… according to one of my teachers. Let’s start off with a little bit of grade 10 physics: There are four forces that act on an airplane: Lift, Weight (gravity), Thrust, and Drag. All of these forces are equal in straight and level flight. Rule of Flight #1: Lift always acts perpendicular to the wingspan…
I happen to come across an image of an aircraft that smashed into a house. I decided to look up its registry and discovered that it took off from Buttonville! The accident report is availble on the TSBs website. Good news is that nobody was seriously hurt.
Since my flight was canceled today because of the weather, I figured it would be a good time to talk about NOTAMs. A NOTAM is a NOTice to AirMen and it lets pilots and controllers know of things that are different or out of the ordinary. Lets take a look at some of the currently…
We discussed shift length and working rules in our human factors class last night. These rules are dictated by Transport Canada for the safety of everyone involved. Let’s start it off easy (From CAR Section 720). – Max 8 hours of flight time in a single 24 hour period (single pilot IFR) – Max 14…
So for my Computer Systems class I have to program a “aviation related” application in Visual Basic 6. This is what I have so far: I’ve dubbed it “Decoder Ring” as it will eventually decode METAR, TAF, and FD. The teacher tossed in the FD requirement in there. I have no idea what FDs are….
The CBC is reporting that the supreme court is investigating whether Air Canda flight attendants should get paid as much as pilots. The paragraph that stood out for me was: “The section [of the human rights act] says it is discriminatory for an employer to pay different wages to male and female employees in the…
My attempt to get a perfect mark on my first Meterology test failed. I ended up with 89%, two questions out of eighteen incorrect. They were: If an aircraft is flying from an airport that is very cold to an airport that is very warm, a) It will be lower than its indicated altitude. b)…
The planned lesson didn’t happen today because of the weather. No biggie, do a ground briefing instead! Took care of Slow flight, Stalls, Spins, and Spirals. I cant wait to get to these excercises, since they will be a little more “fun” (read: g-forces). I probably wont be flying again until February. I’m going to…
Remember when you were a kid (for the guys out there) trying to undo your girlfriends bra for the first time in the heat of the moment? Remember how awkward and uncoordinated you felt? That was me, today, on the radio. I was able to get in two flights in the past two days. Weather…
Tonights Human Factors class was particularly interesting. Especially the discussion we had on high altitude and decompression. When talking about decompression and the effects on the human body an item called “time of useful consciousness” (TUC) gets mentioned all the time. You wont pass out at this magic number but instead start feeling the effects…