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IMG_0405.JPGDate: 14/10/2007
At: Sep 09 2010 14:00Z
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December 2009 ArchivesWednesday, December 30, 2009 - 11:26:40 ET
Picture this: Flying home with your family, on a King Air. You have flown single engine airplanes before, but nothing as complex as a turbocharged, retractable gear, multi engined aircraft like the King Air. You decide to travel in the co-pilots seat while the pilot of the aircraft takes off and flys you home. 10 Min after take-off, the pilot dies. What do you do? This happened to Doug White. A video of his radar track and atc communications of the almost 40 min ordeal is a good watch. Comments (2) | Permalink | Category: Interesting Things
Thursday, December 24, 2009 - 11:06:27 ET
SIgmets are a way of letting pilots know of dangerous flying conditions in a particular area. The danger could be thunderstorms, hail, a tornado, or even a radio active cloud! They are issued by Environment Canada and is disseminated to pilots over the radio by Flight Service Stations and ATC. I've heard a sigmet broadcast over 126.7Mhz by London FSS one time. I wanted to play you an example but can't seem to find a clip anywhere online. It went something like this: "All stations, all stations, all stations, this is London Radio: Sigmet Alpha One. Valid 1200Z to 1600Z Within an area bounded by Simcoe VOR, Musoka Airport, and CFB Bordon, Severe Thunderstom moving west at 10KTs. Sigmet will up dated as storm conditions change". You can also look up sigmets online at on AWWS. Here is an active sigmet for the Praries: SIGMET A1 VALID 241040/241440 CWEG- WTN 30 NM OF LN /5614N11914W/50 E FORT ST JOHN - /5535N11936W/35 NW GRANDE PRAIRIE - /5453N11822W/25 SE GRANDE PRAIRIE. OCNL SEV LLWS FCST BLO 5 HND AGL DUE TO STG WLY LLJ AT 35 KT. AREA QS. LTL CHG EXPD NEXT 4 HRS THEN SFC WNDS WILL BECM WLY AND LLWS WILL SLOLY DMSH. END/GFA32/YG/CMAC-W This is a sigmet for severe low level windshear below 500' due to a steady westerly low level jet blowing at 35Kts. The area is quasi stationary and little change is expected in the next 4 hours where windows will become westerly and the low level windshear will slowly diminish. Because Sigmets are such an important tool, I felt that it was important to be able to display such notices on a map, especially for flight planning purposes. This is why in an upcoming version of World Flight Planner we've decided to include sigmets on the map and as warnings if your filed plan if you pass through an area identified by a sigmet.
The above sigmet is indicated on the map as a red/yellow hashed area. Clicking on the area will bring up a pop-up with the Sigmet information. Comments (0) | Permalink | Category: Interesting Things
Tuesday, December 22, 2009 - 09:46:39 ET
I hope everyone has a good Holiday! Just a little something to get you in the mood.. The Song is called "Snoopy's Christmas" by The Royal Guardsmen. Comments (0) | Permalink | Category: Interesting Things
Thursday, December 17, 2009 - 22:13:02 ET
Pireps, or Pilot Reports, are a good way to disseminate timely and important information to other pilots and controllers. A Pirep is used by pilots to let other pilots know of conditions that may not have been forecast or expected. For example, a pilot of a 747 might report turbulence so that air planes behind him can avoid it. Another good use of pireps are at uncontrolled or unmanned airports. A pilot might submit a report letting other pilots know of the weather conditions at the airport. Lets take a look at a sample pirep: UACN10 CYTS 170016 The first line contains header information. "UA" means "Pilot Report" in WMO speak. CN is for "Canada" and "10" is the priority. The higher the number, the lower the priority. Sometimes you will see "UACN01" which is the highest priority for urgent pireps. "CYTS" is the station that recorded the pirep, and "170016" is the Date (17th of the month) and time (00:16UTC) the pirep was entered into the system. The second line contains the Flight Information Region (FIR) that this pirep belongs to. This gives a way for Nav Canada to disseminate the pireps to the proper areas in Canada. There is no point in getting pireps for Vancouver in Toronto. The last line is the meat and potatoes of the message. It contains all the important information that the pilot reported. "UA" means "Normal Pilot Report". A "UUA" would mean "Urgent Pilot Report". "/OV" Is the location of the report, I can only assume it means "over". There are essentially three ways to input information: - A Navaid, Airport, or Fix, You would read "CYTS 179010" as "10 miles bearing 179° from CYTS". Or in laymen terms: "10 miles south of the Timmins airport". "/TM" Is the time of the report by the pilot "/FL" is the Flight Level or Altitude of the aircraft. In this case it was "during descent". "/TP" is the aircraft type. This is important. For example if a Cessna 172 reports icing, the controller is not going to relay that to a pilot of a 747. "/IC" Is the amount of icing: Light, Moderate, or Severe. "/RM" (not in the example) Is a free form field for the pilot to put anything else they want. It's the remarks section. Here is another one for you to figure out! UACN10 CYVP 171314 More information about the Pirep can be found in the MANOBS at Environment Canada. As part of World Flight Planner's next release, you will be able to view all the filed pireps along your route, or browse them on a map!
Each little blue icon is a pilot report. When you click on it, the raw report opens up in a bubble for you to read. Comments (0) | Permalink | Category: Interesting Things
Tuesday, December 15, 2009 - 11:22:18 ET
LiveATC.net has recently added yet another southern Ontario airport to its list of feeds! The addition of Oshawa brings the total up to four! Oshawa is an interesting airport to listen to as it contains a lot of training traffic, plus the big-wigs from Ford landing their spiffy jets. The Buttonville feed had been down for a few months, however it is now back up and sounding better than ever! If you would like to listen to students practicing their ILS approaches, you can listen to the KItchener/Waterloo feed. One big gap in the southern ontario airspace that I would love to see covered is Toronto City Centre. That airport is probably the second busiest after YYZ when it comes to traffic. And a great mix too. Porter's Dash-8s, Medevac helicopters, media helicopters, and students. If anyone lives close to the airport and can provide a feed, please get in touch with me. Same goes for anyone of you near London, Ontario. Having a stream of CYXU would be great, considering the Diamond Aircraft factory on the field. Of course you can also listen to Toronto Terminal, and Pearson Tower at liveatc.net. Comments (2) | Permalink | Category: Interesting Things
Thursday, December 10, 2009 - 09:10:32 ET
Flight planning is an integral part of learning how to fly an airplane. Personally, I think it's one of the most important things that you learn as a pilot. All during flight school you learned (painfully) how to plan your flight using good ole pencil and ruler. Everything from calculating the winds, to figuring out cross wind components, to converting from indicated to true airspeed was all possible using your E6B. After I got my PPL I was looking for good (and cheap) flight planning software. It didn't have to anything fancy. I wouldn't be flying IFR, or over 18,000'. World Flight Planner was recently released that allows you to create flight plans online. The great thing about this site is that it allows you to access your plans on a mobile device as well as your desktop. After setting up your aircraft (weight, speeds, etc..) you then start planning your trip. Here is a screen shot of a plan from Buttonville to Ottawa via Oshawa. One of my favorite features is the map. You can see all the airspace you will be traveling through, with the option of overlaying navaids, airways, airports, etc.. A elevation profile is also provided. This is a good tool to make sure that your planned altitude will clear terrain.
Once you're happy with the route, you click on the "plan" link and you're presented with your standard navigation log. Upper winds, a fuel log, notams, and weather are all included on the resulting page for you to print off. Other tools like weather look up (especially on the mobile version) is extremely handy. I suggest that you sign up for the private beta and fool around with the site. Give some feedback to the developers (me and my friend Doug) so that we can make this product even better when we officially launch! Comments (2) | Permalink | Category: Interesting Things
Tuesday, December 8, 2009 - 10:43:04 ET
We decided to take public transit all the way down to the Airport. Tip for those who live in Toronto: Catch the free Porter shuttle at the Royal York hotel, it's much faster. We checked in with a minimal of fuss before we hopped on the (ridiculous) ferry. It took us about 10 min to get through security. I put the blame on CATSA for that and not Porter. They had two screening areas but were only using one. We helped our self to the free coffee/tea and snacks in the Porter lounge. They put a boarding time on our boarding pass which is pretty much useless. All the gates are accessible by the lounge. So you just chill there and wait for them to call you up for your flight. Our flight was scheduled to leave at 9am. We didn't end up boarding until 9am, however we were in the air by 9:10. When we saw the Q400 up close, Sara said: "Wow, you could fly this plane!". I totally agreed. I noted that the wheel to eye height couldn't have been more than 12 feet. It's just like flying a bigger, heaver Seminole, with the exception of being a turboprop (apologies for the Q400 pilots out there!). After waiting for a few C172s to take off from 26 we departed. I was impressed at the climb rate and how short the take-off roll was. I had a window seat in row 5, so I was able to see the prop, wings and some of the flaps up close. We were picking up some very, very light rime icing on our way down to Boston. It was neat seeing the boots inflate every so often to shed what little ice was on the wings and the engine air intake. The service was good. It's amazing how better it is to drink beer out of a real glass, and not a crappy plastic one. I thoroughly enjoyed what seemed like a bottomless glass of Steam Whistle beer. They give out 500ML cans! The legroom was noticeably longer, and the leather seats were comfortable. One issue I did notice was with the temperature of the tea that I ordered. The mugs were extremely cold (most likely from being outside) so when the hot tea was poured into the mug, it was cooled quite a bit. I did found the aircraft to be loud but not from the props. The air conditioning system (at least at the front of the aircraft) was extremely loud. I love Porter and everything they stand for. It's a great airline and I'm glad to see that they are expanding their service to: Timmins, Sudbury, Sault Ste. Marie, Detroit, Windsor, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Washington DC, and Philadelphia in the near future! Comments (1) | Permalink | Category: Interesting Things
Monday, December 7, 2009 - 15:29:43 ET
I had the pleasure of getting a one-on-one tour at the Toronto Area Control Centre from a blog reader last week. I had previously wrote about a group tour I had with one of my Seneca classes. Most of the information on that post is still relevant today. This time around I was able to "plug-in" with a headset for an hour to listen to Joe do his magic as he worked the "airports" position. It was a quiet night, which was good for me as I was able to ask a lot of questions about Joe's job. It was extremely interesting to see and hear what it's like on the other side of the radio. One thing I didn't realize and didn't pick up on my previous tour was all the co-ordination that goes on with the other airports and controllers over the hotline. For example. An American aircraft was on his way to the Rogers Centre from New York State to take some photographs. He was going to be just on the edge of Hamilton's Control Zone, so Joe buzzes "Ham" on the hotline for a "point-out": Joe: "Ham, Satellite for a point-out" Earlier that night, a Buffalo controller called on the hotline for a "manual hand-off". Joe had to manually put in the airplanes squawk and tail number into the CAATS system so that the radar (and Joe) can keep tabs on the aircraft. Another new thing I learned has to do with IFR clearances. The tower controller has to call up Joe and confirm that the clearance is valid before issuing it to the pilot. I knew this happened, but I just didn't know how. One question I do need to ask Joe is: How is a clearance not valid? And what happens when that's the case. I was trying to explain what Joe's job was like to my friends. I came up with the following analogy: "Imagine 300 people calling your phone at the exact same time to co-ordinate what they should bring to the pot-luck party you're hosting". Comments (6) | Permalink | Category: Interesting Things
Wednesday, December 2, 2009 - 22:08:32 ET
NavCanada offers quite a bit of weather related services in addition to their regular air traffic control duties. One of the features that I've started using is called PATWAS or Pilot's Automated Telephone Weather Answering Service. PATWAS allows you to get a "poor mans" weather briefing over the telephone by having an automated system read you METARs, TAFs, SIGMETs, and other weather related data. You can specify a single airport, or all the airports along your route, and it will read out all the necessary information. One other feature you can use is the ability to get the information sent to you via fax. Handy if you are not near a computer and want a hard copy of all the weather data. The NavCanada Aviation Weather Services manual has instructions on how to use PATWAS. One thing it doesn't mention is the ability for you to "say" airport codes instead of having to remember the special 6 digit code for each aerodrome. For example. If you want the weather for Buttonville (YKZ), you can say "Yankee Kilo Zulu" instead of having to key in 93-52-99. If you want to try it out, just call your local FIC, or 1-888-WXBRIEF, and selecting option "3". Comments (1) | Permalink | Category: Interesting Things
Tuesday, December 1, 2009 - 22:17:12 ET
So I was looking through the latest version of the CFS (December 17th, 2009) and the Barrie-Orillia (Lake Simcoe Regional) airport identifier has changed. I popped on the airport's website and they have confirmed it: Effective December 17, 2009, the Lake Simcoe Regional Airport's ICAO Identifier will change to CYLS, replacing the current identifier, CNB9. I was always under the impression that the "real" airports didn't have a number in their identifier. Guess Lake Simcoe Regional has "grown up!" One of the cool things that this airport has (that I wish all airports did) is the ability to call a special phone number and hear a the latest weather from their AWOS. I'm going to talk more about the weather services that are available from NavCanada tomorrow. Comments (1) | Permalink | Category: Interesting Things
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Pilot is Dead. Now What? 
I had the pleasure of flying to Boston via Porter this past weekend. One of the best birthday presents ever! Thanks Sara!