Brian posted a comment letting me know his lesson at 2pm today was canceled because it was too hot. I had a plane booked at 6pm to practice some short field take-offs/landings solo. I was hoping the temperature would be cooler by then.

No dice.

The temperature was 34°C with a dew point of 19°C. Toronto Airways policy for renting planes to students only allows flights between -10°C and 35°C. Needless to say I didn’t go up. My trusty E6B tells me that the density altitude for Buttonville would have been 2792′, …

Today’s weather was perfect for flying. Blue skys, light winds, warm weather. The only problem is, everyone else is thinking the same thing: let’s go flying.

I have never, ever, ever seen Buttonville this busy before. I had to wait about 10 minutes to take off right from the get-go. This was a normal take off and landing just to get a feel for this plane and the conditions. It was non-stop on the radio and people were stepping all over eachother.

The next time around it was a short field take …

John who?!

JD McCurdy, as he is known, was the first person to fly an airplane in Canada. He was schooled at St. Andrews College in my hometown of Aurora, Ontario. He was also the first Canadian to receive a pilots license.

The frame and structure of the Silver Dart (the name of the plane) was made of steel tube, bamboo, friction tape, wire, and wood. The wings were covered with rubberized silk balloon-cloth. It was pretty advanced for its time:

- Was able to take off under its own power, by utilizing …

Tonights flight was good. During this time of day the same controller works both ground and tower, so when you’re on either frequency you only get half of the conversation sometimes. Someone on the radio jokingly asked him “so do you get paid double to work both tower and ground?”

The first flight I did was a normal take off and landing. Just to get a feel for the winds (which were variable 170°-210° at around 5KTs) and the plane. When I landed I was able to backtrack on the runway …

Took me just over 4 hours to finish these up. I think these are going to be the final versions of both my Weight and Balance and Performance worksheets. You can download the 2 page PDF to print and use.

Some notes:

- The performance sheets has space to work out some calculations. The idea being that if anything ever goes wrong, you can find out if it was due to a miscalculation.

- The x-wind component graph takes up a lot of room because the source file is low resolution. Ideally I’d …

“Density altitude is pressure altitude corrected for temperature”. That is how I’ve been taught how to calculate density altitude.

Lets take the following scenario:

- Field Elevation: 650′

- Temperature: 8°C

- Dewpoint: -2°C

- Altimeter setting: 30.05″ Hg

- ICAO Lapse Rate: 1.98°C / 1000′

I’ve calculated pressure altitude to be 520′.

To Calculate density altitude:

Pressure Altitude + ((Temperature – ICAO Standard Temp)x100)

ICAO Standard Temperature in this case for the density altitude of 520′ would be (15°C – (520*0.00198)) or 13.97°C… Therefore:

520 + ((8 – 13.97)x100)) = -77′

Now, according to my Electronic E6B I get a density …

The weather the past four days have been really crappy for flying. At one point on Sunday it was gusting up to 35KTs!

That said, I was still able to get two flights in plus a ground briefing. A solo flight on Friday morning and a dual today.

Friday’s flight was great. The weather was perfect. Light winds and mainly sunny. I love flying at 8am in the mornings. This was also the first time I flew this particular plane. I was able to get 1 circuit in before it started to …

This week has been horrible weather wise for flying. Extrmely low ceilings and thunderstorms/rain. I really do love thunderstorms, but I love flying more

Looks like rain until Sunday.

Today’s flight was not bad. I didn’t have my regular FI today but a “substitute”. One of my teachers taught him when he was learning how to fly. We chatted about this particular teacher as we did the run-up and taxi. It was all jokes and reminiscing.

The plan was to do a few circuits with the FI, then solo for the rest of the time. This was the first time I did a landing with a partial panel! The FI decided to cover up my tach and airspeed indicator half …

I’ve created two checklists.

My Cessna 172 Checklist is a modification of the one given to me by my FI. It contains all of the items in the POH plus a few additional ones. These items I needed to do, but would always forget, like recording the hobbs.

My Emergency Checklist is a compilation of all of the emergency checklists in the POH. All of these items need to be memorized. I found it easy to carry around this single sheet than the entire POH.

Feel free to use them yourself.