I started doing circuits today. Fun stuff. I don’t think that I will ever get bored of them. I have a lot to write about but I’m going to make this one short (and update you about other stuff in another entry).

I booked two lessons today. On the second lesson, I decided to bring along my GPS for the ride so that I could plot my track (and elevation) on a map for later study. Got to the airport and the weather was questionable but we decided to go up …

This is a repost from Aviatrix’s latest post.

First, some background:

ADF Is a navigation tool thats based on AM radio signals. The way it works is that there are a bunch of “stations” (called NDBs, Non Directional Beacons) all over Canada that broadcast this AM signal that you use for direction finding. There is a compass in the cockpit with an arrow that points to the ADF station you have dialed in.

You also know that you are dialed into the right station because it broadcasts morse code. The morse code is …

My last two lessons have been canceled because my FI is sick. Get better soon!

My midterms are coming up this week (and next). I’ve been studying for my Human Factors midterm on Saturday and I’m going to spend the most of the day today doing so as well. The second half of this class is going to be my favourite. We will actually get assigned a bunch of TSB accident reports and have to diagnose what human factors played a role in causing the accident. Make a presentation and present …

Can it be? Three in a row?! Yes, well.. sort of.

The weather today was looking marginal for finishing up practicing spins and spirals. So I decided today would be better spent on a ground briefing than in the air. I was still able to get in 2 flights this weekend.

Saturdays flight was probably the best lesson I’ve had to date. I felt really comfortable at the controls and not once did I not feel unprepared. The weather was great too!

This was the first time (for me) that the plane had …

This clip is a good example of a language barrier that could cause potential problems with air traffic. It looks like the controller was telling the pilot that the flight level was available until a certain point, however both the pilot (and my self) didn’t understand.

Listen to the clip here.

Also interesting to note: they use meters instead of feet overseas.

I’m sure you’ve heard the news. Steve Fossett is trying to break the longest flight record in his Virgin Atlantic Global Flyer.

I’d be interesting to see if anyone is able to capture some clips of his travels on LiveATC.net. His route takes him over Canadian airspace (specifically Gander, NL) which LiveATC.net has a feed of.

In other news.. My latest flight went well. We covered slow flight and endurance. Some new milestones this flight were:

- I made my own copy of the ATIS for the first time! I swear I didn’t …

… according to one of my teachers.

Let’s start off with a little bit of grade 10 physics:

There are four forces that act on an airplane: Lift, Weight (gravity), Thrust, and Drag.

All of these forces are equal in straight and level flight.

Rule of Flight #1: Lift always acts perpendicular to the wingspan (lateral axis).

So what happens when we turn the airplane? We bank our wings. Remember rule number 1? The lift component also banks to stay perpendicular to the lateral axis:

The two green arrows are the resolved vectors for the lift …

I happen to come across an image of an aircraft that smashed into a house. I decided to look up its registry and discovered that it took off from Buttonville!

The accident report is availble on the TSBs website. Good news is that nobody was seriously hurt.

Since my flight was canceled today because of the weather, I figured it would be a good time to talk about NOTAMs.

A NOTAM is a NOTice to AirMen and it lets pilots and controllers know of things that are different or out of the ordinary. Lets take a look at some of the currently active NOTAMs for Buttonville:

060015 CYKZ TORONTO/BUTTONVILLE MUNICIPAL

CYKZ PARAJUMPS 1 NM RADIUS 435230N 792730W (APRX 4 NM WNW AD)

SFC TO 6000 FT MSL 1600/2100 DLY

0602041600 TIL 0602052100

It’s pretty easy to decode this one. This NOTAM is to …