Dear NavCanada,

Next time you print the Toronto VTA and VNC, can you please put airport identifiers next to airports like you currently do with Navaids?

Thanks,

Blake

Have $3,000,000? Why not buy this Boeing 727-200? It’s got a bar, and over 50 “first class” style seats.

Avionics look a little rough though:

My original plan was to fly to Kingston on Sunday. The weather didn’t play nice thanks to an approaching warm front. So, I decided to head west instead to London instead.

I took along a passenger, Sara, whom I’ve given a city tour before. This was the first time I’ve taken her on a X-Country flight. We hopped into a 172SP.

It was the first time the aircraft flew today, so I pre-warmed the engine using the portable heaters that are available at the school. I noticed (for the first time) that …

This is a pretty scary video of a pilot who entered a flat spin (by accident) while trying to do a normal spin. I suspect the engine quit because the forces of the spin caused an imbalenced fuel flow.

At the end, the aircraft flipped over because the landing gear snagged some barbwire that the pilot didn’t see.

So after a week of comments and research, it’s time to answer the question.

This is a unique problem. Mainly because of some of the procedures at Bromont. During glider ops you are not to overfly the airport.

So that rules out joining the mid downwind after overflying the airport. Because there was no traffic advisory available, then the control zone was an ATF. Which means there is only one other way to join the circuit, that is via the straight-in downwind.

I think this is a knowledge gap during the training process. …

I had a reader send in a question about joining the circuit at Bromont airport a little while ago. I’ll let him explain it:

On my first solo flight after getting my Licence, I decided to go from Montreal CYHU to Bromont CZBM.

The MF was closed so it was now an ATF. There were 2 planes in the circuit and they gave me the info that RWY 05L was the active. One was on Final and the other one on initial climb. I decided to Join mid-downwind directly …

Let’s take a look at an example METAR with CRFI data in it:

CYFB CRFI 17/35 -22 .34 0201190630

In order, the block of data contains:

Airport/Station Ident
CRFI Indicator
Runway
Temperature
CRFI value
Date/Time reading was taken

So the CRFI for runway 17/35 is 0.34. We can use this value now to figure out how much extra runway we may need on landing. Let’s take a look at Table 1 in the AIM, Section AIR 1.6.6. You can also find the CRFI charts in the CFS.

If your performance calculations indicate that you will need 2000 feet of …

Back in January of 2007, I breifly talked about the Canadian Runway Friction Index (CRFI). With the recent winter-like weather in Southern Ontario I figured this would be a good time to go into more detail.

Most progression in aviation safety is usually prompted by a previous accident or incident. The creation of the CRFI was no exception. A Fokker F-28 slid off the end of the runway at Dryden in March 1989, killing 24 of the 69 persons on board. Although the main cause of this accident was due to …

I got the latest edition of the CFS (Nov 20-Jan 15) yesterday by mail and noticed something peculiar. It was much smaller! I would estimate approx 25% smaller when compared to the two editions previous.

There are still the same amount of pages, however the paper seemed different. I think they are using a higher grade/weight paper in this edition. It doesn’t feel as “newsprinty” as the previous editions. It feels much sturdier too!

Also to note is the small addition of RVR information for runways/aerodromes that support operations below 2600RVR. See …

Further to my last blog post. I’ve been able to obtain a copy of Nick’s presentation. I’ve made the original Power Point available. As well as a PDF. You just don’t get the cool animations with the PDF.

Download Power Point

Download PDF

You can also visit Nicks website at aerosafety.ca.