I went on a x-country flight to Peterborough and back with my friend Mark last night. Overall the flight went well. I always love flying at night because its much quieter and it’s much easier to see other traffic.

The flight was pretty uneventful until we got to Peterborough. I always call up Unicom first, even though the CFS says its unavailable at the time. Who knows, someone could be there. There was nobody.

I dialed in the AWS frequency. This was the first time I had ever listened to an AWS …

I haven’t been doing a lot of flying over the winter months. I know because for the first time ever I have been battling to keep my rental currency (which expires every 30 days).

I decided to crunch some numbers in my log book and came up with this graph which shows monthly flight hours per year.

2007 As a whole was a lower year for flying with the exception of October and December, where I had done more flying than in 2006 in those months.

Looking at the graph, I now understand …

Transport Canada has added a list of approved ELTs to their website.

http://www.tc.gc.ca/CivilAviation/certification/elt.htm

Keep in mind though, ELTs that are certified to Airworthyness Standard TSO-C91a will not longer be valid as Transport Canada has mandated that ELTs transmit on 406Mhz. I’m unsure when that requirement takes effect.

CAR 605.38 has more details.

A while back I posed the question “Does an airplane in 45° bank experience more G forces than a slower one?”

The quick answer: No. The G forces (or load factor) on the aircraft does not change based on the speed you are flying.

The equation to calculate load factor (n) is as follows:

Where Theta is the angle of bank.

Since the angle of bank determines the load factor and not speed, a faster aircraft at 45° will experience the same load factor of a slower aircraft at the same angle of bank.

The …

A few lighthearted clips to get you through ‘humpday’. (All courtesy of liveatc.net).

Hats Off to JFK – A pilot reports a hat on the taxiway… it turns out to be a Red Sox baseball cap.

I Have Information Blue – A pilot forgot the phonetic alphabet for the letter “Y” – he ended up using “yellow”. The controller plays along…

I will be in the Seminole on Saturday if the weather co-operates.

Last week I was in Boston. I flew out of Buffalo because it was a signifigant cost savings over flying out of the most expensive airport in the world.

After a nice three days of relaxing, we were waiting for our return flight at the airport. I was keeping a close eye on the US Airways website for the flight status, and ADDS. I hit reload on the website and it told me that the flight was canceled! I took a look at the METAR for KBUF and saw this:

KBUF 072002Z …

I’m Back in town from Boston, my flight was canceled so we ended up driving home in a rented car.

There are some changes with ATC phraseology coming in April.

All this and more, in a post tomorrow, stay tuned…

I will be out of town (in Boston) for the next week. I wasn’t able to fly this past weekend due to poor weather.

In the meantime, check out this post at Sullako’s Blog of a crazy crosswind landing attempt. Ouch!