Posts Tagged CPL
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.
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.
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.
Cat. I Screw Up
I got my category III medical back in 2007 when I was working on my PPL, but now that I’m working towards my CPL, I needed to go and get my category I medical. There aren’t many differences between the two categories. For starters, the cat I needs to be renewed yearly whereas the cat III can be renewed every five years. Since this was my first time getting a cat I, I also needed to get an audiogram (hearing) and EKG (heart).
As far as I was aware, I had passed all of the tests I was given and my doctor said I would be receiving my new medical sticker in the mail within a month, depending on how busy Transport Canada was. Within two weeks, I got a little brown envelope in the mail with TC’s return address on it. I opened it up to find a letter and no renewal stickers. To my surprise, the letter said that I had failed my colour vision test and I was being issued a restricted medical and licence.
This was news to me. My doc told me there were no concerns and I should expect my medical in a months time. Weird. So I call my doctor’s office and explain the letter (which he also got a copy of) and he is just as confused as me. He tells me to come in and take a different colour vision test that is more accurate.
When I get there, he explains that there was a mixup on my chart and I was marked as having incorrectly guessed that last four Ishihara tests in his book. If you’ve never seen what an Ishihara test looks like, here’s a link to one.
I was under the impression that each page in his book contained a number within the coloured circles. The reality was that each of the last four pages contained no number. I noticeably struggled to find a number with those last four tests, so I just guessed a number that I thought I might have seen. The doc usually gives people a second chance if they didn’t know about the “no number” possibility but I was administered this test by the nurse, so I never got that chance. I was marked as having four mistakes out of 21, which is above the threshold. The doctor never double checked this before he sent in the medical form so I was marked as a fail.
My new licence restriction limits me to day VFR only with two way radio communication into and out of control zones. With winter fast approaching and daylight hours virtually gone by 17:00, this severely restricts the available time I can fly – I worked until 16:00 every day.
We sent in a new Farnsworth colour vision test about three weeks ago, so I should hopefully be receiving an unrestricted licence and medical in the mail by early December. I’ve attached pictures of my restricted licence and medical. They’re stickers that you place in the new booklet type licences.
My instructor said it took him 6 months to get a”corrective lenses required” restriction removed from his licence when he was still in training. I really hope my problem doesn’t take that long to fix.
Canadian Licensing Stats
Every quarter, Canada’s governing aviation body (Transport Canada) publishes statistics on the number of licenses currently in force. They do a nice job of breaking down the stats by type of license, gender, age, student permits, newly issued, air traffic controllers, province and region, among others. I belong to the column of newly issued aeroplane private licenses, so I thought I would make a few graphs to illustrate the breakdown between a few different classes of data. All data is current as of June 2009.
To start, I thought I would compare the number of private (PPL), commercial (CPL), and airline transport (ATPL) licenses currently in force in Canada. As you can see from the chart below, the vast majority of aeroplane licenses issued in Canada are PPLs with about 27,000 in force. The next biggest chunk comes from the ATPL group with over 11,000 in force and finally the CPLs with 8,000.
No surprises here. The PPL is the least specialized license you can obtain in this group so naturally most of the weekend pilots and general aviation pilots will be included here. The CPL allows you to fly for hire, but there’s only so much you can do with it if you expect to move up to the airlines, so that’s probably why you see it at the bottom of the stack numbers-wise. The airline pilots and aspiring airline pilots hold the ATPLs and make up a good chunk of the total licenses issued at almost one quarter.
Next, I’ve included the same data but for helicopter licenses. You’ll notice that most of the licenses held in this class are by the CPLs. ATPLs make up the next biggest group while PPL helicopter licenses bring up the rear. I believe that helicopters are a little more expensive to operate and maintain than your average single engine airplane so perhaps that’s why we see a huge drop in PPL helicopter licenses in force.
The next logical step would be to look at the split between male and female PPL, CPL, and ATPL aeroplane licenses. Before I looked at the numbers, I knew that there were less female pilots than males, but I was actually quite stunned when I saw the stats.
I figured that the split would be more around 15-20% female, but the number is actually much lower at between 5-7%. In my experience, there have only ever been one or two female flight instructors at the schools I’ve been at and I think I’ve been on two commercial flights where the first officer was female. I have never seen a female captain before but I’m sure there are lots out there.
The final category I’ll look at is one of the more important categories for myself: age. Since I’m working towards my CPL and eventually my ATPL, I want to know when to expect airlines to hire. A big factor is the number of pilots that will retire in the near future. I know that we’re currently in a recession, but the economy will no doubt recover by the time I’m ready to start working as an instructor, so I’m not too worried. Here are the numbers (click to enlarge):
In the PPL category, most of the licenses are held by people under 30. Looking at the bell curve of numbers between 30 and 65, the peak comes at license holders aged 50-54 years old. It’s important to take into account generational bias here because this is exactly where the baby-boomers fall.
Moving onto the CPL category, we can see that the younger folks definitely rule the commercial licenses. Pilots under 40 hold the majority of the CPLs in force in Canada. There is a bit of a bump with the baby-boomers again at ages 50-54.
Finally, the ATPLs. This category is a little more constant towards the middle age groups. The most ATPLs are issued to pilots aged 35-39 where only very few are issued to pilots aged over 60. With stringent medical requirements, many pilots over the age of 50 are forced to retire as their bodies age. While I feel bad for these guys, it will eventually open doors for me. Looking at ATPLs aged over 50, we can see that there are 3,948 of them. This means that within the next 10-15 years, we’ll probably see most of these guys retire. In percentage terms, close to 36% of ATPLs will be retiring in the next decade, if not sooner. This is great news for aspiring airline pilots such as myself. Even if I can’t land a job in the airlines, the vacuum effect of these retirements combined with the hopeful upturn in the economy will create jobs at all levels of commercial aviation in Canada and around the world.
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