Rob's Flying Blog

Fall Flying 2009

2009-07-06T09:16:00.001-07:00

As you can see I haven't posted any flying related blogs for quite some time.

As it stands right know I plan on getting my currency again this September and then resume flying again after that.

Have a great summer everyone.

Rob

Flying 2009

2009-06-05T17:22:00.000-07:00

This year I haven't done any flying... many things contributed to this, but sufficed to say I do intend to get back at it in September.

I'll likely take a couple of trips with my old flight instructor to get everything current again and then I'll make some new posts.

This lack of flying does not mean that I haven't been busy though... I do have a new toy to spend my money on... my wife is starting to refer to my hobbies as a "bucket list".

I say "life is short, don't forget to live it !".

Flying in August

2008-09-20T08:09:00.000-07:00

I went for a flight recently with my friend Jamie. This is the same Jamie whose girlfriend had a mild panic attack last summer when we went flying.

This time it was just me and him and we had a great time. We flew east for a change and watched the Wood Islands ferry depart. It was fairly easy to spot from 20 miles away since it was basically a big white dot on a earth tone canvass, we were cruising at 3,000 ft.

I let Jamie take the controls and he did a fairly decent job of keeping us straight and level, next I had him do some gentle turns. I took back control and climbed to 4,000 ft, we then did some steep turns and stalls for practice. On the way back to the airport we dropped down to 1,000 ft to get a better look at the little communities we were flying over.

My landing was pretty good, it looked for a moment that it was going to be a "solid one", but I flared her out at just he right time and we gently touched the mains down with a light chirp.

I gotta do this more often.

Flying in July

2008-07-05T07:30:00.001-07:00

Just got back from another local sight seeing flight with my brother and sister in-laws.

This was the first time either on them had been in a small aircraft. The flight went well, both of them were great passengers.

I took them along the beaches found on our north shore, then we switched over to Summerside unicom (which surprisingly answered my call) and did a loop over Summerside. Next we visited the confederation bridge and ended out flight with tour of the Charlottetown harbor.

It was a smooth morning for flying, with just a little distant haze.

Ordered a headset today

2008-06-14T09:08:00.000-07:00

I finally broke down and bought a headset today.

It was tough trying to decide which one to purchase but after reading some reviews I ordered a pair of DRE-1000s.

Now, this is a very entry level headset but it has received some very good reviews and for the money seem to be quite a good deal. I figured that I go cheap and purchase a (passenger) set first, that way I can give them a demo and if I'm happy with them I'll get another set for myself, or if I'm not, I'll upgrade to a higher end pair for myself.

The rational behind this is that I want to have two headsets of my own when I go flying, this will hopefully keep me from rummaging through the other aircraft at the school to find headsets for everyone.

Keep in mind that I'm still just renting and most of my flights are usually an hour or so. The headsets that I currently use are provided by the school free of charge - which is pretty nice deal as I understand most places charge a fee. The downside is that some of the sets are better than others, one time I had to swap the set out that I ended up with in order to improve/enable communication with the tower.

Up, Up and Away !

2008-05-17T16:09:00.000-07:00

I booked a flight for Saturday morning with one of the new instructors at the flying school for a check out flight. It seems that since the school has added some additional staff my old instructor Dave no longer works weekends.

I've never been flying with Greg before but he always seemed to be a pretty easy going with a good sense of humor. I preflighted the aircraft and when Greg arrived we fired her up and finished up the preflight checks. During the magneto checks one of the spark plugs turned out to be fouled and it took a few extra minutes on the apron running Fern leaned out at a high power setting before she burned off the carbon deposits.

We took off and did a few circuits, it was a nice day and rather busy with two of the school's students in the pattern with us, us in the 172 and them in a 150 or 152. We ran our circuits a little larger than normal to account for the small differences in speed. We then departed to the training area located to the north east and did some upper air work review, my slow flight was text book bang on. Did some stalls and steep turns and finally we returned to the airport and did a crosswind landing on the inactive for practice. Greg was cool with me using my preferred crab method.

When then joined the active circuit and my final landing of the day was unusually "firm". Greg commented that, "at least we know we're down". I said something about how that sucked a big one.

As we were taxiing back to the apron Greg said that everything was great and he'd sign me off so that I now have my rental privileges back.

I'm looking forward to the summer... if it ever arrives on the East coast.

Back in the saddle again... soon.

2008-04-26T13:21:00.000-07:00

I dropped into the airport this afternoon and booked a "Shake the rust off" flight with one of the instructors for next Sat. I could just get checked out in the circuit but I want to also review some upper air work etc. I'll hit the books and probably read some of my older blogs to help me get refreshed.

I haven't been doing any flying of my own for the past four months, but I have been doing a lot of the commercial kind of flying though, but that really doesn't count does it?

I'll keep you all posted.

Air Canada makes it right

2008-02-10T07:11:00.000-08:00

I went out last night to the local airport to pick up my newly repaired bag. After a few minutes the local ticket agent comes back with what I thought was my bag but it's not actually. It seems that the handle on the old bag was far too damaged for repair so they have replaced it with a brand new bag, which is of slightly better quality than my original.

I am no longer ticked off, and they have been taken off my (won't give this company my business unless there is absolutely no alternative) boycott list.

Flying on the big iron

2008-01-22T13:48:00.000-08:00

Last week I had to do some flying of the commercial kind, my destination was New Orleans. Obviously since there are no direct connections from Charlottetown to the "Big Easy", I had to make a couple of stops on the way down, via Montreal and Dulles.

I arrived at the airport very late, (eight minutes before my flight was scheduled to leave - damn taxi). I checked my bag and since I was very late I obviously needed to be punished so all I received from the customer service agent was my boarding pass for the first leg of my trip. Once I landed in Montreal I would have to leave the "secure zone" and go out to the United Airway's desk, stand in line and get the rest of my boarding passes.

I took my punishment quietly and thanked the ticket counter guy... at least he let me on. Since I was the only passenger in the whole entire airport that wasn't already on the aircraft I went quickly through security, they were all shaking their heads at me in disbelief, but they "processed" me quickly, I finally boarded the aircraft (a 50 passenger regional jet) and the door was immediately shut behind me... Whew I made it!

The flight down was fine and before we knew it we were in New Orleans and running around in light T-shirts. My checked bag was MIA but United assured me that it would be on the next aircraft which was due in two hours and that they would deliver it to my hotel that night (They kept their word).

The week went fast and before I knew it it was time to head north again. Everything went well until we got to Halifax. The weather coming into Halifax was crappy and the rough ride was making some of the passengers firmly hold the seat-backs in front of them. To me it felt like we were actually flying for the first time in the whole trip. It's amazing how smooth commercial travel is, you only have to fly small Cessnas for a short while to appreciate it!

We landed without any further drama and since we had a couple hours to kill we grabbed supper, for airport food it wasn't all that bad actually. Our Air Canada flight was scheduled for 6:15 but it got delayed due to a mechanical reasons, now this is what flying in Canada is all about! We finally boarded a replacement aircraft some three hours late. (Air Canada did not even offer us a complimentary coffee for our three hour wait, - great customer service). We rather quickly departed the airport and about 20 minutes later we arrived back home in Charlottetown, but we soon found out that our checked baggage didn't make the flight. I can only guess that Air Canada was in such a hurry to at least keep this aircraft on schedule that they didn't have time to load all our bags, which we had checked some five hours earlier at the Air Canada desk in Halifax.

So I and about ten other passengers filled out lost luggage reports and were assured that our bags would be tracked down and delivered to us. The ticket man told me that I could actually go to the Air Canada website and "just follow the links" to check on its location from the comfort of my computer.

The next day after wasting ten minutes trying to find the magically hard to find lost baggage web page, all it told me when I entered my information was that it didn't know where the heck my bag was. (Good luck trying to find the "link" - I finally gave up and did a key word search).

Literally 15 minutes later the Air Canada rep called me to tell me that he had my bag at the local airport and that I'd have it in a few minutes. This was great news but it kinda left me perplexed regarding Air Canada's bag tracking application called WorldTracer, it would seem that it couldn't locate my bag even when it was only a few miles away, let alone in the whole wide world. A great waste of time disguised as customer service if you ask me.

When my suitcase finally arrived at my home the main handle was completely ripped off and hanging by one side. I can only guess that the Air Canada's guy must have assumed that this was the condition in which they had received it. A few minutes later when I opened it all my clothes were completely soaked, I'm not talking damp I'm talking soaking wringing wet all the way to the middle of the suitcase. It was raining the night before and they must have left my bag out in the rain for the whole five hours! Thank god I left my training material in a plastic bag or all of it would have been destroyed. Great customer service.

Back on the Air Canada's website I finally track down the information that I need in order to get my bag fixed. It seemed that I have to take my bag back out to the airport and have the local ticket guy inspect it in person. Talk about going in circles. Now I get to waste more time, gas and money on parking. I approach the desk and present my bag for "personal inspection". He looks at it and then goes into the back office and quickly returns with a form which he starts filling out. After a couple of minutes I asked him what he's doing, since up to this point I am completely in the dark. He tells me that they are going to ship my bag across the country to the Air Canada repair shop and have it repaired. He hands me a piece of paper and tells me that I should have it back in a couple of weeks.

I take one long last look at and I have to refrain from waving good bye... I don't beleive that I'll ever see it again.

To sum it all up my trip was great until I got back to Canada, or should I say Air Canada. Then I waited for three hours in Halifax, finally got a damaged bag containing completely soaked clothing, and a encore trip back out to the airport to send my bag on another trip to the AIr Canada repair facility. Let's not forget that there's a chance that I might have to go back out to the airport and eventually pick it up again.

Next time I might drive to the closest American carrier just to avoid Air Canada in the future.

Flying with my daughter

2007-11-18T17:51:00.000-08:00

Today I decided to take my 14 year old daughter up flying.

Breea joined air cadets this past fall and she seems to have an interest in becoming a pilot. I thought that I'd take her up and give her a chance at taking the controls for a few minutes to feel what it's like to control an airplane in flight. She has been up flying with me before but never in the front seat.

After a few minutes she got used to the yoke and how the aircraft handled, she was able to do some easy turns in no time.

It was a great flight and we took a few pics for the old family album.

A little bit of picture taking

2007-10-19T15:00:00.001-07:00

A fellow that I work with has been after me to take him out to his cottage to take some pics of it for his rental site. He built it last year and people book it during the summer months to spend a little vacation time on our beautiful island.

The day we chose for our little photo excursion was fairly nice, we all met at the airport at a predetermined time. I had booked the aircraft out for a couple of hours as his cottage was situated about 50 miles away. He brought his cousin along so the rental cost was split three ways, this was going to be one of my cheapest flights to date!

I preflighted the aircraft, she needed some fuel so I topped the tanks up to 3/4, which left us about 100 pounds under our max weight. Before startup Terry pointed out on my GFA exactly where his cottage was located. In order for him to get some decent pics we'd be flying low and slow, I put him in the back so he could take the shots via my open window. I then studied the chart looking for anything that could be a danger to us, I made mental note that there was a 65o ft cell tower about 4 miles north of his cottage.

I expected the flight to be slightly choppy due to the variable cloud cover, but it was surprisingly smooth. We had a nice tailwind so our flight time to his cottage was only about 20 minutes, it was easy to find. We first made a simple pass at 1,500 ft so I could check out the area throughly, the cell tower was easy to spot and I pointed it out to my passengers.

Since the area was surrounded by wheat fields an emergency landing area wasn't going to be a problem in the remote chance something went wrong with the engine. The wind was from the ten o'clock with the sun at twelve. (I didn't tell my pax that in addition to inspecting the area for safety I was also scouting for a good place to do a forced approach). Everything looked good so I trimmed the aircraft for 80 mph and left the flaps up since they would interfere with the view.

The next next 20 minutes were spent cranking and banking in order to get the perfect shots. I have to tell you that there was some work involved with keeping the aircraft steady in a medium turn, making sure that I stayed at 600 ft AGL, being careful not to bleed off any of my airspeed while scanning the sky for anything that might do us harm. It was also a lot of fun too!

With the photo mission successfully completed we visited a small fishing town nearby and then turned for home. The return trip took considerable more time due to the headwind but it was a beautiful day for sightseeing and I took advantage of it.

About 25 minutes later I called the airport to tell them that we were inbound for the zone from the east but that we'd be doing a loop over Charlottetown first and that we'd be entering the circuit from the south. Radio replied with the winds and the active runway.

My landing was perfect with a couple of chirps. (I floated a tad longer than I wanted too but I still got some nice comments from my pax). 1.6 hours for my log book at only 1/3 the cost... gotta love it!

Nervous Passenger

2007-09-16T14:01:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I took a good buddy of mine and his girlfriend flying for the first time. During part of the year he works in the Alberta oil patch, and as such he flies back and forth. He's also done some flying in small helicopters many years ago as well, so a quick trip up with me in a 172 is no biggie for him. He told me that his girlfriend was a nervous flier, but that she had flown commercially before. He said she should be fine.

I met them both at the airport and they watched as I preflighted the aircraft. My friend asked me some questions about the aircraft and flying which I was happy to answer. A few minutes later with our run-up done we were off. My buddy sat up front with me and his girlfriend was in the back seat by herself.

During the climb out I glanced back to check on her and noticed that she had her eyes firmly closed and she was lying down across the empty seat. Since there was a low level of turbulence I told her she she should sit up and look at the horizon or she'd likely get motion sickness.

She did sit up but then a few minutes later I noticed that she was quietly crying. Of course I immediately offered to return to the airport but my buddy reassured her and she seemed to regain her composer again. For the rest of the flight I could hear her let out a scream every time we hit some chop. I reassured her numerous times that everything was fine and that the light chop was normal. She also didn't like any kind of turn at all so I did all of my turns with very light bank and some rudder. (No banking over and pointing anything out to them). I let my buddy take the controls for a few seconds but he quickly gave them back to me since his girlfriend had starting screaming continuously. Thankfully her mic wasn't picking any of it up.

We finally returned to the airport and her last scream was when I made a normal turn from base to final. Sorry, my bad. I taxied us back to the apron and shut down. We all hopped out and then she thanked me with a smile... which caught me completely by surprise.

My buddy said that he had a great time and that we should do it again sometime!

Were we on the same aircraft?

No.... it wasn't me.

2007-08-28T09:07:00.000-07:00

It seems that last Monday a small Cessna from the local flight school landed long on the runway and missed its intended taxiway. It had to back track in order to exit the runway, as a result a Regional Jet CRJ-200 had to perform a "go-around". There was no close call, no miscommunication, drama or anything amiss, no one at any time was in danger. The local flight service specialist saw that the Cessna had landed long and simple told (suggested) that the commercial do an overshoot to give the Cessna a chance to clear the runway.

While this is not common, it happens all the time and it's not a big deal. I personally have been asked to extend my downwind or land short and take the first taxiway many times, and I have been happy to accommodate the commercial traffic. The commercial pilots have also thanked me over the radio on numerous occasions for letting them jump the queue.

This one time it didn't work out. It was probably a low time student or a infrequent renter that thought he could get down and out of the way in time for the Regional, but it didn't work out that way. No close call, not a safety issue, only a simple inconvinence.

The next day the local paper then ran this headline on the front page, "Commercial aircraft aborts P.E.I. landing". While technically it's true, it is very misleading to the general non aviation public. Everyone that read the paper and knew me then asked if it was me (it wasn't), like the Cessna had done something wrong. I take the time to explain that it was the Cessna pilot that had the right of way and that this wasn't considered an incident but simply an inconvience. No TSB investigation.

In the story the reporter asked the airport spokesperson if this incident could have been avoided if an air traffic controller was in the tower instead of a flight service specialist. I couldn't help but laugh when I read that part. I don't know how an air traffic controller could have helped the pilot land short unless they have type on magical powers that I don't know about.

Flying the warm skies of PEI

2007-08-09T07:19:00.000-07:00

Me and a couple of buddies got up for a flight last weeknd. This was the first time that either of them had flown in a small non-commercial aircraft.

It was about 30c on the apron and we nearly perished from the heat until I fired her up to complete my preflight checks. We taxied with my door open into position and then a few minutes later we were climbing out at a paltry 600 ft per minute. Fern did not like the heat one bit and her performance was way below normal. A few times during the flight I actually had to fly with my window open to increase the airflow in the cabin.

We hit some of the tourist attractions located on our north shore and I circle a few of them so Dean could get some shots. It was a hot hazy day and the pics reflected this fact. I let Dean take the controls for a bit but he wanted me to do all the flying in case he did something wrong, (he admitted that he wife told him not to touch anything).

When then pushed on to Summerside to give Dean a chance to take some shots of his house, then we swung down to the Confederation bridge and finally we returned to Charlottetown where I did a picture perfect landing. (Due to the pax load, nearly full tanks and hot conditions I found that I had to leave more then normal throttle on to reduce our descent rate on final).

Another great flight and both of my buddies want to go again next month when it's a tad cooler and less hazy for picture taking.

Flying the Friendly Skies

2007-07-25T06:38:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the lack of recent posts... I've been very busy.

I recently did a lot of flying but of the commercial kind. I had to do some travelling for work and I have to say that the lack of bouncing around while flying on the "big iron" took some getting used too!

I had six flights during one week, two of them stuck out. At the end of one leg the landing reminded me of some of my earlier attempts at mastering the flare. The landing itself wasn't actually harsh, but we did get a nice bounce with some sustained flight before the Dash-8 settled down a second time onto the Halifax runway. I suspect that the first officer might have been at the controls, and as we taxied in he was getting some "advice" from his understanding and patient captain.

Another of my flights was on a rather large Canadian carrier, and it left me shaking my head. We were flying from Nova Scotia to Newfoundland on a new Embraer 190. It was miserable outside, low clouds, fog and a constant rain. We boarded the aircraft on time, and sat at the gate for about 15 minutes. The captain came on the intercom to tell us that they were having some problems with the flight controls and that they were working to resolve the issue. He also said that they were going to power down the aircraft for 8 minutes and then bring everything back up. (It sounded like they were trying to reboot a computer or something, but eight minutes seemed like a long time). Fourty five minutes later the captain told us they had sorted the problems out and that we were finally departing.

We were pushed away from the gate and then each engine was started and began to spool up. We sat for about ten minutes on the apron then the captain came back on the intercom and said that they were having the same problems again with the flight controls and that we were getting pushed back to the gate. It seems that the aircraft does an automatic flight control test to make sure that everything is working as expected, but the flight control self test system kept throwing out error codes.

The captain then went on to point out that a lack of flight control was a very serious matter, and that if you took a poll of pilots and asked each of them which they'd rather lose on take off, an engine or the flight controls, every pilot would choose to lose the engine, as the aircraft cannot be controlled without the flight controls working properly. (His words not mine). Even the non aviation folks on board could see the rather simple logic of his statement, I just shook my head. The passengers were starting to become worried, I could see it in their faces.

We were towed back to the gate, then we sat there for another hour or so as various maintenance people gathered in the cockpit, some of them left only to return a few minutes later. Another aircraft reboot, (eight more minutes without power or AC) then suddenly an announcement by the captain that he "thought" that the problems had been resolved and that we would be departing momentarily and that the cabin crew should prepare the cabin for departure. Again his words not mine!

This latest announcement cause some interesting conversations amongst my fellow passengers. I thought that one of the main jobs a pilot has was to instill confidence in the safety of the aircraft and crew, this latest announcement did the exact opposite. Basically he told us earlier that the loss of the flight control is extremely serious... and now he's telling us that he "thinks" it's fixed, so we're leaving. I remember one person commenting that this was their first test flight.

My travelling companion tried to lighten up the mood a bit and leaned forward (he was in the row behind me) to ask me if it was true that it's better to lose an engine then the flight controls? I replied that the aircraft that I fly only has one engine to begin with and I rather lose it then my flight controls... but that he shouldn't worry since we only need about half on them working anyways. We taxied into position and immediately took off without any further announcements from the cockpit.

The flight itself went well and after the first few minutes of silence the people around me started to relax again. I found out later from some of the people in the office that I was visiting that they had also been delayed in the past with this very same issue on same type of aircraft.

Obviously I made it home in one piece...ahh the joys of flying.

My second flight as a pilot

2007-06-20T18:05:00.000-07:00

Since I will be travelling again this weekend I booked the aircraft for 5:30 today for some local sightseeing. My eight year old son and his best buddy were my intended passengers. Bruce, the father of my son's best friend wanted to talk to me as he was dropping his son off at our house. To say that Bruce is a nervous flyer would be a huge understatement, he is extremely scared of flying. After a few minutes discussing it I convinced Bruce to come with us. (He figured that if his son was going and if god forbid something happened and he wasn't there, he wouldn't be able to live with himself). I agreed but told him that they were more likely to get hurt walking across the street.

I had my work cut out for me today, was I up to the task?

They followed us to the airport and Bruce watched as I preflighted the aircraft, asking a thousand questions which I happily answered. He was not impressed with the fact that Fern was thirty years old. I reassured him that although her paint and interior needs a little TLC, that she was safe where it counted.

Ten minutes later we were climbing up from runway 21 for what turned out to be a great flight. Bruce actually was surprised with how beautiful the view was from 1,500 ft. Thankfully the flying was smooth as glass for the whole flight. (I can't think of another time it was so smooth). Bruce actually seemed pretty relaxed when I asked him a few times during the flight how he was doing.

We visited a few local towns basically in a 30 mile circle east of the airport, returning along the beaches that line our north shore. Touchdown was perfect with a light chirp from both main tires. (I actually had to leave a touch of throttle on due to the hot day and loaded aircraft). The school must have fixed the front wheel dampener since it didn't shimmy at all as we coasted down from flying to taxiing speed.

The day was perfect and so was the flight, the boys as expected had a blast. Bruce commented that he had a great time and would love to come flying with me again. Our wifes were talking tonight and my wife told me that Bruce had some really nice comments about the flight and my abilities as a pilot. His wife still can't believe that he went with us, and that he'd actually go again!

My first flight as a pilot

2007-05-27T16:03:00.000-07:00

My schedule has been crazy the last couple of weeks, and it's not going to get much better anytime soon.

I booked Fern for a nice local site seeing flight with my three oldest kids as my first passenegers. We arived at the airport on time and Fern was ready to go (full fuel and oil).... nice! I got my two youngest kids situated in the back with their seatbelts and headsets, then my oldest daughter and I hopped in. A couple of minutes later with some fiddling with the radio we were off.

The winds were basically calm so I choose the nearest runway and we took off into the clear blue sky. We flew to the north shore then switched to 126.7 to touch base with some local traffic, then I swapped back over to Ch'town. We followed the island's north shore west for twenty miles or so then I decided to do a touch and go in Summerside.

The local unicom was deserted but I still broadcasted my intentions and position anyway. My touchdown was fine but the front wheel dampener certainly needs some attention. We took off again and this time followed the south shore back to Ch'town, the kids got a great view of the Confederation Bridge.

I had my oldest daughter Brittaney take the controls for a few seconds, she was not enthustiastic about it, I suspect she was a bit nervous although she'd never admit it. The two youngest kids were ready for some aerobatics but the newly licenced pilot (aka me) vetoed that request, I did give them a couple of minor rollercoasters, which they loved.

We turned towards the airport over Ch'town harbour and my straight in for runway 03 was nice, I was a tad high but we still touched down on the thousand foot markers. The front wheel made its presence known again as soon as I released the elevators. A short backtrack to taxiway Charlie and a few minutes later we were on the apron.

My first flight as a licenced pilot was in the books with 1.1 hours on the hobbs. What a great day for flying, my kids loved it.

Life is good!

Flight Test Complete

2007-05-14T07:30:00.000-07:00

After Saturday's weather related cancellation, Wedsnesday afternoon turned out to be absolutely beautiful. My Flight test was booked for 12:30.

I arrived at the airport about 10 AM and spent a few minutes going over a few things with Dave. It seemed that the new instructure that Dave was going to send with me called in sick so Dave would be flying over with me to Debert after all. I printed up all the weather info that I needed and then finished my cross country calculations for the mock cross country that I would fly during my test.

I then went out and filled the tanks on Fern and preflighted her. Dave showed up and we lifted off albeit 15 minutes late. The trip to Debert (a former military airbase) took about 45 minutes, we were cruising at 4,500 ft which made it easy to spot from about 25 miles out. Dave had his non aviation GPS with him and I looked it over while we were enroute. It gave all the basic info one would expect, ground speed, time and distance to destination and our location on the track. He said that I can pick one up (non aviation) fairly cheap and simply type in the airport locations using longitude and latitude. He also went over some of the additional features that other purpose built aviation GPS have and then reminded me that a portable GPS was something that was nice to have, but only in addition to a proper cross country plan and maps etc. (I actually had my map out and I was tracking our progress the old fashion way). Ten minutes later I made a crappy landing on runway 27, I chalked it up to being rusty. I followed Dave's directions and taxied us over to the local flight school.

Once inside Dave introduced me to the examiner and we all chatted for a few minutes. I gathered everything up that I needed then Stu and I went into the class room and closed the door while Dave chatted with some of the locals. I have to say that Stu's laid back attitude was certainly a huge relief, I could tell within the first minute or so that we'd get along well. We went over my paperwork, student licence, medical, registration and insurance etc. He then explained how the flight test was structured and asked me if I had any questions, I didn't.

We began the flight test with a question and answer session. I was asked a bunch of questions to which I knew most of the answers, but for some I had to refer to journey log and POH. Then he gave me a scenario and then asked if I could land at a particular airport in our 172. I had to refer to the CFS (Canadian Flight Suppliment) for the airport runway info and since I had somehow had forgotten my nice laminated crosswind chart, I had to use the one that was in the CFS. Next he looked over my map and cross country sheets then asked me some more questions.

Stu seemed happy with all my responses so we packed our stuff up and went out to pre-flight the aircraft, then we hopped in and I did the pax brief. Stu gave me directions to the run-up area where I finished the run-up portion of the preflight. On the runway I completed my pax brief with the, "In the event of" speech prior to takeoff. A couple of minutes later we were climbing to cruise altitude. We called leaving the circuit and then contacted Halifax terminal to let them know that we were entering their class "D" airspace.

I thought to myself that this was going pretty good so far... then asked myself what I had forgetten..... ahh yes, the cruise checklist. I told Stu what I was doing and he replied good. Then he asked me where my set heading point was and I pointed it out with my finger, it was still a few minutes away. Once over my SHP point I wrote down the time then changed course slightly, computed my numbers and did my cruise checklist. Stu asked me a few questions and seemed happy that I actually knew how to get from point A to point B, then he asked me to turn North which I did, then he handed me a set of foggles.

Next up was some instrument work, straight and level, some turns and finally some recoveries from unusual attitudes. I took the foggles off and then we did some slow flight, power off and on stalls, then a climbing stall in a turn, we followed this up with some steep turns to such and such heading. He then took control and made some steep turns to the left and right, then asked me to scan to the left for traffic, which I did. A few seconds later we were in a steep spiral dive to our right as he handed the controls back to me. My recovery was quick and correct, I didn't forget to use the rudder this time! After each manoeuver he made a mark on my score sheet.

Stu then announced that there was something wrong with the airport at Debert and that we needed to divert to another airport, which he specified. What do I do now? I showed him where we were on the map, and then pointed out some of the geographical features that I would follow to get me to the diversion airport. I quickly calculated the distance, flying time, ETA along with the fuel requirements and provided Stu with my results verbally, to which he replied with a simple "good" and then said, "lets go there". After a few minutes of looking outside and enjoying the scenary he unexpectly pulled the throttle back to idle and said, "engine failure".

I pulled the carb heat on and looked at my altitude and said out loud "5 minutes" (glide time from 2,700 ft). I trimmed for 80 mph while scanning for a safe place to land. I did my simulated pax briefing and mayday calls, then jumped into problem solving and simulated restart procedure while zigzaggin my way to my selected touchdown point (sod farm). I went to forty degrees of flaps once I was positive we'd make the field. Stu asked me to over shoot at three hundred feet. I was pretty happy with my performance, failing to make the field during the simulated engine failure is an automatic and immediate fail.

We then climbed back up and I turned south again per Stu's directions, a couple of minutes later he mentioned that clouds were coming down and a safe return to the airport is not possible, what do I do now? I replied that his scenario had 'precautionary landing" written all over it. I said that I was going to return to the sod farm which I selected for my forced approach. We arrived back a few minutes later and I did a high pass, talking my way through the "GLOWS" checklist out loud, then I did a low pass and climbed back up to circuit height to run the circuit and land. Stu then asked me what I do different during the precautionary if my engine was going bad on me, I responded with what I've been taught, to which he replied "good" and then asked me to head back to the airport.

We joined straight in on downwind for 27, Stu requested a soft field landing using the intersection of the crossing runways as my touchdown target. My landing wasn't great but it wasn't bad either, I touched down exactly where he wanted. Next he requested a short field takeoff, which is what I did. On downwind he asked me to do a normal landing and said that this would be a full stop. My normal landing went very well, practically a greaser. (Finally started getting the rust out).

We taxied back to the apron and I pulled out the checklist and shut Fern down. I thought that we were done so I started to open my door but Stu asked me to hold up a second as he still had some questions for me regarding emergency checklists. He asked a few what-ifs and I rattled off the memorized answers, which caused him to make some more marks on my score sheet.

He then asked me if I had completed my written test yet, I replied that I had. Then he held out his hand and said, "Well congratulations, you've passed your flight test... and now your a Pilot!". I shook his hand and thanked him with a huge smile.

We went inside, Dave was standing on the other side of the lobby about 15 feet away looking at me to see how I did, his expression reminded me that of a concerned parent. If I didn't know better, I'd say waiting for us to return had stressed him out a bit. For my part I kept my expression completely neutral and looked at the floor while I followed Stu over to the counter. Then I said in a voice loud enough for Dave to hear, "Well Stu... all I can say is that I blame my poor test results completely on my flight instructor", Stu replied, "I'd have to agree with you on that". Poor Dave couldn't take it anymore and finally asked me straight out how I did, I waited a few seconds then finally replied with a thumbs up and a big smile.

I paid my flight test fee and then the three of us went back to the same classroom as before and went over my test results. I got a copy of my score sheet and we chatted for a few more minutes then Dave and I thanked Stu again and we headed for home.

And that kiddos was Rob's flight test.

For those of you that are bound to ask the classic question of "How many hours did my PPL take?".

Dual 35.1
Solo 12.7
T & L 108

I'm now what I always wanted to be... a pilot.

Flight Test Complete

2007-05-11T16:09:00.000-07:00

Details to follow soon...

Flight test rescheduled

2007-05-05T17:08:00.000-07:00

The weather forced my flight test to be cancelled this morning. The earliest I can get another booking is for next Wednesday afternoon.

Briefing update, flight test booked!

2007-04-29T17:14:00.000-07:00

I met with Dave last Friday morning and went over the questions that he had giving me. Then we went over some of the stuff that I might be asked during my flight test.

This weeked sucked weather wise but Saturday looks like it might be nice enough to fly to the mainland airport where the TC examiner is located. (We need at least a 6,000 ft to get across the straight VFR). We'll fly to Debert, (45 minutes one way) then I'll meet with the examiner and take the flight test, and if everything goes well I'll fly back home a licenced pilot.

I've never been to Debert before so I'll be flying out of an airport and over terra firma during the test that I've never seen before, also we'll be skirting the Halifax terminal control area. It should be quite interesting to say the least, let hope my sense of direction doesn't fail me... I'd hate to get lost and not be able to find my way back to the airport!

As always I'm walking into this challenge with the standard "10 foot tall and bullet proof attitude". I'd hate to be humbled now..... I think that I hear "Mr. Reality" knocking at the front door!

I'll let you know how I make out...

Final Flight Test Review

2007-04-13T10:58:00.000-07:00

There were a few outstanding items that Dave wanted to touch on one more time before unleashing me on the poor TC examiner. We booked this flight for Thurday afternoon and it turned out to be the nicest day yet this spring.

In preparation for this flight I did another mock cross country, this time taking Dave's advice into consideration. My set heading point was 9 miles from the airport and this would give me plenty of time to climb to altitude and get everything trimmed up. My first checkpoint was exactly 10 miles further, and it was easily identified (I used a cove along the south shore). At this checkpoint I took out the whiz wheel and did the ground speed and revised the time calculations then did the aircraft checks. (reset heading indicator, carb heat, lean mixture and check the engine temps). Dave was happy.

We then jumped into some instrument upset recoveries. I have to tell you that if you've never had you head down and eyes closed while some madman is tossing the aircraft around in the sky you've got to give it a try. Not for those with weak stomachs! My recoveries were correct and quick. Dave was happy

Next was a spiral dive. I recovered quickly and correctly, making sure to avoid any torsional stresses. Old Cessnas don't mind being shaking and stirred, but they don't like being twisted.

Dave then asked me for the checklist, I didn't know why he wanted it but while I was searching in the side pocket for it he hauled the power back and announced with a smile that the engine had just failed. I did not have any problems with this during my mock flight test but Dave feels that you can never get enough practise. I trimmed and found a nice place to land, then did a simulated mayday call and pax brief. I decided at about 1,200 feet that while the original field that I had chosen was nice, there was a nicer one two fields over which I decided to land in. As long as I can make my original I'm allowed to change my landing spot without occuring a penality. (I went to the TC website and looked at the benchmark document that examiners use to test student pilots). I easily made my field and Dave was happy.

Dave then asked for me to take us back to the airport. I hauled out my map and proceeded to determine our exact location, then told him that I was going to go north a bit and follow route 2 home. (I thought he was testing my deversion skills). He looked at me and said OK or you can just take us back. It turned out he wasn't testing me he just wanted to head back.

During our flight back we talked, he said that I that everything went very well and that I'm ready for my flight test. The end is finally in sight!

We now need to get together and go over the test questions that he gave me a few weeks ago. I'm going to complete the few remaining ones this weekend and meet with him, hopefully I can get my flight test book for late next week.

Mock flight test complete

2007-04-04T16:00:00.000-07:00

Finally everything lined up and we were able to get up for my mock flight test.

While I finished the paperwork for my pretend cross country to Moncton Dave played musical aircraft in the hanger, moving three and a tug to free the one we wanted. Dave returned to the office and then I went out to preflighted the aircraft and pull her over to the fuel pumps to top her up, a few minutes later were off.

To make a long story short, there was much that went very well today and a few things that I need to brush up on. Dave did not provide me any feedback until after the flight.

We started off with my cross country. It turns out (after the fact) that my set heading point was too close to the airport and I should choose checkpoints that are easier to identify from the air, and my cross country log keeping needs more work too. Yes even flying has its paperwork. These issues are easily fixed.

We broke off the cross country and started with some slow flight, slow flight turns and then some power off and power on stalls, no problemo. Next up was steep turns, my first steep turn was perfect but during my second 360 I wandered from my starting altitude more than I wanted too, I corrected it but "all-seeing" Dave still caught it. I think what also screwed me up was the fact that I started my second turn with the altimeter at an odd number like 3, 430 instead of something more simple like 3,400.

Next he had my do some instrument work under the foggles, basically fly this heading at this altitude, now descend to this altitude etc., no problem. Now that I have my scan down pat and I keep it moving I find this kind of flying simple, no outside distractions.

Next we did some upset recovery work. I recovered each time quickly but during the first one the sun was directly in my eyes so I couldn't see anything with the glare coming from the foggles. I took my hand off the throttle to block out the sun during recovery, without adding throttle (hand blocking sun) I traded altitude for airspeed. Due to the issue with the sun Dave had me do another, during my second recovery I added only 1/2 throttle and without thinking traded height for airspeed again. (Both times he left me in a steep climb with airspeed quickly falling).

Dave then took over again and promptly put us into a spiral dive, I recovered fine without exceeding any important v-speeds, but Dave wants my recovery to be quicker and with more rudder.

About 30 minutes into the mock flight test we encountered a real problem with our radio, we could recieve fine but couldn't transmit. We checked all the obvious stuff, unplugged and replugged everything but nothing fixed it. Dave contacted the tower using his cell phone to update them on our radio situation and we continued on.

Dave then asked me what direction I would fly to get us back to the airport. I took out my map and pinpointed our current location, which was easy, then I used the airport's compass rose to compute a return heading home. Dave agreed that this was an easy way to do it but he wanted me to use geographical feature such as roads, high-tension power lines, railroad tracks or bodies of water to find my way back.

Dave then announced that we had a simulated engine problem, oil pressure was low and the temp was high. I throttle back a bit and did a precautionary landing in a grain field which went perfect, we overshot at a couple hundred feet. A few minutes later we had a complete mock engine failure, my forced approach was perfect as well. No feedback on either.

I followed the north coast back to an area north of the airport and then turned south to follow a road to the control zone. As we arrived back at the airport there was a large commecial jet getting ready to leave, we could hear the conversation. Getting clearance would take him a few more minutes so tower cleared us to land over our half functioning radio. Dave asked me to keep a tight circuit to speed things up and keep us from delaying the commercial.

Dave requested a short field landing on base so I dropped 40 degrees of flaps, throttle to idle and quickly trimmed for a 75 mph glide, we were coming in high on final due to the tight circuit. With full flaps and a full forward slip I brought us down rather quickly from our high approach on final, I came out of the slip at 20 feet to let everything stabalize again, then added just a hint of power to get us over the runway lights. We could have been easily stopped by 500 feet but I let her rollout to get us to our taxiway faster. Tower had called us on final to politely request that we clear the runway as soon as possible using taxiway charlie so the big commercial, with it clearance now approved, could get underway. Tower must have watched my textbook short field because they were on the radio telling us that we could take taxiway Bravo at our descretion, which is what I did. (I was very happy with this landing).

Back in the office a few minutes later Dave and I discussed how things went. As I outlined above there were a few things that he wants to be a little better so we've decided to do one more dual flight which will hopefully to wrap things up.

Looking back over this mock flight, knowing what still needs a little work I feel quite confident that my flight test is just around the corner.

Going solo.

2007-03-28T11:58:00.000-07:00

Since Dave wasn't able to keep our booking for my mock flight test on Saturday, I went out on Sunday solo for some review. My flight was uneventful and I was able to practise all the basics.

I find that I still have a habit of coming in high on final during my precautionaries and forced approaches, I'm able to get down but I have to use forty degrees of flaps and a healthy forward slip. It's safe and fun, but probably not what the examiner will be looking for. My slow flight went much better this time, I was able to keep my A/S pegged at 60 mph and maintain my starting altitude without getting on the backside of the power curve.

A couple of things that I realized during my solo flight.

1) Flying alone is boring.

2) I must soon purchase a decent headset. The ones supplied by the school are free which is nice, but sometimes I end up with a crappy set which sucks. The headset that I had on today left me wondering afterwards if I had suffered permanent hearing lose. (The hum eventually went away).

I have rebooked my mock flight test for this upcoming Saturday, Dave's is booked up all week and this is the earliest I could get in.

This last part of my PPL training seems to be taking forever.

Mock flight test was scrubbed.

2007-03-24T13:04:00.000-07:00

Dave called while I was out this morning, my mock flight test was booked for the afternoon.

I called him on his cell, it turned out that he was in Nova Scotia with another student who was doing a commercial flight test. They were going to be late in returning so my mock flight test was scrubbed. I was going to go up anyways for some solo practise but the broken cloud layer was only 2,200 feet, so there really wasn't much I could practise. I guess I could have done some circuits and turns but what I want/need to practise is slow flight and stalls, as well as some forced and precautionary approaches.

Dave said that he'd call me back once he returned and had a chance to check his schedule for Sunday, but he didn't think that it looked good. I didn't hear back from him so I went out to the airport and booked Fern out for tomorrow at 2:30. I'm going to do some solo practise.

I'll keep you posted.

Flight Test Review #2

2007-03-20T17:08:00.000-07:00

Flight test review #2

This flight went pretty well. We reviewed a bunch of different things and for the most part Dave was happy with my performance. After an "unexpected" spiral dive he asked me how I thought I had done during my recovery. I told him that I thought that I was too slow in hauling the power back and levelled the wings, this was what he wanted to hear. He said that I don't have to be perfect in everything I do, but I have to always be safe. My recovery from the spiral dive was safe, but next time it will be quicker.

All my turns went well and I was able to stay smack dab on my starting altitude each time. During my two steep turns we flew through our own wake which was cool, just a little bump. I got behind the curve during my slow flight exercise and I really had to add alot of power to bring us back up to our starting altitude. It was a slight mistake that I quickly identified and corrected on my own without any input from Dave. We then did some slow flight turns, each time I added just a hint of additional power to maintain altitude and speed, (60-65 mph).

Next we did a power off stall which didn't take long since we were flying so slow. The nose never did drop but I could hear the stall warning buzzer and could see that we were losing altitude so I recovered. Full power, carb heat off. I lost a little more altitude than I thought I should have but Dave seemed happy.

Next came my brain fart of the day, the precautionary landing. Dave "announced" that our oil pressure was getting low and the oil temp was starting to rise.... what do I do know. I quickly found a nice spot to land then I completely forgot about the field inspection. I must have been thinking forced approach because I completely forgot about the high and low level inspection passes. Dave quickly asked me if I was going to inspect the field first and then I realised my omission.

Dave suggested that because my engine was now questionable that I should leave the throttle alone and do a upwind pass at 2,000 feet first to look things over. Everything on the GLOWS list looked good so I extended my upwind leg to give me some time to dump altitude for my low level pass on my downwind leg. I did the downwind field inspection at about 1,000 feet, everything still looked good so I prepared the aircraft for landing on final.

I was high but it was a nice long field and I'd rather be a little high than a little low. I chopped the throttle to idle, dropped 40 degrees of flaps and then went into a full forward slip, we plummeted to the ground like a rock. I called this the "tactical approach", I suspect that most non flying people would not find it fun at all. I finally experienced the slight osculation in the yoke that the POH warns of, slips with full flaps are not recommended but this does not mean that they can't be done, the osculation was very minor and it disappeared when I released the rudder. It's easy to bleed off airspeed in this configuration so I was very careful to keep my speed up by keeping my nose down. I made the field and I was asked to overshoot at a couple hundred feet AGL.

Dave then had me go under the hood and do some "instrument" flying. Fly this course at this speed and altitude... now turn to such and such heading. Give me a 500 feet per minutes descent to this altitude, now give me a rate one turn to this heading, etc. He also threw in an upset recovery for good measure.

I was told to take the foggles off and then asked where we were... I replied, "somewhere over Prince Edward Island", I can see that Dave was impressed. He then asked me how I'd get us back to the airport... I looked around and replied, "I'd make a right turn" which impressed him even further. I was then told to get my map out ... some times he has no sense of humour.

I was successful in finding a way back to the airport, on final we had some gusting winds and the ride was a bit choppy. After we passed the threshold the bottom fell out of it, we went from ten feet in height to one foot in about a second and a half... it was fast. I've never had this happen before. We were in normal landing configuration, nowhere near stall speed, twenty degrees of flaps, no slip, the stall horn remained silent. I immediately pulled the yoke back all the way to try and cushion our landing somewhat, and much to my surprise she responded just as the mains were about to contact the runway. Touchdown was actually nice and gentle, with just a chirp. I balanced her on the mains a little longer than normal to scrub off the excess speed we were still carrying and commented something about it to Dave, I think he replied good recovery or something to that effect. I guess that this is why you carry a little extra speed during gusty conditions.

After shutdown Dave said that I was ready for my mock flight test. So I've spent the last couple of weeks going over emergency procedures and reviewing everything else I can possibly get my hands on.

My mock flight test is booked for this Saturday, if all goes well then it's flight test time !

Next flight review flight booked.

2007-03-07T15:54:00.000-08:00

I've booked my next review flight for this upcoming Saturday. The weather this past week sucked, right now it's -32C with the wind factored in, which is unusually cold for March. There's hope on the horizone though, +9C by Sunday, spring is a coming!

I've been studying some of the material that Dave gave me in preparation for my flight test. One of the questions asks what color the instrument lights are in a C172... I haven't a clue. I'm not sure if this is something that I actually need to know since I'll be restricted to flying in the day once I finally get my PPL.

Flight test study

2007-02-25T15:19:00.000-08:00

I had my second review flight booked for this morning, but it was too windy to fly.

After my last flight Dave Emailed me quite a bit of study material and some exams to complete prior to my actual flight test. It seems that the examiner conducts a Q and A session prior to our flight test to ensure that I actually know all the stuff that I'm suppose to know before I fly. Alot of this material must be committed to memory. All of these emergency procedures and checklists are also kept in Fern within easy reach.

I've spent the last week reviewing this stuff and answering the exams, I should have it all burnt into my brain by the time flight test day arrives. After my next review flight Dave is going to give me a mock flight test, this will identify any areas where I need more work.

Flight Test Review #1

2007-02-10T10:32:00.000-08:00

Today was my first flight test review flight.

In today's "lesson" we reviewed alot of old stuff in order to prepare me for my upcoming flight test. Depending on how I do, I'll have two of these review flights then a mock flight test with Dave to determine if I'm ready to be let loose with an examiner.

I preflighted Fern and then fired her up, since she was cold I waited a few extra minutes before performing my engine run-up to ensure that the engine/oil was warm. I noticed during my exterior preflight that the school had installed a couple of baffles on either side of the spinner openings. Obviously they were designed to reduce the airflow to the engine, so the engine runs warmer and the people inside are at less risk of freezing. Dave was inside with another student but appeared on cue and then we were off.

We started off with some straight and level, which went fine. Then some slow flight at 70 mph, I reduced the power too much and we started to descend, I adjusted the power and brought her back up, then fine tuned it from there. Once I had her 'levelled out" we did some slow flight turns. Simple.

In this configuration Dave had me do power on stall which went well, we did have a little wing drop but I brought it promptly back up with the rudder. I have to remember to do a full power climb during the recovery phase. Next it was a power off stall, the stall warning was screaming but the nose never did drop, we we're bleeding altitude pretty bad by the time I added full power. Dave mentioned that I have to remember to keep a close eye on the altimeter and recover once we start loosing altitude.

Next we did some turns both left and right at 30 degrees of bank, then some steep turns at 45 degrees of bank. This went well, I didn't wander too far from my starting altitude and stayed within flight test standards of 100 ft.

Dave then asked for control and without any warning at all put us into a vary steep left spiral dive and simply said you have control. I levelled the wings and pulled the power back to idle all at the same time, then I pulled us out of the dive at 165 mph. Dave commented that I should be a little quicker levelling the wings and not to forget to use the rudder as well. I should finish my recovery with steeper climb.

Next Dave without warning pulled the power back to idle and said, "wooops an engine failure, what are you going to do now"? I did my pax brief while I trimmed for best glide (75 mph). Then I did a simulated mayday call while I looked around for a good landing area. I ran through the cause check list that I have committed to memory and then attempted restart. (I forgot the obvious - carb heat.... damn). Then I came in on final way too high, Dave asked me what I thought and I replied that I was way too high, he then asked me if I'd make it and I said yep, but I'd touchdown just past the halfway mark with just enough room to stop, (it was a long field). He then called for a overshoot which meant a full power climb, which I didn't do. I have to remember to conclude many of these exercises with full power climbs and not the simple cruise type climbs at less then full power that I have been doing.

I then did about 20 minutes of instrument flying, which I found surprisingly easy. Dave then asked me to look outside and tell him where we were, which I did. Next he asked me how I would fly us back to the airport, I replied that I'd simply hang a left, which was not the answer that he was looking for. I then said that I'd follow the highway (which is what I did), or make a bearing to the airport using my map. As I entered the downwind Dave said that an aircraft just took off from the active but lost something, the airport does not have anyone to come out and inspect the runway and you have to land soon so what are you going to do now? I told him that I'd do an inspection pass beside the runway first and if it lloked safe I'd do another circuit then land.

On final I called tower and told then that we were going to do a overshoot. I flew beside the runway about 200 ft AGL at 80 mph, Dave said that I should have everything trimmed for level flight early so I can spend my time looking out the window at the runway and less time worrying about flying the aircraft. By the end of the runway I was down to about 100 AGL and Dave called me on it. I must be more watchful of my height. I really like this low flying stuff... maybe I should have been a crop duster.

Next I flubbed a soft field landing by dialling in only twenty degrees of flaps, Dave called me on it after it was too late to do anything about it, so I did a "firm" regular landing. We then switched runways and Dave asked me for a short field landing this time. I dropped full flaps and trimmed for 70 mph. Dave asked how short I could make it to which I replied "pretty short". He said alright then, lets see if you can put her down at the beginning of the thousand foot makers and have her stopped by the fifteen hundred foot markers. I replied, "you got it". I can just imagine Dave thinking to himself, "damn cocky students...".

My final was OK but I was a little low, so I fed in some throttle to keep us 30 ft above the runway for an extra few seconds, then I pulled power back to idle and we touched at 60 mph on the exact spot I had hoped for. (A little skill on my part and a whole lotta luck me thinks). I got on the brakes hard and kept the yoke all the way back for maximum drag, and to keep as much weight on the main wheels as possible. We stopped just short of the fifteen hundred foot runway markers! Dave commented that my landing was excellent but that I was a little too aggressive with the brakes.

We taxied back and called it a day, it was a good flight with plenty of useful review.

My next review flight will hopefully be this upcoming weekend.

Second solo x-country is done!

2007-01-31T14:26:00.000-08:00

I finally got around to doing my second cross country solo.

After my last flight I wanted a day without an overcast, or at the very least, a high overcast. I didn't mind if it was a bit windy but I wanted better than 7 miles of visibility that I had during portions of my last cross country. My patience finally paid off and I got what I asked for, it turned out to be a beautiful cold clear day with visibility as far as the eye could see.

I took the morning off work and went out to the airport, I breezed through my preflight paperwork (nav calcs etc.) much faster this time. I called for a weather brief and was told exactly what I already knew, I then submitted my flight plan. I checked in with Dave then went out to the hanger to preflight Fern and add some oil. Marc (the school's owner) helped me get her out of the hanger by moving a few pieces of equipment and other aircraft, then I pushed her out to the pump and filled her fuel tanks in the -15c morning sun.

A few minutes later I taxied out to the runway and I was quickly off. During the run-up and taxi I had alot of frost form on the inside of the windscreen, but it soon cleared as I climbed up to my cruise attitude of 4,500 ft. I called tower and told them that I was clearing the zone and requested flight following , tower then gave me the frequency for Moncton center which I called next. Centre gave me a code to squak and then had me do a squak ident, which I did, then they asked me to confirm my altitude.

The flight to Moncton was slow and cold but uneventful, centre had me adjust my altimeter to that of Moncton's as I crossed over the Confederation Bridge. I fine tuned my heading indicator every fifteen minutes and enjoyed the scenery scrolling by underneath at 80 kts. I grabbed the ATIS about 20 minutes out, the active was very close to my current heading which meant that I'd likely have a straight in approach. About ten minutes out I thanked centre and then switched over to Moncton tower.

Flip flopping between frequencies and talking (and listening) on the radio is second nature to me now, no more "stage fright". I remember back to my first few calls on the radio and simply chuckle to myself about how nervous I was. I called tower and as expected was given a nice straight in approach behind some other traffic. I performed a nice touch and go then turned to my next leg's heading, using my heading indicator this time. I called clear of the zone and requested flight following, then switched over to the frequency I was given for centre. Interestingly, the frequency is not always the same, it must change based on my direction of travel or something, I'll have to remember to ask Dave about it sometime.

This 105 mile leg was done at 120 kts ground speed, gotta love a nice tail wind. The trip to Trenton was uneventful and cold, I was given a "heads up" a couple of times for other traffic in the area but no worries. I'm glad I took Marc's advice and left my heavy fall coat on for the flight, it was a wee chilly even with the sun. The 172's heater seems to be to better suited for more fair weather flying. Every few minutes I leaned over to make sure it stayed opened all the way, as it has a tendency to close over somewhat after a few minutes, (probably vibration related). I started noticing that my left knee/leg was getting pretty cold from a draft. I had plenty of time on my hands so I had a in-flight snack, then a few minutes later I bid centre farewell and switched over to Trenton unicom where I broadcasted my location and intentions.

I came in on final high but quickly brought it under control with some slip, my touch and go was decent. During my climb out I broadcasted my position and intentions, waited about 15 seconds for anyone to respond then started a lazy right turn to a heading that would bring me back home. A few minutes later I called clear of the zone then switched over to centre and requested flight following. I climbed up to my cruise altitude of 5,500 ft and I could easily see the Charlottetown harbour 50 miles distant. I brought up the airports VOR and then practised staying on the proper radial, which wasn't too hard.

About 15 miles out from Ch'town, centre called and asked me if I could see the airport, which I could, then they requested that I switch over to Ch'town radio for the rest of the flight. I thanked centre and did just that. Next I did some descent calculations in my head, which brought me down to circuit height as I entered the pattern. I still had some time left on my booking so I decided to do some touch and goes for practise, all of which went well.

All in all a perfect cross country flight of 3.1 hours, no problems, no issues and no mistakes.

Solo x-country done.

2007-01-25T15:51:00.000-08:00

Finally the weather and my schedule looked like they were going to cooperate so I booked a time slot for Sunday morning. A couple of days out it looked like it would be nothing but blue sky, but by the time Sunday actually arrived it was scattered with an overcast over the island at about 6,000 feet, and worse at the other two airports located on the mainland.

Basically my cross country looks like a triangle. Charlottetown to Moncton - 75 miles, Moncton to Trenton - 105 miles and finally Trenton to Charlottetown - 55 miles.

I went out to the airport early and did all my paperwork, nav calculations, checked the weather, metars and notams etc. Next I called the weather briefer and got a briefing, then I checked with Dave to discuss my options. It looked like the cloud layer on the mainland might drop down enough to prevent me from completing my last leg (Trenton to Charlottetown). I decided to proceed anyways and if the overcast on the mainland looked like it was getting worse I'd return to Ch'town early. I called my flight plan in and then I was off a few minutes later.

My cruise altitude to Moncton was 4,500 feet, the overcast above the island was about 6,000 feet. It stayed like this until I crossed over the Confederation Bridge, on the mainland the overcast got lower and lower until I was found myself at only 2,000 ft ten minutes out from the airport. On the trip over I took note that the cloud was lower to the south so I decided to get a touch and go in at Moncton and return home. I contacted Moncton tower and told them of my intentions, there were quite a few other aircraft in the circuit. At this point forward visibility directly ahead sucked, I could barely see maybe 7 miles distant as I looked down at the ground at an angle. Bouncing around in the soup with other aircraft nearby was not fun.

I told tower that my visibility sucked and that I did not have them in sight, tower gave me a vector and said that I'd see the runway it in a minute or two, which I did. I was lined up perfectly to join the base leg of runway 24, damn that guy in the tower was good. I started getting everything setup for landing and then did a quick calculation in my head as to what I'd needed to fly in order to return home. (This was something that I realized after the fact that I should have done before hand).

I did my touch and go and during climb out I started getting jostled around pretty good, it was difficult to read the compass and I had not adjusted my heading indicator for some time (forgot). Visibility really sucked, it was difficult to see anything directly ahead of me and I could only see the ground out for maybe five miles. I called clear of the zone and then requested flight following, next I checked in with Moncton centre and told them that I was returning to Charlottetown instead of Trenton. I knew that the weather would get better as I got closer to the coast.

I continued on my course for a few more minutes, with my thirty knot tailwind my ground speed was about 130 kts, then I saw a landmark that I did not expect to see. After referring to the map a couple of times and then my course, which I admit that I wasn't really keeping a close eye on , I determined that I was about 30 degrees off course! WTF! I connected the dots and decided what needed to be done to fix things, a 45 degree turn to the left would get back home and out of this damn soup. Not having 50 miles visibility sucks.

I had just completed my course correction when Moncton centre called to ask me if I knew where I was. Oh the embarrassment... I think that I actually hung my head in shame. I replied that I did, mentioned that I was over a known landmark and then admitted that I was much farther south then I wanted to be, and that I had just made a large course correction to the east. Moncton asked for a pirep, which I gave them back as heavy haze at 2,000 ft with about 7 miles ground visibility. They told me according to another pirap that it should get much better as I get closer to the coast. At this point I was over the main highway that leads to the bridge, so I told them that I was simply was going to follow it, thanked them and signed off.

It was certainly nice knowing that I had someone looking out for me and all I really had to do if I got lost was to give them a call. On the other hand my pride to a hit with me being so far off course. I muttered less than nice things to myself for the next ten minutes until the coast came into view, visibility was getting much better now.

I called Moncton centre to tell them that I was climbing to 4,500 to cross the straight, it was difficult for me to tell just how close to the overcast I was. I had to dodge a low flying cloud as I crossed the straight, then a minute later everything went completed white! Visibility outside went from good to nil, that fast, this is not good I thought to myself. I must have either drifted up into the overcast (I was now at 4,600 ft) or the overcast had come down to me. Either way I could no longer see the ground! I knew that I had not flown into a cloud ahead of me so I only had to descend to get back to where I needed to be, my eyes went immediately down to my instruments.

I concentrated on keeping my scan going while I turned carb heat on and then reduce my throttle for a nice 500 ft per minute descent. This was not practise anymore, this was real, mistakes like this kill people. Every few seconds I'd take a very quick peek out the window and then back down to my instruments. I keep remembering Dave telling me to keep my scan going, don't fixate on one instrument. After what seemed like an hour, but was actually less then 20 seconds, I broke down out of the overcast and could once again could see the coastline below me. I maintained my descent and turned for Charlottetown, twenty minutes later I made a decent landing and taxied Fern back to the apron and shut her down. I felt like a stupid student pilot, tired as well.

I really thought long and hard about not including my off course excursion to the south and then my accidental flight into overcast while crossing the straight. I finally decided to include both of these events so that you could learn from my mistakes.

I was able to determine after the fact why I was so far off course. I made a couple of simple mistakes, I subtracted 180 degrees from my original heading but didn't factor in the winds then became fixated on scanning for other traffic in the area, to the determent of maintaining an accurate heading. (Just because it feels like you going in the right direction doesn't mean that you are). I had also flown into the overcast and survived. I have to say that the instrument training that I received paid off in spades. I immediately determined what needed to be done and then I relied on my instruments and training to get me out of a difficult situation.

This flight was very frustrating for me... mistakes were made. Flying in the soup far from home is no fun at all.

I have learned much from my experiences today, hopefully they will make me a better pilot.

Dual x-country done!

2007-01-24T14:47:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the delay in posting the details of this entry, I've been really busy.

My first dual cross country was booked for Wednesday Jan. 10 at 8 AM. I arrived at the airport an hour early and checked the METERs, TAFs, NOTAMS for all three airports, then I checked the GFA and upper winds. Next I did my navigation calculations based on the forecasted winds, all this took about an hour as it was the first time that I had done all of this since ground school, I double checked everything.

Dave arrived and filed a flight plan for us, I did my exterior preflight as the previous student topped up the tanks for me, I thanked him then got in and started my interior preflight. Dave arrived, I did our runup and contacted tower for the airport and traffic advisory. I informed tower that we were on a VFR flight plan to Moncton and a few minutes later we were off.

The weather was perfect, sunny and visibility as far as the eye could see, the air was perfectly smooth. With the visibility so good I knew within a couple of minutes that my initial heading was off by about ten degrees. My navigation calculations were good, it's just that the winds where we were slightly different than at the recording station, 70 miles away. We had a stiff headwind so our ground speed was just 80 kts.

Over the next hour Dave had me plot our progress and revise our ETA, I revised our heading again slightly. Dave then did a position report over the Confederation Bridge which was fairly simple. Twenty minutes out we grabbed the ATIS for Moncton, which told me what the winds were and the active runway. I maintained my heading and spotted the airport about 15 miles out, right where the map said it would be. I called tower, YQM was very busy, tower told me that we were third and that I could continue straight in on our current heading for the active, which was runway 29.

The local flight school has received a huge contract from China to train pilots, and as such it now has alot of English speaking Chinese students. I don't mean to be rude, but we could barely understand what they were saying in English on the radio. I commented to Dave that the tower must get use to their very thick accents.

Some of the aircraft that this flight school trains on are small two seat Diamond Eclipses, I had to look carefully to spot them from a few miles out. We saw number two land just about the time I had Fern all setup for landing, 20 degrees of flaps and trimmed for 75 mph. Tower called to tell us that we were now number one and asked us to expedite our approach. I resisted the temptation to reply that the whip would be applied to the hamster, instead I replied with a professional "will do, fox romeo november". I left everything as is and adjusted the throttle to increase our speed to 95 mph, with the added power I had to hold the nose down and fly her down all the way to the threshold. A normal approach would have me adjusting our glideslope with power, so it was fun to actually "fly" down the glideslope.

I chopped the power at about 100 feet, let the excess speed bleed off, then topped off this unusual (for me) approach with a nice landing as six other training aircraft watched from the taxiway beside the runway. This was the first time I did a expedited approach and I was able to pull it off without any help from Dave. I quickly cleaned up the aircraft as we rolled down the runway, a few minutes later we arrived at our cruising altitude on a heading that would take us to our next airport.

Within a few minutes I had to tweak our heading to keep us on our proper track. With a stiff 32 kt tail-wind pushing us along, the 105 kt mile leg went quick. I made the required calls to Trenton unicom and reported our position and intentions to the local traffic, eventually someone replied from the airport with the winds. I thanked them and joined the downwind for the active at midfield. I found myself high on final so I used a full slip to bring us down. I reached over to ensure that I had full carb heat on, (something I alway double check) but I accidentally grabbed the mixture knob instead. My brain immediately caught the error but not before my hand had started to move, by the time the engine coughed I had already started pushing it back in. Dave gave me a look and I returned it, after a couple of seconds I said "I know".

I had taken my hand off the throttle for some reason, the carb heat is to the left of the throttle and the mixture control is to the right. I know this with my eyes closed, but when I reached over I grabbed the wrong one, (something that would not have happened if I had not taken my hands off the throttle in the first place). Note to self, keep your damn hand on the throttle while on final.

This runway was different from what I am used to as it slopes downward at the western end, the runway and the land past threshold seemed to fall away abrubtly as we climbed out. Everything different is new and exciting.

We climbed to 6,500 ft in order to ensure that we could cross the Northumberland Straight safely, as it is much wider at this point. At this height we could easily see the Charlottetown harbour, 50 miles distant, and we could just make out the Summerside harbour as well, which must have been at least 75 miles. The visibility was the best I've ever seen, Dave commented that the air can be much clearer in the winter.

Thirty minutes later l finished my dual cross country with a nice straight in crosswind landing in Charlottetown on the inactive. My often delayed dual cross country was finally done, three different provinces, three different airports in 2.7 hours.

Cross Country?

2007-01-07T18:12:00.000-08:00

I wish I could write about such a thing, but alas, it was a no go this morning.

It was a beuatiful day... except for the 25G39 winds. Dave did eventually call to confirm after the fact what we both already knew. I also booked tomorrow morning as a back up, so it's no surprise that the forcast is calling for cloud and rain/snow.

Blogging Pilot World 2007

2007-01-05T07:15:00.000-08:00

I, and many others have recently received an Email from IFRpilot, he suggests that we "Blogging Pilots" should have some kind of fly-in/get together this summer. An opportunity to put some faces and names to some of the blogging pilots out there in the cyberspace community. The details are still being finalized, suggested and voted on.

Paul over at Rants and Revelations has taken the time and effort and put together a Pilot Blogger mailing list for this event.

I can tell you that the initial response has been very positive. If you're a blogging pilot and have somehow been left off the initial mailout, you can use the link above to sign yourself up to the event mailing list to get all the additional details and provide your two cents worth.

Whenever and wherever it is, I hope to see you there!

New Year's resolutions

2007-01-01T15:41:00.000-08:00

Alright, first things first, tourney update.

My son's hockey team, whom I help coach, came in first this past week in the tourney that I mentioned in my last post. Our record was five wins and no losses, my son scored 19 goals... that's my boy! I can't tell you how proud I am of all the kids on the team, they played their little hearts out.

2007 resolutions.

I usually never do this kind of stuff, but this year I think I'll set some reachable goals for myself.

1 - get my pilots licence.... that's obvious.
2 - takes my friends and family flying.
3 - get back into shape, get back to the gym and start jogging again.
4 - continue working on my french

I can tell you that 1 and 2 will happen for sure, 3 and 4 will be a best attempt kind of thing.

Hope all of you have a safe and happy 2007.

Non Flying holidays

2006-12-28T10:43:00.000-08:00

I have to tell you I have never seen things line up so badly and for so long. The east coast has been under a perpetual overcast for the past month. One day it will be sunny in Charlottetown but not at the other airports, and then vise versa. Not to mention it has been very windy as of late as well. There has been lots of days where we could have done some local flights but we need at least a 6,000 ft ceiling to fly to our XC destination airports located in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.

I have been trying to juggle my schedule and my flight instructor's, then toss in a terrible stretch of weather and there you have it, almost a complete month of trying to get a XC done. One afternoon it looked like a go but at the last minute Dave had to call it off for personal reasons. Hopefully as winter finally sets in and the temp go down to seasonal values we'll have more sunny days where the winds aren't 20 knots.

On a personal note, since I have nothing to post about flying. I'd like to let my readers know that my wife and I had a beautiful baby girl this past September, we named her Rebecca.

I am also coaching my son's hockey team again this year, and we're in the middle of a Christmas break hockey tournement. So far we've got three wins and no losses, my son Brechan has averaged slightly more than 4 goals in each game, he is very talented. (Since nearly everyone pronounces his name wrong when they read it the first time, I should point out that the ch in his name makes a "k" sound.)

Happy New Year everyone,
Rob

Love this weather...

2006-12-03T17:32:00.000-08:00

My cross country was cancelled again, the ceiling was at 3,ooo ft and the winds were gusting up to 24 kts.

I spoke with Dave this morning to confirm the cancellation, he said that he has a few students now all waiting for the weather to improve to get their cross country's done. I had him book both days for next weekend, hopefully one of them will be nice.

I also read in the paper on Friday that this past November was the warmest November ever recorded on Prince Edward Island. A float rating might be a good idea soon!

Dec 10th Update:

Not much sense creating a new entry to to say the same thing. The last two weekends have been crap as far as cross countries go. So I'm going to keep an eye on the weather and see if I can't get out during the upcoming week.

Dec 16th Update:

No flying yet. It seems like it has been cloudy for weeks. There has been a few days where it would have been fine for some local flights but when I checked the weather at the other airports they had low cloud bases. I just checked the forcast for the nest few days and it's not looking good.

Cross Country Cancelled

2006-11-26T07:19:00.000-08:00

Early this morning my cross country looked like it was going to happen, there were only a few clouds at 1,400 ft. As the morning wore on though, the few clouds turned into a broken layer at 2,000 ft.

This is far too low for our requirements for a couple of reasons. First, one doesn't general fly cross country at such a low altitude unless it's a low level site seeing trip. Second, we have to cross the Northumberland straight which is 9 miles wide (we actually fly directly over the Confederation Bridge) so we need height to stay legal with respect to gliding distances to land.

At least I got up once this weekend.

Lesson #27 Instrument flying

2006-11-25T07:46:00.000-08:00

Woke up to a nice beautiful day for flying, it was sunny and 4c, no wind to speak of.

I went out to the airport slightly late, and jump right into the pre-trip. A few minutes later we were climbing out and Dave was searching for a map to put over the windows.

To make a long story short, my instrument work went really well. Dave had me doing various turns while decending or climbing to such and such heading, to this altitude and maintain this airspeed. Task overload nearly, but I kept my scan going and I was able to do everything he asked for to satisfaction.

Next we did some upset recoveries. With my head down and eyes closed, Dave flew like a madman... now recover. This went well too. Afterwards I had Dave show me what he was doing while I had my head down.... I'm glad I had my eyes closed, that's all I can say!

Next we moved onto some VOR work while headed back to the airport, no problems. We overflew the VOR and watched the "flip". Finished off the lesson with a fairly decent, but not perfect landing.

Tomorrow we do our first cross country, I have to do some homework tonight to get ready.

It's good to be back in the air again.

Non Flying Update

2006-11-12T09:03:00.000-08:00

I had a lesson booked for this afternoon but the overcast is 600 feet with a light drizzle. Dave has a cross country planned for tomorrow morning, other than that he's booked up solid. There is however a slight possibility that the cross country might be cancelled due to weather at the other airports. If this happens and the weather is good enough locally for a lesson he'll give me a call.

Monday Update:
I just checked the METAR, overcast is at 600 feet and the TAF says it's not going to get any better. I'll see if I can take some time off work this week and get a lesson in.

Thurday (Nov 16) Update:
Tried as I might I have not been able to get both Dave and the Fern lined up to make a lesson happen. To top it off Dave is leaving this Saturday for a one week trip to Europe, which is good for him but sucks for me. Oh the joys of living in smallville PEI. When I spoke to him this morning I had him book my next lesson, another hour of instruments for next Saturday, and also a cross-country, (three provinces, three airports in three hours) for Sunday morning.

I'm still hoping to complete my PPL by Xmas.

Lesson #26 Instrument flying

2006-11-04T14:33:00.000-08:00

This morning was beautiful and sunny with a light wind, a great day for flying. It kinda sucked that I wouldn't see much of it.

I arrived at the airport and Dave was nowhere to be found, so I started preflighting Fern in the hanger. She needed oil and fuel. I added the oil and then I had to haul another 172 outside in order to get Fern out of the hanger. The fuel pumps are about 100 meters away so I just hauled her over there without firing her up, (a 172 is quite easy to move around by hand). I then returned to the hanger and put the other 172 back inside and shut the door. Back out to the pumps I top up both tanks and by now my hands are frozen, as it's only 4 degrees out. I roll up the fuel hose and static line and head back inside to wash the oil off my hands under some warm water, halfway back to the building Dave comes strolling out of the door.

Takeoff was soft field which went well. It's amazing how rolling down the runway with the nosewheel in the air can become common place. I didn't remember to put the flaps back up until 600 feet. Ten degrees of flaps really keeps the nose down during climbout, and they don't seem to add much drag at all. I put the flaps up and retrimmed.

A few minutes later and I was flying using only the instruments, Dave commented that he might need some sunscreen. We started off with a straight climb to 3,500 feet, then some straight and level flight to take us to the west . Next Dave had me do a couple of standard rate turns in both directions. Then straight and level at 80 mph, I trimmed for the requested speed and used the throttle to maintain correct altitude. Next we did some climbing and decending turns both left and right at 90 mph.

The key to staying on your numbers (altitude and heading, and at times speed) is to always be scanning, never fixate on one instrument for too long. It's a simple concept but one that must be learned, as a student pilot it's easy to watch one or two instruments for too long, to the determent of something else.

With some of the basics out of the way we moved on to unusual attitudes. During my last lesson there was a couple of times that I felt like we were in a slight decending left turn and I had to keep myself from correcting us because all my instruments were telling me that my inner ear was wrong.

To recover from unusual attitudes a pilot needs to ignore most of the instruments because they are unreliable or lag too much during recovery. I remember back to an earlier lesson when we were doing spin recovery, the attitude indicator got tumbled and it took forever to come back online. The two main instruments that Dave taught me to use during recovery was the airspeed indicator and the turn and bank coordinator.

I put my head down and basically looked at the floor while "madman" Dave started tossing the aircraft all over the place, after about 30 seconds he asked me to recover. When I lifted my head I felt like we were in a very steep spiraling dive to the left. I looked at the ASI and it was climbing fast, so I pulled the power off while I looked down at the turn and bank indicator, it said that we were wings level. I still felt that we were in a very steep left turn. I maintained level flight and pulled the nose back up until the airspeed stopped increasing then I brought the power back up. All this took maybe four seconds. I was now flying straight and level but it still felt like we were in a steep left turn.

We did this exercise a few more times and each time my senses told me one thing and the instruments told me something else, most time I was off by a little, but a couple of times I was off by alot, usually when I closed my eyes. Dave said that I did a good job of recovering. I have to tell you that it was a strange feeling, your instruments telling you one thing and your inner ear telling you something else. I didn't find it hard to ignore my senses and believe the instruments. Dave asked how I was doing and I replied that I was starting to feel a little light headed and dizzy, I reassured him that there was zero chance of me tossing my cookies though. He then hauled the map off the windshield so I could get everything "coordinated" again by flying for a couple of minutes VFR.

It was still a nice day.

Next we discussed how we could use the VOR reciever to return to the airport. I turned the dial until the needle centered, then I looked at the To and From indicator and from that I could tell what radial that we were on. Using the VOR I could determine the heading that I needed to fly in order to return to the airport. A quick turn and a minute later we were inbound for the airport on the radial I tuned, then Dave turned the dial a bit and had me practise intercepting a radial. Simple stuff.

It's important to remember that the To and From indicator has nothing to do with the heading of the aircraft, but rather the location of the aircraft in relation to the VOR station and the radial you've dialed in.

I flew us the rest of the way back to the airport using instruments with Dave calling out headings, I went back to looking out the window during final. There was a 7 kt crosswind so I put Fern into a slip and did firm but decent landing. Much better than last week, but it still needs work.

A beautiful day for flying, and other than a couple of minutes I didn't get to see any of it. However, instrument flying is getting easier and I am getting better at it. We're going to do one more lesson on instruments and then it's on to our first cross country.

Another 1.2 hours in the old logbook.

A fellow blogger from down under.

2006-10-30T18:04:00.000-08:00

I was contacted recently by a fellow blogger from Sydney, Australia named Geoff Hopkins. Geoff's been flying for years but has only recently started blogging about it. I checked out his blog site and from what I can tell, it's going to be nice... lots of great pics.

Geoff is also somewhat of a podcaster as well, he has put together some rather nice podcasts that I think many of you will find very interesting. I've added a link to his blog site to my blog roll.... enjoy.

Lesson #25 Intro to Instrument flying

2006-10-29T04:30:00.000-08:00

In Canada a student private pilot must complete a minimum of five hours of instrument instruction. This requirement does not permit a VFR pilot to fly in IFR conditions obviously, but it will hopefully give a VFR pilot enough instrument training to safely navigate out of IMC (cloud) and back into VFR conditions.

The weather on the east coast of Canada has been terrible for flying the last two weeks. There was a large stationary low stuck a few hundred mile to the East North-East (over Newfoundland) that caused us to have off and on showers for nearly a week. One minute it's sunny and then the next a large cloud would float over and it would rain for a few minutes.

I had a lesson book for last weekend but it was cancelled due to rain, low overcast and wind.

Trying to schedule a lesson time that worked for me, work, Dave and my family is proving tough. Dave has been pretty booked up with other students, and a local PPL that's getting his multi rating (so he can fly his beautiful new to him twin which he just imported from the U.S.) As it turned out the only time that I'd be able to get out and fly this week was Friday morning. The previously mentioned low pressure area was still effecting us, but it finally started moving slowly East Friday morning. It was still sunny one minute with a patch of nice blue sky and then cloudy the next with showers/rain, though we had enough of a ceiling to do a lesson and the wind had come down somewhat.

I knocked off work mid-morning and headed out to the airport, which is only about five minutes away. Twenty minutes later we took off and headed North. Dave started unfolding a large map, I asked him if he was lost or something. He replied that someone had made off with the foggles and the laminated map that the school keeps in Fern. They haven't been stolen, but they've mistakenly made it into someone's flight bag. They'll eventually turn up again, given enough time.

He unfolded the map to the correct size and placed it over the windshield in front of me, I immediately went down to the instruments to keep us from plummeting to our deaths. Dave could still see out his slice of windshield, as the map did not extend all the way over to his side.

Dave started me off with some straight and level flight, then we did some rate 1 turns to this and that heading, and a couple of 180 degree turns. I did pretty good job when I remembered to do a complete scan, a couple of times I overlooked something or other and within what seemed like seconds I was drifting off course or from my assigned altitude. Ten degrees is not much, and it's surprising how quickly you can wander off course.

Next we did some 30 degrees of bank turns to a certain heading, both left and right. Dave then had me do some straight and level climbs and descents. Remember the acronym for a climb is APT (attitude, power and trim) and a descent is PAT (power, attitude and trim). Next we did some climbing turns and descending turns, all went well, but I was really working to keep an eye on everything.

Since today was my first lesson on instrument flying Dave showed me how to navigate back to the airport using the VOR. He had me come around to a heading of 90, which was in the general direction of the airport. Then he tuned in the 90 degree radial of the VOR and then pointed out that the "To" flag was on. Our VOR receiver indicated that we were left of the radial so we changed our heading to 120 degrees to intercept it, which we did after a few minutes. We then tracked on it at a heading of 90 degrees for a couple of minutes but we started getting blown off course to the right, so I had to alter my heading to the left (North) to compensate for the wind. We were blown off the radial a second time but I brought us back and I was able make a second slight heading correction that managed to keep us on it all the way back to the airport.

Dave called us entering the zone and then he turned on the NDB receiver, which simply points to the non directional beacon, which is a navigation aid that is used to setup for ILS approaches. He asked me to fly directly towards it and a few minutes later we actually flew over the beacon and the arrow on the receiver did a 180, Dave then had me turn 30 degrees to the left and after a minute or so he had me do a 180 degrees turn to the right. He then pointed to the ILS indicator. He said that when the vertical line (which was all the way to the left) starts swinging to the right that I should alter my course 30 degrees to the right and keep the line centered, with small heading corrections. A minute later the vertical line started to move and I altered my course to the right 30 degrees and did my best to keep the line centered.

Dave asked me to set us up for landing, which I did as he called tower to report that we were on long final. He then had me reduce power and keep it reduced until the horizontal line on the ILS receiver started to come up, which it did a minute or so later. All I had to do now was keep both lines centered and I found myself shooting my first virtual (map still in the front windshield) ILS approach!

Dave then called us short final and removed the map. Directly ahead was the runway, the view outside revealed that we were at the perfect height for the remaining distance. Tower replied back that the winds were from our left at 60 degrees, 7 kts gusting 21. We found ourselves crabbing pretty good, Dave requested a slip to compensate for the winds. My crosswind landing sucked, I forgot to turn the ailerons into the wind once we were down, and I released the rudder early.

All in all another great lesson with lots of new material to review and absorb. I finally know what pilots mean when they refer to the "hockey stick" during an ILS approach.

Juggling Schedules.

2006-10-15T18:03:00.000-07:00

I tried to get out this past weekend for my next lesson, (Instruments) but my instructor was booked. He was either flying or he was out with another student. When I spoke to him last week I asked him to give me a call even if it was last minute in case someone cancelled.

Alas, no calls.

I'll give him a call tomorrow morning and see how these week looks for an after work lesson. The weather is suppose to be sunny all week.

I'll keep you posted.

Lesson #24 Low Level Diversions (Solo)

2006-10-07T08:58:00.000-07:00

Actually low level diversions was only one of the things I wanted to do during this solo flight.

In fact I had so many things that I wanted to practise today that I actually sat down before the flight and listed everything out on a piece of paper. I then ordered them in a way to make best possible use of my time. When I arrived at the airport I chatted with Dave before I went out to preflight Fern, we went quickly over my list and he seemed satisfied with everything.

A few minutes later I climbed out of the zone headed north, I leveled off at 3,000 ft and performed a HASEL before jumping into some power off stalls (3), next I did some power on stalls (3), during one of these I got a some wing drop but I was expecting it so I was able to bring it back up quickly with some rudder.

I checked my task list and next up was some 30 degrees of bank turns, both left and right. After that it was some steep turns at 45 degrees of bank, I had to add power during these to keep my speed up. I was able to do all my turns while keeping my altitude to within 50 feet of my starting height.

I was still at 3,000 ft I so I transisition into some slow flight for practise, I really had to watch the altimetre to make sure that I didn't loose any altitude. I still need more practise with this as I have a habit of not feeding in enough power early enough, and I sometimes loose more than 100 feet.

Next up on the list was a forced approach. I pulled the power all the way back to idle and pulled the carb heat on and trimmed for an 80 mph glide. I ran through my cause checks, mayday calls, passenger brief and restart procedures. I made my chosen field with the help of some forward slip but I forget to simulate turning everything off and opening the doors prior to touchdown. I need to practise going through everything in my head a few more times to get it all down perfect.

I climbed back up to 1,000 ft and start planning my diversion. A few minutes later I began my little 19 nauticle mile trip. This diversion went exactly as planned. My seat off the pants heading adjustment for the wind at the beginning was bang on, but I reached my destination a couple of minutes late though, still... not bad for a first attempt.

On the way back to the airport I flew over my friend house and then I followed route 2 back to the airport. At about the halfway point I used a private strip to practise a precautionary landing. My low pass was a little high at 700 ft since I didn't want to scare the livestock in the field next to the strip.

I joined the downwind for the active and proceeded to do a soft field landing with 40 degrees of flaps, this time I left a little more power on right till the end, touchdown was nice and soft. I then did another circuit and practised a short field landing which went really well too.

Another great solo flight. I got everything done that was on my list and my diversion was pretty well bang on. My turns are getting much better and the stalls are a non issue. I still want to do more work on my slow flight and I'd like to practise some more crosswind landings as well.

I accomplished all of the above with 1.4 hours on the hobbs.

Lesson #24 Low Level Diversions

2006-10-04T17:14:00.000-07:00

Knocked off work a little early and went out to the airport for a 2:30 lesson.

I preflighted the aircraft while Dave finished up with another student, a few minutes later Dave showed up and we pushed Fern over to the fuel pumps and filled her tanks. While taxiing out to the runway I decided to spice things up and do a soft field takeoff, which went well. After about 5 minutes heading north Dave took out the map and asked me where we were, I pointed to a spot on the map, then he chose another spot on the map about 15 miles away and said that he wanted to go there now. We then spent a few minutes going through the steps of how to plot a low level diversion. He drew a straight line from the "box" that we were holding over to the little town where he wanted to go, then he roughly showed my how to calculate the magnetic heading using our airport's compass rose, which was nearby.

With the rough course laid out he then measured the distance between the two points with a pencil and then determined the actual distance by using the tick marks found on the lines of longitude, which are the lines on a VNC that run north to south. These tick marks indicate minutes of latitude, a minute of latitude equals a nauticle mile.

Now we have a heading and the distance, next he figured roughly a 90 kt ground speed and then he calculated the time to destination. Finally he marked check points along the route to use as a reference. We used these checkpoints to verify our drift and time, after each cheackpoint we fined tuned our heading to compensate for the wind and we adjusted our ETA to destination. Plotting a diversion is rather simple to do, but it's a much tougher task when you have to also fly the aircraft, and keep an eye out for traffic.

During our little trip Dave wanted me to stay at a thousand feet to limit my visability (to make it harder). He also had me scan the map and point out cell towers etc. I had a habit of setting the map on the dash, then when I picked it up I forgot to hold it orientated with our direction of flight. After a few reminders I finally started keeping it on my lap properly orientated with our direction of flight. Dave said that it will be much easier for me to keep things straight if I get into the habit of doing this now.

We arrived at our destination on time and we basically followed the route Dave drew on the map, I did have to adjust our heading at each checkpoint to compensate for the wind. After we got to our destination Dave asked me how I would navigate us back to the airport. I told him that I'd follow route 2 back to Charlottetown until I spotted the airport. It seems that following roads and other man made landmarks is a perfectly acceptable way to navigate, when you not using things like VORs to make life easier.

About 15 minutes later we were back at the airport, Dave requested a soft field landing which I performed decently.

Balance.

2006-09-23T06:25:00.000-07:00

Before I started flying I always thought that in order to go faster in an aircraft all you had to do add power, I later learned that my assumption was only half right.

If your cruising along at say 100 kts and you add power then keep an eye on the airspeed gauge, you'll be surpised to see that aren't going any faster. If you then look over at your altimeter and vertical speed indictor they'll indicate that you're now climbing. I found this surprising the first time my instructor explained and showed me this concept.

The faster you go the more lift your wings produce, if you forget to retrim the aircraft so that your wings have a lower angle of attack (AoA), relative to the airflow, then nearly all that extra power will be converted into lift. The opposite is true as well, pull the power back and forget to retrim to increase your AoA and you'll maintain the same airspeed as before, but you'll be descending.

Student pilots quickly manage this concept earlier in their training as this concept is put to use during every landing. When I'm preparing the aircraft for landing I usually pull the power back near the end of the downwind in order to slow down. As I pull the power back I have to add increasingly more back pressure on the yoke to maintain my circuit altitude until I slowed down to my approach speed, which is 75 mph. Once I hit my approach speed I trim the aircraft to fly at this speed without any imput from the controls.

During my base and final legs I use my power settings to control my descent, if I'm a little high I pull the power back, and descend at 75 mph, if I'm a little low I add some power and then I can climb or reduce my descent rate until I'm back on the proper glideslope.

Keep in mind that this is a rather simple explaination on how power effects the aircraft and how these concepts are used by us students from day one.

I took in an airshow last weekend in Summerside, the Snowbirds were performing. The show was kicked off by a single CF-18, it was awesome to say the least as this fighter has power to spare. I paticularily liked the display of power in the vertical climb. He slowly flew across the harbor at a couple hundred feet and then he simply pointed his nose skyward and added power. I could actual see the aircraft accelerating in a vertical climb. (He topped out at around 25,000 ft. out of sight)

I managed to take a pic just as he was going vertical:

I had to post a couple of pics of the Snowbirds as well.

Traffic:

A low pass:

A really low pass:

Lesson #23 Precautionary Landings (Solo)

2006-09-17T16:33:00.000-07:00

Everything went this weekend as planned.

I arrived at what I thought was basically on time but I had slightly messed things up and actually left and arrived back at the airport a half hour later than I had actually reserved the aircraft for in the book. I preflighted Fern and a few minutes later I was up in the warm Saturday morning sunshine. Visibility was about twenty miles due to the haze.

I had the aircraft for an hour and a half so I had plenty of time to do precautionary landings, slow flight and some power off stalls.

I did a soft field takeoff, this time I was much better during the transition from driving to flying, practise brings one closer to perfection. I kept her from balloning and let the speed build before I climbed out of ground effect.

This is a picture of the north shore of PEI. I took it about three minutes after takeoff at about 3,000 ft enroute to our training area. (I've edited it a bit to remove some of the haze).

The precautionary landings we're a no brainer. I used both of the private landing strips that we had used in the past, this time I was able to find them without any problem. I find that the more time I spend flying the better I'm able to spot things on the ground. I can only assume that it takes time for you brain to learn how to "see" thing looking down from height rather than always from the ground up.

I used the map for the first time to locate and fly over my buddy's house, actually I used the field behind his house to practise a precautionary landing. No I didn't buzz his house.

With everything completed that I wanted to get done today I headed back to the airport but due to the haze it was somewhat harder than normal to pinpoint visually. I knew where it was in reference to the harbour so I simple flew towards the spot where it should be and I eventually spotted it from about 8 miles out.

Here's a pic as I enter the downwind for runway 28:

On final:

A great solo lesson, flying by myself is starting to feel somewhat routine and a normal thing to do. I got everything that I wanted to get done today and topped it off with another sweet landing.

Next lesson looks like it will be on diversions.

Weekend plans.

2006-09-15T03:19:00.000-07:00

This weekend is going to be beautiful, nothing but sun and temps in the low twenties...

I've booked the aircraft for Saturday morning at 9:00 am, for an hour and a half solo. I hope to get some precautionaries in and then some power off stalls and slow flight, might even get a chance to fly over my buddy's house. I'm gonna bring the digital camera and try and get some good pics which I hope to post.

In the afternoon I'm taking the family up to Summerside to watch the Snowbirds perform. After that we're going to pick up our new puppy (German Shepherd) from our breeder, his name will be Kaiser and he's only 8 1/2 weeks old. I expect that he'll be a great addition to the family, the kids are really excited.

All in all a great weekend shaping up.

Lesson #23 Precautionary Landings

2006-09-10T16:36:00.000-07:00

Since I've already done forced approaches I expected that this lesson was going to be easy. I arrived at the airport early and waited for Dave to return with another student. After a few minutes I saw them land and a couple of minutes later I watched as they pulled up to the pumps. Dave and the student hopped out and the student topped Fern up for me. Nice!

Dave came in and we chatted for a couple of minutes and then I went out to preflight the aircraft. A few minutes later Dave had arrived, we fired her up and I called the tower. Tower came back telling us that an aircraft would be landing in a few minutes. Since the controller's response was a bit choppy we missed what kind of aircraft it was so, Dave asked me to find out. I asked tower to repeat aircraft type and tower responded that it was an F-18. Dave then told me to tell tower that we'd taxi to the hold short line for runway 03 (so we could get a front row seat for the show).

We both scanned the sky back and forth trying to pinpoint where it was, after a minute or so I called tower for his location and tower responded that the radar had it right on top of the airport. Sure enough we spotted the dull grey fighter directly overhead at about 2,000 ft. It turns out that he was heading outbound to do an ILS approach for 03. Since it was going to take some time we decided reluctantly to do our takeoff.

A couple of minutes later tower called and asked where we were... which was pretty strange because he should have us on his radar. I replied with our location and then tower asked if we had our transponder on, (we had forgotten to turn it on in all the excitement).

We never did get to see the F-18 land, but we could here the controller falling all over himself to provided any and all assistance. The fighter pilot called in and told tower that he was going to perform an ILS approach with an overshoot, tower then asked him how low he was going to go and if they could expect an afterburner climb out. (I could almost hear the pretty please in tower's voice). The afterburner climb out didn't happen, I guess the fighter didn't have the extra fuel.

Although we lingered about 8 miles from the airport for a few minutes but we couldn't see the dull grey fighter in the haze. Damn!

We reluctantly got back to the lesson at hand, precautionary landings. These types of landings are something that you do when things start to get bad. Say your flying along and all of a sudden the ceiling started dropping or the engine starts acting up and you haven't got a proper airport nearby to use, so you have to land but where? Generally a private airstrip or a wheat field makes a good spot to set down in.

The first thing you usually do is overfly the field at circuit height to perform an initial inspection to make sure it looks good, then you make another pass this time much lower to ensure that it still looks good, and that you haven't missed anything. If everything still looks good and you decide to continue with the landing, you do so using your best soft field technique, which for us is 40 degrees of flaps, nearly full stall, until the mains touch, then keep the nose light as long as you can.

We used the two private grass strips that we had practised with before, this allows us to get nice and low. Actually we could only get really low on one of the strips as the other strip had a bunch of cows nearby and we didn't want to spook them. We made three precautionary landings using both high and low passes. At the private strip without the cows I came down to about 100 ft AGL, but I found myself high so I preformed an overshoot. Our 172 will not climb with 40 degrees of flaps hanging down so after I went to full throttle, pushed carb heat off, I had to bring the flaps back up to 20 degrees before things on the ground started getting smaller again. Having to overshoot didn't really bother me all that much as the smallest runway I've ever landed on is 5,000 ft long and 100 ft wide, so I kinda expected this to happen. Actually I blamed Dave for it because he's never let me land at anything smaller. (He found my logic somewhat amusing).

The next time I came in nice and low, so much so that Dave mentioned that the trees that we were flying over are taller than they seem. We weren't all that close but Dave tends to err on the side of caution when a student is at the helm, I certainly can't blame him. His warning was more of a "you see the trees below us right"? I told him to relax, that of course I see them.

This private strip, which is only about 1,000 ft long sits at one edge of a farmers field on top of a small hill, At the end of the "runway" it drops off pretty good (30ft or so) into a tree line which is maybe 400 feet away. Coming in on low final over the tree line you can almost get down to level with the end of the runway and then have the land come up to you. I wasn't quite that low but there wasn't any question of overshooting it this time.

In real life and depending on your situation you might not have the time to make both a high and a low pass so you might decide to opt only for the low pass at 500 ft AGL for your first and final inspection. Obviously things like cell towers, livestock, hay bails, trees, hills, wind direction and speed are all going to be factors in choose a suitable place to make a precautionary landing.

With this out of the way we headed back to the airport. About 10 minutes later I top off a nice straight in approach with a picture perfect full stall landing, for which I received a "Nice" from my instructor.

My next lesson will be a solo to practise precautionaries, I'm also going to do some power off stalls and some slow flight which I didn't get done during my last solo lesson.

PPL Written Test Results.

2006-09-08T14:02:00.000-07:00

I have been studying for the last couple of weeks in preparation for my Transport Canada Private Pilot Licence exam. My home and work schedule has been really crazy this past summer and I've tried to put this day off for as long as possible.

On Tuesday I finally called and booked the exam for today, actually today was the last day I could have realistically written it. I have a French exam next Wedsnesday and I have to start studying for it, so I had to stop studying for my PPL and start studying my French. My next French module starts in two weeks and it requires about ten hour per week of home study. So I had to write the PPL this week, do or die.

To make matter worse the testing centre isn't just down the street, actually it's a two hour drive one way, and $41 for the bridge. So I had to take a whole day off of work in order to write it. Since I didn't have alot of time recently to study I didn't have high hopes of passing every section, I figured the navigation section would be my undoing. I felt like I was between a rock and a hard place.

For those of you that have not written this exam I'll give you a brief description. The PPL exam consists of 100 question, which cover Air Law, Navigation, Meteorology and Aeronotics, you have 3 hours to complete it. About 60 of the questions are straight out question and answers, and for the most part they are quickly answered. The remaining 40 questions require most of the time as you have to reference the sample GFAs, METARS and TAFs that you're given. There's some simple calculations that need to be performed and the navigation questions for the most part cover the sample cross country flight that you need to do in order to answer them.

The questions themselves are computer delivered and they are multiple choice. The exam program itselfs is logically laid out and it has two bars at the botton that keep track of your progress and the time.

The exam is divided into 4 sections and you require a minumum of 60% overall to pass the exam and you also need to get at least 60% in each of sections, or you have to rewrite the section again.

I arrived at the testing centre early and met the lady that I had spoken to on the phone previously when I had booked the appointment earlier in the week. She was very pleasant and made me feel really at ease. She reviewed my documents and then led me over to the pay clerk where I paid my exam fee. She then went over the testing format with me, and made sure that I had everything I needed.

I was then led into a room with six testing cubles along one wall and it had a smoke glass wall along the opposite side that allowed them to keep an eye on you. The testing booth itself consists of a computer terminal and a medium size desk, there were other testing stations on both sides of me but I was the only one writing today. I reviewed the navigation information on the sheet she gave me and plotted my sample cross country flight before I started the clock on the computer.

They provided me with a rather large, heavily laminated map which refused to lay in any manner other than tightly rolled up. The cross country trip that I needed to plot required me to use both side of the map. I set everything on the floor and managed to get the map to lay flap by sqeezing it between the ends of the desk and the station dividers. I spent about 20 minutes plotting my cross country, tracks magnetic and true, also the distances for each of the legs as well.

Happy that I hadn't messed anything up I then started the actual computer test itself which then started the 3 hour clock. The first twenty question were simple and quick. The next twenty were on navigation which took alot of time as I think that I read each question about three times to make sure I hadn't missed a key word and then I did my best to answer them, triple checking my answer in each case. Some of the questions gave you winds in true then presented you with the answers in magnetic, be careful with these, as the incorrect "correct" answer is in the pick list.

The navigation section took the longest and then it was onto the METS section, this went quicker but it was still slow as I tended to double and triple check the question and my answer. I eventually found myself in a pickle, with 35 questions remaining and only 20 minutes left on the clock. Where did all the time go...

Luckily the last section of the test were simple question and answers, and I started making up for lost time. In the end I was able to answer all but the last three questions before time expired.

I was not very optomistic on how things had gone. I honestly thought that I had failed at least one of the sections, I sat there and gathered my thoughts before I got up and went out to face the music. I dreaded having to go through all this again.

The lady asked me how I thought things went, I told that I didn't think that it went well at all, that I had run out of time at the end and left three questions unanswered. She went around the desk and hit the key board and then looked up and smiled, she asked me if I'd be happy if she told me that I had passed, I replied that I'd be shocked.

She then told me that I had passed exam with flying colors! She said that my marks each of the four sections were in the eightiest. I was stunned... I asked her if eighties were good and she replied that they were on the high side for the exam I had been given.

She then printed off my results and then congratulated me, I thanked her and wished her a good weekend. I looked at my results for the first time, I had averaged mid to high eighties in each of the four sections. What a huge relief it is to finally get this out of the way.

My Pilot's Licence is now one more step closer to reality.

One year and counting...

2006-08-30T16:12:00.000-07:00

One year ago I decided to get my pilots licence, actually on Aug. 27th it was one year to the day that I took my first flight in a small GA aircraft.

I remember being handed control of the aircraft a couple of minutes after takeoff and then flying around for about twenty minutes, it was all a blurr. I was hopelessly hooked.

I started ground school in Sept. 05 and then started flying my first lessons the end of October. Since I was paying for my lessons out of pocket as I went, I decided to fly once a week and see how things went. The biggest thing was not some much the money, although it is expensive, but getting the time and the weather to cooperate.

When I was told early in my training that I'd probably solo around 15 - 18 hours, and then I'd actually start flying outside the control zone a few hours after that! I thought my instructor was crazy, I mean if they're going to let me take this aircraft out all by myself after a mere eighteen or so hours of instruction, then they're crazier than I am. There was so much to learn and know, and all of it was so new.

Well, here I am exactly one year later and I'm on the home stretch. I've flown outside the zone all by myself for the first time and I and the aircraft have returned safely. Actually, I'm more comfortable in the aircraft without my instructor watching every move. (But it gets lonely not having someone to chat with... I miss you Dave!).

I'm writing my PPL next week and then I hope to pick up the pace as far as lessons go, I hope to have this little adventure wrapped up by Xmas.

If your reading this blog and thinking about flying yourself one day, stop dreaming and start doing.

Get things started by signing yourself up for ground school and book yourself a fam flight, that's all it takes to get things started.

Lesson #22 Forced Approaches (solo)

2006-08-26T07:49:00.000-07:00

I had the aircraft booked for 9:00 AM this morning, the weather looked good so I made an effort to get there on time. I often run late in everything I do, but I managed to arrived a 8:50 AM, Fern was still in the hanger.

I filled out the flight log on the desk and then went back downstairs and hauled her out of the hanger, put the tow bar back inside and shut the hanger door, then did the preflight. She needed both fuel and oil, great. So much for getting up for a 90 minute solo. There's usually oil in the baggage compartment, but all I find when I look is an empty oil bottle. Nothing under the rear seats either. I then go back inside to see if I could find some oil in the Seneca, no joy. I couldn't get into the front baggage compartment because it requires a key, which I couldn't find. I then call Dave, his line's busy.

Ten minutes later I finally get through and was told to look behind the rear set of seats of the Seneca, I do and I find a bottle of oil. Back outside to Fern, I add the oil which is always a messy task. There's a spout that you put on the bottle to keep from spilling oil on the aircraft, unfortunately it's always covered in oil. Then I walk over to the fellow sitting in a Cherokee in front of the fuel pumps, he says that he's just about done and that he'll be moving in about "ninety seconds". I go back inside to wash the oil off my hands, check the METAR to confirm the cloud heights and then I go back outside to pull Fern over to the fuel pumps.

I fill both tanks up, put the static line and hose away. I get back inside and nicely situated with my kneeboard on, my headset wire tuck under my right leg and the belts done up and seat adjusted forward. I go to reach for the keys to fire her up and realize that I had left them in the pump. Shit! I then unbuckle and take everything off, hop out and grab the keys, get back in and get everything back on and look at my watch, it's now 9:40 AM.

Fifty minutes, I felt somewhat flabbergasted to say the least... The plane is book for 10:30, I think about it quickly and with everything I've been through this morning, adding fuel and then going on a mini easter egg hunt in search of oil, I figure that I desearve at least an hour. A few minutes later I'm levelling out Northwest of the airport at 3,000 ft, I call clear of the zone and ask the tower to confirm that my Mode C is working properly, it is.

A few minutes later I do my HASEL checks and start my upper air work review.

First thing is some turns at 30 degrees of bank, left and then right, stopping at a predetermined heading. I'm sloppy on my height and I'm overshooting my heading. I do a few more and things get much better. Next up are some 45 degrees turns to the left and then right. Initially I'm a little sloppy maintaining my height but I quickly adjust. I add a little power to maintain my A/S and height, I also need to add some rudder to keep the ball centered when I turn to the right, but not to the left.... interesting, must be engine torque.

A few minutes later I finish with the turns and then I do three forced approaches, all of which I make. I still need to work on my radio calls and Pax briefings, my cause checks and restarts are down pat though. After some trial and error I find that I prefer to use a forward slip with twenty degrees of flaps, rather than 40 degrees of flaps, for bleeding off any excess altitude on final. The forward slip allows me much greater flexibility in that I can both turn it "on and off" very quickly, or dial in a little or a lot as needed. The really nice thing is that I don't have to mess with my trim settings when I come out of it, (the trim has to be set after each flap change).

I check my watch and realize that it's time to head back. I won't be able to get any stalls, slow flight or any practise in the circuit with my crosswind landings today.

I join the circuit on downwind, I extend it a bit for spacing due to other traffic in the pattern. I float a little over the runway during the flair, there's only a 5 kt crosswind. I bring her back down without adding any power and then get her straightened out for a really nice touchdown.

I taxi back to the apron and shut down with 1.1 hrs on the hobbs. I'm late as usual, but the next guy doesn't have to spend any time adding fuel or oil...

My next lesson with be a dual with Dave, we're going to be doing some precautionary landings.

Update on next flight.

2006-08-25T03:22:00.000-07:00

I've booked a solo flight for Saturday morning, but the weather's not looking good, so I also made a booking for Sunday morning as well. One of these two bookings should pan out.

During this flight I'm going to practise some steep turns, some slow flight, power off stalls and then shoot a few forced approaches. Finally, I hope to top it off with a few crosswind touch and goes back at the airport.

I hope to get everything that I listed above done in the 1.5 hours I have the aircraft booked for.

My hours so far:

Dual 22.1
Solo 2.6
T&L 85

Lesson #22 Forced Approaches II

2006-08-18T16:26:00.000-07:00

Last lesson I learned how to do a successful forced approach. Basically set the aircraft for best glide and then pick a good location to land, then run the circuit by the numbers and land the aircraft on the spot that I'd chosen. During today's lesson I'd continue to practise forced approaches with my instructor, but with all the other important stuff thrown in to make it complete.

We started things off with a briefing. The first thing that a pilot with an engine failure needs to do is Aviate, this means fly the aircraft. The second thing a pilot needs to do is Navigate, basically find a suitable spot to land. The final thing a pilot needs to do is Communicate, tell the freaked out passengers in a calm voice to chill out and get prepared for landing, then call someone on the radio and let them know what's going on. I've oversimplified this process somewhat, but I'm going to run you through it shortly.

Takeoff and climbout was normal, we flew out to our normal training area which is located about 10 miles or so to the northwest. Our transponder was still giving us grief, it refused to work in Mode C during our last lesson, it was fixed this week but it's still not working properly. For those of you that don't know what Mode C is, it's a type of transponder that basically tells the tower/ATC your altitude. It's not required for our lesson, but it's nice to have.

We arrive over our training area and I'm just about finished trimming us out for cruise at 3,500 ft when Dave reaches over and pull the throttle back. I believe that he took some enjoyment in asking me what I was going to do now. I quickly pull on carb heat and trim Fern for 80 mph, which is best glide, I've got about 7 minutes to touchdown. I quickly find a suitable field and point us in that general direction. Actually, the hardest part about field selection on PEI is narrowing it down to one.

I then start my simulated passenger brief, I tell them that we're having some engine problems and that we're going to be landing in a farmer's field. That I've been trained for situations like this and there's nothing to worry about. As a precaution however they should slide their seats back all the way and remove any sharp objects from their pockets and place them on the floor. They also should remove their glasses and tighten their seatbelts. Then I tell them where our fire extinguisher is located and that there's a first aid kit in the back.

Next I make my mayday call, I tell the tower or ATC that we are declaring an emergency, that we've had an engine failure and will be landing in a farmer's field. Then I tell them where we are, our height, type of aircraft, it's colour and the number of people on board. Finally I switch the tranponder over to 7700.

If time permits, I begin my cause checks, going from left to right on the panel to determine if there's something wrong that can be made right again. I verify that the engine primer is locked, main power on, mags on both, carb heat on, fuel on both tanks, mixture full rich, then I check the engine's oil pressure and temp.

Next item on the to do list is to attempt a restart. I give the wings a good rock back and forth to dislodge anything that might be clogging the fuel pickups. Then I switch to the left mag and left fuel tank and crank the engine. If this doesn't work I switch over to the right mag and right fuel tank and attempt another restart. If time permits, multiple restart attempts can be made while running the circuit.

Just prior to touchdown, open both doors slightly to keep them from getting jammed shut. Next turn off the main power switch, switch the mags to ground and turn off the fuel supply. If possible perform a perfect softfield touchdown bringing the aircraft to a complete "shiny side up" stop.

My job's done, now I may bask in the praise of my passengers as they go on and on about my skills as a pilot. Next I swagger John Wayne like to the emergency vehicles as they scream up, these folks tend to get excited and they'll need to be calmed down as well...

Ok... I'll admit this last bit is a little "over the top", but I'm doing the writing here...

If time permits you can go through all the steps I've outlined above, else forget about them. As a pilot you need to always remember that your first priority is to fly the aircraft to your chosen landing site.

Dave ran me through a few simulated engine failures with me going through each of the steps. The first time I was a little rough and forgot a few things during the pax brief, but I got much better as the lesson wore on. As far as making my fields, I had no problems whatsoever as I was bang on nearly everytime, but I do have a habit of being a little high on final. For two of these forced approaches, we used the same two private landing strips from our last lesson, this allowed me to come right down to about 200 ft AGL.

My final approach of the day was by far my worse. I came in way too high and found myself cranking and banking so much on final that Dave even commented about our extreme nose down attitude, I quickly replied that we had full flaps on and that we were just a hair over 80 mph. (Stalling wasn't an issue as I was making sure that I careful not to load the wings too much). We overshot the field at about 500 ft.

My last approach didn't impress Dave, and I knew what was coming before he even started. He said that I shouldn't be putting myself in a position where I have to agressively manoeuvre the aircraft on final. Since we had plenty of time I should remember that I also have the option of making a slow turn to see what's on the other side of the aircraft, as well as what's underneath us. I can only imagine afterwards how I would have freaked out my already freaked out passengers, making turns at 45 degree of bank with the nose way down, coming in on final like the space shuttle. (I have to confess, it was fun though).

Anyways, it was time to head home. I had done six forced approaches during the lesson, each from a different height, with the last couple coming as complete surprises as Dave without any warning reached over and hauled the throttle back on me. Five of my landings would have been bang on and my sixth would have been possibly too long, my aggresive S-turns on final during my last landing would probably have freaked most passengers out.

Since our Mode C was on the fritz I called tower and told them that we would be entering the cz at circuit height (1,200 ft). The guy in the tower then asked what I wanted to do, usually they assume that your coming in to land after the standard hour long lesson. I replied that we wanted to land and that we were looking for the airport and traffic advisory. I received the info I need and Dave suggests crossing at midfield to join the downwind for runway 21, for a crosswind landing. I get on the radio again and let tower know of our intentions. A few minutes later as I'm just over midfield and about to make a left turn to join the downwind for 21, Dave asks me to report our position. I would normally have waited until I had straightened out on the downwind leg.

Just as I finished my radio call Dave reached over and pulled the power back to idle, "another engine failure" he declares with a smile, I comment somewhat colourfully about his timing.

I hold my nose up to bleed off speed as I finish my turn, then set her up for a best glide. Dave then calls tower to inform them of our simulated engine failure. I turn base early, and then final, running the numbers. I leaned over and dropped 40 degrees of flaps, then I remembered that this was going to be a crosswind landing and then pull the flaps back up to 10 degrees. I accidental left the switch in the raise position, Dave catches my mistake and puts them back down to 10 degrees.

The actual landing was soft, but messy. I touched down on my right wheel followed a few seconds later with my left, the nose came down about 5 seconds after that. It wasn't bad landing but it's obvious that I still need practise with cosswinds as I tend to lag behind on the rudder as I use the ailerons to keep us on the centerline. Practise makes perfect I guess.

Couple of things to remember from this lesson;

- If I have the time, I should use it to make sure that I get a better look at the area that I'm flying directly over for possible better places to land.

- Our flaps are electrically activated. I have to get into the habit of putting them up incrementally during my overshoots, instead of slapping the button up which raises them all the way.

- Turns at high angles of bank which most pilots quickly become comfortable with can really be unsettling to the occasional passenger.

With this lesson finished and my FI satisfied that I'm able to handle an engine failure, I'm now permitted to leave the cz and go out and raise havoc in the training area. My next flight will be a solo to practise my forced approaches and upper air work.

Studying for the PPL

2006-08-17T16:44:00.000-07:00

The last couple of nights I have been reviewing navigation, basically I re-read the section in "From the Ground Up", highlighting key points for my final "last minute review". I also purchased "The Canadian Pilot Pilot Answer Guide" which contains literally hundreds of questions on the various sections of the PPL test.

I've been doing the navigation review questions from the CPPAG to identify any areas of weakness. The last couple of nights I've basically taken over the kitchen table with all of my flying stuff; maps, FTGU and the exam book, pencils, pens, calculator, highlighters and an eraser, not to mention the stuff a pilot uses for plotting, such at the E6B and a Nav Plotter.

Now, I have to mention that I already have the fundementals of navigation down pat, I'm good with maps and I have a strong sense of both directional and situational awareness. My first flight instructor Paula also did a wonderful job of explaining this stuff to us during ground school. But what I also have is a unique ability which permits me to make the most obvious and stupid mistakes imaginable. This has left me both frustrated and at times sitting there muttering to myself in disbelief.

Classic example: How long does it take to climb to 2,700 (asl) @ 300 ft per minute after taking off from such and such airport? The answer's obvious, until I got it wrong and picked 9 minutes... it's wrong because I forgot to subtract the airports elevation first. Dooohhh!

The next example takes the cake, and left me wondering if I've past my stupidity to my kids...

I measured the track between two airports that I want to fly, this seems pretty simple right? Except that I used the solid star (which denotes the avialibility of lighting) at one airport and the hollow star ( the proper reference point) at the second airport. I quickly discovered that nothing seemed to be adding up properly, mileage, course, fuel burn, true ground speed etc. were all off. Then I started thinking that the CPPAG was suspect, I decided to go back to the map and double check everything once more and this was when I spotted my obvious goof.

I know this stuff, why am I making these stupid mistakes...

On the flip side I've now mastered the nasty VOR again, and I am able to determine if I'm coming or going.... or somewhere in the middle.

Hitting the books

2006-08-16T18:35:00.000-07:00

I been spending an hour here and an hour there studying for my written PPL exam. When I finished ground school last fall I had every intention of writting the test as soon as I hit the minimum required flight hours, but I never got around to doing it.

So now I find myself in a pickle... my to do list is getting very long.

1) I return to French language training the first week of September, this requires me do at least 10 hours a week of home study. But I first have to study for, take and pass the test for the last section I completed this past spring. I can read French at a bilingual level, but I need alot of practise in the speaking, writing and learning the proper grammer rules of said language.

2) We have a new baby due the end of September, so we're all excited about this.

3) We're getting a new puppy in the middle of Sept. ( the date sucks but this process started nearly two years ago, it's a long story... kids are excited)

4) Our deck has seen it last summer. I, with the help of a buddy are scheduled to start this little project the second weekend of September, of course weather permitting.

5) My neice is getting married the first weekend of Sept, so we have a trip to Cape Breton planned to attend the wedding. (Flying would be so much faster, 6 hr drive vs 1.25 hr flight each way).

6) A lieutenant's postition might be opening up soon at the firehall, and I'd like to apply. This would require study on my part to write the test and preparing for an interview.

As you can see I have alot on my plate right now, and I'm really trying the crack down and hit the books so I can get the PPL exam out of the way by the end of August. I hope to write it locally at my flight school, if they ever get around to setting up the computer. If writing it locally doesn't pan out then I have a couple hour commute each way, to write it in Moncton.

I hope to get up for another flight lesson within the next few days.

So much to do, and so little time to do it in.

Lesson #21 Forced Approaches

2006-08-11T18:07:00.000-07:00

Today's lesson was forced approaches, we also reviewed some upper air work.

The day started off overcast and rainy, I checked the weather as soon as I got to the office, it looked like it was going the clear up by the time my lesson rolled around at 6 PM, and it did.

I arrived at the airport early and I was able to jump right into the preflight, then we pushed Fern over for fuel and topped her up. We hopped in and I started going over the last few items before engine start when I noticed that someone had taken my headset. It turns out the Dave had forgot them in the turbo Seneca earlier in the day, so he went back in to fetch me a headset while I finished the runup. The headset he appeared with must have been the crappiest one the school had, it did nothing to drown out the engine noise. The rest of the headsets that the school have are actually pretty decent, and they're free to use. I've decided to buy my own after to get my pilot's licence.

Takeoff was normal, I made a climbing turn to the northwest and proceeded out to our training area. Dave first wanted to review some upper air work so I levelled us off at 3,500 ft and then we did some power off stalls, no problem. Next we did some slow flight (65 mph), then some turns to a specific heading. With this quick review finished we started on the new stuff.

Dave went over the procedures that I needed to learn if the engine "fails", then he demo'd a forced approach, talking me thru everything that he was doing. Luckily PEI is full of landing spots, places like farmers fields and golf courses, so there's no problem finding suitable terrain. He quickly picked out a suitable field for us to practise with, one that was into the wind, smooth and didn't look like whatever that was growing in it would rip something important off the aircraft. It took him about a minute of describing the field in question before I was able to narrow it down. Once we decided where to land we simple did a "circuit" to get us there, he did what I'd call a textbook perfect forced approach. We climbed back up to 3,500 ft and I gave it a try myself.

I ran the same circuit but found myself a bit high on final, Dave suggested full flaps in order to increase our descent. Dave's suggestion worked and we would have easily made the field without overshooting. We then climbed back up and I did another forced approach, this time using a small private landing strip beside a golf course as my target. I came in slightly high again and I added full flaps (40 degrees), we were still high so Dave took control and showed me how to do some S-turns on final to scrub off the excess altitude, this worked perfectly. This time we went much lower and he actually overflew the strip at about 40 feet. With trees to our right and the hanger to our left, it was absolutely amazing. You really get a sense of speed when your that low. We climbed back up to 700 ft, then he did a 180, pulling some Gs, and overflew the field again the other way. I was like a kid on a new carnival ride, big grin the whole time.

We climbed back up to 3,000 ft and located another private strip a few miles away. He pointed it out to me and when I finally saw it he pulled the throttle back to idle. He said that I just had another "engine failure" and that I was on my own for this one. I quickly pulled on the carb heat, set Fern up for best glide (80 mph) and ran the circuit. I made sure that I applied full power for a few seconds for every 500 ft of verticle drop, this keeps the engine warm and ensures that we have enough heat to prevent carb ice and keeps us from shock cooling the engine (which is a concern in the colder months).

I came in slightly high again and applied full flaps, Dave said that I was still too high and that I was going to land too long. I said that I knew that and asked him to be patient. I then made a couple of shallow S-turns on final and managed to scrub off the excess altitude quite nicely. We would have landed right on the spot I was shooting for. Dave asked for control at about 100 ft and did a touch and go.

Dave seemed happy with how things were going, being slightly high on final is much much better than being slightly low. If I had an engine failure I'd be able to make the field. The key is to run the circuit and hit my numbers at each leg. If I find myself low I can make my turns to base and final early to catch back up. If I'm high, I can extend each leg a bit and use things like forward slips, full flaps and even S-turns to ensure that I scrub off the excess altitude in order to make the field.

We then decided to head back to the airport, a few minutes later we joined runway 03 on the base leg. A small twin commercial was coming in at the same time from the east, he landed on runway 28 at nearly the same time as we touched down on 03. I topped off the lesson with a picture perfect landing.

Some key points from today's lesson: Pull carb heat on then trim for best glide (80 mph), 3,000 ft AGL gives me about 6 minutes. Don't forget to warm engine every 500 ft. Find a suitable field into the wind, then run the circuit hitting the numbers. It's OK to be a little high on final, things like a forward slip, full flaps and S-turns are tools that can be used to scrub off excess altitude.
The actual landing is done with full flaps. Never ever scrub off altitude unless I'm 100 percent sure that I can make the field, once it's gone... it's gone for good.

My next lesson will be more review of upper air work, then some precautionary landings with simulated radio calls. In another lesson or two I should be able to leave the airport to practise on my own!

Good Canadian blog site.

2006-08-10T18:02:00.000-07:00

I added a new blog site called Cockpit Conversation.

For those of you that are getting into aviation with a career in mind, I think that you should spend some time reading this lady's blog. It is really well written, funny and it'll give you a fairly good idea as to what may be in store for some of you.

Lesson #20 The Circuit (Solo)

2006-08-07T05:00:00.000-07:00

Crosswind Landings (Solo)

I was finally able to get up and complete the solo aspect of this lesson. Three of my bookings were cancelled due to weather, but the the forth was a charm. As usual the wind just would not cooperate at all, it would alternate bewtween 2 kts one day and then 20 kts the next.

I had booked my solo for Sat afternoon, I checked the weather a couple of times in the morning and the wind was gusting about 20 kts, which is way too high for me. My flight instructor wanted me practise in 5 - 9 kts of crosswind, without any gusts. I was hoping the wind would calm down and that these 20 kt gusts would stop as the TAF forcasted.

Lesson time came and I went out to the airport expecting another cancelled flight, I checked the METAR and surprise, surprise, the wind was now 320 at 10 kts, no gusts. This latest forcast put the wind at 340 (magnetic) which would be 60 degrees off of runway 28, my crosswind solo was a go! I spoke with my flight instrutor and he agreed.

I hauled the aircraft out of the hanger and preflighted her, made the call to tower and a couple of minutes later I was on the active (runway 03) doing my takeoff. I figured that I'd save some time by doing my takeoff on 03, then switch over to 28 rather then taxiing about mile and a half to takeoff position on 28.

I did my takeoff, winds were now 350 @ 12 kts, I switched runways at circuit height and then did my downwind checks. My first landing was a handful but everything quickly came back, it was starting to get gusty again though. It's nice having the windsock at the end of the runway to confirm what I'm feeling in the aircraft. Since my first landing went so well I figured that I go for another one, wind gusts be damned.

I made my downwind call and was reminded to make my call on final, which I had totally forgotten to do the first time. The only thing I can offer in my defense is that there was no other traffic in the pattern and that I had my hands full on my first approach... yes I know how feable that sounds.

This time I made my call on final and was rewarded with "winds now 350 12G16". While technically I was exceeding my limits on the crosswind runway (I did do my dual lesson with 16 kts of crosswind) I decided to continue and if things started to go bad I'd do an overshoot and switch back over to 03 and complete my solo lesson on the active, which was still within my instructor imposed wind limits. The landing thankfully went well, but I really had to work the rudder and ailerons to get her down. I touched down softly on the right wheel and then a few seconds later the left wheel touched down, I kept her nice and straight which took alot of rudder. I actually surprised myself with how well the landing went, considering the amount of control inputs I was using to compensate for the gusty conditions.

I decided to do another circuit and give it another try, hopefully the winds would calm down again. I made my call on final late since there was chatter on the radio, the winds were now 350 12 g18, so much for the winds calming down. My approach went well but I was starting to get a little low so I fed in some power to bring me back up to a proper glideslope.

I was about 100 ft AGL in a sideslipe as I crossed the threshold and reduced power, the rudder refused to hold her straight with the runway, I quickly added a couple hundred RPMs and she straighten back out for me. I really had her leaned over with the ailerons to maintain centerline. The gusts were playing havoc with me. At 50 ft AGL, one big gust hit me and threathened to blow me off centerline, after about 6 seconds I was able to wrestle her nearly all the way back. I was now at about 20 ft AGL and things were not looking great. I just got back over the centerline when another big gust hit me. Even with a faster than normal approach speed and a couple of hundred rpms of power, the rudder gave up and refused to hold her straight any longer, and to make matters worse she started to dive for the runway!

I believe that I actually said "nope" out loud as I made my decision to abort. I quickly but smoothly went to full power, released the rudder and levelled my wings, all at nearly the same time. Fern responded immediately with more than 1,000 ft/min climb rate. I called tower to let them know that I was overshooting.

I had "bottomed" out about ten feet above the runway. I did everything I could to salvage a tough landing, but it was not to be. I wanted to test the limit of my abilities, not how strong the landing gear was on the aircraft. As I climbed back up to circuit height I asked tower to confirm that the winds were 350 @ 12 gusting 18, they came back that their wind instruments were down and that they we reading the windsock like me..... "That's just lovely," I thought to myself. I informed them that I was switching over to runway 03 and staying in the circuit.

My next landing was good, as I had less crosswind to deal with but the gusts were still a big pain in the ass though. I was slow turning base and the winds blew me farther downwind then I would have liked, and as such I had a longer than normal final.

My next landing I over compensated for the wind on my turn to base and found myself way high on final. I quickly went into a forward slip and scrubbed off about 400 ft in no time. I made my call on final and tower replied back with the winds 350 @ 12 gusting to 18. I looked at the windsock and she was as straight as a board, which put the winds in excess of 15 kts continuous, 40 degrees to my left. I came in slighter faster than normal, the winds were still gusting pretty good and they were keeping me very busy. I got blown off the centreline so I added a bit of power and "flew" her back over to the middle of the runway again. I then reduced power again and got her settled down.

I was really working the controls to compensate for the wind gusts. I touched down lightly with my left wheel, then the right. She started turning left (into the wind) but I brought her back with the rudder. I pulled the throttle all the way off, then as the front wheel touched down she wanted to turn left again, this time I held full right rudder and I also had to add some right brakes as well to hold her, the ailerons were turned fully left all the way into the wind. The front wheel then started to shimmy, not surprisingly, so I tried to take some extra weight off of it by feeding in even more back elevator, then another gust hit and I could actually feel the right wing reduce the weight on the right wheel which immediately started to lock up. It was one thing after another. Eventually she settled down, I found myself about twenty feet left of centerline rolling along at about 20 mph. The actual landing itself was pretty good, keeping her straight and slowing her down proved to be a handful.

All this probably only took about 20 seconds or so, but I felt like ten minutes. I then decided that the winds were too high to continue in a safe manner. I called tower and told them I was going to do a full stop.

Looking back as I write this has given me time to reflect, I know now that I should have called it a day earlier. I held out hopes that the winds would come back down and I did four more circuits after my first one hoping things would pan out, which they didn't. Although each of my landings were actually pretty good, I really had to work very hard on each of them to make it happen. I had previously done some decent crosswind landings with my instructor in 16 kts of crosswind, and I have to say they were easy compared to what I was dealing with today. It wasn't so much the wind that was the problem, but the on and off again nature of the gusts that kept me busy all the way down, I'm not sure what they really topped out at.

My next lesson with my instructor will be precautionary landings. I intend to continue practising crosswind landings until I'm completely comfortable with using the sideslip method.

Now where's that runway?

2006-08-03T15:52:00.000-07:00

During one of my lessons this is what happened as we were taxiing out to runway 28, which was the active.

I made my call to the tower to get the airport advisory, tower came back with an aircraft in the circuit that would be landing in about 5 minutes. Since it was going to take us a few minutes to taxi out to the active I called tower back and told them that I'd taxi Alpha, Charlie, Runway 21 to the hold short line for Runway 28 to wait for traffic. Since our tower is actually a "radio" you as PIC tell them what your going to do and then they let you know if that sounds good, usually with a "copy that".

As we were taxing out, there was some chatter back and forth between the aircraft in the circuit and the tower, the pilot obviously wasn't very comfortable talking on the radio. It sounded like he started talking and then was trying to figure out what he wanted to say as he went along. The next thing we hear is the aircraft announce that they were on final for 28. I looked over from our postion on taxiway charlie and couldn't see him, which left me wondering if I missed something. Maybe he called really late and was already down, in which case I'd not be able to see him at the far end of 28 due to the layout of the airport. Tower quickly came back and informed the pilot that they were actually on final for 03! My instructor and I said WTF at basically the same time, we both turned around and then confirmed for ourselves that this was actually the case.

The pilot came back with a quick sorry and then pulled up and turned right in search of runway 28. Dave and I just looked at each other and then I asked him if I had heard that right, Dave replied, "yep". We then had some interesting dialogue back and forth about how a pilot could mix up the heading of the runway by 110 degrees, let alone not see the big numbers on the end of the runway as they were on final!

We then watched them as they kept turning to intersect runway 28's base leg, then they polished things off with a nice three bounce landing. A couple of minutes later we were on runway 03 holding short of 28 as they taxied by. Normally we'd all give a quick wave as the other aircraft taxied by, but the pilot refused to look our way...

This has taught me a very valuable lesson, no matter what you hear on the radio while in the circuit, never take it a face value, always confirm it with your eyes. I'm still shaking my head at this one...

Lesson #20 The Circuit

2006-07-29T07:18:00.000-07:00

Crosswind Landings

I was finally was able to line the aircraft and my instructor up for a lesson, things have been really busy at the school. I had a couple of lessons booked previously but the weather did not play nice, no wind one time, and another my instructor didn't show up, some miss communication.

We were finally able to get out this afternoon and get the dual part of the lesson done. The weather actually cooperated for once as well, as we had a nice breeze for our crosswind landings. I arrived at the airport and went right out to the apron to get started on the preflight while Dave finished with another student, everything looked good and a few minutes later Dave showed up and we were off.

The winds were 290 @11 gusting 18, so runway 28 was the active. I made my call to the tower to get the airport advisory, they came back with an aircraft in the circuit that would be landing in about 5 minutes. Since it was going to take us a few minutes to taxi out to the active I called tower back and told them that I'd taxi Alpha, Charlie, Runway 03 to the hold short line for Runway 28 and wait for traffic. After the trafic passed we backtracked on 28 and a few minutes later we were off.

When I turned downwind for 28 I called tower to let them know that we were switching to runway 21 to do some crosswind landings. At midfield I made a left turn to join the downwind for 21. Dave had me set us up for our first landing with 10 degrees of flaps, on final he took over and demo'd a crosswind landing. As it was gusty he had to use full rudder most of the way in to keep us lined up with the runway, he also had the wings banked into the wind pretty good to keep us from blowing off the runway's center line. We touched down on our right main gear first and then the other main touched down, each with a nice chirp.

Dave handed control of the aircraft back over to me as we were rolling and I did the takeoff. With such a high crosswind component coming from our right, I had to keep the ailerons fully banked into the wind initially to keep us from wandering all over the runway. Then as our speed came up I relaxed them gradually until rotatation. Keeping the ailerons into the wind keeps the right wing down and makes it much easier to track straight on the runway.

I found my first crosswind landing alot of work, keeping the aircraft straight with the runway with the rudder, and also keeping us on the centre line with the ailerons was an unfamiliar juggling act. I managed to pull off my first "official" crosswind landing with some assistance from Dave.

I've done other crosswind landings before but I always used the crab method, which I find much easier. I'd basically crab all the way in until the flair and then as we are about to touch down on the mains I'd kick in some rudder to straighten us out.

As I climbed out for my next circuit Dave said that my landing was pretty good and that he did not have to provide alot of assistance, the next one would be all me. On final tower updated us with the winds and I did some quick mental math, our actual crosswind was going to be in the low double digits. I did a normal approach and then while we were still a couple hundred feet I fed in some rudder to straighten us out and then got on the ailerons to keep us on the centerline. I found myself pretty busy, but everything worked out fine and Dave seems happy that he didn't have to provide any assistance.

I did a few more landings, with each one it began to feel more familiar. On one landing things got a little ugly at flair height (balloned a little too much) so I fed in some power, got Fern settled down again and managed to pull off a nice landing. Dave didn't offer any help or advice so I guess he was happy with my recovery. We did a few more landing and Dave was satisfied that I'd be OK on my own. I finished the lesson with one of the best landings that I've done in my short time flying, crosswind and all... Dave even commented on how nice it was.

Since we didn't have alot of extra time today, I booked the aircraft for Tuesday morning to complete my solo component of this lesson. Let's hope the weather cooperates as I need between 5 and 9 kts of crosswind to practise in.

No wind... no flying...

2006-07-22T13:03:00.000-07:00

Went out to the airport today to do a lesson on crosswind landings, the only problem is that the ever present wind was non existent (3 kts).

The overcast was too low to do some upper air work review and I haven't read up on precautionaries or forced approaches so I was out of luck for today.

I'm going to review my upper airwork, then read up on precautionaries and forced approaches, this way we'll have some options available to us in the case the wind refuses to cooperate during my next lesson, which is scheduled for Monday.

I've also hit the books again and started studying for my TC PPL written exam, I plan on writing it the last week of August.

Lesson #19 The Circuit (solo 3)

2006-07-07T19:18:00.000-07:00

The weather looked great for flying so I decided to take the afternoon off and grab a lesson. During today's lesson Dave was going to show me how to do a short and soft field takeoffs and landings. This lesson as it turns out was going to be a blast!

Dave demo'd a short field takeoff and landing and then had me do a couple. The idea of a short field takeoff is to get off the ground in the shortest distance possible. To do this in a C-172 we added 10 degrees of flaps, then held the brakes and went to full power. Checked the rpms, the oil temp and pressure and then released the brakes, rotate at 65 mph and that's it. To setup for a short field landing we dropped the flaps down to 40 degrees and aimed for the start of the runway, we touched down at about 500 feet and were stopped before the thousand foot markers. Dave mentioned that although we could have shortened it a bit more, chances are that landing on the strip any shorter means that your not going have enough distance to get off.

I did a couple of short field takeoff and landings without any problems. The one thing that I did notice is that with the flaps down at 40 degrees, I often needed to leave a little power on as the flaps really create alot of drag. After Dave was satisfied with my short field work we moved on to soft field T&Ls.

With soft field takeoff basically you want to keep the weight off the front wheel and you need to be careful taxiing as the aircraft can sink in a get stuck, depending on what you've gotten yourself into. So basically you dial in 10 degrees of flaps and go to full power with the yoke fully back. The front wheel almost immediately goes into the air and you carefully "balance" the aircraft on the mains while you wheely down the runway, careful not to drag the tail. The aircraft, because of the extreme angle of attack lifts off much earlier than normal, this is when you need to quickly push forward on the yoke to ensure that you keep the aircraft in ground effect, while you wait for your speed to build, which it does quickly.

I found these soft field takeoff simply a blast, I had no problem balancing on the rear wheels at all. I was a little sloppy keeping her in ground effect as I had a tendancy to "float" around ten to twenty feet, still in ground effect but I'm going to practise this more in the future to get proficient at it. Landing on a soft field also requires 40 degrees of flaps, you want to ensure that your touchdown as softly as possible, keeping the weight off the nose wheel. The only difference is that with full flaps the nose is significantly lower. Keeping the nose up isn't much of a problem as that's the way Dave has taught me to land since day one. During a normal landing I usually stay on the mains until the elevators cannot hold the nose up anymore anyways, so it's a rather normal landing except for the additonal 20 degrees of flap. (Normal = 20 degrees, short and soft field = 40 degrees)

Dave was happy and requested that I drop him off at the apron, I was going back up for an hour to practise by myself what I had just learnt. On the way in (about 5 minutes taxi each way) Dave gave me a pep talk, the usual stuff, this time he said that if I somehow manage to get off the runway and onto the grass that I should just stop the aircraft and not to try to pilot it back onto the runway since I might snag a light! After he said this I gave him a strange look and asked him with a laugh what kind of students he had previously in Newfoundland and Cape Breton. He replied back that it has happened... For the record, I've never ever even came close to the grass once, so I don't know where that came from.

I reassured him that I'd be only using the runway today and that I thought that he was a glass half empty kind of guy, and that he was suppose to be saying things to instill confidence in me and my newly aquired abilities.... we laughed our asses off on the way in... I then asked him if I could call him goose and if he'd call me maverick... it seems that we both watched "Top Gun" on the TV this past week, he replied that since he was the instructor he call sign should be viper. I agreed... another good laugh ensued. Then I asked him when he'd be teaching me tactical ascents... he asked what I meant and then I explained to him that basically you stay in ground effect until the end of the runway with your speed building and then you pull back nice and hard and shoot up to circuit height. Dave gave me the same look I gave him a couple of minutes before when he brough up the running off the runway into the grass. He explained that a number of things could go wrong with my tactical ascent idea and suggested that none of them would have a happy ending. (This tonque-in-cheek conversation livened up a rather long, boring and hot taxi back to the apron).

I dropped Dave off and then it was another long, hot and lonely taxi back over to the active for some time in the circuit. I did a couple shorts and then three soft T&Ls, all went well and I'm starting to feel much less tense on final. The cross wind started coming up and it was beginning to push the aircraft around on the runway while I was doing soft field takeoffs, while in ground effect Fern would turn into the wind while 10 feet over the runway, exciting stuff for a student pilot.

All my landings were good and I was able to stop fern nearly every time by the thousand foot markers. Doing so left 4,000 feet of runway left for my takeoff so I didn't have to waste time backtracking which is a plus. One approach was a little high so I put her into a healthy forward slip, down I went carefully ensuring that I kept her above 70 MPH, talk about a nose down attitude. Came out of it about 100 feet above the runway and a decent landing ensued, stopped by the thousand foot markers.

Another great lesson on the book, next lesson we're doing crosswind landings, now where's that damn wind?

Lesson #18 The Circuit (solo 2)

2006-07-03T17:43:00.000-07:00

Monday morning was overcast and it looked like the day was going to be a complete washout. I checked the weather (GFA) and "forcasted" that it would clear up in the late afternoon and the winds would drop.

I went to the airport and chatted with Dave, told him my thoughts on the weather and he checked the forcast (TAF) for himself. The TAF was forcasting winds to pick up and gust 30 knots. I told him that I didn't beleive that this would be the case and we agreed that I'd call around 4 PM in the unlikely event that I was right and the TAF was wrong.

I was right, things did clear up and the winds did come down... should have been a weatherman...

Arrived at the airport at 4:00 PM and chatted with Dave for a couple of minutes, then went out to preflight the aircraft. A few minutes later I was all done, added a little oil and managed to get some on my shirt and the aircraft's windscreen. Dave did a few circuits with me to make sure I was good to go on my own again, as it had been some time since I had did my first solo. He seemed happy so he asked me to drop him off at the apron. He gave me a quick chat, basically don't kill myself and if the aircraft is still flyable after I'm done with, then that's a bonus. He said that I could stay out for an hour but if I felt like coming in early that's fine too... stay in the circuit and no off airport site seeing.

All by myself now, called tower and then taxied out to the new active which was 28. To be honest I was a little nervous, more so than the day a few weeks ago when I first solo'd. The past few weeks the weather has been miserable for a new student pilot and I was really feeling the "pressure" not to muck things up. I have a tendency to think things out a little too much for my own good sometimes.

The next hour went fine, my confidence started to grow with each completed circuit. I found myself checking everything a second time on downwind instead of relaxing and taking a minute to enjoy the view. During this hour I had to extend my downwind a few extra minutes on one circuit to let a commercial come in and land on the intersecting runway, as such I got to fly over one of the rivers that come off our harbour, at least it was a change of scenary. I also extended my climbout once to let a Dash-8 come in, so I also got to see some scenary on the other side of the airport too. I had a feeling I get some off airport site seeing in today.

Before I knew it it was time to make a "full stop".

All my landing were OK except one, I didn't like the way it was looking so I decided to just do an overshoot. My last landing was a thing of beauty, stall horn wailing for what seemed like forever in ground effect, then I could just barely feel the mains touchdown.

Today's totals:
0.5 dual
1.0 solo

Aircraft is still flyable.

More disappointment.

2006-06-25T11:28:00.000-07:00

The past week was terrible for a poor student pilot hoping to get some solo hours in. It was sunny and warm, but unfortunately it was windy as well. The wind varied for the most part 30-50 km/h, it would occasinally drop down overnight but come right back up again in the morning. This past weekend was rainy and overcast except for this afternoon, when it was forcasted to clear up, so I booked a flight for 12:00.

Got there and the weather didn't look good, 600 foot overcast, but the weather site indicated a clearing trend so I decided to hang around. It finally cleared up around 1:30 but Dave was busy with some other folks so I hung around until 2:30 to see if the person that had the plane booked for the rest of the afternoon might cancel out, he didn't.

Sunday evening was out as Dave had plans. Nothing seems to be working in my favor as of late.

The weather controls everything...

2006-06-17T08:58:00.000-07:00

Hi all,

Just thought that I would give you a quick blurb...

The weather the last two weekends has sucked... rain and overcast. This morning I went out to the airport with high hopes but it just did not happen. I was going to go up and do a couple of circuits with Dave and then I was going to get some solo time in. Unfortunately the wind was just too high for me to work in the circuit by myself so we decided to scrub the lesson for the day, tomorrow looks like it will be breezy as well.

I hope to get out twice next week if the weather coroperates.

Till then...

Lesson # 17 The Circuit VIII

2006-06-03T11:42:00.000-07:00

The weekend looked like a total writeoff (rain and more rain) so I tried to get a lesson in Friday evening. After a few phone calls and a visit to the airport things were booked for 7:00PM.

The plan was the do a few circuits with Dave and, "If you don't kill me then you can do some on your own," (Dave's words not mine.)

I arrived at the airport early and waited for Dave to get back with a site seeing group. They finally arrived and climbed out all giddy and happy, no one was sick. Eventually I got the preflight out of the way and we were off a few minutes later.

During my first takeoff from 03 Dave was peering out the window trying to see what was going on with a broken down commercial twin (not sure what type) that was parked just clear of the runway intersection on the inactive 28/10. Dave reported that all the parts were still attached and he didn't see any fluid or fire indications.

We did a couple of circuits, my landings were OK. On my second circuit tower asked us to extend our downwind to let a Jazz Dash-8 land, I confirmed that I'd extend and we got a quick thank-you from the Jazz pilot. During this time Dave talked about landing behind a larger aircraft, basically I need to come in at a slightly steeper approach on final and touchdown past the touchdown point on the runway of the larger aircraft, which is what I did. If I was not capable of doing this then I should wait a few minutes to ensure that the wake turbulence has subsided, the larger the aircraft the more the turbulence.

Then tower called and indicated that a tug was going out to get the stranded aircraft and it would be dragging it back. Dave said that this would prevent us from doing anymore circuits for about twenty minutes. Just about the time that I was suppose to go solo again, we decided that our third circuit would be our last for the night and that we'd give it another try next week.

Dave decided to practise an engine failure and a short field landing to spice things up a bit, at the end of the downwind he pulled the throttle back to idle and asked me what I'd do? The first thing I did (while he was asking the question) was to set Fern up for a 75 mph glide, with 20 degrees of flaps. It became apparent a few seconds later that we would not make the runway, had I turned immediately towards the runway we would have... a few precious seconds going the wrong way is all it took. Dave said that as soon as a engine failure occurs in the circuit it's important to turn directly for the runway.

Dave then asked me to go to 40 degrees of flaps and trim for 70 mph, which is what I did. Since I still had a good engine I used it to make a nice landing with full flaps, which was my first landing in this configuration. I have to say that a full flap landing is different than a normal landing with only 20 degrees of flaps, first of all the nose is much lower and the aircraft has alot more drag and tends to sink much faster, after touchdown we got on the brakes to reduce our rollout to take bravo back to our apron.

Aside from one landing where I flared bit high and then added a touch of power to bring us back up to flair again, everything went well and Dave seemed happy.

For my next lesson Dave will come up for a couple of circuits then I'll be let loose on my own to reek havoc. My next few lesson will be me going solo for one lesson and then going up with Dave for the next to do engine failures and different types of landing... should be fun.

All in all we got alot done in .4 hours on the hobbs.

Lesson # 16 The Circuit VII

2006-05-30T17:56:00.000-07:00

Sunday morning was a beautiful day for flying, sunny with light winds.

I went out to the airport at 10 AM and chatted with my FI for a couple of minutes, then went out to preflight Fern, for the first time in about three or four lessons she did not need oil or gas. I finished with the preflight and a few minutes later we were off.

I banged off a few nice circuits with some decent landings right away. Dave commented that everything was going well but my approaches on final were a bit on the low side and that we should be shooting for the 500 foot runway markers. I told him that I was going little low on purpose, and that I was aiming for the numbers on final. He said that it's better to hold a bit more altitude in case of an engine problem, and that I should be aiming for the 500 foot markers.

The next circuit I waited until the runway's threshold on downwind to haul the power back, 20 degrees flaps and then set the trim for 75 mph. I adjusted the power to 1,500 RPMs to make sure that I was between 450 - 550 ft AGL when I turned final. I found that this height really helped set me up for a nice glide slope on final. This time I touched down on a 1,000 foot markers on purpose, but by mistake. I aimed for them instead of the 500 foot markers... my bad.

I did a few more nice circuits touching down on the 500 foot markers each time. Some of my landings were pretty sweet, stall horn blaring, nothing but sky in the windscreen and then just a gentle touch of the mains.... I even got a "nice" from Dave a couple of times. I don't know what it was but during this lesson things just clicked. I was hitting my altitudes, being careful to get her trimmed for 75 mph and 1,500 rpm, making sure that I was hitting the proper altitude when I made my turn to final. I just started to feel more relaxed during the landing phase and I'm also getting better at identifying and correcting minor mistakes earlier.

Dave said that I should make my next landing a full stop, which is what I called into tower on final, pulled off another nice landing. As we were rolling down runway 21 Dave asked me the magical question every student pilot wants to hear, "So... you think to good to go by yourself for one"? To be honest, this question caught me by surprise. I thought about it for a few seconds and then asked him if he thought I was ready to go... he replied, "Yep", then I said, "Well... where can I drop you off at?" Dave made a quick call to tower to let them know that I'd be coming back out for my first solo, then he gave me a few pointers while we taxied back to the apron. Before I knew it, I was all alone.

This is your captain speaking:

I gave Dave a wave, called tower and then taxied all the way back out to the active, which took a couple of minutes. It was certainly a new experience being all alone in the aircraft... roomy. I rolled out onto the active, doubled checked everything for the third time and went to full power, then called tower to let them know that I was rolling on 21.

Just after rotation a rather large and angry looking bee flew out of the backseat area and bounced off the windscreen in front of me.... oh this is lovely I thought to myself. It must have gotten in when Dave got out. Fortunately it sat on the top of the panel for the rest of the circuit.

Everyting went well, and before I knew it I was on final and about a minute later. After a nice flare and landing I was back on terra-firma, taxiing back to the apron in an aircraft that was still in flyable condition. I has just taken off, flown and then landed an aircraft all by myself..... WOW!! I had a permenent smile on my face for the rest of the day.

In case any of you are wondering I solo'd at 16.9 hours, which is about two hours longer IMO than it should have taken, due to nasty weather in the circuit for most of my circuit lessons and my lack of ability in mastering a consistent approach, landing and flare.

Till next time...

Lesson booked.

2006-05-26T15:00:00.000-07:00

Last weekend's youth chess tournement in Moncton was pretty fun.

My son Brechan (the ch makes a k sound) had a really great time and managed to place sixth in the country for his grade. We all stayed on campus at the University of Moncton, which is where the event was held. The dorm rooms were sparten to say the least, but the cots were comfortable and the bed linen was clean so no complaints. There was a rec room with a ping pong and a couple of pools tables along with a TV. The kids we able to entertain themselves playing chess, ping pong and pool while the rest of us where able to watch the hockey game... go Oilers go....

I was flicking through the channels on the TV earlier this week when I stumbled onto some type of reality show about Tom Cruise. I was about to turn to the channel to something more interesting, when they cut to scene of him and some rapper dude climbing into his beautifully restored P-51 Mustang to go for a flight. I didn't even know that he was a "real" pilot. They had a chase plane and cameras everywhere... he looked at least to me as though he was doing a great job of flying that old warbird. I can't imagine what 1,700 HP piston driven aircraft feels like, I do know that it sounded awesome.

Since the rapper dude was a nervous flier, Tom talked him through a few simple meneuvers, some shallow turns etc., and then later on they even did a roll. They finished the flight off with what looked like a perfect landing.

I wonder if a P-51 Mustang is easier to land then a Cessna 172....

Now back to my reality... I had hoped to get a couple of back to back flight lessons in this week but the weather has been unsettled and a little windy. Sunday looks very promising so I just called Dave and booked a lesson for the morning, if the weather cooperates I'll hopefully get back up early next week again too.

Weekend without flying

2006-05-19T17:42:00.000-07:00

My son recently won the provincial chess championship for PEI for his grade. He's been playing in his school's chess club since he started grade 1 last fall. I first taught him how to play when he was three and lately he has developed a real passion for the game.

Since he is PEI's provincial champion for grade one, he and the rest of the kids on the Provincial team will play the other provincial teams this weekend at the Canadian National Chess Tournement being held in Moncton.

So no flying for me this weekend.

I did try to get a lesson in this afternoon but it was too windy. I went out to the airport anyways and had a good conversation with my flight instructor. Dave currently has four other students doing training in the circuit, he said that we are all dealing with the same problems pretty much, and I'm not an exception.

He suggested that we schedule a couple of lessons back to back, on concurrent days for next week. He feels that I'll benefit from a couple of lessons in quick succesion, hopefully this will bring me up to a level where I'm ready to solo, so this is what we're planning on doing next week, I'll keep you posted.

In case any of you're wondering, I have 15.6 hours and 45 T&Ls.

Lesson #15 The Circuit VI

2006-05-13T21:44:00.000-07:00

I'm getting worse...

Over my last few lessons I've been getting use to the circuit, and for the most part I've gotten them down pat except for the flair. Now during most of my time in the circuit I've had to deal with alot of wind, my last lesson was no exception. But even with a stiff headwind I was able to make six decent circuits all be myself, my FI never touched the yoke once during any of my flairs... I was pretty pumped up afterwards to say the least.

Fast forward to today's lesson and I think that everyone will agree that I had good cause to feel optomistic. I'm not saying solo yet... but I'm thinking that if I keep up the good work it'll be soon.

Today was a beautiful day for flying, warm and sunny, not a hint of the nasty wind.

First circuit - Takeoff and climbout was good, Fern was surprisingly sluggish - must have been the warm day. Everything went well but my final was way high, the plane just did not want to sink for me. Dave suggested that we overshoot and try again, which is what I did. I dunno, I could have done a slideslip but I didn't... coulda, shoulda, but didn't... good grief.

Next circuit - My approach was good but I flaired too much, too early and floated back up. I then added too much power and didn't keep it on long enough. Dave assisted and kept us from hitting too hard. I've got to remember to look at the end of the runway not directly in front of the plane, and I didn't really need to add power anyways since we only came up a foot or two.

Next circuit - everything went fine but I didn't keep enough back pressure on the yoke after touch down, as a result we got a awful shudder from the front wheel. Dave quickly fed back pressure in and the problem went away.

It just seemed to be one thing after another during this lesson... very frustrating to say the least. After about an hour of this I was ready to call it a day.

The only saving grace was that my last circuit was perfect and my landing was smack on, decent flair at the numbers.... with just a chirp of the tires after what seemed like 10 seconds or so of flair with the stall warning screaming the whole time.

Even with my last circuit being a good one I left the airport feeling bummed out. Dave says that I should concentrate more on the stuff that I'm doing right and not dwell so much on my mistakes. I really can't stand not doing something well and these stupid mistakes tend to eat at me... I need to relax more.

I have identified a few areas where I'm still making mistakes from time to time, and I will work on not making them anymore... sounds pretty simple, lets hope I can get my head around this concept.

Lesson #14 The Circuit V

2006-05-06T15:33:00.000-07:00

This is my fifth lesson in the circuit and it's starting to show!

Today was a great day for flying, as expected the wind was present but it played nice. It stayed within 20 degrees of our runway's heading, and was a constant 15-20 kts for the whole lesson.

I showed up for my lesson on time and chatted with Dave for a few minutes, then another couple of pilots showed up and we all chatted some more. About an hour after my lesson was suppose to start we finally wrapped things up and I headed out to preflight the aircraft. She needed oil and fuel. I managed to get oil on my hands so Dave pulled Fern over to the fuel pumps while I went back inside to wash up.

A few minutes later we were up and doing our first circuit, the wind made it choppy until 800 feet ASL where it smooth out. We made 6 circuits during our hour long lesson, and I did all the landings by myself - four were really nice, Dave never touch the yoke once during the lesson.

It turn out to be a great lesson, everything is starting to seem routine in the circuit and much less rushed. I never messed up anything, but I did miss a downwind call once. I'm starting to learn little "tricks" to make my time in the circuit easier.

I climb straight out until 900 feet then I make my crosswind turn, this lets me hit circuit height (1,200 ft) and trim the aircraft out for level flight with plenty of time to turn downwind. I'm also getting a feel for the proper trim, during this lesson I was pretty bang on everytime which makes life a whole lot easier. The windscreen had a good buildup of bug impacts, and I was able to use one of the impact marks as a great glide-slope indicator. I just lined the bug mark up with the runway numbers and I was bang on every time. I also find it much easier to leave just a touch of power on until I get about 20 feet above the runway, this little bit of power keeps my descent rates acceptable and lets me flair out nicely without making any major control corrections.

I've found myself high a couple of times on final and I've pulled the power back to idle which works well, but leaves me with a too high of a descent rate. By adding an extra couple hundred RPMs for the last hundred feet or so, I find that this slows my descent down to a rate that works nicely for me at this stage.

My first "great" day in the circuit...

Also a quick correction:
In my last post I incorrectly identified a sideslip as a forward slip... guess you can call this a "slip" of the tongue... ;")

Althought the control inputs are the same, the slid slip uses a small amount of rudder to keep the nose pointed at the runway and the ailerons are used to counteract the turning effect of the rudder. The side slip keeps the nose lined up with the runway in crosswind situations. The forward slip uses the same control inputs but full rudder is used, counteracted by the ailerons to generate more drag to increase your descent rate without any additional speed.

Thanks to Mark for pointing out this mistake.

Lesson #13 The Circuit IV

2006-04-29T13:35:00.000-07:00

Another breezy day in the circuit, what's a student pilot got to do to get a calm day around here?

The wind at the beginning of the lesson was 11 kts, 10 degrees off runway's heading, by the end of my lesson it was 50 degrees of the runway's heading -to our right, at a constant 12-15 kts.

This lesson actually went pretty well, the wind made us crab a bit on final but it wasn't too bad until until the last couple of landings. This lesson was good practise and most of the landings were made without any assistance from Dave -- four nice ones. I'm still making some little mistakes here and there, nothing critical, just forgetting the occasional call to tower.

I don't know what it is with my last landing of the day, but I always find a way to mess it up. It certainly didn't help that the wind had shifted around to our right and cause us to crab pretty good. Dave showed me one way to correct for this, it was by using the rudder to keep us straight with the runway and then use the ailerons to keeps us from turning... this is also known as a forward slip.

I did this during the last part of final but it, surprise... surprise... increased my glide-slope as it enduces additional drag on the aircraft. (Actually this meneuvor is also commonly used to scrub off altitude without increasing ones forward speed). Correcting for the crosswind using the forward slip caused my sinkrate to be too high and I had to get on the power late, Dave helped out with the controls.

Watching me mess up my last landing of the day, (Dave had pointed out the fact that I'd have an audience for this landing earlier to me as we turned final), were a couple of pilots and about half the passengers of a regional jet, which was holding on the Alpha taxiway for 03. Just great...

The winds have now become my enemy... and my flight instructor gets a kick out watching me crumble under pressure...

Lesson #12 The Circuit III

2006-04-22T13:41:00.000-07:00

What a crazy week we had weather wise.

The last decent day we had here on the Island was a week ago today, which was the first day of the trout season. (Me and about another dozen or so firefighters got together and went fishing).

We all met at the fire hall at midnight, cooked up a huge scoff, then had a "few drinks". We headed out to the local fishing hole at around 3:00AM, then we sat around a rather large bonfire and drank some more until day break, at which time the fishing began. It was a great time, the weather was perfectly calm and +5c (40F) at daybreak, it turned out to be a great day. I caught quite a few tiny ones and threw nearly all of them back. A couple of the boys had a bit too much to drink, but nobody ended up in the lake... or the fire, so I can't wait to do it again next year!

Anyways... on to the flying.

I had hoped to get out flying on Sunday (16^th), but the weather was terrible. The next week was also a wash out, as the weather took a turn for the worse. We had a low overcast and a constant wind for the whole week, with a couple days of heavy rain thrown in for good measure. This was all a courtesy of a stationary low, anchored off the coast of Nova Scotia.

Saturday the 22^nd looked promising, it was suppose to be windy in the morning but the winds were forecasted to diminish in the afternoon, which was when I had my lesson booked for. The winds did come down but not very much, just enough to fly.

I did not find it a good day for circuits.

I arrived at the airport, chatted with Dave for a couple of minutes and then headed out to pretrip the aircraft. Dave came out, we finished with the pretrip and then I made the call to tower. A couple of minutes later we were flying. The winds at the beginning of the lesson were 10 degrees off the runway's heading @ 12 kts gusting 18.

To make long story short, we bounced around pretty good for the whole lesson, which made everything that much harder. It was tough to trim the aircraft because the nose and the wings refused to stop moving long enough for me to get an accurate fix on the aircraft's attitude.

We made six circuits, I made four of the landings all by myself, one of which I had to do some last minute manoeuvring to make it happen. We came over the threshold at about 50 feet. then we got a strong gust from our left that pretty much blew us right off the runway... OK, maybe I'm exaggerating a bit... but not much! Without any assistance or coaxing from Dave, I added a bit of power and "flew" us back over the centreline and then completed the landing at about the 1,500 - 2,000 foot markers. Dave commented that I had done a great job of salvaging it, he also told me that I always have the option of doing a go-around if things get really messed up.

After an hour or so of bouncing over all the sky, I was mentally drained. Flying the aircraft was alot of work. I saved my worse landing for the end. Everything was going well but during the last little bit I started to descend at too high of a rate, (damn winds) so I had to get on the power, stayed on it a bit too long, then we floated for what seemed like forever and finally I put her on the ground with Dave helping me all the way.

What a great way to top off a tough day.

Hopefully the weather will be better for my next lesson.

Lesson #11 The Circuit II

2006-04-09T15:46:00.000-07:00

What a difference...

For those of you that read my last blog entry regarding my first lesson in the circuit, it was pretty obvious how bummed out I was. The whole time I felt overloaded with too many tasks, and as such I was constantly behind the aircraft for most of the lesson. After a few days of reflection I began to feel much better and decided to look at that lesson as half full, instead of half empty. I stopped dwelling on everything I did wrong or poorly, and I listed the things that I was did right, then I asked myself what I needed to do to make my next lesson in the circuit better.

After I finished up my duty crew requirements at the Firehall on Sunday, I went out to the airport a bit early. I felt much more confident and I was looking forward to my second lesson in the circuit. As luck would have it I was able to chat with a commercial student named John while watching Dave and a third student (Huey) do some touch and goes in the circuit. Yes, we critiqued each landing... it's hard not too!

To make a long story short, Dave and Huey wrapped things up, then I went out and preflighted the aircraft, a few minutes later Dave showed up and we were off.

My first circuit was OK, but I forgot the carb heat and my downwind call was late, Dave assisted me with the flair. My second circuit was good, I remembered the carb heat this time but forgot the downwind radio call, made up for this by doing a nice flair and landing all by myself. The next three circuits were great, other than forgetting the downwind call once more, I managed to do everything by myself and I made three nice landings all by myself.

During my last circuit I was feeling pretty confident, we got off topic and started chatting about all the new construction sites that are springing up everywhere. By the time I stopped yapping I found myself high on final. (I think Dave let me talk myself into this to teach me a lesson - very sneaky). We landed long at the thousand foot markers and we had to do a 180 on the runway to backtrack to the last taxi-way.

Dave helped with this landing, although I didn't think I needed it. At about 50 feet I noticed that we were long and a bit fast so I brought the nose up to scrub off a little speed, (I already had the throttle at idle). Dave told me afterwards that he thought that I was trying to flair way too early, which I wasn't. I was content to land long, but I wanted to bring my speed down to what I'm use to before getting down to flair height. looking back, I now relize that I should have told him what I was doing, instead of having him guess.

What went right with today's lesson:
At the end of my last lesson in the circuit I was exhausted and pretty stressed out about sucking at everything, today's lesson in the circuit was great! I knew what needed to be done, and when it needed to be done, I never felt overloaded or pressed for time. I flew the plane and managed to make four great landings all by myself -what a feeling! I'm also getting much better at dialing the trim in correctly the first time.

What I need to improve on:
On one takeoff I was slow rotating, I knew it before Dave called me on it. I forgot my downwind call twice, and I was pretty late with it another time. Twice I found myself a hundred feet low on the downwind, and I was high on final once during my last circuit. During one touch and go I managed to wander back and forth pretty good while I was prepping the aircraft for takeoff.

So... I still need to work on a few things, and I certainly need alot more practise time in the circuit, but I finished this lesson pretty pumped and feeling great!

Another windy day

2006-04-07T18:21:00.000-07:00

I never relized how windy it was where I live until I started flying. I was going to go flying this afternoon but the wind was gusting to over 20 knots. I checked the weekend weather, Sat is going to be rainy and windy, but Sunday looks like it will be partly cloudy and calm, so I called and booked my next lesson for Sunday at 5 PM. Some will think that this is an unusual time to have a flight lesson, but in my world it makes perfect sense - let me explain how things work in the world that I live in.

I'm on duty this weekend at my Fire Station, for those of you that don't know I'm also a paid volunteer firefighter. We get over 140 calls per year, with another 100 or so calls that are false alarms, so it's a pretty busy volunteer station, this is one of the reasons why we are paid. Now, one of the requirements of being a firefighter at my station is that it must be manned during the weekend days to ensure that we're able to continue to give our community response times that are equal to that a full time station. So three weekends a year I have to do a weekend duty, this runs both Sat and Sun, 10:00 AM - 4:00 PM. So this weekend, both my days are out because I'm at my station, so I can only fly after I get off.

The weather for tomorrow isn't looking very promising, but Sunday looks good. So I hope to be working on my next flying blog entry Sunday night. Lets hope the weather work out for me on Sunday.

lesson #10 The Circuit

2006-03-24T15:41:00.000-08:00

Well, that was a most humbling experience.

Where do I even start... I guess I'll take you through the circuit and I'll save my personal comments and thoughts on this lesson until the end.

Friday morning Marc (the flight school owner) called and left me a voicemail, it seemed that Saturday was booking up fast and if I was going to fly this weekend I better get my name in for a slot on Sunday. I called and chatted with my flight instructor Dave, after a bit of chit chat about how the weekend was shaping up (availability and weather) I decided to take the afternoon off work and get a lesson in. It was my first oportunity to go flying in a few weeks and I didn't want to chance putting it off until Sunday and have the weather mess things up again.

I arrived at the airport 15 minutes early and then had to wait for 45 minutes until FFRN got back. Another student, who is working on his commercial licence had Fern over in Cape Breton. They finally returned a half hour after my lesson was supposed to start, since I had time to spare it wasn't much of a issue. I talked with Luke (the commercial student) for a minute or two on the apron and then went and preflighted the aircraft. She needed fuel, so I went to see what was keeping Dave and then we pulled her over to the pumps and topped her up. Finished preflight and then made a call to tower to let them know what we were doing and off we taxied to runway 03.

Takeoff:
I first check for traffic and then pull out onto the runway and line her up with the centerline. Do the runway checklist. The taxi and runway checklists are used to make sure that the aircraft is in the proper configuration for takeoff, and you haven't forgot something stupid like leaving the flaps down or your fuel selector on your left tank. I call tower and inform them that we're rolling on 03. As I go to full throttle the aircraft wants to go left and I have to get on the right rudder to stay straight. While I'm steering with my feet (rudder) I also need to check a few things to ensure that we're good for takeoff. Things that need to be checked prior to rotation are: air speed indicator (is it working), tach (are you getting full power) oil pressure (in the green) and oil temp, (usually still on the low side), and how's the engine sound. Runway 03/210 is 7,000 feet but 60 mph comes rather quickly and we begin our rotation, then trim for climb at 80 mph, maintaining a straight out track from the runway, which is not as easy as it sounds with a 6 knot crosswind and your bouncing around. Drop the nose at about 500 - 600 ft to do a forward scan for traffic, we do this because we can't see anything ahead of us in this climb configuration.

Crosswind:
At 800 ft I begin our crosswind turn, no more than 15 degrees of bank, because we're climbing. During the crosswind leg we reach circuit height (1,200 ASL) so I reduce throttle to 2,100 rpm and quickly trim the aircraft for level flight. I turn another 90 degrees left at 30 degrees of bank this time, this turn puts us on the downwind and this track parallels the active runway.

Downwind:
I call tower to inform them of our location, " Charlottetown radio this is foxtrot romeo november on the downwind for runway 03". Then I have to get right into my downwind checks which I need to commit to memory. Dave suggested that I should basically sweep left to right to ensure I get everything. For the first few circuits I kept forgetting one or two things, but by the forth or fifth circuit I have it down. Mains on, mags on both, brakes, carb heat on, mixture rich, fuel selector on both tanks, engine oil pressure and temp in the green. Near the end of the downwind leg I reduce power to about 1,700 rpms and wait for our speed to drop down into the white arc, then I add 20 degrees of flaps and quickly trim for 75 mph.

Base:
I make sure that I turn in time so that I don't cross the runway's centerline. Left turn to final is at 30 degrees of bank, 75 mph @ 1,700 rpm.

Final:
I call tower, "Charlottetown radio this is foxtrot romeo november on final for runway 03, touch and go". Ch'town radio replys with wind information and anything else I need to know. I adjust our power to control our decent, and then pull the throttle back to idle at the runway's threshold. Flare at a few feet, hold it with ever increasing back pressure until she settles down onto the runway nice and gentle like. Adjust trim for takeoff, flaps up and back to full power for takeoff, which happens quick because we're still doing 30-40 mph when I apply power.

My thoughts on this lesson:
As you can see there is alot of work to doing circuits, and it all must be done in addition to flying the plane. I found my first lesson doing circuits alot of hard work, very heavy on the multi-tasking. I found my first few circuits a bit overwelming, with Dave talking me through most of it. The next few circuits I kept forgetting things on my checklist and I was doing things less than acceptable, which to be quite honest drives me right up the wall. This lesson has left me somewhat discouraged, something I haven't felt since my first couple of flight lessons. It seemed that for the most of this lesson I couldn't do much of anything right and I was constantly behind the aircraft for most of the lesson.

I was doing stupid things like straying from our circuit height, which is 1,200 ft, so why the hell am I at 1,100 feet - trim's not bang on and we drifted down a bit on the downwind. I never caught it because I was doing something else. Another thing that I kept doing poorly is trimming for a proper glide speed of 75 mph. I found myself working the yoke to maintain the proper pitch to adjust our speed, when I should have trimmed it right the first time and then adjusted our glide slope with throttle. Dave told me time after time to stop doing this and trim the plane correctly. Finally my flare needed alot of work, a couple of times I flared too early and we floated back up and I needed to add a bit of power. Another couple of times I was not quick enough pulling the yoke back during the last bit of the flare just before main gear touchdown and Dave helped me out.

There's just so much to do and so many things that you need to keep your eyes on, all at the same time, while your doing something else or thinking about what you need to do next. I felt like a juggler who was forced to juggle one ball too many. At the end of a very long hour we finally called it a day. I asked Dave if I sucked as badly as I thought I did, he said that my experience was average and that I will get better at circuits, all I need is more practise.

Late edit:
I should add that a couple of days later as I'm putting the finishing touches on this blog entry, I feel much better. Looking back at this lesson, I realised that near the end I was starting to get comfortable with the pace at which things must happen. By writing this blog entry and effectively going through this lesson again in my head, I have identifed the things that I was doing wrong and I know what needs to be done to fix it. I still expect to make mistakes during my next lesson, but I feel much more confident now than I did a couple of days ago.

Weekend waiting and flying

2006-03-18T11:39:00.000-08:00

I went out to airport yesterday, even though the weather conditions was marginal. Waited around and chatted with Dave, watched some planes do some takeoffs and landings. After an hour or so it didn't look any better so we decided to try again today.

Just called Dave to book a lesson for 11:00Am, weather looks so so, winds are light which is good, but there's a "few clouds" just above circuit height, so I'll grab a bite to eat and head out to the airport and see what happends.

Sunday Edit:
No flying today. Weather looked great at 9:30, called and booked a lesson for 11:00, Went out to the airport and watched the low evercast to the north and west, then periodic heavy flurries for about an hour before we gave up for the day.

The weather's great and terrible.

2006-03-13T13:06:00.000-08:00

No flying this past weekend.

It was beautiful and warm all weekend, but it was too windy. Great weather for melting the last little bit of snow, but not good for flying. Since my next lesson is circuits we need a realitively calm day... which the past weekend wasn't, and today definitely isn't.

METAR CYYG 131400Z 30021G29KT 15SM FEW040 05/M02 A2971 RMK CF1 SLP061=

METAR CYYG 131500Z 32014G27KT 15SM FEW038 BKN049 06/M02 A2973 RMK CU2SC6 SLP069=

METAR CYYG 131600Z 31020G28KT 15SM BKN040 07/M02 A2976 RMK SC3 SLP078=

The next few days look like crap as well. Nothing I can do but wait it out.

A non flying update.

2006-03-01T14:54:00.000-08:00

I haven't been out flying for the past couple of weeks, last weekend it was too windy so Dave and I got together to get a couple of briefings out of the way, slips and basic circuits. Dave wanted to leave certain things out of the circuit brief such as crosswind landings and such until we started doing them at a later lesson.

As it was, the briefing for slips was fairly quick, but the briefing for basic circuits covered alot of information. Dave wouldn't win any awards for his drawing abilities, but I found his diagrams helpful. Since I've alread done some landings and takeoffs, and a couple of touch and goes, I'm pretty familiar with circuits and the things we do at each stage. During the brief we went over the various parts of the circuit, the altitudes and usual rpm settings for each, and what we should be doing to prepare for landing, checklists etc. I found this brief very informative and I took lots of notes for later review. I also got a copy of the official up-to-date version of our checklists and our emergency procedures, so more stuff to remember

As I said earlier, I wasn't able to fly this past weekend, when this happens I usually try to get some time off work to get a lesson in during the week, unfortunately this is not he case this week. This upcoming weekend is also out as I'm going to be out of province with my Fire Dept's curling team. I suspect it will be a long weekend, interrupted by the occasional sip of good wiskey.

Weather permitting I'm going to try and get a lesson in sometime next week, hopefully things will be less busy at work and I can start working on my circuits.

A few more lessons and me thinks it will be getting close to solo time... a few of my friends want to know exactly when this is so they can seek shelter in their basements... I've got some funny friends.

Lesson #9 Spirals

2006-02-16T18:58:00.000-08:00

Wasn't able to go flying this past weekend and since this weekend wasn't looking good for flying I decided to take a few hours off work and go flying this afternoon.

Went out to the airport at 2:30, Dave was just finishing up with another student. They finished up and we all chatted for a few minutes and then we jumped into the prebrief. The prebrief was standard fair, the difinition of a spiral, safety parameters, the causes and the recovery procedures. With prebrief out of the way I head outside to preflight aircraft which was sitting on the apron near the fuel pumps.

Preflight was a chilly event, as luck would have it she needed oil and surprise... surprise... fuel. There's usually a litre of oil stored in the rear baggage compartment so I grabbed that and poured it in while Dave added a little fuel. Since we'd also be touching on our last lesson - spins, we'd need to keep her light in order to keep us in the utility range.

When I go flying I like to leave my winter jacket in the car and wear a comfortable warm shirt, it's pretty tight inside a 172 and Dave and I are not small lads. By the time I get the outside portion of the preflight done, add oil and help with fuel, I'm pretty well frozen. We get in, Dave takes off his winter jacket and tosses it on the backseat, I quickly finish the preflight, fire her up and a couple of minutes later we have heat! With the wing vents taped up for the winter all our flights are warm.

We start off today's lesson by touching on our last, this means doing some spins. Engine to 1,500 rpm and here we go... the first one I attempt was crap, I released the controls too early. Dave demostrates one and then I give it another try. I bring the throttle back to 1,500 rpm, climb to stall, get the buffeting and then bring the yoke all the way back and kick in full rudder, this time I hold the control inputs much longer and we snap right into it... down we go. This was a pretty decent spin. I bring us out it after maybe a complete revolution or so, man these are a blast!

With the review out of the way it's on to today's lesson, Spiral dives. Spiral dives are basically a steep decending turn, these can happen if you spend too much time looking out the windows and not enough time flying the airplane. They can also happen during spin training, poor steep turns and flying into clouds. Before you know it the nose drops and your airspeed rockets towards Vne. Recovery is fairly simple, bring throttle to idle and then quickly level your wings and pull out of the dive without overstressing the aircraft. It's important not to pull out of the dive while leveling your wings. Dave put us into a few spiral dives to the left and the right and had me recover from each one. Dave comments a couple of times that I need to be more aggresive when leveling the wings.

With today's lesson in the books we started heading towards the airport, which is very easy to spot as we finally got some snow, what a crazy winter we're having. Since we're still about 4,000 feet and circuit height is 1,200 feet we have a bunch of altitude to lose, so it was a perfect time to introduce me to the forward slip. To perform a foward slip, you basically feed in full rudder and then bank the wings the other way to maintain your heading. Dave shows me one by applying full right rudder, the plane yaws to the right, at the same time he adds about 10-15 degrees of left bank. We quickly go from losing 500 feet a minute to around 1,200 feet a minute, with no gain in forward airspeed. I give it a try and find that it's pretty simple to do. I scrub off our excess altitude and make the call to tower, bringing us into the downwind for 03 at circuit height.

I ballooned a little on landing, I quickly added a stab of throttle and a few seconds later we're on the runway. Dave suggests that the next time I balloon I should hold the power on a wee bit longer.

Another great lesson.

Lesson #8 Spins

2006-02-06T20:18:00.000-08:00

What a lesson... it was a blast!

This was the only lesson that I went in feeling like it was either going to be very fun, or very not fun, luckily for me it was the former.

We went throught our usual prebrief before our lesson, the weather didn't look good. The forecast was for sun and +7c, but when I got to the airport it had become overcast. So we started the prebrief not knowing if we'd be able to do the lesson.

We reviewed the various stages of a spin: incipient, fully developed and recovery. We then went over how to put a Cessna 172 into a spin, what would happen and how we would recover. First off, a 172 is a very stable aircraft and it has to be coaxed into a spin, this is done by pulling power back to about 1,500 rpm and holding a nose high attitude until she's about to stall. At the first sign of wing buffeting we pull the yoke all the way back and then apply full rudder in the direction you want to spin, hold these control inputs for a few seconds and the inside wing drops and down you go. WEEEeeeeee......

To recover, you reduce power to idle and hold opposite rudder to break the spin, then you feed in just a little forward pressure on the yoke to break the stall, pull out of the dive and add power as needed to maintain or gain altitude.

Dave, who has a sense of humor much like myself, said that under no circumstances should I attempt to hug him during this manoeuver. It seems that one of his previous students had lost his composure during their first spin and latched into him pretty good, which made it somewhat more difficult to recover. After the prebrief we did our weight and balances to make sure we were in the utility catagory before our lesson.

I did the preflight, added some oil and we were off. We arrived at our training area about ten minutes later at 6,000 ASL and did a little review of our last lesson. First we did a power off stall, then we did a power on stall, and finally we did a climbing turn stall. During a climbing turn stall the outside wing will stall before the inside one, this happens because the outside wing is at a greater angle of attack, when the outside wing stalls it drops rather abrubtly and you need to use the rudder to bring it back up. I was very impressed at how effective and quick the rudder is at bringing a dropping wing back up. With our review out of the way it was time for today's lesson.

The first spin that Dave demonstrated was a definite pucker moment for me, I've never been done anything like this before and I admit I was a little stressed about this lesson before hand. I had done some research and read about other student's experiences with this lesson, and I also watched some videos that I had found on the internet, all of which did little to ease my mind. For the first few seconds, during our first spin, (when it seemed that we were headed straight for the ground), I was liked OMG, then Dave straighten us up and pulled us out of it. After we gained back some of our lost altitude he did another one to the right this time. With the second spin out of the way the lesson was quickly turning from something that had to be endured into something that was beginning to be fun, just like Dave promised it would. During both spins Dave talked the whole time, telling me what he was doing.

Now it was my turn. I was a bit hesitant to jump right into it, so I went over what I was going to doing to make sure I had all the control inputs and timing right, once I had that clear in my head I performed my first spin. I let go of the controls just as she went over and I recovered a bit early, wasn't what I'd call a spin. For my second one Dave said that would tell me when to release the controls, to ensure full entry.

My second spin was a full rotation and she recovered just like my instructor ensured she would. Incipient stage spins feel, at least to me, like we're rolling while headed straight towards the ground, and that recovery should involve the use of ailerons. Dave said that it might seems that way to me, sitting in the cockpit, but if viewed from outside it would be obvious that we're spinning. Recovery from the spin happens fairly quick once full rudder is applied, which harps back to the inherent stability of the aircraft. I did a couple more spins the other way and that was all she wrote, lesson completed.

For the fun of it, Dave did a power-on spin.... to give me a chance to experience how the aircraft reacts at a higher power setting. It seemed to me that we're were near verticle before she stalled, Dave kicked in full rudder and she snapped right into it this time, much more quicker than before. Recovery was performed the same way, reduce power to idle, ailerons neautral, full rudder and as she stops spinning forward on the yoke to break the stall.

Dave then touched on our next lesson spirals, by doing one. The speed element is much greater than spins, and we have to be careful about redlining the engine and exceeding Vne (183 mph).

Back to the airport for a full circuit landing on 28, Dave provided some input to help me with my flare. Then we were quickly back up into the circuit for one more. This time I'm informed on downwind that I'm on my own for this one, he then asks me where I'm gonna touchdown at, I reply in my confident pilot voice, "the thousand foot markers". I somehow actually manage to accomplish this feat with just a gentle bounce, more luck than skill I assure you.

Dave seemed happy with the landing, although the little bounce ticked me off. I guess I should be happy that we've not had one hard landing, this is mostly because of Dave's assistance, but I am getting more confident in my abilites and I feel that I'm able to do more and catch my mistakes earlier.

It was another great lesson.

Lesson #7 Stalls

2006-01-23T17:58:00.000-08:00

I wasn't able to get any flying done this past weekend, on Saturday the overcast was too low but I went out to the airport anyways because they were having an open house, talked to a few people and checked out some of the planes. On Sunday the wind was gusting to 35 - 40 kts so flying was out.

I took Monday afternoon off work so I could do my next lesson, stalls. As always Dave started off the lesson with a prebrief to go over what we'd be covering. This usually takes 20 - 30 minutes. We went over the definiton of a stall, the different types of stalls, the warning signs and most importantly, how to recover. We also went over some of the safety aspects of the lesson, HASEL checks, minimum height requirements etc.

The idea of this lesson is to identify the early symptoms of a stall and prevent them from occuring, also to teach recovery techniques if you find yourself in the middle of one. Practicing stalls at 3,000 plus feet is fun, having one happen at a few hundred feet AGL on final, while your paying attention to a handful of other things can be very serious.

Most small general aviation aircraft wings stall at an angle of attack of 16 - 17 degrees. Stalls can happen at any speed and at any attitude. As a pilot it's very important to recognize the symptoms of a imminent stall, as they are most likely to happen when your low and slow, during landings and takeoffs.

Some of the symptoms of a imminent stall is buffeting, an aerodynamic vibration caused by the airflow starting to detach from the wing surface. Another obvious symptom is of course the stall warning buzzer, which is set by the manufacturer to sound just before your the wing stalls completely.

With the prebrief done I went outside and did the external part of the preflight, she needed fuel. Since it was cold and I only had a light jacket on I went back inside to find out what was taking Dave, and to get some warmth. I found him and back outside we went, short trip to the fuel pump, and back outside again to fill her up. Dave somehow managed to break the clip off pump's ground cable during this process, so he headed back inside to let them know and I jumped into Fern to keep from freezing.

Alright, all that out of the way. Dave returned and it was time to finish the preflight, surprise... surprise... a new checklist. My previous flight instructor had a great checklist, one created with the student in mind. Somehow this checklist has vanished and Dave is trying to find or edit (not sure which) a checklist that works for him. All the checklists are basically the same, check this and confirm that, but the steps can be in a slightly different order and they can be divided up differently too. I like to get a much as possible done while still on the apron, then once we're on the runway a few final checks and then we're good to go. I'm thinking about creating my own checklist, one that works for me and doesn't change week to week. Of course if I decide to do this I'll have Dave review it and make sure there are no errors or missing items.

Preflight done, I taxi us out to the runway 21, backtrack a bit, turn us around and off we go. Takeoff was fine and I closely watch our heading to minimize our drift to the left. I let the nose get a bit too high on our climb out, Dave called me on it just as I'm about to lower it on my own. I quickly get her trimmed and make a climbing turn to the northwest, calling tower to let them know.

To start things off Dave had me put us into slow flight, which I did. He then took control and demonstrated a power off stall with a flawless recovery, I then attempted to replicate. My first stall went fine, pull the power back, hold the nose up to maintain altitude, hold it, hold it, nose is starting to get high, stall warning buzzer starts wailing, then the nose drops nice and gentle, I recover by feeding in some forward yoke while bringing power back up. Sometimes I feed in too much forward yoke, but I'm learning.

I did a few more power off stalls for practice, during one of these we had a wing drop, Dave quickly brought it back up with the rudder. Most non pilots would think that you'd bring the dropping wing back up with ailerons, turning the yoke and lowering the aileron on the dropping wing increases it's angle of attack even more, and can be a very dangerous mistake to make in a stall near the ground. You must bring the wing back up by using the rudder to yaw the plane, basically this causes the airflow to increase in speed over the dropping wing giving it more lift while at the same time you reduce the speed of airflow over the higher wing reducing its lift, this levels you out.

Next we moved on to power-on stalls, Dave started off by demonstrating one. The nose drop is much quicker compared to a power off stall. I give it a try. Stalling a plane with the engine generating a good deal of thrust it difficult to do. It requires a lot of backpressure on the yoke, I'd estimate about 40 lbs worth, and the aircraft's nose is really pointed skywards. Once the nose decides to drop, it's pretty abrupt and recovery is quite quick. Dave had me do a few for practice, as with the power off stalls I tended to input a bit too much forward yoke.

Since the cloud cover was only about 3,500 feet and we were too heavy for Dave to show me the thrills and joy of a spin, which is what we are going to be doing during our next lesson, we started back towards the airport. I called tower and made a turn to the west to line us up for a straight in approach for runway 21.

The wind was from the 180 at 7 kts, which should have pushed us to the right but we were getting pushed to left, this kept up until we got down to about 500 feet. I was feeling pretty good, I thought that I had us on a great glide scope, four white lights... the only thing is, its supposed to be two white and two red lights for a 3 degree glide. How do I forget simple stuff like this. We did start to get some red lights just as we passed the threshold...

Landing was pretty good, I did balloon slightly but I compensated just as Dave called me on it.

Another good lesson in the books.

How about this weather.

2006-01-14T12:42:00.000-08:00

I'm not able to do any flying this weekend as I'm playing in an all Firefighter's weekend curling spiel. Our Fire Department has three teams entered this year and we fancy ourselves a pretty good bunch of curlers... most days... unless we drink too much...

I can't believe the weather we're having this winter on the east coast, right now it's +10 degrees (50 F). We had a bit of snow back in the middle of December, but it's long gone and we've had nothing since, it hasn't been cold and I think my lawn is turning green.

The forecast calls for it to be even warmer tomorrow... this is the weirdest winter I've every seen, but I'm not complaining. I had my oil tank filled last month (it needed 3/4 of a tank) and it cost me $500!, so every day it's warm like this instead of -20 saves me money which leave more money for the flying budget.

Speaking of my flying budget, I had hoped to add a few bucks to it again this week but my car needed rear brakes, which surprised me because it's only two years old (Altima 3.5SE with 50k KM) so that took $200 of my hard earned money that could have been put to better use in my flying fund.

Whose that cat...

2006-01-10T19:00:00.000-08:00

Here' s pic of me and the Cessna 172 that I'm doing my flight training on. I've named her Fern because of her call letters and the splash of pretty green.

My instructor took this pic on January 8th, just before our slow flight lesson. It was a beautiful day for flying.

Lesson #6 Slow Flight

2006-01-08T19:10:00.000-08:00

Didn't get out flying on Saturday due to crappy weather.

Sunday I was up early to coach my son's hockey team. The sun was just coming up and I didn't have time to check the metar, I took a look outside but I'm not great at judging cloud height and it was still pretty dark, so I wasn't sure what the day would bring.

Our hockey game went well and when I walked out of the rink I was greeted by a sunny and nearly clear sky... so I called Dave as soon as I got home and booked a lesson.

I arrived at the airport about an hour later and chatted with Dave for a few minutes, did the prebrief and I went out to the hanger to preflight the aircraft. The preflight went well but they must have just changed the oil, as it was pretty clear and it was hard to tell what the level was at first, in the dimly lit hanger. After I realised that the oil was nearly clear instead of the usual black, I was able to determine the level, she was good to go.

Pushed her outside and snapped a couple of pics, hopped in and finished the preflight using the checklist, called tower and then taxied out to 28. This takeoff was much better than my last one, although I did rotate a bit early and I got a little wobble from the front wheel just before liftoff. I quickly trimmed her for a nice climb at 80 mph and made sure I kept a bit of pressure on the right rudder to keep us straight. I was much happier with this takeoff.

We flew to the northwest at 3,000 feet and started things off with a 20 degrees of bank turn. Halfway through I noticed that I had gain a few feet (less than 50) and I was able to correct early so that by the time I finished my 360 I was back at the height I started at. I then did a 30 degrees of bank turn the other way, this turn is much faster and more back pressure is needed to maintain height.

It's funny how you can get used to things, at first I found a 30 degrees of bank turn to be very steep and a bit exciting, now they just seem like a normal turn. A 20 degress of bank 360 takes forever.

Next we practised flying for endurance. I already knew from my previous lesson that flying for endurance is achieved at about 1,800 rpm, but this was a colder day and there was less fuel in the tanks so Dave had me started off at a cruise rpm, I then brought the throttle back 100 rpm at a time, trimmed to maintain altitude and repeated. VFE was achieved a couple of minutes later at slightly more than 1,700 rpm.

With this review out of the way we started on today's lesson, slow flight. The definition of slow flight is flight that is just above the stalling speed and below the speed for best endurance. We did our HASEL checks and then Dave slowed us down from normal cruise to slow flight, he went thru the characteristics (poor forward viability, sluggish controls etc.) then brought us back up to normal cruise, then he had me do the same. We practised slow flight with and without flaps. Dave then had me do some turns in slow flight to get a feel of the aircraft.

With today's lesson in the books we touched on our next lesson, stalls... by doing a couple of them. It was kinda cool to see the airspeed indicator drop below 40 mph, stall horn wailing. Doing something like this a few lessons ago would have caused a "pucker" moment for sure, now it's just new and exciting.

We headed back to the airport just as traffic was starting to pickup. A Mooney had just taken off for Moncton. I called tower to let them know we were inbound for the cz and that we'd being doing a straight in approach for 28, (the active into the wind runway). I asked them for a traffic and airport advisory, they replied that a Dash 8 was on short for 03. there was also a 737 about 15 minutes out coming in for a straight in approach for 03.

A few minutes later we were on final for 28, by this time a cherokee called tower, they were on the apron finishing their runup. A couple of months ago all this chatter would have totally confused me, but I was able to pretty much visualize where everyone was.

Dave then called tower and informed them that we were going to do a touch and go to the circuit, which was news for me. Tower asked if we were going to do some circuits, Dave replied that we'd just do the one touch and go and that we'd be doing a full stop after that.

I setup for landing, it was a bit choppy so I was kept busy on the yoke. Reduced power maintained altitude to bleed off speed, flaps to 20 degrees, trimmed for glide slope, maintain speed (65 mph), watch for correct slope etc. All this keeps me pretty busy, juggling everything at once, the choppy conditions didn't help either. It was a decent landing with Dave adding some assistance on the yoke. I find our decent during the last fifty feet steep, so I have a tendency to flare a bit early, this is wrong and I must remember to stop doing this.

We slowed to about 30 mph or so, Dave put the flaps back up and then pulled off the carb heat and I went to full power and we took off. I brought us backup to circuit height and did the circuit.

My next landing was perfect, at least from my standpoint. This time I fought the urge to flare early, brought us down with Dave talking me through it the whole way. After we touched down (gently) Dave informed me that I had done that landing by myself, he didn't provide any assistance on the yoke. I was so busy landing the plane I hadn't noticed that he wasn't helping me.

This was my first landing all by myself, without any "hands on" assistance from my instructor. I felt like a million bucks.... I'm still smiling.

I know that this is getting repetitive, but another great lesson!

Isn't January great !

2006-01-06T19:15:00.000-08:00

Two good things happened yesterday.

First, I recieved word from Transport Canada last night that my class three medical has been processed and I should get my certificate in a week or two via mail. Michelle at civil aviation (TC) has really been great to deal with. I had one minor snag but it's all good now.

Second, we watched our Canadian junior hockey team beat the Russian's five zip. My son and I watched the game until the end of the first period when he had to go to bed, but he came back out to see the replays of the third and forth goals. I admit I love hockey, but I sometimes worry that he's becoming a bit of a fenatic.

I help coach his team, he's big and quite talented so I'm of course supportive. (At six he can skate backwards faster than most kids on his team can skate frontwards).

Anyways back on topic. I booked my next lesson for Saturday morning, looks like the weather might be iffy though, Sunday looks better so my chances are pretty good that I'll get a lesson in. I'm gonna snap a few pics so I'll post some of those as well.

Post holiday update.

2006-01-02T19:19:00.000-08:00

I didn't get a chance to do any flying over the holidays, I would had liked too but I was so busy doing other things... the weather wasn't great for it anyways.

We had a few family "get togethers" here on the island, then we went to Cape Breton (6 hour drive) to spend a few days with my brother and his family. The kids all got MP3 players for Christmas and the wife and I were out early boxing day and managed to pickup a nice portable dvd player. So the drive over and back wasn't too bad as the kids watched a movie each way and listened to their music.

We came home on new year's eve to ring in the new year at the inlaws. The kids had a blast, we picked up some fireworks on the way home and set them off just before midnight.

Unfortunately I didn't get any studying done for my Transport Canada PPL exam, where did the time go...

I hope that everyone had a great Christmas and a safe new years... and that the weekend weather is nice for flying.

Lesson #5 Flying for Range and Endurance

2005-12-16T19:29:00.000-08:00

Well, I woke up hoping that yesterday's forecast for this morning was right, and it was. It was a beautiful day for flying, nice and clear, light winds and hardly a cloud in the sky.

I wasn't going to let this "break" in the weather slip by, so when I got to my office I gave my instructor a call and booked a lesson for 11 AM. It's been more than two weeks and I was really looking forward to getting up flying again.

I was a little late in getting to the airport, I found Dave out on the apron filling up the tanks on the aircraft. On our aircraft's key ring there's a key to activate the airport's fuel pump. You put your key into your assigned slot on the panel located beside the pump, turn the key which turns on the pump, then you fill your plane. There’s a fuel register located beside your key that records the amount of fuel your account has pumped. The amount of fuel is also recorded on the pump itself, just like a regular "auto"pump at a service station. This setup allow you and everyone else (with an account) to get fuel whenever it’s needed.

After we finished topping up the tanks, I preflighted the aircraft. I find the preflights getting much quicker now, and I don't seem to be missing anything anymore. When we turned on our radio we noticed that there was alot of static on our headsets. Dave played with the jacks and the radio for a minute or two until he located the problem. It turned out to be the second radio, which I suspect is the original. This radio (which we don't use) must have been turned on by the last person that flew the aircraft. Once Dave turned it off our headsets were clear again.

I finished our run-up and called tower for the airport advisory. I then informed them that we’d be training to the northwest, 4,000 feet and less, back in about an hour, and that I was taxiing us to runway 03.

My forth takeoff wasn't great. Dave as usual was pointing out things on the panel as we accelerated, important things like engine rpm and oil pressure etc. These are things that need to be monitored during takeoff so that the pilot can make a decision in case something doesn't look good. So with me trying to keep one eye on our speed, one hand on the yoke, one hand on the throttle, and trying to pay more attention than usual to the important things that Dave was pointing out to me, I was a little slow in rotating.

This caused us to "drift" a bit prior to actual rotation. It felt like our rear wheels were sliding back and forth a little, as if it we were on ice. They were still in fact on the tarmac, but just barely. This drifting sensation wasn't huge but I did notice it immediately and this made me realize that I should have already rotated. I began to pull back on the yoke just as my instructor started to point this out. The plane wanted to fly and I was keeping it on the ground by not rotating early enough. Another valuable lesson learnt, 65 mph means up.

Climb out was good but our heading drifted to the left again, I was not giving it enough right rudder. I guess I was still a little rattled about my "three wheel runway drifting session" and I wasn't paying enough attention to our heading and the ball.

At this point in time I was less then pleased with my performance, sloppy takeoff and a crappy climbout.... at least I'm getting the radio calls down, that's something I guess. I called tower and told them that we were clearing the zone.

The weather was beautiful and clear over the airport, along the north shore of the island (about 12 miles away) there was a wall of dense cloud hanging over the water. Winds were calm and the warm water combined with cold air created a solid layer of stationary clouds running basically west to east.

We started off the lesson by first reviewing some of the stuff we covered during our last couple of lessons. Dave had me do some medium turns, they went well but I did let the nose come up a couple of times as I leveled out. Next Dave then had me do some straight and level flight at different cruise speeds, no problems here either. I'm starting to get a feel for the plane as I transistion from one power setting to the next.With this stuff out of the way, we started on the new stuff.

First was flight for best range, basically to fly as far a possible per unit of fuel, this is called “vbr” in pilot lingo. In the real world we would calculate our best ground speed base on the current wind speed and direction. Basically you try to fly at an altitude that maximizes a tailwind or minimizes a headwind. You also have to figure in the amount of fuel that your going to burn climbing to this altitude and then determine if it’s worth it, based on the distance to be flown. Aircraft weight and some other stuff also needs to be a factor as well. For today’s lesson we were just going to keep it simple and try to get the most amount of “distance” out of the aircraft based on the airspeed to RPM ratio.

We started off in a fast cruise, then recorded the airspeed. We then reduced our rpms by 100, waited until our airspeed stabilised, trimmed the aircraft for level flight and recorded the airspeed again. We worked our way down until the airspeed took the largest drop, we then went back up to the next highest rpm, this was our best cruise rpm to obtain maximum distance. I then leaned out the mixture until the engine began to get rough and then enriched it just enough to make it smooth again. Vbr was achieved at 2,100 rpm.

The next part of the lesson is flight for best endurance, also call “vbe”. Basically to fly as long as possible per unit of fuel. We started at our best cruise rpm and worked out way down 100 rpm at a time, trimming the aircraft to maintain altitude. We kept going down until we got to a rpm where we could no longer maintain altitude. We then went back up to the previous rpm and this gave us our best endurance. Vbe was achieved at 1,800 rpm.

Dave then wanted to briefly touch on our next lesson, which is going to be slow flight. He wanted to show me what slow flight feels like, and to wrap up today's lesson we'd also do a stall. I was a tad bit apprehensive, as I have never experienced a stall before.

He slowed us down and extended the flaps 20 degrees, then started going over some of the characteristics of slow flight, sluggish controls etc. Then he performed a stall, which turned out to be pretty much a “non event”. He pulled the power back and pointed the plane skywards, the stall warning horn started going off, our airspeed dropped to an indicated 45 mph. I wondered to myself how the heck we were still flying, then the nose dropped on its own and Dave brought the power back up. That was it, all there was too it, no drama, no hundred foot plunges, nothing exciting at all.

We managed to work our way down from the north, away from the stationary bank of clouds to southeast of the airport. It was about time to head back so Dave asked me if I knew where the airport was, I did. I called tower to let them know that we were inbound and then turned us west to take us over our harbor to line us up for a straight in approach for 03.

A few minutes later (on final) I noticed that we were getting a bit low on our glide slope, I mentioned that I was going to add a bit of power to bring us back up, Dave agreed. We were lined up for a straight in approach to runway 03, which took us directly over Charlottetown. This added a bit of excitement, as there were houses and such directly below us all the way down, and we'd also pass over the Ch’town Bypass at about 150 ASL just before touchdown. I’ve driven on the bypass under plenty of planes on final for 03, and I found it pretty cool that this time it was me in a plane doing the flying.

My third landing was much better than my second, with Dave providing assistance as needed.

Another great lesson...

Weather blues

2005-12-13T20:38:00.000-08:00

Went to the airport on Saturday and did the prebrief for my next lesson, "Flying for range and endurance". We had an overcast of about 2.000 feet that looked like it might lift a bit but it didn't, so we decided to hold off on doing the lesson and wait until the weather improved. Monday afternoon was flyable (overcast at 8,000) but I couldn't get away from the office.

Now we're suppose to get a storm tonight that will continue until tomorrow with high winds and about 20 - 25 cm of snow (10 inches), so the next couple of days look dismal as well.

The forcast for Friday looks promising... I'm gonna keep my fingers crossed. I can't fly this weekend as I'm on duty at the firehall Saturday and Sunday. (With my luck I bet Friday will suck and it will be beautiful all weekend).

Weekend flier

2005-12-09T07:46:00.000-08:00

Last weekend I didn't get a lesson in. Saturday was out due to the weather and on Sunday it was pretty windy, but perhaps still flyable. (A constant 15-20 kt wind directly down runway 28).

Early Sunday afternoon I mentioned to my wife that perhaps I might be able to get a lesson in, she "suggested" that we do something as a family instead... so we went skating. That's ice skating for my American readers. ;-)

I help coach my six year old son's hockey team so we (my son and I) spend a few hours every weekend on the ice, and skating is something we do alot of as a family... it's certainly a heck of alot cheaper than going to a movies these days.

This week I was pretty busy so I couldn't do a make-up lesson like I did last week.

I just checked the forcast and Saturday is looking good, I'm going call my instructor and book a lesson right after I publish this blog entry.

I'll keep you posted.

Lesson #4 Turns

2005-11-29T20:26:00.000-08:00

Well, the weather finally cooperated and I was able to get away from work for a few hours this afternoon to do the lesson that I missed this past weekend.

As always we started with a prebrief to go over what we'd be covering today. With the prebrief out of the way I went out to the hanger and started the preflight, everything looked good. Dave showed up and we pushed "Fern" outside. (Foxtrot Foxtrot Romeo November, Fern for short). I completed the preflight, fired her up and confirmed with Dave what we were doing, training areas and altitudes, etc. I then went quickly over what I was going to say to the tower, Dave said that it sounded good and I made the call. I taxied alpha, charlie and then backtracked on runway 21, did a 180 and then called tower again to inform them that we were "rolling on 21".

Full throttle, some right rudder, weaved a bit, rotated at 60 mph and then did a nice climb-out at 80 mph, my third takeoff was complete. I managed to keep us straight with the centerline of the runway after takeoff by using the sun, which was at my 45, and by maintaining 210 on my heading indicator. I had drifted to the left quite a bit during my first takeoff, alot less the during my last takeoff, and none this time. Once we hit circuit height (1,200 ft) I began a slow right climbing turn to the northwest and called tower to keep them informed.

It was a beautiful day, 8c with a few clouds at 11,000 ft and a little haze, visibility had to be nearly thirty miles or so because I could just make out the Confederation Bridge off to the west.
I've attached a pic to give you an idea of some of the landmarks that we can use here in PEI on clear days. Hard to miss a 9 mile, 16 story bridge even if it is still 25+ miles away... now where the heck is that airport again...

We arrived at our training area and Dave started the lesson off with some gentle turns, (15 degrees of bank) then had me give it a try, no problems. Next we did some medium turns, (30 degrees of bank) both left and right, ending the turn at a fixed geographic landmark. I did the same and I was pretty accurate at ending the turn where I wanted.

Next he had me do some gentle banked turns and then asked me to turn them into a medium turns ending the turn at a fixed heading on the heading indicator. I was pretty good at this as well, but I did finish a couple of turns with about 5 degrees off. I also lost a little altitude as well, but kept within a hundred feet. I swear the altimeter is possessed and it's out to get me.

The turn rule states that you should start levelling out from your turn before you get to your desired heading. If your in a turn with 20 degrees of bank, you should start levelling your wings 10 degrees prior to your desired heading. I'm starting to get a feel for the aircraft and how much back pressure I need to apply to keep us from losing altitude, practically none for a gentle turns and a just little for a medium bank turn.

Dave seemed pretty happy so we moved on to climbing and descending turns. I did some climbing turn at 15 degrees, then trimmed the aircraft. Next I did some descending turns at 15 and 30 degrees of bank, again trimming the aircraft. Next I spent a few minutes taking turn requests from Dave. I kinda felt like a taxi driver with Dave telling me to give him a left or right turn at such and such angle of bank, take us to this heading and level us out at such and such altitude. It kept me busy but it was great practise.

Next Dave wanted to show me some steep turns to finish the lesson up, I'd get to practise them later. Before we did any of these we did what is called a HASEL check. HASEL stands for:

* Height - sufficient to recover safely. 3,000 AGL minimum.
* Area - Not over congested area.
* Security - is everything tied down.
* Engine - temps and pressures correct.
* Lookout - do clearing turns and look for other traffic

The first turn that we did was at 45 degrees of bank, 110 mph. Dave told me that we'd have to add power as we went past 30 degrees of bank to maintain speed and altitude. This was pretty fun and it certainly gets you turned in a hurry.

The next one was a minimum radius turn, it's also called a canyon turn for those of you that have canyons to fly in. This type of turn is done at 80 mph, with the flaps set to 40 degrees. Dave brought her over to 45 degrees of bank and then added power to maintain our speed and altitude. Wow... I thought that we did a tight turn before, but at 80 mph she practically circle the same spot on the ground like a string was tied to her... I've never seen the heading indicator spin so fast... this turn is fun!

The final turn Dave showed me was a collision avoidance turn. This is the type of turn a pilot would use to avoid an imminent midair collision, it is an aggressive manoeuver and the most abrupt maneuver I've experienced to date. Basically it's an immediate and aggressive reduced power dive into a steep right turn all in one. I hope that I never have to perform one outside of training. I would think that this type of turn would scare the crap out of most people who don't fly alot, or are non pilots.

After Dave finished showing me these new turns, I took over and flew us back to the airport and did my second landing. I lined us up with runway 21 for a straight in approach and brought us down without too much drama. Throttle to 1,500 rpm, hold our altitude to reduce our speed, then extend flaps 20 degrees and maintain 80 mph for a nice glide.

About a minute or so out we were a bit low on the glide slope so Dave had me add a some power to bring us back up into a slightly high glide (three white lights on the papi) to the runway. I added a bit of power while pulling back on the yoke to maintain 80 mph. This brought us back up and then I reduced the rpms back down to 1,500.

I managed to bring us all the way down perfectly to the last few feet, then I flared a little early and ballooned a bit. Dave very quickly "assisted me" with the throttle by adding some power for a few seconds. This allowed us to float back down gently a second time and do a really nice landing. Dave helped with the yoke a bit to bring her down onto her back wheels and we rolled down the runway for quite some time with the nose wheel in the air, then the nose wheel gentle descended into the asphalt.

While my first landing was nearly all me, I needed more "hands on assistance" from my instructor during my second one. The important thing is that I learned from his assistance. I wonder if it's too early to spend an hour or so just doing circuits....

Another great lesson in the books...

Another weekend gone.

2005-11-27T16:26:00.000-08:00

I had hoped to go flying on Sat, unfortunately the aircraft had been booked until 3 PM and I'd planned to take the family to the annual christmas parade at 4 PM. So Saturday was shot.

So my "Plan-B" was to go up today, but the weather didn't coorperate. The winds were good but we had broken clouds at 1,800 and not much of a horizone, so today was a flop too.

I dropped into the the airport this afternoon, which is only 2 KM from my house, and spoke with my instructor about going up tomorrow afternoon (Plan-C).

The forecast looks promising so I'm hoping to wrap things up early at the office and go flying around 2.

I'm going to get back into the books tonight and start studying for the TC PP exam. I finished ground school a couple of weeks ago and haven't touched my books since. I figure I'll have the required 10 hours flight time in by the end of the Christmas holidays and I'd like to write the first week Jan.

Lesson #3 Climbs and Descents

2005-11-19T16:45:00.000-08:00

Another great lesson today, are they all like this?

This was my first flight with my new instructor, his name's Dave. He's a class one instructor with more than 2500 hours, he seems pretty laid back, which I like. Today's lesson was climbs and descents, we also did some engine out / best glide work and practised some balked approaches, finally the lesson ended with me doing my first landing!

We started with a preflight brief to go over what we'd be covering during the lesson. It took a little longer than usual as there was much more material to cover, plus we chatted about some other things as well. We then headed out to the hanger to preflight the aircraft, she needed some oil, then we pushed her outside to finish the preflight inspection. It was chilly and FFRN was bit reluctant to start.

I handled the calls to the tower, and wrote down the airport advisory, I then taxied us out to runway 28 (which takes about five minutes) and performed my second takeoff. I found this takeoff mush less stressful than the first, however the sun was in my eyes which made it hard to see the the airspeed indicator. We flew west northwest of the airport to our practise area, and spent the next 45 minutes practising different types of climbs, descents, simulated engine-out glides and then some balked approaches.

The first climb we did was for best rate (Vy), which is achieved at 83mph at full throttle. The first thing we did was scan for traffic, next we checked the gauges to make sure everything looked good, then I brought the nose up to the angle I wanted, which reduced our speed, then I applied full power, adjusting our angle of climb to maintain 83 mph, then I adjusted the trim to eliminate the pressure on the yoke. Every thirty seconds or so I'd drop the nose a bit to do a quick forward scan and then point her skyward again bringing her back down to 83 mph.

The second climb is for best angle (Vx), which is even slower at 69 mph than a Vy climb. A Vx climb starts by scanning for traffic, checking the gauges, then pointing her skywards at a even steeper angle than before, then apply full power while adjusting your nose up attitude to bring your speed back to 69 mph. Again I'd lower the nose every 30 seconds or so to make a scan out front for traffic and then and point her skywards again. Vx climbs shouldn't be maintained for long periods of time as the airflow is reduced to the engine and overheating is a concern.

Next we practised some en route climbs which are done at a faster speeds and lower climb rates. These types of climbs are more comfortable for your passengers and allow you to maintain good forward visibility.

Next we did some simulated engine out / best glide speed practise, best glide is achieved at 75 mph.

We then moved on to descents, both power off and power on. We trimmed the aircraft for level flight at an indicated 110 mph @ 3,000 feet, (If memory serves me right I think that this was 2500 rpm - which is a fast cruise). Dave then had me pull the throttle nearly to idle, hands off the yoke. We immediately started to descend while maintaining 110mph. At low power settings and high descent rates one must remember to apply engine power for about ten seconds or so, every 500 feet, to prevent shock cooling the engine.

I then did some power on descents, these types of descents are done with reduced engine power, so shock cooling wasn't a concern as the engine was still turning 1,700 rpm.

Next we practised some balked approached. Basically I set us up for a landing (at 2,000 feet though), 75 mph with 20 degrees of flaps. Dave then had me apply full power and then bring the flaps back up. The plane would immediately start to climb. After a couple of these we decided to head back to the airport.

We were about 10 miles out and I had planned to enter the normal left hand circuit for runway 28, which involved crossing at midfield. I made my call and the tower came back and gave us the option of a straight in approach for runway 21, which would save us a few minutes of taxiing. Some fancy flying on my part to correct our approach for the new runway, got it lined up, lowered the flaps 20 degrees, reduced the engine to 1,700 rpm, and brought IAS to 75. This put us in a nice gentle glide to the runway.

I found myself crabbing just a bit to the right due to a 6 knot crosswind coming from my 90, but I didn't have any problem lining us up with the centerline. Everything went well and I did all of the flying with Dave adding just a bit of input to assist with the "flare" at the end. It was by no means a greaser landing, but I've experienced worse as a passenger on some commercial flights, so I was pretty darn pleased with myself, to say the least.

A quick recap of my third flight lesson:

- I did nearly all the radio calls today and didn't mess anything up, one minor error.
- I did my second takeoff.
- I'm getting more comfortable and more confident flying the plane.
- I did my first landing.

Another great lesson, can't wait till next weekend!

A web developer I am not.

2005-11-18T18:13:00.000-08:00

I thought that I'd "spruce things up a bit" and do some simple editing of my blog site, writing some of my own html from scratch... well actually... some cutting and pasting to be exact.

I've just added a few links to some of the other student pilot blog site's that I to read regularly.

When I first started seaching for some quality blogs sites on the topic of flying, from a student's perspective, there wasn't alot of sites that jumped out at me initially. I figure if I can save somebody some time searching for material like mine, I've done my good "net" deed of the day.

As I write this entry I'm just starting out on the road of flying, waiting eagerly for each weekend to come, hoping the weather is good so I can get my next lesson in. (If you fly, or you're a student pilot like me you'll know what I mean).

These fellow blog sites that I added links to are "veteran student pilots", with some great blogs worth reading, well written and a wealth of knowledge.

Ground school finished, and my instructor is leaving.

2005-11-17T06:20:00.000-08:00

Ground School:

Tuesday night was the last night of ground school, we've spent the last couple of week reviewing everything and doing some example tests and exercises.

I've learned a tremendous amount, which is pretty amazing considering that I've had very little time to study outside of class. I hope to take the TC written test right after Christmas, so this will give me about six weeks to study, including the Christmas break.

My Instructor:

I've known for about a month now that my instructor (Paula) was leaving, she has decided to move to Ottawa for personal reasons. I'm sad to see her go, as we seemed to get along pretty well and I was looking forward to our winter flying lessons.

I had some minor reservations about her at the beginning, when I met her for the first time (only because she was young), but she turned out to be an excellent instructor, both in the classroom (groundschool) and flying.

I'm sure she going to do great wherever she goes, and if she continues to teach, her students will be lucky to have her as their instructor.

I wish her all the best.

Lesson #2 Straight and Level

2005-11-16T20:55:00.000-08:00

With this weeks lesson titled "Straight and Level", I thought to myself... how hard could it be? I already did climbing and descending turns last week, so this straight and level stuff should be a piece of cake, right? Well... it wasn't as straightforward as the name might imply.

Before we went out to preflight the aircraft, we reviewed last week's lesson and then we went over the new stuff that we'd be covering during this week's lesson. We touched on things like various cruise power settings and how the transition from one to another effects the attitude of the aircraft. My instructor then reminded me that I'd be doing the takeoff today, I thought to myself, OK... second lesson and she wants me to do the takeoff, this should be at least interesting. We finished up with brief and then went out to the hanger to preflight the aircraft.

I still needed some prompting at the start, but once I got going I pretty well covered everything on my own. We pushed the aircraft outside, shut the hanger door and jumped in. Went through the checklist inside the plane, this time much quicker than before, fired her up, everything looked good.

Paula informed me that I'd be doing some of the radio work today, she then told me what I should say. Now, how hard could it be to say a few simple things on the radio, I'm a firefighter, so it's not like I'm unfamiliar with the talking on the radio. Well, I contacted the tower to let them know who we were, our location and that we were just finishing with our run-up. So far so good.

I then told them of our intentions, that we'd like to work to the northwest at 3,000 feet and below, and that we are looking for the A/P advisory. The tower came back with a bunch of stuff, some of which I remembered. (Paula had written it all down). Then I messed up when I tried to repeat back our taxi instructions, which was to taxi alpha, charlie, runway 21 to runway 28. It's pretty simple now that I think about it, but at the time I got a little flustered, I gave my instructor a blank look after I got the runways backwards, I think that I might have thrown in a runway that didn't exist for good measure too, she jumped right in without missing a beat and corrected my error.... tower never said a word. I'm still shaking my head about it though.

I managed to taxi us out to the active runway, which took about five minutes. I then did a 180 to put us into the wind on the centerline. Paula then went through the "in the event of something going wrong during takeoff speech", basically what we would do if the engine failed with sufficient runway left to stop, etc. With all that out of the way, it was time for me to do my first takeoff!

Well... I thought to myself, this should be at least interesting. Left hand on the yoke and right hand on the throttle. I slowly went to full power (a little too slowly), a little right rudder to keep her from drifting left, 50, 60, 70, 80 mph, rotate! Climb to maintain 80 mph, keep her straight, wings level and we're flying!! I started drifting a little to the left after takeoff, I was not compensating with enough right rudder. But that was easily fixed after a little prompting from Paula.

So, about a minute after takeoff I'm trying my best to keep us straight, wings level, in a climb maintaining 80mph, my instructor calls us clear of the circuit and says here, and hands me a map! She then asks me when I think we'll be clear of the zone. Talk about multi-tasking! I say, "I dunno, maybe another two minutes or so", which was not the answer she was looking for. She pointed out some landmarks on the map and outside that I could use to determine when I should make my call, which I didn't manage to mess up somehow. We flew about 15 miles to the northwest of the airport and began our lesson.

First thing Paula showed me was what happens when we go from a low power setting in level flight to a high power setting, without touching the controls. The plane yaws to the left, and starts to climb, then the "faster" right wing rises after a few seconds and puts the plane into a left turn. The same thing happens when you go from a high power setting to a low one, except the yaw is the other way and the plane starts to descend, the faster wing rises and we bank right.

So to remedy this, you need to compensate with the rudder to keep the plane from yawing one way or the other, while pushing back or forward on the yoke depending on wether you adding or reducing power, then trim the plane to maintain level flight. We practised this for awhile, until I stopped getting the pedals backwards... add power - right rudder, reduce power - left rudder. Don't fly the plane using trim, adjust your attitude to maintain altitude with the yoke and then trim for it. None of it's terribly complicated, it just the cordination of everything at once.

At the end of the lesson Paula handed me the map and asked me if I knew where we were, I did. It's pretty easy really, as we live on an island so the shoreline below is always there. She then asked me what direction we needed to fly to get back to the airport, I eyeballed the map quickly and guessed 115, she asked me how I came up with that number, I told her the took a rough guess, which was not what she wanted to hear.

She showed me the compass rose around the airport and how to use it for a heading fix. I then picked a "new" heading of 150, (this time using the compass rose on the map), she agreed with me and told me to head back to the airport. After I completed our turn home, she asked me if I could see the airport, we were still more then ten miles away but I was able to find it after a few seconds.... cool, getting much better at this.

All in all another great lesson, it's still a little overwhelming. I find writing these blogs very useful, they really help me review the lesson and make sense of it.

Couple things that I'm getting better at:

Trim - not getting it backwards anymore.
Turns - much better, not losing nearly as much height.
Straight and level - once I have her trimmed up, I'm actually getting somewhat "comfortable" flying the aircraft.

Can't wait till next weekend!

The weather blues...

2005-11-09T21:23:00.000-08:00

Well, I was really looking forward to this past weekend's lesson (straight and level), unfortunately the weather did not cooperate at all. After reading many times about weather cancellations in some of the other flying blogs I follow, it's happened to me too, and only my second lesson.

All we needed was a measly 2,000 ft, but the overcast didn't get any higher than 1,700 ft all weekend. I checked the metar every few hours, both days, this sucks!

Our airport is 160 feet, (200 feet rounded up), add another 1,000 feet for circuit height, and we need to stay a minimum 500 below the cloud base, so technically we were at the bare minimums, for one afternoon, but we decided not to push it.

Anyways, this weekend is looking good...

Ground school

2005-11-08T22:27:00.000-08:00

Ground school classes started the first week of Sept., they were held two nights per week and were about 2 hours in length, sometimes a little longer. There was seven to ten students most nights, so it's was fairly good size group, not too big and not too small.

I found the classes well laid out and organized, our instructor had a good teaching style and alot of patience, as went go over each new section of our book she'd emphasize the things that we'll have questions on for our exam.

As I write this blog entry, ground school is wrapping up and we only have a couple of weeks left, all of which is review. I felt that it went pretty well and I did manage to learned alot of new stuff, and I do mean alot, everything from how an aircraft flies, weather, air regulations to cross country navigation.

During class we wrote the radio exam, went through the PSTAR and wrote the test. We did a tower tour and spoke with one of the FSS, who's also a pilot. We went out to the hanger and throughly went over one of the schools Cessna 172s, and looked at some other neat aircraft as well.

I would not say that ground school is difficult, but you do need to set aside enough time to read each section before class. There is an awful alot of material to learn and remember for the exam.

The only part that I, and nearly everyone else, didn't get right off the bat was intercepting specific VOR radials. I'm a very visual person so once I visualized what was going on (draw it on a piece of paper) I'm was able to answer the various bearing questions. Some advice on this topic, read the questions twice, the keywords "to" and "from" make a huge difference! It also doesn't help that some of the incorrect answers assume that you've made stupid mistakes like this, and give you "seemingly" the correct answer.

As I have to drive to another province to write the Transport Canada private pilot exam, I figure that I'll give myself some time to study and get some of the required flying done before I write it. I figure that early January looks like a good date to write.