Photo gallery

From my latest flight with RTH. Enjoy

Military Helicopter on the Apron

waiting on the baggage handlers I guess!

waiting in line for the runway

lets go!

the old terminal building

Pickering Nuke plant

the terrain changes a lot once you get beyond Uxbridge

local quarry, good nav landmark

Those cliffs are not so visible from the air!

thread the needle, the dreaded left hand approach for 08!

Bloor street viaduct

the city is tall and I am low!

don't look down.

home stretch

back where we started

Checking in, checking out

RTH and I are away for the next couple of days. Our Christmas present to ourselves, two nights in a nice hotel with spa visit and Christmas dinner thrown in.

It’s actually been a fair while since I stayed in a hotel for pleasure rather than business. I’ve got my reader loaded up with books and free Wi-Fi at the hotel.

Looking forward to a couple of relaxing days. Posting will resume after I return.

Happy holidays to all my readers out there in the blogosphere! 

Weird stuff, non-flying related

I have a bit of an internet presence that isn’t Local flight East related. Mostly on a forum for British expats that I make no attempt to remain anonymous on.

Mostly it’s just online stuff but a couple of times a year we try and arrange meet ups. That in itself gets interesting as you try to locate a group of people in a pub who a) you’ve never met before and b) have no idea what their real names are.

As with anything internet related, there are a few “characters”, a lot of in jokes and various ongoing sagas.

Anyways, it is Annual awards time. This year I have made the shortlist for three of them in the “Canada” section.

I’m in the running for

1)      Nicest poster (have no idea how this happened)

2)      Poster I’d like to have afternoon tea at the Ritz with (a little upset that I didn’t make it into the “gin soaked binge” category)

And finally and most bizarrely

3)      “Most Zealous Marmite Aficionado”  

For the record I loathe the stuff, so I can only assume that the nomination was intended ironically.

Sadly I’m dead last on number 1 but winning number 3.

Highs and lows.

One of the main difference between D’s Mooney and the 172’s I cut my pilot teeth in, is that his is a low wing plane vs the high wing Cessna.

I’d never really given the difference much thought to be honest, other than “some planes are different to the one I learned in.”

Now though, I’m starting to contemplate the various advantages and disadvantages of each plane design. As a former student, the tendency is to judge the plane you learnt in as “normal” and judge everything else relative to it. The fact of the matter is though, the 172 is an excellent training aircraft but may not be the best choice for a plane to go places in.  The 172, for example, is touted as a four seater plane but if you put four adults and baggage in it, well you’re going by road because you haven’t got any room for fuel and you are probably well over your takeoff weight.

Other differences aside (D’s Mooney has retractable gear and a variable pitch prop), the age old debate of high vs low wing continues. Now I’ve never flown a low wing, but I’ve flown in one. Based on that these are my observations

·         It is a lot easier to check the fuel in a low wing plane. No milk crates needed

·         It is easier to get into a high wing plane, no climbing on the wing needed and there are two doors

·         You have to be a lot more careful taxing a low wing, cones and other assorted apron furniture passes easily under a high wing. I think it would be easy to take out taxiway lighting if you weren’t careful

·         Crosswind landings concern me a little; I think striking a wingtip would be easier in a low wing, especially if you slip it in like I tend to.

·         Despite other people’s opinions, I actually find the visibility in turns slightly better in a low wing.

Now my final observation and I honestly don’t know if this is purely psychological or due to the fact that the Mooney is a heavier plane but I feel a lot more stable in the low wing. The little bumps and jolts of everyday turbulence just don’t seem to concern me as much. I’m a lot more comfortable in the plane in general.

This is a phenomenon that warrants further investigation. I’d love to get some flying time in a low wing. A Piper or something. Now I just need to find one.

I want me one of those!

One of the other things D wanted to play with in his plane was the autopilot. I’ll admit to being intrigued. None of the planes I’ve ever flown have autopilot, it is either not installed or deliberately disabled, lest us students learn to actually utilise it!*

Oh I’m so envious, I really want one! Even just the “altitude hold” function takes a massive workload off of you. Being able to track a VOR radial is amazing and the fact that you can set your own “virtual waypoints” is mind blowing to me. And all of this in a plane with a traditional “steam gauge” cockpit.

There are drawbacks of course, you really have to understand what the different modes do, so you realise just what it is the plane is actually going to do, whether it is track the heading, hold the altitude or seek out whatever waypoint you ask it to. Actually I think D’s autopilot can  fly IFR holds on its own.

But the most disconcerting thing of all, is watching a plane do a 15 degree bank to pick up a heading with no one’s hands anywhere near the controls. It is very very freaky to watch. I may have mentioned this once or twice. D just laughed.

You can actually use your hands to do stuff, like unfold your chart or pull out an approach plate, hard for me to get my head around, I’m barely beyond the “if-you-take-your-hands-off-the-control-column-the-plane-will-instantly-crash” stage of flight management.

 But I’m going to have to get used to it I guess, for various reasons RTH is planning on getting checked out in the flight schools 182. It has a glass cockpit with a G1000 FMS. Half of the “fun” is going to be learning the glass cockpit system alongside dealing with a variable pitch prop.

One of our “projects” this winter is to take some online training and familiarise ourselves with it. I need to know just as much as RTH who’ll be flying it as chances are I’ll be programming the thing.

Fun times ahead.

* I understand why they disable these things for students but it does add another thing to the list of "things-they-don't-teach-you-on-your-ppl-that-you-have-to-figure-out-for-yourself"

A flight odyssey

As you may have gathered, I’m currently on vacation until January 5 and looking forward to it to be honest.

RTH starts his vacation a day later and so asked me “what are your plans for Friday then?”

My careless “whatever the hell I feel like!” was replaced by a different plan upon receiving an email from D. Basically he was taking his plane up for a flight and wanted to know if I wished to tag along.

I thought about it for all of three nanoseconds before replying in the affirmative!

D is working towards his instrument rating at the moment; he’s passed the written and is chugging away at the flight test standards. Something which leaves me slightly in awe, I’m still fumbling my way around the sky VFR. D talks of circling approaches, IFR holds and procedure turns and I nod sagely and pretend I understand every word.

D had a few things he wanted to get done this flight, including some monitoring of his EGT’s. Some tasks that would involve a bit of “head in the cockpit” time. I was more than happy to act as a spare pair of eyeballs while he did what he needed.

We did the “engineering” stuff, concluded that the autopilot was behaving as it should and headed up to Muskoka to practice some instrument approaches, again something the subtleties of which escape me at the moment.

Either way I had a spare few moments to take stock of my surroundings. It’s a lot snowier up there and the lakes are slowly starting to freeze over, smaller ones totally frozen and larger ones starting to go at the edges.

It’s pretty.

Oh so very pretty up there.

Unbelievably beautiful in fact.

I can’t believe I get to do this for fun!

Even after all my flight hours, all my training, all the “flinging it around” airwork, I still need a reality check sometimes.

It is such a privilege to be able to do this.

Oh yeah you might be wondering about the “odyssey” part of the title. As D filled in the paperwork for the flight, he noted that we’d just ticked over to 2001 hours exactly on the plane.

Lesser known hazards of the office party

I’ve mentioned before that I don’t go to mine, the combo of alcohol and idiots not being conducive to me keeping my job. But I did go to RTH’s. A little less fancy than the year-of-the-sparkly-shoes but still pretty good.

Clotheswise it was still problematic though, Friday is a casual day here so I couldn’t wear anything too fancy to work without drawing the inevitable ‘got an interview?” snide remarks, so I dressed “normally” and carefully folded my newly dry cleaned suit in my bag and changed at the end of the day.

I jumped in a taxi, heels and snow generally being a bad combination, and immediately caught my tights on the Velcro fastening on my bag.

This is why I can’t have nice things.

But this wasn’t the main hazard. No it would seem that the combo of fake leather on my funky new suit and dry cleaning chemicals has left me the worst case of contact dermatitis in living history. All up my arms where they came into contact with the sleeves.

I’m ITCHY ITCHY ITCHY and having to stop myself ripping my own skin off.

Just one more reason why the office Christmas party is a bad idea.

On a positive note I managed to waste a good half hour in total texting a friend, googling various pictures of rashes and trading findings .

We were both relieved to discover that I didn't have Ebola , Lyme disease, ringworm or West Nile.

According to one flow chart though, it could have been Lupus.