Saturday, September 30, 2006 - 18:05:34 ET

On Deck for October...

I elected to make today's lesson a ground briefing to go over some things that will happen during the flight test.

I spent 0.8 hours going over some questions that I had about how the flight test is going to go. After that I wrote the "mock exam". Here is how the next couple of weeks are going to shape out.

I am going to find out what my mark was on the mock exam. If that is 70% or higher than I'm good to go for writing the real written exam at my nearest Transport Canada office (which happens to be a 20 min subway ride from my place). I'm planning on writing that this week.

I have a solo lesson booked tomorrow to practice some air work to bring it within flight test tolerances.

I have two possible dates for my solo long x-country that I still need to do, October 8 and 15th.

I still have to do the mock flight test which I have booked for October 23rd.

This month I got a little screwed because I waited last minute to book things. In most cases all the 172's are booked.

So I still have a lot of things to study before the 23rd. I need to go over everything a few times in my head (chair flying) before then.

Let's hope the weather holds up for all my booked flights!

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Wednesday, September 27, 2006 - 22:38:08 ET

Being sick sucks

I've come down with a cold that hit me pretty hard today. I was supposed to go on a solo flight today to prep for my pre-test flight on Saturday. That didn't happen.

So instead I spent the day studying for the PPL written test and bummed around in MS Flight Sim. I finally updated my "ground school" section with a post about intercepting a NDB track.

School has been going good. We've already had a test in Instrument Procedures which I think I did alright in. Next class we will be learning how to read approach plates! I'm a keener so I've been practicing the Buttonville NDB 21 approach in MS Flight Sim today. I have no idea if I'm doing it right as I am just guessing at what to do based on the plate.

Yesterday we learned about ILS. It was interesting to note that Canadian Airports do not use the "marker" system the US does. We don't have outer, middle, and inner markers to tell us where we are in the approach. Instead we need to use DME distances or GPS/RNAV fixes.

A lot of people have been asking me questions like.. "how long does it take to get your licence", "when did you go solo", "how many hours do you have". I have decided to put up a "milestones" page where I will list how long it has taken me to do/get certain things. Check back for it in the upcoming week.

I need to get my rest....

Comments (0) | Permalink | Category: Training

Wednesday, September 27, 2006 - 21:29:14 ET

How to intercept a NDB track

I am going to illustrate how to intercept a NDB track using MS Flight Simulator 2004 in a perfect world (no wind to worry about).

There are certain times that you will need to track to a NDB at a particular heading. This is mainly used in two situations:

1. You are using NDB (LF/MF) airways.
2. You are using a NDB approach into an airport.

In this example we want to intercept the Buttonville (KZ) NDB at 150°.

Step One - Tune and Identify
The first step involves tuning your nav radio to the Buttonville NDB frequency. You can find this frequency on any chart (VTA, VNC or an IFR LO chart). It is also located in the CFS. Tune your radio to 248kHz (1) and pull the volume knob to listen to the Morse code (2).

If you don't hear any Morse code, then the station is un-serviceable and cannot be used for navigation. If you hear Morse code and it is not what is to be expected, double check your frequency.

Step Two - Parallel Your Track
Once you have the NDB station tuned. You need to find out at what heading you need to fly in order to intercept this track.

Turn your airplane to a heading of 150° (3) and note that the bearing to the NDB station is 50°^[1] to the right (4).

The rule of thumb to use is to add 30° to your bearing to station and turn that many degrees towards the ADF needle. There is one exception though. You never want to turn more than 90° so you add 30° to whatever your ADF needle shows to a maximum of 90°.

In this case 30°+ 50° = 80°

Step Three - Intercepting The Track
Turn 80° to the right. 80° + 150° = 230° (5) You will notice that the ADF needle has moved(6). You want to keep flying this track until the needle has moved 80° to the left (when it reaches 280°)

Step Four - Flying To The NDB
When the ADF needle gets 80° to the left (when it shows 280°) it is time to turn!(7) Turn to the heading that you want to intercept the NDB at, which is 150°(8)

Just keep on this heading and you will cross over the NDB. You will notice that the bearing to the station is 0° (because the needle is pointing to north)(9)

How do you know when you've crossed over the NDB? When the needle swings 180° and points behind you.(10)

^[1] Note: When I originally performed this exercise I noted the bearing to station in step two as being 050° instead of 055° This is why the ADF needle in figure 9 is pointing to 005° instead of 000° This error is also noted on my ground track as I don't fly directly over the station.

Comments (0) | Permalink | Category: Instruments

Thursday, September 21, 2006 - 15:58:06 ET

flywithblake.com

A buddy of mine told me today that a squatter had registered flywithblake.com.

I'm not sure if I should feel honoured (that my site is large enough for a squatter to care) or angry.

Don't worry, I wont be buying flywithblake.com for any amount of money!

Comments (0) | Permalink | Category: Site News

Wednesday, September 20, 2006 - 12:59:40 ET

On the home stretch...

It's been a busy few weeks, nontheless my training is progressing nicely.

My goal of getting my license at the end of the month might be pushed back a few weeks mainly due to weather. However I think that I can get the written portion complete and my flight portion at least booked before September ends.

Today's lesson went well. We went over some of the flight test excercises.. mainly upper airwork. It's been a while since I've done them.. but they went ok.

By the time we got back the ATIS was showing signifigant wind changes it was now gusting and they noted that there was mechanical turbulance on final. It was a bumpy ride down, but my landing was excellent. One of the better ones in a while.

School is going good so far. Instrument Procedures is by far my favorite class. It's interesting and it gets me excited for getting my IFR rating...

So far my plan of attack is as follows.

- Get my PPL
- Immediately after get my Night Rating
- Take a break from lessons (3-4 months) and build up some PIC x-country hours and PIC night hours
- Work on my multi/ifr rating in the spring

Back to studying for the written....

Comments (2) | Permalink | Category: Training

Wednesday, September 13, 2006 - 21:27:21 ET

Learning about NDBs and VORs

Yesterday's class (instrument procedures) was all about NDB/ADF and VORs. Specifically I learned how to intercept an NDB track and fly it inbound or out. Also learned about VORs and how to track radials.

I spent some time scouring the net trying to find a good NDB/VOR simulator that I can play with. I have MS Flight Sim that I could do some practice radio nav stuff (see my previous post) but I want to get the concepts down first.

The Flight Simulator Navigation site provides an excellent history into how NDBs came about and it goes into great detail about VORs and ILS too.

Tim's Air Navigation Simulator has a lot of features like actually adjusting the airplanes speed, add wind. You can even use two VORTACs at the same time.

Luiz Monterio has a bunch of flash based simulators that you can play with.

I was able to find these useless videos on Google Video.

Does anyone else have any good (free) resources for learning all about ndb and vor navigation?

Next class we are going to learn how to read ifr charts and approach plates... fun!

Comments (0) | Permalink | Category: Training

Wednesday, September 6, 2006 - 13:45:33 ET

Slipping.. Which Direction?

School started up again for me yesterday for this semester. An interesting topic was brought up during the lesson... which direction should you slip.

I was always taught to point the ailerons into the wind. That is, if the wind is coming from the right, apply left rudder and right ailerons.

However my teacher suggested that this might be a bad idea. In a Cessna 172, the static port is located on the left side of the plane. Because of such you should always slip to the right (rudder right, ailerons left) so that the static port is pointed into the airflow. The idea being that you want your airspeed indicator to underread rather than overread.

What are your thoughts?

(FWIW, both my "Flight Test Notes" and the Transport Canada Training Manual say to always slip into the wind)

Comments (1) | Permalink | Category: Training

Friday, September 1, 2006 - 11:56:45 ET

Whats the Frequency?

I came across this clip at liveatc.net. It is from the Toronto Centre (CZYZ) feed.

I couldn't help but chuckle at the controllers misfourtune.

Listen to the clip!

Comments (1) | Permalink | Category: Interesting Things

Friday, September 1, 2006 - 11:11:29 ET

Canadian International Airshow

It's on! I plan on going to the airshow on Monday.. should be interesting. For those of you who can read NOTAMS:

060908 CZYZ TORONTO FIR CZYZ PURSUANT TO SECTION 5.1 OF THE AERONAUTICS ACT, AIRSPACE IS RESTRICTED SFC TO 10000 FT MSL WITHIN 5 NM RADIUS CENTERED ON 433727N 792541W (CNE GROUNDS, APRX 1 NM W TORONTO CITY CENTRE AD). EXCEPT FOR CANADIAN INTERNATIONAL AIRSHOW PARTICIPANTS AND EMERGENCY MEDICAL/RESCUE ACFT NO PERSON SHALL OPR AN ACFT WITHIN THE AREA DESCRIBED UNLESS AUTH BY THE AIRSHOW AIRBOSS AT 416 917 4681 0609011400/0609011630 AND 1630/2130 DLY 0609021630 TIL 0609042130

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Friday, September 1, 2006 - 10:39:38 ET

X-Plane

The lesson in the sim yesterday went without a hitch. It still wasn't fully repaired so the rudders on the left seat were broken.

Spent an hour doing things like unusual attitudes and mock flight exam stuff. Pretty uneventful. My telephone rang (I forgot to turn it off) and my FI paused the sim to allow me to turn off the phone. Too bad you can't do that in real life ;)

After the exercises, she moved the plane into a 10 mile final in IMC. I descended the plane using instruments only and popped out of the clouds a few miles back. Landing with no rudder was possible just a little challenging. Lets just say I made it on the runway and nobody got hurt ;)

The software that is used in the sim is called X-Plane, which is FAA and Transport Canada approved (with the necessary hardware). The great thing is that you can run this software on your PC for about $50. Toronto Airways has 5 screen outputs. Front view, and the two side views are on LCD TVs. Inside the cocpick they have two flat panels for instrumentation. The rest of the sim is hardware (with full feedback). Each display is driven by a shuttle PC. I dont know the specific details of the hardware inside these PCs.

X-Plane version 8 runs on PCs (Both windows and Linux) and Macs. I'm not 100% sure, but I think this software is much more realistic than Microsoft Flight Sim.

Comments (0) | Permalink | Category: Training