It was Sunday afternoon when I decided to see if there was a plane available at 6pm. I called up the airport, and indeed there was!

So far, the new booking policy at TAL has paid off. For me specifically, I’ve been able to fly exactly when I wanted to without having to book months in advance.

I filed my flight plan for the following routing:

CYKZ YSO CYQA CYLS CYKZ

This would give us a round robin flight around Lake Simcoe

The flight was smooth above 4000′ and hazy, but still perfect conditions with …

Yesterday involved a 1.5 hour checkout with a flight instructor at Toronto Airways. It had been 8 months (damn, time flies) since I was last up in the air.

Toronto Airways has changed their checkout policy for the better. Checkouts now involve 0.5 hours of ground briefing plus 1 hour in the air. The good news is that you pay for the aircraft time only. No more $300 checkouts!

After we did some weight and balance and performance calculations we headed out to the airplane to do some circuits. I ended up with …

NavCanada has decided that the Pilot Information Kiosks in various airports across Canada will be decommissioned by the end of August of this year.

The main reason? Lack of use.

PIK were introduced in the early 2000s when the availability of the Internet, cell phone, and other mobile technologies were limited. Due to the emergence of this technology NAV CANADA has seen dramatic decreases in the use of PIK, to a point where further investment is no longer practical.

Not surprising that they are getting rid of them given the reasons stated above. The eventual …

I just did an update of the GTA Rental rates spreadsheet for aicraft rentals in the Toronto Area.  I’ve updated all the prices, as well added the Brantford Flying Club.

If you have any recommendations, suggestions, or corrections… please let me know.

The minimum annual cost to fly is still out of Brantford (no change from 2012).

My annual renewal form came in the mail for my CFS subscription. In it was a letter on a blue piece of paper that read:

NEW!

NAV CANADA now offers the Canada Air Pilot (CAP), Reistricted Canada Air Pilot (RCAP) and Canada Water Aerodrome Supplement (CWAS) in electronic PDF download format…

Wow! This is great news..

This is something that a lot of Canadian flyers have been asking for.

You can purchase the digital versions on Nav Canadas e-commerce site.

I haven’t been flying or posting a lot lately. This past year has been busy with other things in my life.

Doug and I spent a lot of time working on the latest version of World Flight Planner. We had a booth at the latest COPA AGM and we’ve been updating the software to support more features based on feedback from our users.

I’ve been hard at work at renovating the house my wife and I purchased a while ago. So most of the flying money has gone there.

That isn’t to say …

Toronto Airways (the flight school at Buttonville) is making a policy change with regards to their booking & rental policy.

John Davis, Vice President of Flight Operations describes the change:

Toronto Airways has been receiving numerous complaints from customers with respect to our aircraft availability.  As a result, we completed a thorough investigation of our reservation system, aircraft utilization and cancellation policies.

It was discovered that some individuals were taking advantage of our system to monopolize the aircraft and not use the time that they booked.  In many cases the actual time used …

Anne and I carpooled up to Lake Simcoe Regional Airport (CYLS) for a 9:30am departure.

Our route took us first to Lindsay (CNF4) then Oshawa (CYOO), Buttonville (CYKZ), to the Mans VOR (YMS), Collingwood (CNY3), and then finally back to Lake Simcoe.

I planned the flight to cut across Lake Simcoe. I did the math and we would have to be 4500′ above AGL to be within gliding distance of land. So the climb out of CYLS was up to 5500′ eastbound to Lindsay.

For this leg I was flying. The visibility at …

It’s been a while since I last posted. I’ve been extremely busy with a few other things in my life. But I do have some good news to report!

I will be at the COPA AGM in Hanover, Ontario later this month. World Flight Planner has a booth that I will be manning. This is a great opportunity to meet myself and/or check out our flight planning software.

We will also be giving away some great prizes, so be sure to check us out if you will be at the AGM.

I’m also …

NavCanada is outlining changes to the way they publish and calculate the magnetic variation in AIC 12/08.

In a nutshell: they are going to calculate the variation every year, on July 1st. Something I’ve been doing at World Flight Planner for the past 3 years. NavCanada will be using the same IGRF model that the flight planning website uses. So this is welcome news and further validates how I do things at WFP

Variation will not be calculated for northern domestic airspace and in the southern domestic airspace the variation …