Monday, November 28, 2005 - 20:49:26 ET

More On Curriculum

The course outlines for the classes I will be taking at Seneca are now on line.

Aeronautics
The main textbook is "From the Ground Up" which I've already done about two thirds of the workbook. Some highlights:

1. Components, structure, loads, stresses, documents
2. Bernoulli's Theorem, Newton's Laws, airfoils and production of lift, weight and C of G, drag, couples and turning moments, wing design, high lift devices, attitudes and movements, stability and control, flight performance
3. Flight instrument, pitot-static system, gyroscopic principles, magnetic compass
4. Design and construction, definition of horsepower, 4-stroke cycles, cooling, lubrication, fuel system, ignition system, electrical system, the propeller, engine instruments, engine operation
5. Runway and taxiway marking and lighting, aerodrome traffic procedures
6. Altimeter and standard pressure regions, high and low level airspace, control zones, aerodrome traffic zones, control areas, terminal radar service areas
7. Clearance and instruction, flight rules, flight plans, cruising altitudes, weather minima
8. Transmission and reception of radio signal, wavelengths and frequencies, communication equipment and facilities and procedures
9. Care of the airplane, weight and balance, aircraft performance
10. Personnel licensing, aircraft registration and airworthiness requirement, documentation, inspection requirement, flight rules and procedures
11. General health, diet, physical fitness, hypoxia, hyperventilation, decompression sickness, sensory illusions, alcohol, drugs, fatigue, emotional stress, checklist for safe flight

Meteorology
Here the prescribe texts are the AIP and a new book I'm not familiar with: "Air Command Weather Manual" from the Department of Defense.

1. Weather basics
2. Aviation weather information services
3. Hazards to aviation
4. Flight Planning

Human Factors
All about how flight influenced the human body. Many textbooks for this class, one of which I already have.

1. Cockpit Design
2. The body
3. Stress and fatigue
4. Judgment and decision making
5. Crew resource management
6. Human factors in aircraft accidents

Computer Systems
I'm hoping not to have to take this class, however I don't know enough about the crappy programming language they use to try to get a prior learning assessment credit from them.

1. Basic language fundamentals
2. Building an application using VB
3. Arrays, loops
4. Sub procedures
5. Building an aviation related visual basic application

I might be able to build something cool... perhaps some sort of software that will help with flight planning?

So thats just a rundown of schooling I will be taking. I hope to be able to squeeze in 2-3 days of flying in there as well.

Comments (0) | Permalink | Category: Pre Training

Friday, November 25, 2005 - 16:25:53 ET

Questions Answered!

I got a call back from the FI I did my intro flight with the other day and she was able to answer all of the questions I had.

She said that it might be possible for me to write my PSTAR exam before becoming an "official" student at the school. Just to come in when the weather is crappy (I'm presuming that's when the CFIs have nothing better to do). However, writing the Radiotelephone exam (for my radio license) would have to wait.

In the meantime I'm continuing my studying. I constantly get 95-98% on all of the mock exams I can find on line. It'd be sweet if I ace the exam!

Right now my weak spots have to do with the blast areas of different types of planes. I always get them confused. Is the take-off blast danger of a Jumbo jet 1600ft or 1200ft? (its 1600ft, 1200ft is for a Medium size jet).

I also took a look at the requirements for the in flight exam for the commercial license. It's pretty much the same as a private license except that the tolerances are much smaller. For example: straight and level flight for the Private exam might have a tolerance of +/- 100ft of altitude. For the commercial exam its +/- 50ft (these are examples... not real values).

I am going to be adding a new section to the site where I will have links to all the documents, mock exams, regulations that I have been reading.

Comments (0) | Permalink | Category: Pre Training

Tuesday, November 22, 2005 - 22:32:23 ET

Danger Area

The rear of an airplane both in the air and on the ground is a dangerous place. In the air you have to concern yourself with wake turbulance (not caused by the engines, but the wingtip vorticies). On the ground you have to worry about Jet and Prop blast.

This "danger zone" is different depending on the type (jet/prop) and size of the aircraft. Below is the areas around an airplane where jet blast is dangerous.

A diagram is also available.

Comments (0) | Permalink | Category: Airmanship

Tuesday, November 22, 2005 - 12:37:26 ET

Procedure or Politeness

Radio communication is a very important part of a pilots duties. There is specific protocol that needs to be followed in order for you to get your message across clearly in the shortest amount of time possible. Take a look at this example:

Controller: "American 1778, contact tower now on 122.8. Good day"
Aircraft: "Contact tower on 122.8, American 1778"

This is called a "hand-off". This particular aircraft wants to land, and the controller knows this because of the flight plan that was filed before the flight took off from their origin. The controller started his transmission with the call sign of the aircraft, followed by the instruction. The aircraft wont execute the instruction until he's read it back to the controller.

This is a pretty routine "radio transaction" between pilot and controller. The interesting part lies in the "Good day" portion of the controllers transmission. Some controllers say "Good day" or "Good evening". Some even like to use "so long" or "cya!".

I wasn't able to find any official documentation that specifies that you have to say "good day" when you expect to no longer talk with the aircraft. So I wonder if this was something that controllers just started doing to let the pilots know that you don't need to talk to them anymore.

Then there are some controllers who just love to have fun. In this particular clip, a ground controller from Boston slips in a few "go sox!" into his instructions.

Comments (2) | Permalink | Category: Pre Training

Monday, November 21, 2005 - 12:25:20 ET

Ground School Details

Seneca has finally updated their website with class schedules and information. Classes start the first week of Janurary! Here is what my schedule will look like:

Monday: Human Factors
Tuesday: Meterology
Wednesday: Aeronautics
Thursday: Computer Systems

All classes are from 6:30pm - 9:30pm At Buttonville Airport, with the exception of Computer Systems. I'm going to try to see if I can get a credit for not actually attending the Computer Systems classes as the cirriculum is stuff I already know. So this first semester, the cost will be about $1500, plus $5,000 for the tuition.

I'm looking forward to meterology and human factors the most. Both should prove to be really interesting. Toronto Airways (the school that will be providing the flight training) has two types of ground school. One is a ten week course (two days a week) or an intestive all day four day course (thursday-sunday). Im not sure which one i'd like to do.

Just to clarify some things:

- Seneca is providing schooling in addition to the minimum ground school requred by Transport Canada. The only purpose for going to Seneca is to get a post-secondary diploma in aviation.
- Toronto Airways is the school that I will be using for ground school and flight training. The schedule and instructors are independant of Seneca College.

WIth advice from other students, i'm going to write my PSTAR and Radiotelephone exams as soon as possible. As such i'm starting to intensify my studying of the materials you will need to know for the PSTAR exam:

- Canada Flight Suppliment. This contains information on almost every single aerodrome in Canada. Along with other helpful information such as emergency procedures, cross-wind calculations, and airspace rules.
- Canadian Aviation Regulations. The "bible" of all aviation books in Canada. It contains all of the rules and regulations you need to know in order to fly in Canada.
- Aeronautical Information Manual. Contains the same information as the CAR but in "human readable" form. With suggestions by Transport Canada.

All of this information, with the exception of the CFS, are available online! The passing grade for the PSTAR exam is 90% and you have three hours to complete 50 multiple choice questions. Most students complete it in about one hour.

Comments (3) | Permalink | Category: Pre Training

Wednesday, November 16, 2005 - 20:57:43 ET

Saving $24,000 a year

I never thought that paint could be so heavy! In an effort to save cash, Air Canada is stripping some of their aircraft of most of its paint. Leaving the "au naturel" polished aluminum to bare the brunt of the elements. According to Air Canada, the paint weighs 360 pounds and takes about 12 days to strip off the airplane. This results in a fuel savigns of $24,000 per airplane. With 45 Boeing 747s that can result in a total savings of $1,080,000 a year!

This just proves how tight profit margins are in the airline world! I personally think the new look is great! It's a throwback to the old school airplanes from the 50s, where most of them were not painted. The full story and more photos, are available at aviation.ca

Comments (0) | Permalink | Category: Interesting Things

Monday, November 14, 2005 - 13:31:47 ET

Visualizing Air Traffic

FAA Flight information is available to the public (I'm still trying to figure out how I can get that data). Aaron Koblin put together some pretty spiffy videos of this data. Each dot represents an airplane flying to or from the US.

Be sure to check out the "overview documentation" (a video) on his website to understand how to interpret the data.

Comments (1) | Permalink | Category: Interesting Things

Saturday, November 12, 2005 - 23:42:11 ET

Waiting some more...

Went to the Seneca Open House with Melissa today. We were both somewhat disappointed, nobody was able to answer any of my questions about their part time course. I kept on getting redirected "to the website" and I kept on reminding them that it was out of date. I spent most of the time talking to the students. One showed me around the place. The Fracas simulators are pretty pimp. They have two, one for Cessnas and another that has a glass cockpit for (I think) a jet engine plane. The latter being good for ATP training.

In any case I walked away with not that much more information. Some good things about the Seneca program:

- You get to use their sims whenever you want, and it doesn't cost you a dime.
- The planes are inside a hangar, so no need to de-ice, scrape off frost. (Only get to use their planes in the full time course)
- Getting extra help from your instructors doesn't cost anything either.

I decided to go back to their website tonight to see if there was anything new. I did find one tidbit of information on it: December 15 at 6pm is an Orientation/Information session for what I can only guess is their Winter semester. This session is specifically for the part time program.

So I think I will wait until that session before I make a decision on how I'm going to proceed with my training. In the meantime, I'm going to continue learning on my own!

Comments (0) | Permalink | Category: Pre Training

Thursday, November 10, 2005 - 01:39:39 ET

Radio Navigation with MS Flight Sim

After reading over the chapter on radio navigation, I decided to try it out - using Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004.

I hopped in my Cessna 172, and departed Buttonville on runway 33. I climbed up to 4,000 feet and turned on the autopilot and told it to hold this altitude. First item on the list, understand how the ADF works. The ADF is a simple device that points you in the direction of the radio beacon. A simple arrow on a dial. Just turn the airplane until the arrow points straight up, now you're headed towards the NDB.
I tuned the radio to 248KHz (which was the closest NDB from Buttonville). I was surprised to hear the morse code identifier! Flight Sim rocks!

I turned the airplane into the direction until the arrow pointed straight up. I flew and flew until magically the needle swung around 180 degrees! I passed the NDB. Task one complete. The little pink icon (circle, not triangle) on the map on the leftis the NDB. You can see when I started homing in on it as my track veered to the right (east).

The next task was to use a VOR. VORs are used by everyone from private pilots to commercial airliners. They are the key to navigating the skys. I was a little confused as to how these work, since they are a little more complex than the simple NDBs. A VOR allows you to intercept it at a specific heading, called a radial. There is an indicator that tells you if you are left or right of the VOR. The idea is that you just keep the indicator centered and you will intercept the VOR at that radial.

I tuned my nav radio to 117.35MHz, the Simcoe VOR. Then I selected which radial I wanted to intercept. And flew towards the VOR keeping the marker centered. The closer you get to the VOR the harder it is to keep the needle centered. What I ended up doing was fly past the VOR then select a radial that was in the opposite direction I was going (in this case 240°) just so that I can exaggerate my track. So I started turning the aircraft until the needle was centered, then kept on flying. Once the to/from flag flipped I knew that I was on the other side of the VOR. I took a look at my heading indicator, and sure enough it showed 240°! Awesome!

I saved my entire flight in this PDF. When I decided to head north to fly past the VOR, I took the "long way" (as you can see by the little loop in the track just east of the NDB).

Comments (0) | Permalink | Category: Navigation

Tuesday, November 8, 2005 - 23:54:08 ET

Questions, Waiting, Tax Benefits

I haven't been doing as much studying these past two weeks as I would like. I'm at the "navigation" chapter in my textbook and I am missing some tools that I need in order to complete them. Mainly a "real" E6B, some protractors and rulers.

I'm actually pretty excited about the Seneca open house this weekend. I'm going to chat with the FI I had my intro with after to get some feedback from her about what I plan on doing:

I'm going to pummel the Seneca people about their curriculum and their class sizes. I want to see if they are going to be able to have enough students for all of their classes. Also want to know if I can sign up for the winter semester, or if I'm too late. Their course calendar online is way out of date.

Once I get the info from them, I'm going to speak with the FI. Mainly to find out how it all works: what days/times ground school is at. What days works best for her in regards to teaching me. I plan on taking some of my vacation days from work to go to the airport mid week. I plan on going there 3 times a week. I'm also curious to know more information about her, what rating she has and if she's going to be teaching me for all the other endorsements I want to get (Night, IFR, Dual Engine). Then if all goes well, hopefully by next week I will be signed up and ready to go!

I'm still waiting for my medical certificate from Transport Canada.

So I found more information about claiming your flight lessons against your income tax. All of the normal stipulations apply (you can claim parking, books, etc..) with the addition of having the flying school fill out a TL11B form. This form is available only in electronic format (according to the CCRA website). The form outlines how many hours you've flown along with the total cost. The important bit is the Student's Disclosure which states:

The Canada Revenue Agency may review your claim and ask for more documentation.

This is where having a category 1 medical certificate will help prove that you are not just doing this for fun, but as education needed for a job/career. I'm assuming keeping all your receipts as well as your log book will also be used.

Comments (3) | Permalink | Category: Pre Training

Sunday, November 6, 2005 - 23:38:00 ET

Site Improvements

I've added a few things to the site:

• By The Numbers: Added number of entries
  
• Random Photo: Added a photo (was getting sick of the "test photo") with titles
  
• Last Updated: A new section that will display the last updated dates of the Ground School and Links sections
  
• Ground School: Added a "quick links" nav bar at the top to quickly filter ground school entries by category
  
• RSS Feeds: You can now add this site to your RSS reader
  

This site looks perfectly in Firefox and Safari. IE displays it ok, but not how I intended it (the left and right hand navs are more "spaced out" in IE). IE sucks, so you shouldn't be using it anyways.

If you have any suggestions on how the site can be better, please dont hesitate to let me know!

Comments (0) | Permalink | Category: Site News

Sunday, November 6, 2005 - 20:28:57 ET

The Three Speeds

There are three ways of calculating your airspeed. Each one needs to be used in certain situations. It's important to know when to use which airspeed and how to calculate it.

True Airspeed: Airspeed that is corrected for air density error. This is the actual speed you are traveling through the air.
Calibrated Airspeed: Airspeed that is corrected for instrument error and position.
Indicated Airspeed: Airspeed as reported by the airspeed indicator.

To understand when and how to calculate TAS and CAS, one must understand how the airspeed indicator works.

Airspeed is the speed at which the aircraft is traveling through the air not the speed at which it is traveling over the ground (thats known as ground speed). So how does this instrument work? It measures the difference between the static pressure and the pitot pressure.

Static pressure is just pressure exerted on the instrument from the atmosphere.
Pitot pressure is the dynamic pressure created by the aircraft flying through the air plus the static or atmospheric pressure. A pitot is a little tube that allows air to enter.

Hold your hand out, palm facing your face. Static pressure is currently being exerted on your palm (the weight of the air in the room you're sitting in). Now blow on the palm of your hand - That's dynamic pressure.

Because the instrument depends on pressure to determine the airspeed, certain scenarios can cause errors in the IAS:

Density Error: As your altitude climbs, the air gets thinner and thinner. Although you are traveling at the same speed, less air molecules are entering the pitot pressure system. Therefore the pressure entering the instrument is less and therefore reports a slower speed. In order to correct for this density error you can add 2% (approx) to the IAS for every 1,000 feet of pressure altitude (I will be explaining the different kinds of altitudes later).

Position Error: This is error caused by the position of the pitot intake "hole". Eddies that are formed as the aircraft passes through the air can cause more or less air to pass over the pitot intake. Also high angles of attack (such as at take off) place the pitot intake at an unusual angle to the dynamic pressure. Take your hand again, and blow against it, however this time start changing the angle so that the bottom part of your hand is farther away from your face.. see how you "feel" less air?

So with all that out of the way.. when do you use which airspeed? In most cases you will always use TAS. To calculate TAS you need to know the altitude and outside air temp. The calculation is quite complex as it involves calculating the speed of sound (for the altitude and temperature you know). The equations can be found here. In all cases you will be calculating your TAS using your E6B.

There is one other airspeed that I neglected to mention. This is the Equivalent Airspeed. This only applys to speeds greater than 250 knots at altitudes below 10,000 feet. This airspeed takes into account the compressibility of the air. The faster you move through the air, the more compressed the air becomes just in front of the aircraft.

Comments (0) | Permalink | Category: Instruments

Sunday, November 6, 2005 - 19:21:08 ET

Cutting It Close

I found a great website the other day. A seasoned commercial airline pilot seems to be blogging from inside the flight deck. Some great photos of what he sees out the window also accompany his text.

One of his entries talks about a take off problem. Because of the recent weather (a wet runway), the weight and balance calculations had to be changed. Weight and balance calculations are used to determine if the plane will be able to take off, land, fly properly, etc.. It takes into account the centre of gravity (you can change the COG by shifting fuel from one wing to another, or moving cargo around) and the actual weight of what you are carrying.

For this particular flight, they were able to calculate that 10 passengers were needed to leave the plane, in order for the flight to be able to take off. I find it amazing that they you are able to cut it that close (what happens if the 10 people were lighter than you expected?)

Comments (1) | Permalink | Category: Pre Training

Tuesday, November 1, 2005 - 19:45:27 ET

Seneca Open House

Seneca College is having a open house on Nov 12, 2005. One of the campuses that is participating in this open house is at Buttonville.

I think this will be a *great* opportunity to check out what the school has to offer for their aviation program. I'm particularly concerned with their class sizes and whether or not they will be able to offer their par-time courses.

More information on the open house can be found at their website.

Comments (0) | Permalink | Category: Pre Training

Tuesday, November 1, 2005 - 16:26:39 ET

Getting info from the TSB

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada is the organization that (among other things) investigates aviation accidents.

I wanted to look up a specific investigation so I proceeded to their website. I knew the exact report number, however the report was not available on the website.

I decided to contact them via their contact form and asked them if I could get a copy of the report (and I cited the report number).

5 days later I got an e-mail back from their Public Affairs Advisor with a copy of the report in PDF format. I was actually quite surprised to get a reply back this soon (and with the information I requested).

Just because a report isn't available on their site, doesn't mean you can't ask for it (and get it!).

I am trying to read up on as many accident reports as possible. I find it an invaluable resource into learning what can "go wrong" when your in the air. You can always learn from other peoples mistakes!

Comments (1) | Permalink | Category: Pre Training