Saying No
Posted by Colby in Instructional on May 11th, 2010
“Centralia traffic, Katana Foxtrot Echo Charlie Papa, turning final 28, touch and go, Centralia.”
I had just entered the circuit at one of the small uncontrolled fields near London. No one else was around and I had the whole place to myself to practice circuits. My instructor sat quietly to my right, letting me make all the decisions in his usual way. I would ask quesions and he would respond with: “What do you think?”
We turned final. Too high, too fast. Power to idle, flaps to LDG, start a slip to drop some altitude. It wasn’t working as planned and the runway wasn’t terribly long. I realized I had really botched the approach and had set myself up for a tricky landing.
The next decision was tough: Flaps up one notch, back pressure on the stick, full power. “Centralia traffic, Katana Fox Echo Charlie Papa, overshooting runway 28, left circuit, Centralia.” I had completely screwed up that approach in almost every way and it was the first time I ever had to overshoot during an actual approach. I knew my instructor wouldn’t be too happy and any second I was expecting him to start telling me the things I did wrong. He said, “That was awesome, good job.”
“Wait, what?” I was confused. I just made a series of mistakes which resulted in an unviable landing situation. How was any of that a good job? During the debreif after the flight, he explained what he meant by the comment. Aviation is ruled by A-type personalities: people who need to be right, who are extroverts, competitive, controlling, and impatient. To a certain extent, I possess these traits myself, but hopefully not to any extreme. My instructor explained that the hardest decision to make in aviation is the one where you admit that you screwed up. By overshooting, I admitted to myself and to him that I failed in my attempt to properly land the aircraft, but at the same time, I made the safest possible decison concerning the safety of the aircraft and all passengers onboard. Overshooting is the toughest decision you’ll make in aviation, especially if you’re an A-type personality.
Since that day back in 2007, I’ve definitely come a long way. I’m licensed, have a night rating, almost ready to flight test for my commercial license and will be starting my multi-IFR after that. I’ve forgotten many of my first training flights but that one stuck with me. It was, in my opinion, one of the most important things I’ve learned in aviation.
This is my first post in a while. I’m sorry about the absence but I’ve been busy working on getting my commercial ground school done with (all 80 hours that Transport Canada dictates). The flight school I’m with right now doesn’t currently offer CPL ground school so I’ve had to take it online with Harv’s Air in Manitoba. I wrote a post about this a while ago and I plan on doing a full review of the service they offer. Initial impressions are positive; however, there are many areas for improvement.
The event that sparked interest for this post happened on the weekend. I had planned to do my 300NM cross country which is also one of the requirements TC sets out for all CPL students, but the weather didn’t cooperate. I instead booked a regular solo slot for the afternoon and thought I would try and get up for some airwork practice. None of the flight instructors I have flown with before were at work that day so I needed one of the more senior instructors to sign me out. I’ve never flown with him either so he was a little apprehensive about signing me out. In fact, he told me he wasn’t comfortable letting me go given the current conditions (330/11G21) even though we have a runway 33 in London. The winds weren’t anything I couldn’t handle, but it comes down to liability and the person whose name goes beside yours on the sign out sheet. As an instructor, you have to make decisions that in all likelihood won’t please the student very much. I had just driven almost 30 minutes to get to the airport, did the walk-around and weight and balance and was ready to get going, only to be told (in a nice way) to go home.
Surprisingly, this was the first time this has ever happened in almost 3 years of flight training. I hope to be an instructor after I graduate university so these are situations that I had better get used to. An unhappy student is better than a dead or severely injured student.
Since I last posted, a few interesting things have happened, including getting to fly the DA40 Diamond Star. Hopefully I will have time in the not so distance future to write about it. I also ordered Peter Burkill’s book, 30 Seconds to Impact, which details the events surrounding British Airways flight 38 which experienced double engine failure on final into Heathrow. I’ve started reading it and will post a review when I’m done. Pete was nice enough to sign the inside cover for me too.
Currently, I’m focusing on my CPL written exam and preparing for the flight test. I’m sitting at just under 150 hours total time and hope to test within the next month or two.
Finally A Nice Day
So we finally got a nice weekend of sunny weather here in London. Blue skies forecasted for both Saturday and Sunday with one booking on each day. I decided to get some cross country time in by planning a trip to Chatham (CNZ3) which is a 5,000′ uncontrolled strip 60 NM southwest of London. I had a direct tailwind heading to Chatham and a not-so-fun direct headwind coming back. I managed to clock my fastest groundspeed yet at a whopping 150 knots. Yeah yeah.. so it’s not really that fast for a lot of people, but for a little tiny DA20, that’s pretty good! Anyways, I’ll try and get in another cross country flight on Sunday which will boost my XC time over 23 hours PIC. Looking forward to the long cross country that I get to do as part of my CPL requirement (3 intermediate stops and at least 300NM in distance).
Here is the evidence.
Followed by the shear excitement derived from such speed.
Mike Da Mustang [Video]
Posted by Colby in Cool Stuff on February 5th, 2010
This is clearly meant for kids but I still find it awesome. Lots of adult aviation references in there too. Enjoy episode one!
1920 Flight Test Requirements
Posted by Colby in Aviation Tidbits, Cool Stuff on February 4th, 2010
I came across this link a while ago and am just getting around to posting it. The scan is from Smith’s Falls Flying Club’s website and details the requirements of obtaining a PPL in 1920’s Canada. The test is conducted solo with the examiner watching from the ground.
Although there are way more requirements these days, at least you don’t have to shut the engine off at 5,000′ and glide to a spot landing within 300′ of your mark! Enjoy this tidbit of Canadian aviation history…
Credit: Smith’s Falls Flying Club
First Experience with Glass
To my surprise, my flight school recently received a brand new Diamond DA20 equipped with the Garmin G500 glass cockpit. Apart from flight sim, I have no glass time but I’m pleased to say that I’ve fallen in love.
Aside from this new aircraft, the only other glass cockpits reside on the DA40’s at my flight school, which rent for close to $200/hour. Needless to say, I’ll stick with the $145/hour DA20 even if it means the old six pack steam gauges. But now I have another option and I’m sure it’s going to be tough to get rental time on it.
The G500 is the little brother to the G1000 system that Garmin is famous for. It’s not as complicated and is only certified on single and multi-engine aircraft under 6,000 lbs. It consists of two 6.5 inch LCD displays: the Primary Flight Display (PFD) on the left and the Multifunction Display (MFD) on the right. Between these two displays, pretty much every bit of flight information imaginable is at your finger tips… at least that’s what it seems like to a low time Garmin virgin like myself!
The G500 grabs it’s GPS information from the GNS430 which is something I’m already used to. This is the GPS/avionics system installed on the other DA20’s at our flight school. All in all, it’s quite the system. I’m sure that when I get a chance to fly the DA40’s, I will marvel at the awesomeness of the G1000, but for now, the G500 will do just fine.
So how is it to fly with the G500? Well it’s a bit weird getting used to. I found myself wanting to look at the standby instruments because they were what I was used to looking at. I find that executing manoeuvres such as steep turns are a little bit trickier as well. I’ve got to be switching my view from outside to inside and then to back outside, but I find myself searching for where to look on the displays. I’m not completely comfortable yet with the system but it will come in time. Navigating your way around the various options is pretty simple to do. It’s the same sort of system on the GNS 430 which utilizes scroll wheels to change fields. I’ll have to explore all of the options one day when I have the time because there’s so many of them (traffic alerting, terrain alerting, synthetic terrain vision, etc.)
To end on a completely unrelated note, here is an audio file I came across recently. It’s old but it’s still funny. Enjoy. Cockpit Announcement
Winter Training [Video]
I think it is finally starting to hit me that I’m training for a commercial pilot licence. To think that I’ve been dreaming of being paid to fly and now it’s all starting to seem within reach. Last weekend marked a winter miracle here. Both Saturday and Sunday were beautiful and sunny with few clouds in the sky. The wind was a bit gusty but you couldn’t ask for a more perfect winter weekend to fly. This gave me the perfect opportunity to get some dual instruction time in on the first day and practice solo the next.
My last handful of flight have been solo cross countries or solo airwork sessions. It was nice to have 200 lbs of knowledgeable instructor sitting to my right as I went through the manoeuvres that I would eventually have to demonstrate to an examiner. Steep turns, slow flight, stalls, and a spiral dive recovery to finish it all off. I’ve mentioned before that the CPL steep turn exercise is different than the PPL exercise. For the CPL, we do a turn through 180º at 45º of bank and then flip the wings back the other way to turn another 180º back to the heading we started on. It’s a little more complicated and involves more manipulation of the controls that the standard 360º steep turn.
Another new experience was a regular turn with 30º of bank in slow flight. For my PPL flight test, I only had to demonstrate a rate one turn in slow flight. This is a standard turn that will bring the aircraft through 360º in 2 minutes every time. It’s a fairly shallow bank angle and doesn’t require much thinking to get right. That said, when you’re hanging in the sky at 40 kts and have to execute a turn with 30º of bank, it’s a little tougher. The first time I tried, the nose dropped a good bit and the airspeed picked up 10 kts at least. Second time the nose still dropped but I tried my best to hold it up there while not stalling. Third time was the charm and wow does that airplane turn when you do it properly. I would estimate it can get through 360º in around 10 seconds. That said, a higher bank angle at a lower airspeed and nose high attitude is a lovely equation with the word “spin” on the other end of the equals sign. It’s a rapid turn and requires quick reflexes to keep the airspeed and altitude pegged while still operating safely. Something I’ll be practicing lots in the future.
As for the ground portion of the CPL, Transport Canada requires me to have 80 hours of classroom instruction and a letter of recommendation to write the written exam. Since my flight school isn’t currently offering CPL ground school, I’m doing mine online with pilottraining.ca. They’re run by Harv’s Air out in Steinbach, Manitoba. I plan to write up a thorough review of their CPL product when I’ve delved a little deeper into everything it has to offer. So far though, I’m impressed with the amount of content. They’ve got slides, videos, audio, and quizzes for each chapter along with a bunch of other useful stuff. I will say though that the content delivery method is a little rudimentary – they’re using .swf files to deliver powerpoint slides. I would much prefer to view a PDF file. I managed to deduce that the first video was made in 2003 so it may be a bit dated, but as long as the rules haven’t changed, it still works just fine.
Below is a video I took of the airwork practice I mentioned above. I used some stick-tack to fixate my iPhone on the right wing. You’ll notice there’s lots of vibration but until I can get a proper mount, I’m afraid that’s as good as it’s going to get. About the only interesting thing to watch is the aileron and the right flap that you’ll see comes down during the second stall and during slow flight. The high pitch whine that you hear is the stall warning horn. And yes, it’s still that loud and annoying with a headset on.
A Day For Airwork
Posted by Colby in GPS Tracks, Training on December 14th, 2009
With all of the cross country flights I’ve been doing lately, I thought it would be a good day to go up and practice some airwork instead. It’s been a while since I worked on my steep turns and slow flight so a brush-up flight was in order. My handy iPhone recorded my track, altitude, and speed for this one so you can see my track overlayed onto google maps. Crosswind component was up there around 16 kts so I did two circuits before calling it quits.
Overall a good flight. Need to practice my commercial steep turns though. They consist of a steep turn 180º followed by a roll out and a reverse steep turn 180º back to where you started – all in one smooth motion. They’re looking passable right now but I can do better. You can see them as ‘S’ shapes on the GPS track below.
I See Trees of Green, Red Roses Too
A few days ago I received my new medical and licence in the mail. If you read my post from a few weeks ago, you’ll know that I was marked as failing my colour vision test on my last medical examination. As far as I’m aware, I can tell the difference between red and green, so I had to take a different test (which I passed) and send in the results. I was restricted to day VFR flight only which you can see in my other post on the pictures of the medical/licence I posted.
We recently switched to a passport type aviation booklet that holds all of our licences in Canada. It has pages for renewals and type/rating endorsements. When you get your licence/medical renewed, Transport Canada sends you a little sticker that you can place in the next blank spot. Along with those little stickers, they send you a bill for $55, which if you don’t pay, they turn your debts over to the Canada Revenue Agency (our taxation authority). Right now I work for CRA on internship, so I have to admit it was a little tempting to try and let the invoice lapse. Obviously I would never do that, but you can’t blame a guy for not wanting to pay those ridiculous fees.
Lately I’ve been flying smaller cross country flights in order to build my XC hours. You need 20 PIC XC hours as a requirement for your CPL here in Canada. As of last weekend, I’m at 19.8 hours. There are a few small uncontrolled airports within about 50NM of CYXU, so they make for the perfect 1.2 hour XC flight. No need to make a double booking at my flight school in order to go somewhere. Last weekend I got to fly both Saturday and Sunday. I can count the number of times that has happened on one hand.
Winter is fast approaching so the cancellation rate on my flight bookings is going to go up over the next month. Our first snowfall came two days ago when Southern Ontario was blanketed by a huge storm. A Colorado Low swept through bringing that lovely green, orange, and red pixelated radar screen that I’ve come to loathe over the years. The winds aloft at 3000′ were 57 knots. The low stratus was whizzing by above our heads at a pretty mighty clip.
My logbook just went over 120 hours total time. To be honest, that number is low for someone who has been flying for 27 months or so. If you’ve got the money and time, you can be fully licensed and working as a pilot in that time frame, but I’m not one of those people. I’m a full time student, albeit on internship right now which has given me some extra time/money before I graduate. Ideally, I’d like to have my instructor rating and be teaching by the time I graduate university. I need 100 PIC hours, amongst other requirements, before I can obtain my CPL. As of today, I’m halfway there with 50.1 hours in command. I can’t wait to get this flight test out of the way!
On a side note, I wanted to plug a new aviation blog that I’ve recently started following. Ian is a B777 pilot for British Airways and has started writing about his experiences. The great thing about the aviation community is that most people genuinely love sharing their passion for flying. It’s even better when pilots in such a senior position in the industry reach out and motivate the up and coming students. Getting advice from someone like Ian or Doug is invaluable in what is arguably one of the toughest industries to establish yourself in. So, I just wanted to welcome Ian to the blogosphere, and you should definitely be reading his posts if you’re interested in aviation or are an aspiring aviator yourself. Both Ian (The Flying Scotsman) and Doug (From The Flight Deck) are listed in my blogroll in the right sidebar, along with my other recommendations.
A Peek Around the Cockpit [Video]
Here’s a short video of the DA20’s cockpit in flight. I’m on the return leg of a cross country flight from Goderich (CYGD) to London (CYXU) at 5,500′. Groundspeed is a massive 130 knots – pretty fast for a DV20.
It should be noted that although the aircraft is called a DA20, it’s symbol on the flight planning form is actually DV20. I think that DA20 was already taken by a Dassault Falcon 2000.
Funny Approach Fixes
Posted by Colby in Cool Stuff on November 30th, 2009
I found a great series of approach fixes into Portsmouth International today. Being a huge Bugs Bunny fan, this one is pretty awesome.
In order, it reads: ITAWT ITAWA PUDYE TTATT —> IDEED.
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