Archive for category GPS Tracks
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.
Sightseeing Over London
Posted by Colby in GPS Tracks, Training on August 27th, 2009
In order to help reduce the cost of building hours towards my commercial license, I have been offering to take friends and family up for sightseeing tours around the city. As far as I know, if I take two passengers, I am allowed to split the cost as long as I don’t take a profit on these flights. With three people onboard, a one-hour flight works out to be under $50 per person which is way better than the $140 I would be paying for just myself. To my knowledge, this sort of thing isn’t allowed in the US.
Today I took up a coworker and his thirteen year old son who was interested in flying. We did the standard sightseeing bit around the city and then flew over their house (a popular request). After that, we headed west of the city where I demonstrated some of the airwork items that I usually practice when I’m solo such as steep turns and stalls. We then headed back to the airport and did a few circuits. His son was fairly interested in most of the things I was busy doing so I tried to explain everything as best I could. The whole flight was 1.4 hours and I tracked it with the GPS on my iPhone. Below is the track:
St. Catharines & 100 Hours
Posted by Colby in GPS Tracks, Training on August 17th, 2009
This past weekend I planned two flights to CYSN (St. Catharines) and back to practice my cross country skills. The purpose of the flight was to visit with a friend of mine who I hadn’t seen in a while so I figured a 40 minute plane ride was less painful than a 3.5 hour train ride, especially considering what happened near Ottawa recently. Again on this trip I used MotionX GPS to track my flight.
Weather conditions on Friday evening were great: few clouds around 6000′ and about 12 miles visibility. The air was smooth, albeit hot and humid proving that density altitude can become a factor even in Ontario where most airports sit around 1000′ ASL. The picture above is looking out the left wing at a line of cumulous clouds making their way towards me. I had a little fun ducking around them as I made my way eastbound towards the Niagara region.
I had never flown into St. Catharines before so I brushed up on my MF procedures before the flight. They’re similar to ATF procedures but there are a few differences. For one, you’re physically talking to someone at a ground station rather than simply broadcasting your intentions to other pilots. As you’ll be able to see from the GPS track below, I used the straight-in beacon approach to runway 06 and taxied to the terminal to pick up my friend. Simply put, you fly towards the SN NDB (Ch. 408 on your ADF radio) and then turn (left in my case) heading 064º to line up with the runway which is 4.1 NM from the NDB. A simple approach for a simple pilot.
Parking in St. Catharines was very easy. The terminal is located at the very east end of the ramp closest to Bravo taxiway as it exits from runway 06/24. No landing or parking fees!
The return trip was also fairy uneventful. I used flight following from Toronto Center for both legs of the trip. They’re extremely helpful and I would recommend using them if you’re ever going to be near Toronto’s airspace. On more than one occasion, they gave me traffic advisories for both GA and commercial aircraft operating near Hamilton and London. With the sun in my eyes and haze reducing the visibility, I wanted all the help I could get (including using my VTA as a makeshift sun blocker device thingy). Hey… whatever works, right? All in all, both legs went smoothly. I’m definitely getting more comfortable navigating my way farther and farther from home. Having a GPS on board helps but you still need to be confident in your map reading abilities should anything happen to the GPS.
The first leg of my second flight to CYSN marked an aviation milestone for myself: 100 hours total flight time. Can’t wait until the big 200 rolls around and I can take my CPL flight test. Seems so far away….
Enjoy the GPS tracks and profiles. The southerly track is eastbound, northerly track is westbound. Note: GPS track may not show up if you’re using an RSS reader. For best results, view directly in your browser.
iPhone + MotionX GPS + Night Flying
Posted by Colby in Cool Stuff, GPS Tracks, Training on July 20th, 2009
I was recently offered an internship position with the government as a part of my university’s internship program. In a nut shell, I take a year off of school between my third and fourth year to work. I get real world work experience, a decent wage (being a government position) and a new reference to put on my resume. It’s not a bad deal at all, and I get a year off school to work on my commercial license too.. 
Due to my recently secured position with the Canadian government, I felt I could indulge myself in a new tech purchase. I’d owned an iPod Touch for a year and had always loved using it for anything I could when it came to flying: log book (LogTen Mobile), METAR/TAFs (AeroWeather), E6B Calculations (PilotWiz) and of course my own app for checking crosswinds (xWind)
The one thing the iPod Touch lacked was a GPS chip. So, on June 19, when the new iPhone 3GS came out, I went to my local Fido store and splurged on a new 16Gb black iPhone. I promptly did some research on the best GPS apps and came across Fullpower’s MotionX app. You can click on the link and read a bit about it, but I’ll give you the quick summary of features here: waypoint creation, multiple navigation modes, altitude and groundspeed readout, ETA readout, choice of OpenStreetMap or Google Maps, compass, music integration, and the ability to record your routes and export them in a few formats. With all of these features, I was skeptical as to how well they would all work for a $3 app. So, on a recent flight to Toronto City Center (CYTZ), I put this app through its paces. Turns out it does a pretty darn good job.
I turned on the the stopwatch feature within MotionX when I was done my run-up and let it start recording my position, speed, and altitude at every step along my flight. I departed runway 33 and made my turn eastbound following the 074º radial outbound to towards Toronto. Once clear of the London class D, I called Toronto Centre for flight following and told them I was just looking for a sightseeing tour of downtown Toronto, at which point I would turn around and come home. I needed 2.1 more hours of night PIC time for my night rating so it seemed like a sensible route.
The great thing about MotionX is that you can export your saved routes in GPX format which is supported by many open source plug-ins and applications. I managed to find one called XML Google Maps for WordPress which allows me to show you my route and also my altitude and speed profiles. If you look below, you’ll see my route in blue departing runway 33 to the north, then turning east and heading to Toronto. The blue waypoint markers are laid out every 10NM along the route for reference. Toronto Centre cleared me to intercept the shoreline around Oakville and call City Center tower to enter their airspace. I knew there was a NOTAM out for YTZ that had an airspace closure around Humber Bay due to July 4 fireworks. I don’t really know why we had fireworks for an American holiday, but it was still a pretty cool to see from the air!
If you follow my route to the west side of Humber Bay, you’ll see that I circle a few times while watching the fireworks and then head back west along the shoreline. I climbed back up to 4500′ and headed home. One of the cool things about the GPX file that I exported was the altitude and speed profiles that the XML Google Maps plugin allowed me to generate. You’ll notice that at the beginning of the flight, my flight plan called for a 5500′ cruising altitude eastbound (conforming with cruising altitude orders of course). Toronto Center stepped me down to 2000′ when I was circling watching the fireworks to keep me under any Toronto Pearson IFR traffic coming and going from our nations busiest airport. You can then see my climb, and subsequently the number of miles it took to climb 2500′ back to cruising at 4500′: about 10NM.
Last but not least, the speed profile. Now you might notice a little spike in the middle of the profile that reaches about 400 knots. This is obviously an error within the app and I noticed that the speed was the least reliable performance measure during the flight. It fluctuates a lot but you can still average out the speeds and find that I was cruising at about 120-130 knots groundspeed eastbound and a bit slower westbound. Nonetheless, its a pretty cool graph.
Well after all was said and done, I was extremely happy with my $3 purchase. This little app is a great tool for flying and any other activity you can think of. I recently took it to Halifax on vacation and used it a lot to find my way around downtown. It has the option of caching the map tiles (up to 250Mb of data) so that even if you lose your data connection or don’t have a data plan, you can still use the app. Just make sure to cache the maps you’re going to use before you head out into the world.
In terms of my flying, I need 0.4 more hours of hood time or sim time to complete my night rating. I really do love flying at night and have gotten used to the differences. It’s smoother and can be a lot prettier at night with all of the small towns and city lights you see along your route. Toronto was a beaming glow of orange in the distance that I could see from at least 50 NM away. Not bad at 4500′!
Does anyone out there use their iPhone while they fly? More specifically, do you use any GPS apps that you find particularly useful? Let me know in the comments. I’m eager to try new things out.
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