Friday, March 31, 2006 - 14:42:50 ET

Buttonville Flying Club

I recently discovered that there is a flying club that operates out of Buttonville. According to their website they have over 100 members.

The membership fee is $30 (for students) for a year. This club does a lot of trips, some of the bigger trips on the list for this year:

Apr 4-10 - Sun 'n Fun in Lakeland Florida
May 12-14 - Washington, DC. Visit the Smithsonian museum and sight see the U.S Capital to be preceded the week before by a meeting on procedures if required by first timers or VFR pilots
Jul 24-30 - Oshkosh Airventure (a really popular airshow)

You dont have to own an airplane to go along on the trips. They call it a "have a seat/need a seat" policy. If you have spare room on the plane, and you're a member, you're welcome to come along as a passenger.

It could be a great opportunity to learn outside of the lessons i'm taking now.

I'm a little weary of becoming a member. I dont want to join if its nothing but a bunch of old school ex-military fighter pilots (those who actually use "roger wilco" on the radios) trying to re-live their glory days. That said, I'm still going to try to attend one of their meetings. Just have to figure out when it is..

Is anyone else out there a member of a flying club? Why did you join? What advantages does your club offer?

Comments (4) | Permalink | Category: Training

Thursday, March 30, 2006 - 10:14:47 ET

Hourly Forecasts

The Weather Network has launched a new product called "Hourly Forecasts". They forecast the weather for the next 12 hours, hour by hour.

I don't know how accurate these forecasts are.. however they could prove to be useful for flying. If you know you are only going to be flying for a part of the day (ie, doing circuits for a couple of hours) then you can use these forecasts to see how the weather will be like for that part of the day.

The forecast is limited however. The most detail you get are precipitation and temperature.

Check out Buttonville's hourly forecast.

Comments (2) | Permalink | Category: Training

Wednesday, March 29, 2006 - 11:00:06 ET

Summer Ground School

I've registered for my summer semester courses last night. They start in the second week of May and run until August.

Tuesdays: Instruments and Avionics
Wednesdays: Navigation
Thursdays: Personnel Management

I was hoping that four courses would be offered, however, this schedule good (especially for the summer) as it gives me Mondays and Fridays off.

I haven't been able to study for the PSTAR test at all. I really want to get it out of the way so that I can solo as soon as possible. I have, however, been studying my emergency checklists.

As part of the pre-take off checklist, I have to provide a take-off briefing to my FI. In a nutshell, it lets her know what's going to happen if/when the engine fails on the take-off roll. I have recently added a new bit of information to the briefing in order to help me remember the best glide speed for the 172:

"If there is an engine failure or malfunction before rotation with sufficient runway remaining, I will abort the take-off and stop within the remaining runway.

If there is an engine failure or malfunction after rotation with sufficient runway remaining, I will land the airplane on the remaining runway.

If there is an engine failure or malfunction after rotation with insufficient runway remaining, I will put the plane into best glide at 65KIAS and land within 30° of the runway center line."

Before I used to say just "best glide" without stating the airspeed.

It's important to communicate this to your passenger or co-pilot in order for no misunderstandings or freak-outs to happen if something doesn't go right on take off. You would put this plan into effect if you notice that your "parameters are not in the green":

- Full Power?
- Engine Temp and Pressure in the green?
- Speed is alive (and climbing?)

If any one of those items don't pass.. abort the take off.

I've booked lessons all the way up to the end of June. Hopefully by then I wont need my FI as I will have my private license by then. I hope to get up this weekend, I haven't been in the air for almost 2 weeks now.

Comments (0) | Permalink | Category: Pre Training

Tuesday, March 21, 2006 - 23:10:48 ET

More Radio Goodness

I found out on Monday that I passed my radio exam... no surprise there. Just studying now for the PSTAR test.

My lesson on Monday went well. It was windy so excellent circuit practice in wind. Lots of Touch-And-Gos. I still can't get the hang of the flair on landing though. My FI blames the lack of practice in calm weather. All of my circuit practice has been in windy conditions. Every time i've gone up for circuits, we've had a runway change. Monday was no exception. This time it was from 33 to 03. With that, i've now taken off and landed on every runway at Buttonville!

My circuit work is on par, both my FI and I seem happy with it. My approaches are better now. The only issue is the flair on landing. With that in mind, my next circuit work will be in calmer conditions.

I've also been told to work on memorizing the emergency checklists. That will be the next lesson.

I also asked about getting a tour of the tower. My FI says that's no problem as long as they are not busy. So I will probably venture up there at some point.

I'm going to be out of town next weekend, so my lessons then have been canceled. Next scheduled lesson.. April 1st.

Some audio clips:
Cleared for Take Off
Turning base and Touch-and-Go

Comments (2) | Permalink | Category: Training

Monday, March 20, 2006 - 16:52:40 ET

How not to speak on the radio

Was finally able to go flying today. Winds were gusty, but still ok for doing circuits. I decided to bring along my scanner this time and record ground and tower.

My first call for this lesson didn't go too well. Listen to the clip and see if you can spot the TWO things I did incorrectly (leave a comment).

Listen to whoops.mp3

(And yes, ground was barely understandable.. but I understood what he was saying)

Comments (8) | Permalink | Category: Training

Sunday, March 19, 2006 - 16:38:25 ET

Flying and Cellphones: Mythbuster Style

The latest episode of Mythbusters tackles the myth of cell phones on airplanes. Their experiment was done two different ways.

First they purchased a bunch of equipment, radio stacks, VOR/NDB radios, GPSs and got it working. They then tested the equipment by tuning it to an airport VOR (San Francisco, which was 10miles away).

During the entire experiment, they were trying to determine if a cell phone can cause interference with the VOR equipment. Either by deflecting the needle, or flipping the to/from flag.

Take a look at how VORs work at Wikipedia!

Through their experiments, they were able to make significant changes in the VOR by using 800-900MHz cell phones (old analogue and CDMA/TDMA phones). GSM, which works at 1800MHz didn't affect any of the instruments.

Their second test was to try to duplicate the results in an actual working aircraft. They were able to do the experiment in a modern jet with a glass cockpit. They weren't able to reproduce the same results with the old equipment they got from a scrap yard. The reason? The modern aircraft's wiring is shielded against interference.

The Mythbusters concluded that the reason why cell phone usage is not allowed on airplanes is due to the fact that it would cost too much money to test every phone on every plane for interference. Better safe than sorry.

Comments (0) | Permalink | Category: Interesting Things

Monday, March 13, 2006 - 08:09:54 ET

Cumulonumbus North of Field

No flying today because of thunderstorms. The upside though is that I have yet another METAR I can use to test my METAR parsning engine that I wrote for my Computer Systems class. This SPECI is particularly interesting:

SPECI CYKZ 131233Z 09011G16KT 2 1/4SM -TSRA BR BKN006 OVC012CB RERA RMK SC6CB2 CB N MOVG E OCNL LTGICCG N=

Trying to figure out the Remarks section...

Stratus Cumulus 6/8
Cumulonimbus 2/8
Cumulonumbus North of field, moving East.
Occasional Ligtniging in cloud North of field.

This is also a good day to study for the PSTAR too.

To answer a comment left below. The reason why this is so interesting is two fold:

1. Thunderstorms in March are rare here.
2. The remarks section of a metar is anyones game. There are a standard set of abbreviations you can use, but not everyone uses them. So being able to read the remarks section of a metar is fun sometimes. (Everything after the RMK is the remarks section)

Comments (1) | Permalink | Category: Training

Saturday, March 11, 2006 - 17:17:39 ET

The PSTAR

I will probably find out how I did on the Radio Exam come Monday. In the meantime I've been studying for the PSTAR test. The passing grade for this test is 90% and its your ticket to getting your Training License (read: fly solo).

Subject areas include:

- Canadian Aviation Regulations (CARs)
- Air Traffic Control Clearances and Instructions
- Air Traffic Control procedures as they apply to the control of VFR traffic
- Air Traffic procedures at uncontrolled airports and aerodromes
- Special VFR Regulations
- Aeronautical Information Circulars
- NOTAM

This exam only covers air regulations, rules, and laws. 50 questions with a three hour time limit. I am using the Transport Canada Study and Reference Guide.

Comments (0) | Permalink | Category: Training

Saturday, March 11, 2006 - 16:56:08 ET

The Three Altitudes

A plane needs air to be able to fly. Thanks to the laws of physics, the same parcel of air can have different characteristics based on temperature and altitude. Because of this, there are a few things we have to be careful of while trying to keep that hunk of metal afloat.

Let's take a look at some fundamental "laws" of air (and all gases for that matter), as they apply to flying:

- As altitude increases, air pressure decreases
- As air temperature increases, air pressure decreases (Gay-Lussac's law)
- As relative humidity increases, air pressure decreases

These three items are very important because aircraft performance is based on how much air it can move over its wings at any one time. The more air (dense) the aircraft can use for propulsion and lift, the better the aircraft will perform. For this reason, we calculate pressure altitude and density altitude.

Calculating these values are key especially during take off.

To calculate at what equivalent altitude you'd be taking off from, use this formula:

(ICAO Standard Pressure - Current Station Pressure) * 1000 + Station Altitude (in feet).

Lets take a look at calculating pressure altitude at an airport that is 650' above sea level (Buttonville) with a current station pressure of 30.23" Hg:

(29.92"Hg - 30.23"Hg)*1000+650' = 340'

So at 30.23"Hg station pressure, you'd be taking off from a pressure altitude of 340'. Lower altitude means denser air, which means better performance. In essence, every 0.1"Hg of pressure equates to 100'.

Now, the pressure altitude equation above assumes the stations air temperature is 15°C and dry. This is hardly the case (especially in Canada). This is why we figure out density altitude. Which is the true indication of your actual "altitude". Calculating the density altitude can get a little complex. This is why we have our E6B calculators!

I hope that this explains why flying in the summer in Toronto is such a pain in the ass. Really hot and humid weather is not ideal flying conditions. Let's assume its a really nice muggy day at Buttonville (650' above sea level). The temperature is 30° with a dew point of 28°C. Station pressure is 30.15"Hg. Using a calculator the density altitude is 2745'. This means that at Buttonville, you'd be trying to take off as if your plane was 2745' above sea level.

Comments (3) | Permalink | Category: Airmanship

Friday, March 10, 2006 - 23:32:51 ET

Various Tidbits

I did better than expected on my Meterology midterm: 81%. Most of my mistakes were due to stupidity (ie, not reading the question properly).

I also took care of the Radio Operators test on the weekend. The massing mark is 70%. It comprised of 30 multiple choice questions and 10 short answer questions. Pretty straight forward. The short answer questions involved spelling out words using the phonetic alphabet (alpha,bravo,charlie,etc..) as well as making an Urgency (Mayday) and Priority (Pan Pan) calls and messages.

I always find it difficult to figure out when you would use Mayday versus Pan Pan. There are some fine lines. For my Mayday call I said that I was doing a forced landing. For my Pan Pan call, I indicated that I was low on fuel and would like priority for landing. When would you do a Mayday instead of Pan Pan?

Westjet is hiring some part-time positions. Ticket agents and Aircraft "bitches" (stock plane, fuel, etc..). I decided to apply to the "bitch" position.. hopefully I can work weekends and nights I'm not at school. Good for two reasons: One, I get my foot in the door and get close up to planes I might be flying in the future early on. Two, extra cash to pay for more flying!

This month is pretty busy non-flying wise. I've only been able to book 2 lessons on each Monday this month.

Comments (1) | Permalink | Category: Training

Sunday, March 5, 2006 - 12:00:00 ET

Studying For Your Radiotelephone License

I've been using the following two documents provided by Industry Canada as a study guide for the Radiotelephone License:

- Study Guide for the Radio telephone Operator's Restircted Certificate (Aeronautical)
- Guide for Examiners Conducting Examinations for the Radiotelephone Operator's Restricted Certificate (Aeronautical)

The examiner guide is good, because it contains some sample questions you could expect them to ask.

Comments (0) | Permalink | Category: Training

Saturday, March 4, 2006 - 20:33:07 ET

METAR Weather Codes ... Decoded

I've been spending the past hour working on my Computer Systems assignment (its a METAR, TAF, and FD decoder). I'm at the point now where I have to convert the weather codes into human readable format. Ie, make it so that "SN" is displayed as "Snow".

Most of the codes are straight forward:

SN = Snow
RA = Rain
VA = Volcanic Ash
DZ = Drizzle

There are some that, at first, didn't make any sense:

GR = Hail
BR = Mist
FU = Smoke
PO = Dust

I thought to my self.. Hail, in French is: grêle. So I looked up the French equivalent of "mist" and "smoke", and low and behold:

GR = Hail = Grêle
BR = Mist = Brume
FU = Smoke = Fumée
PO = Dust = poussière

Now, the only ones I cant figure out are:

MI = Shallow
BC = Patches
GS = Snow Pellets

If anyone knows what "real" word those codes are abbreviations of, please let me know. Knowing the "real" word actually helps me remember what the codes mean!

Comments (2) | Permalink | Category: Training

Saturday, March 4, 2006 - 14:53:28 ET

Winds: 340 at 19, Gusting to 26

Today was a textbook day for illusions! I was afraid that it would be weeks before I could experience them first hand. I was able to book this flight a little last minute on Friday night.

I was going to experience two illusions today. These illusions are created by drift. It's pretty simple really:

Ground speed. If you have a strong headwind or tail wind, it "looks" like you are going faster (tailwind) or slower (headwind) than you actually are. If you look solely at your airspeed, this is true. However, your ground speed does increase or decrease respectively. To illustrate this, we put the aircraft into slow flight, the goal was trying to make our ground speed 0KT. With the plane in slow flight, we were hovering around 45KIAS... however our ground path was almost 0! I felt like a helicopter just hovering in one spot. Pretty cool.

The moral of the story, don't rely on how fast the ground is moving to determine your actual airspeed.

Turning. Because of the wind, you will need to start your turns later (headwind) or earlier (tailwind). When turning in a headwind the airplane will feel like its slipping into the turn. It's important to use the Turn Coordinator and not the ground as your tool to determine co-ordination. Make sure you don't put too much rudder in (like I did the first time). Start your turn later than you normally would. Turning in a tailwind the airplane will feel like it's skidding into the turn. Make sure that you start the turn earlier than you normally would.

I also practiced a few spirals and spins too. I wasn't too comfortable with my ability to recover from them yet. After todays practice, I'm much more comfortable. I need to speak out the steps that I'm doing so that my instructor (and eventual flight examiner) will know exactly what I'm doing.

Today was the most comfortable that I've felt in the airplane. I was able to hold altitude pretty well heading up to the practice area and even in my turns. Radio work is pretty much down pat. The only thing I'm not doing yet are calling base while in the circuit and annoucing our position/intentions in the practice area (which is no big deal really).

Landing wasn't as tough as I thought... even with the gusty conditions. When landing with a gust factor follow this simple rule:

Take the gust factor, half it, then apply that value (in KIAS) to your approach speed.

So today, the gust factor was 7KT (26KT-19KT), half that (we rounded up to 4) and made our approach speed 69KIAS (instead of the normal 65KIAS).

Make sure that you have your crosswind correction in when you're on the runway, whether taking off or landing.

I'm noticing that my take offs are getting much more smooth. I need to call out whats happening while we're taking off though:

- Full Throttle (check to make sure that RPMS are up, ~ 2600 RPMs)
- Parameters in the green (oil pressure and temperature are in the green range)
- Speed is alive (the airspeed indicator is showing an increase in an airspeed)

If any one of these checks fail, abort the take-off. I noticed that today my FI was not calling these out. I was too worried about my crosswind corrections during the take-off that I didn't start checking those items.

Navigation is all on my own now too. I'm getting better each flight. I love it how my FI goes "ok, take us home" and I can do it. I know what altitudes I need to be at when, when to make my radio calls to tower, and I can spot my landmarks. However, take me to the east practice area, and I'm sure I'll be lost.

So whats next? My Pilot Training License. You need this license in order to go solo. So my FI suggested that I write the necessary exams soon. I'm going to write the Radiotelephone Operators License exam on Monday. It's pretty straightforward and not that difficult. As for the PSTAR test .. I am going to need to study for that some more before I can take it. Right now, I'm aiming for March 20th.

(Click the map to see a bigger image. This particular outing shows how inaccurate the GPSs altitude feature is. It indicated under 500 feet for most of the take-off.. which is impossible since the elevation of the airport is 650')

Comments (3) | Permalink | Category: Training

Friday, March 3, 2006 - 11:06:22 ET

Circuits Part 2

This is an update to a post I made earlier in the week.

The flight on Saturday was good. We finished up stalls and spirals. Let me tell you, spirals are much more easier on the stomach than the spins are. One of my classmates took a video of her spin lesson - I asked for a copy so that I can post it here. Just so you guys can get an idea of what it looks like from inside the aircraft.

The weather wasn't the best. At 5000' we were doing our lesson in holes in the ceiling. A little annoying, but its good practice to see what it's like in less that ideal visibility. I can totally understand how people get disorientated when you cant see the horizon.

I also did some forward slips.. fun.

On the way back it was up to me to navigate. I was able to identify the necessary land marks without great difficulty. Finding my way back was no problem at all. I'm confident that if I was to fly by my self right now, I would have no problems getting up to the north practice area and back.

One thing that I don't like about my charts is that road names are not printed on them. I think i'm going to mark them in my self in pencil.

It was time for circuits on Monday. A lot of fun! I had two lessons booked. The morning lesson went off without a hitch. From memory I think we did 5 "cycles" (take-offs and landings). 1 was a full stop, the others were touch and gos. What possibly could happen, did happen. We had a runway change, two overshoots (where you abort the landing), and cross-field landing (I think it was called..). All in an hour.

I got my mid-term mark for my Human Factors class on Monday.. 94%. I'm happy with that. A few small stupid mistakes. I don't feel I did that well on my Meteorology one though. I will find it out on Tuesday.

So I found a video of a spin on YouTube (thanks but no thanks Google Video). So what is happening is that the plane stalls (that beeeep noise you hear is the stall horn), a wing drops (to the left in this video) and you start spinning towards the ground while the plane is stalled. You actually feel a few Gs (1.5-2G) when you pull out of the nose dive.

Comments (0) | Permalink | Category: Training

Wednesday, March 1, 2006 - 14:33:32 ET

CRM in the 50's

Crew Resource Management. It's a concept that is relatively new to the aviation scene. The idea behind CRM is that work flows and communication in the cockpit and with the rest of the crew is optimized.

A lot of aviation accidents in the past were due to a lack of CRM. The most famous would probably have to be the Tenerife Disaster, the most fatal aircraft accident in history (583 died) (dont say September 11 attacks trumps this, it wasn't an accident!).

Many factors were at play. However the captains refusal to listen to the first officers comments about not being cleared for take-off where probably the main cause of the accident. CRM is aimed at getting the entire crew to work together. The attitude of "do what the captain says" is no longer accepted.

Imagine modern day CRM looked something like this clip from The High and the Mighty:

That clip was stolen from here.

UPDATE: Check out this page from Wikipedia to learn more about CRM.

Comments (0) | Permalink | Category: Interesting Things