Whee! I’m free!

Over the next month, I took with a few short flights in rented C-172s to celebrate my newly-won independence: to Kingston Airport to fly my parents around on 6 September, to Morrisburg Airport on 13 September, to Smiths Falls Airport on 18 September, to Peterborough Airport on 25 September, and finally, with my kids and my spouse’s cousin Andrea, over Arnprior Airport and back on 29 September.

But is it useful?

After only a month, however, the excitement of flying same-day trips within an hour of Ottawa in a rented plane was wearing very thin. I wanted flying to be useful, and to get to that point, I needed three more things:

1. A night rating, so that I wasn’t restricted to daylight flying
2. An instrument rating, so that I wouldn’t be grounded for days in bad weather
3. My own plane (or a share in one), so that I could go on real trips for business or family vacations

Student again … and owner

So barely a month after earning my PPL, I had my instructor, Alain Mussely, back in the right seat working with me on my night and IFR ratings. I went airplane shopping at the at the Buttonville Airport in November 2002 and decided to buy a 1979 Piper Warrior II (C-FBJO) — a low-maintenance, fuel-efficient plane that can cruise at 125 knots true airspeed for six hours (no reserve) with a 665 lb load. The plane arrived in Ottawa on 4 December 2002 for an extensive pre-purchase inspection, then I put it into the shop to have a four-place intercom installed over Christmas.

I earned my night rating in February 2003, and my instrument rating in July 2003, and then I had everything I needed. A couple of long trips before the instrument rating had convinced me of its value: I got stuck overnight at North Bay Airport because of bad weather on a flight back from Sault Ste. Marie in May 2003, and had to race out of Caldwell Airport near New York City in June 2003 in the wee hours of the night to escape ahead of 3-4 days of bad weather.

Finished

On 28 July 2003, I took my family and dog up for our first cross-country IFR flight. It was gloomy on the ground under a low overcast, and it was strange for my family inside the clouds when everything outside the windows went white, but then suddenly we burst into brilliant sunshine and blue skies. 11 months after earning my PPL, I finally had everything I needed to make flying useful. I have 750 hours’ more experience now, but I still have the same license, the same plane, and the same ratings.

A typical ELT.

I had an unusual experience this morning flying home from Sault Ste. Marie to Ottawa with my dog, Paisley. Three separate high-altitude jets heard an ELT signal at a point along my route about 20 miles south of North Bay.

The most common types of ELTs will start sending a signal automatically when they experience high G-forces (such as when an aircraft has made a forced landing or crashed), but most often, an ELT signal just means that a boat has bumped against a floatplane, someone forgot to turn off an ELT in the back of a courier truck being shipped back for a battery changed, etc. etc. It used to be that satellites monitored the emergency frequency 121.5 MHz, but they don’t do so any more (they’ve switched to the new 406 MHz frequency), so it’s up to us pilots to listen and report.

Joining the search

There was already a plane or helicopter with the callsign “Rescue 333″ doing a lower-level visual and ELT search. It also happened, however, that Toronto Centre was already talking with two small planes at lower altitudes who would both be crossing the location where the signal was received: me from west to east, and a Cessna 172 from south to north. Centre enlisted both of us to widen the radio-search area by tuning in 121.5 MHz on our second radios and listening for any signal as we passed through. Every 3-5 minutes, I turned off the squelch on my radio: that creates horrendous static, but it also lets me hear very faint signals.

None of us, including the search aircraft and other high-altitude airliners, heard anything more. I looked as carefully as I could, but from 9,500 ft in a low-wing aircraft it’s hard to see much detail, and I didn’t want to go lower and interfere with the Rescue aircraft’s search patterns.

Ping!

About 20 minutes later, over Algonquin Park, however, I did suddenly hear one very brief ELT wave (the part that sounds like a sheet of metal pinging), as if someone had switched an ELT on to test it then turned it off a second later. It was 8 minutes after the hour. All ELT testing is supposed to take place during the first five minutes of each hour, but I suspect that some floatplane pilot somewhere in the park just had a slow watch. Still, I reported what I heard to Centre, and they passed it on to the Rescue plane.

How to help

The odds are very high that this was a false alarm — most search and rescue calls are — but it was still sobering to think of a brother or sister pilot down there somewhere under the tree canopy, in desperate need of help. If you’re a pilot with two radios, I strongly suggest that you keep the second tuned to 121.5 MHz whenever you don’t need it to get weather, etc. — some day you might actually make a difference.

CYRO-CYAM VFR, 4.4 hours flight time (4.2 air time) PIC #flightlog

CYTZ-CYRO IFR 1.8 PIC in a PA-28-161 #flightlog

No one is using this hashtag for anything else, and it would make it easy for pilots to find other pilots on Twitter who’ve flown the same routes or used the same airports. So far, of course, I’m the only pilot to find.

Where do they look?

Point A to Point B

Let’s say that you filed your flight plan from Point A to Point B and that there are no obvious barriers (mountains, large bodies of water, restricted airspace).  I’m not sure exactly how SAR works, but let’s assume that they’ll search within a 5 nm radius of each airport, and along your route of flight from those circles, allowing for a 10° drift in either direction.  The search area appears in grey below (not to scale):

Point A to Point B search area.

For a 300 nm flight, using my very rusty high school geometry skills, I calculate the search area to be nearly 9,500 nm²!  That’s a lot of forest to search for a little plane with an unconscious pilot strapped into the front seat.

Point A to Point B (via Point C)

Fortunately, we can improve our chances quite a bit, simply by providing a checkpoint halfway through the flight:

Point A to Point B via Point C search area.

Now that Search and Rescue knows that you intended to fly via Point C (represented by the yellow triangle), rather than, say, flying to the north for better scenery, or to the south to buzz your buddy’s cottage, they can anchor their drift lines at an additional point, cutting out a lot of search area (I’m still allowing a 5 nm circle of ambiguity around the checkpoint).  I calculate that the search area is now reduced from nearly 9,500 nm² to just under 5,500 nm², a reduction of over 40% simply by adding one checkpoint in the flight plan.

Point C to Point B

But wait, there’s more!  Let’s say that, when you were over Point C (your midway checkpoint), you actually made a call to flight services and gave a position report.  Now there’s no need to search anything before Point C, because they know you passed it before you made your forced landing:

Search area after making a radio call over Point C.

You’ve reduced the search area from the original 9,500 nm² down to about 2,800 nm² — still a lot, but I’d bet more on your chances now.  Simply choosing a checkpoint, and making a radio call over it, can make a huge difference.

Caveats, etc.

Flight following is an even better option, since ATC will know much more precisely where you disappeared from the radar.  Unfortunately, flight following at lower altitudes is available only in highly populated areas.  In Canada,  below 10,000 ft you’re beyond radar coverage for much of the southern area of the country, not to mention the vast north.  Even in the US, radar coverage can be spotty — I’ve fallen below radar at 7,000 ft when flying IFR in both Maine and New Hampshire, for example, reverting to non-radar reporting procedures.

A checkpoint makes sense only if you can report over it, which means that you need to be able to reach flight services, which is non-trivial at low altitudes away from populated areas.  I plan my VFR flights with checkpoints that I know will be in range of an RCO or DRCO; if that doesn’t work, you can always try relaying your position report through another aircraft (air-to-air range is much further than air-to-ground).

Another interesting option for people who fly a lot in remote areas is the Spot personal messenger (site), which updates your position continuously via GPS and satellite and displays it on a web site. I haven’t tried it yet, but the price looks reasonable. It would be critical to mention the Spot in the remarks for your VFR flight plan, so that SAR would know to go to the site and check your flight path.

Last week I wrote about the summer flying dilemma, the challenge of balancing passenger comfort, speed, and the rising summer cumulus clouds. Pilots face a whole series of dilemmas like that with every flight — in fact, it’s probably fair to say that flying is more about finding balanced solutions to different dilemmas than it is managing the yoke, rudder, and throttle.

Weight vs. time

This week, I had to deal with a different challenge, the fuel and weight dilemma. A few years ago, I never had to worry about this one: my Piper Warrior can carry 665 lb when the fuel tanks are full, and that was enough for my whole family of four, our dog, and luggage, so filling the tanks for every flight was a no-brainer. Now my girls have grown into intelligent and beautiful women, and I’ve gone the other direction by putting on a few extra pounds, so I have to start thinking about fuel and weight.

Trade-offs

Here are the kind of options I consider before every flight:

Additional considerations

You have to consider a few points when looking over these choices:

• There is some stuff I have to carry in the plane — charts, Pilot Operating Handbook, tow bar, a couple of quarts of oil, some emergency supplies, cover, etc. That stuff weighs at least 20 lb even when I strip it to its bare minimum, so out of a 40 lb baggage load, only 20 lb would be available for bags — that’s 5 lb each for four people.
• People rarely fly naked (which is a good thing, given the average pilot’s age). Even in the summer, clothes and shoes add an extra 5 lb per person, and people tend to carry purses or backpacks with food, books to read, etc., adding an extra 5 lb each.
• For safety, you need to have a fuel reserve. The minimum required is 30 minutes (45 minutes at night) VFR, and more, including fuel to get to an alternate airport, IFR. For me, 2:40 fuel means at most a 1:40 flight VFR, and maybe 1:00 IFR, which isn’t enough to be useful for cross-country flying (a fuel stop every hour makes for a long flight).

There are yet other considerations. A lighter plane will take off in a shorter distance, climb faster, and cruise faster (I see a 5-10 knot difference in cruise speed between just me on board lightly loaded, and wallowing along at maximum gross weight). It costs time and money to tanker extra fuel along, and could also be a safety issue on a short runway, if there are trees looming at the other end.

The PIC’s burden

As with the summer flying weather dilemma, there’s no automatic right answer for this: that’s why you’re pilot-in-command — you have to think hard, and trade off one kind of safety or efficiency for another, hoping you’ve found the best balance. Airline pilots worry about this even more than small-plane pilots do: someone once pointed out to me that for a 747, every takeoff is a short-field takeoff.

This week, I got my whole family to Toronto and back safely, IFR both ways, landing with about 1:30 left in the tanks. It was nerve-wracking having to do such careful fuel management, and telling Porter FBO in Toronto the exact number of litres to put in each tank (rather than “fill ‘er up”), but it worked. My fuel burn was exactly as planned, we flew a bit faster for being light, and we got four adults back and forth in a 160 hp airplane.

Next week, it’s just me and the my 12-year-old Border Collie flying to the Soo. I’ve filled the tanks right up to the brim, and will fly the whole thing non-stop for four hours, IFR or VFR, while the old girl naps in the back seat.

On a typical VFR summer day in southern Canada or the northern US — the kind that the weather(wo)men call “a mixture of sun and cloud” with a decent amount of humidity — swirling columns of heated air, called thermals, start rising in the morning, and get higher and higher into the late afternoon as the sun warms the ground.

Clouds are the dividing line

At the top of those thermal columns, like scoops of ice cream on top of invisible cones, scattered cumulus clouds form. At first, those clouds might be only 1,000 feet thick and maybe 2,000 ft above the ground, but as the columns rise, the clouds get both higher and thicker, and some of them may develop into storm clouds during the afternoon (giving your typical cottage thunderstorm or 20-minute shower).

Underneath those clouds the horizontal winds are weaker, but the vertical motion of the thermals can cause a lot of turbulence — while the air may be smooth at breakfast, by early afternoon it can be rough enough to have passengers grabbing for the vomit bags, while the pilot feels like he or she is in a wrestling match with the yoke and rudder pedals.

Above the clouds, the air is normally smooth, but the winds are much stronger.

So where do you fly?

Flying eastbound

Eastbound, the best place to be is above the clouds if you (and your plane) can manage it. Prevailing summer upper winds in this part of the world are from the west or southwest, so on a good summer’s early afternoon you can get a 25-30 knot tailwind and smooth air at 9,500 ft eastbound. What’s not to love?

The problem is that the tops of those cumulus clouds keep getting higher and higher until almost supper time. In Canada, you need oxygen to fly above 10,000 ft for more than 30 minutes, and the tops of summer cumulus clouds could hit that height anywhere between 11:00 am and 2:00 pm, even ignoring isolated storm clouds. As the day goes on, without oxygen and a powerful plane, you hit a point that you can’t outclimb the clouds any more, and you’re forced to descend either into them (IFR) or under them (VFR), giving up some of the tailwind, and throwing you and your passengers back into the turbulence.

The good news is that, with the extra speed from the tailwind, you might be able to finish your trip before that happens. It’s possible to fly a Piper Warrior from Ottawa to Charlottetown in well under four hours with a good tailwind, so you can leave early in the morning, fly non-stop, and land for lunch before the clouds (and turbulence) outclimb you. Your passengers will have to put up with a bumpy descent and landing, but the rest of the flight will be smooth.

Flying westbound

Flying westbound, into the wind, you’re faced with a lose-lose proposition:

1. Fly below the clouds to get weaker headwinds, but subject your passengers to stomach-emptying turbulence as the day goes on.
2. Fly above the clouds to get smooth air, and watch your airspeed drop to (or below) automobile speeds.

First thing in the morning, you have a good chance to find both smooth air and weak headwinds at low altitudes (e.g. 2,500 ft), but that won’t last until lunch. As the cumulus clouds start to form, you’ll have to pick sides, diving down into the turbulence or climbing up into the headwinds. And to throw extra salt into your wounds, the headwinds slow you down and make it more likely that you’ll have to make a fuel stop, slowing you down even more, and pushing your flight later and later into the afternoon and the worst of the turbulence and/or headwinds. If you do decide to go above, even that won’t last: in a low-end plane without oxygen, you’ll eventually have to go down below and start banging your passengers’ (and your) heads against the ceiling of your plane.

Flying north- or southbound

In Canada, it’s safe to say that most cross-country flying is on the east-west axis, since Canadian cities are spread out in a thin line along the US border. In the US, on the other hand, you’re just as likely to be flying on the north-south axis (or something in-between). In that case, if the upper winds are from the southwest (typical in summer, at least east of the Rockies), then flying southbound will be a lot like flying westbound, but with less severe headwinds, while flying northbound will be like flying eastbound, but with less beneficial tailwinds.

Strategies

I fly some passengers who suffer from motion sickness, so I spend a lot of time planning around this stuff. In general, flying eastbound, I’ll go up above and accept a longer flight to get smooth air, since my passengers would rather be comfortable for 5-6 hours than violently ill for 3-5. Still, I can’t protect them from the turbulence when I have to land (fuel stop or destination).

Of course, I can’t stay above all day when the sun’s out — today, coming back from Charlottetown, I started at 2,500 ft in air so smooth you could do calligraphy in the back seat, but by late morning ended up at 10,500 ft over Quebec’s Eastern Townships trying to stay above the rising cumulus layer. Once my 30 minutes above 10,000 ft were up, I had to descend and subject my passengers to 40 minutes of turbulence below the clouds at the end of the flight.

If your schedule can handle it, there are some workarounds to minimize the damage:

• Start as early in the morning as possible, if there’s no fog or low stratus. Some pilots I’ve met like to be preflighting as the sun rises. If your family is willing to wake up at 5:00 or 5:30 am, go for it, and the flight will be more fun (plus you’ll have more of the day at your destination).
• If your route follows a shoreline or a wide river, fly over water instead of land (staying within gliding distance). Water tends to be cooler in the summer, and doesn’t throw up thermals as much. Often, the best break through a line of thunderstorms will be over water, but don’t let yourself get pushed offshore.
• Fly in the evening, especially if you have a well-lit destination for landing after dark. Summer evenings are long-ish, and the air tends to start calming down again around 7:00 pm, give or take, as the ground cools, the thermals die out, and the afternoon cumulus clouds flatten out and disperse.
• Split up the trip. Instead of two three-hour legs with a fuel stop on your westbound flight, fly halfway, land before lunch, and spend the day. The next morning (or that evening), fly the second leg in smooth air again. For example, I could have flown from Charlottetown to Quebec City, spent an afternoon and evening there, and then flown on to Ottawa the next morning.
• Stay on top as long as possible, and descend quickly at your destination. For passengers who suffer from motion sickness, popping ears are far preferable to a long time down low in turbulence.
• Take up soaring. Glider pilots love afternoon thermals, because the rising air lets them stay up almost indefinitely — that’s why you’ll often see gliders happy circling under a cumulus cloud, while pilots of powered planes are impatient to be back on the ground.

In the end, though, turbulence and headwinds are facts of summer flying, and not every day is a typical day — you could drag everyone out of bed at 4:30 or 5:00 am and still be in bumps the whole flight, and you could even end up with headwinds in both directions. Don’t pressure yourself to make the flight perfect and control things outside your control: just do your best with whatever you have to work with.

So where would you fly in this? There are thunderstorms right across the country and well north of the Arctic Circle, and then snow.

(Source: Environment Canada, Canadian Weather at a Glance.)

• Charlottetown Airport in Charlottetown, PEI.
• Toronto City Centre Airport (can’t bring myself to call it “Billy Bishop” yet) in Toronto, Ontario, for the third time this year.
• Sault Ste. Marie Airport in Sault Ste. Marie, ON.
• Beverly Municipal Airport just north of Boston, MA.

All of the trips will be starting from my home airport of Ottawa/Rockcliffe. I was thinking of trying to squeeze in a flight up north to Moosonee Airport as well, but I can’t see where I could fit it in.

I just noticed this now in Transport Canada publication. I’m reproducing it here because I cannot link to it directly (links added by me):

On August 24, 2009, the pilot of a privately-owned Piper PA23-250 arriving from the United States stopped in Brantford, Ont., to clear customs before continuing to his private strip. When the pilot was preparing to depart Brantford, he was unable to start the right engine. The pilot elected to attempt a single-engine takeoff from Runway 23. During the take-off roll, the pilot was unable to maintain directional control; the aircraft departed the right side of the runway just before the intersection of Taxiway Echo and Runway 23. The aircraft struck a taxiway light and continued across the taxiway before becoming airborne. The aircraft began a slow climb but was unable to clear trees at the edge of the airport property. The aircraft’s right wing struck a tree approximately 20 ft off the ground, severing the outboard portion of the right wing. The aircraft crashed into a cornfield approximately 300 ft beyond the tree and sustained substantial damage. The pilot was the only occupant on board and received minor injuries.

TSB File A09O0179.

You can search for the source on this page.

Note that the news story linked above claims that an engine “seized” shortly after takeoff, but the later TSB summary contradicts that. The newspaper version is more believable — it’s hard to imagine any pilot knowingly doing a single-engine takeoff in a light twin!

In case the AIC link dies, or you don’t feel like searching the whole file, here’s the relevant text:

AERONAUTICAL INFORMATION CIRCULAR 4/10
OTTAWA/GATINEAU, QUÉBEC
CHANGES TO THE OTTAWA/GATINEAU CONTROL ZONE

NAV CANADA, the country’s provider of civil air navigation services, conducted an aeronautical study that evaluated the airspace and publications in Ottawa, Ontario and the surrounding airports. The study recommended changes to the airspace and publications for Ottawa International, Ottawa/Gatineau, Ottawa/Rockcliffe, and Ottawa/Carp airports. These changes will be implemented over a period of time.

The first planned change is to extend the Ottawa/Gatineau control zone south, to the south side of the Ottawa River, with an exclusion over the river at 700 feet above ground level (AGL) and below.
This change will take effect 8 April 2010 at 0901 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). The appropriate
aeronautical publications will be amended.

For further information, please contact: [...]

This may sound innocent enough, extending the Gatineau Airport control zone from the north shore of the Ottawa River less than a mile to the south shore, but it effectively closes off the only eastbound class G corridor out of Ottawa, one used very heavily by pilots from Rockcliffe Airport. This will now be mandatory frequency (MF) airspace while the Gatineau FSS is open, and we’ll all have to call Gatineau as soon as we take off from Rockcliffe.

Making an extra radio call isn’t a big deal, but I wonder how many Ottawa pilots will notice this change in the new CFS, or the AIC buried deep in that PDF file? I learned about it only because a pilot from Toronto told me. As far as I know, there has been no major effort to reach out and inform local pilots — no mention in emails from local flying clubs, blogs, etc., and the chief instructor at at least one of the local flying clubs was unaware this morning of when it was coming in or exactly what the change would be. I wouldn’t be surprised to see dozens of airspace vios after April 8, as pilots follow the same route they’ve followed for years without realizing they have to make a now-mandatory call to Gatineau. Normally, I’d have expected to be hearing about something like this for months before it happened.

Afghanistan

http://www.motca.gov.af/important_information.htm

Argentina

http://www.cra.gov.ar/dta/ais/inicio.php

Australia

http://www.airservicesaustralia.com/publications/aip.asp

Brazil

http://www.aisweb.aer.mil.br/aisweb/

Canada

Not available online; partial information is available here and here, but the actual directory of Canadian airports is paper-only, in the Canada Flight Supplement

Chile

http://www.aipchile.cl/dasa/aip_chile_con_contenido/index.php (limited number of airports)

China

Not available online

Estonia

http://aip.eans.ee/

Finland

https://ais.fi/ais/eaip/en/

France

http://www.sia.aviation-civile.gouv.fr/default_uk.htm

Germany

Military aerodromes: http://www.mil-aip.de/

Civilian aerodromes: not available online

Iceland

http://www.caa.is/FlugmalahandbokinAIP

Iran

http://ais.airport.ir/Homepage.aspx?site=ais.airport&lang=fa-IR&tabid=0</dd%

]]> http://lahso.megginson.com/2010/02/21/online-aips/feed/ 13 davidmegginson http://lahso.megginson.com/2010/02/14/valentines-post/ http://lahso.megginson.com/2010/02/14/valentines-post/#comments Sun, 14 Feb 2010 13:48:14 +0000 davidmegginson http://www.megginson.com/blogs/lahso/?p=285 Continue reading →]]> The first year I owned my Warrior (December 2002-December 2003), I used it to get my night and instrument ratings, and to fly an abortive family trip to Sault Ste Marie. The second year I owned my Warrior, I decided to do something much more romantic, and used it to whisk my love off to New York City for her birthday in late May.

In a movie, the trip would have been a total surprise, with me taking off her blindfold at the airport, not telling her where we were flying, etc. In real life, that would have been a horrible idea, since she was still very nervous about flying. Instead, I introduced the idea a few of weeks before, and made sure she was comfortable and had time to prepare. My brother and sister-in-law very kindly took in the kids, who were too young to stay home on their own back then.

I’d flown into the NYC area only once before, landing in Caldwell, which is a long way from Manhattan; this time, I decided to try Republic, which is just as far the other direction, but would let us take the LIRR almost door-to-door from the airport to our Midtown hotel (hint to everyone: use Teterboro). We were MVFR to Massena to clear customs, then IFR for the rest of the trip: she experienced her first ILS approach in actual IMC without panicking, breaking out around 600 ft, and we had a wonderful romantic weekend in Manhattan. The trip back was all IFR but in the clear on top, with strong headwinds but smooth air, and she sat in the back reading and relaxed the whole long trip. We flew directly over a break in the clouds a few thousand feet over Manhattan, and could clearly see Central Park, the Statue of Liberty, etc.

After this, while it wasn’t always easy, the whole family was game to fly, and we had several years of amazing family trips to Toronto, Waterloo, Vermont, North Bay/Sault Ste. Marie, Cape Breton/Halifax, Gaspé, and (every March Break) NYC. We don’t all fly together much now, because my kids are getting older and have their own lives, but I’m hoping to squeeze in one or two more some day. In the meantime, I’m so grateful that we had those shared years with all four of us (and sometimes the dog) bouncing around in a little Cherokee, and it all started with a romantic trip to New York City.

]]> http://lahso.megginson.com/2010/02/14/valentines-post/feed/ 0 davidmegginson http://lahso.megginson.com/2010/02/02/back-in-the-air-2/ http://lahso.megginson.com/2010/02/02/back-in-the-air-2/#comments Wed, 03 Feb 2010 04:16:33 +0000 davidmegginson http://www.megginson.com/blogs/lahso/?p=284 Continue reading →]]> The last time I flew was mid September, just before I was due to renew my medical. Things didn’t go as expected, and I had to get through an obstacle course of health, work, and then mechanical issues (this after going through another set of obstacles last spring to renew my IFR rating).

Today I went to the airport with a huge fear of failing again. The last three times, something was wrong, and the plane wouldn’t/couldn’t fly. I arrived hoping that the mechanic had put in the new, fully-charged battery I’d asked for, that the engine heater was working, and that the plane would actually start. I saw the old battery sitting in the baggage area, so I knew Red had put in a new one, and I put the old one in my trunk. The engine was warm to the touch from the heater, so I knew it was good. I uncovered, preflighted, pushed the starter, and — just like last time — the prop turned only a few degrees and stopped.

The battery was flat again, or else the starter was shot. If a second battery was flat, that would mean that something (a short?) was draining it even when the master was off, so yet another round of troubleshooting and maintenance. I plugged in my battery charger (in case it might help), drove back across the field to the shop, walked into Red’s office, and asked him if the battery was fully charged when he put it in the plane. He said yes. Then he added something:

“It was late in the day, so I didn’t install the new battery. I put it in the back of your plane, and meant to leave a note.”

So the old battery was still in the plane, while the new battery was in my trunk. That meant there was still hope I might actually fly. I borrowed a pair of pliers, drove back to the plane, swapped batteries, took the cowl cover back off (I’d put it back on to keep in the heat), and fired the starter.

The prop spun.

The engine fired and kept running.

I did a long, detailed runup and a high-speed taxi first, to make sure that all the controls were functioning properly after maintenance (a “high-speed taxi” involves almost talking off — going fast enough down the runway to take most of the weight off the wheels or climb a few inches, but not high enough that there would be a problem if a control cable snapped, etc.). No problem. I taxied back around and took off, flying four left-handed circuits.

Back in September, my landings were sucking a lot, but after everything I’d been through fortune was smiling on me. I flew four nearly-perfect circuits, with four textbook-smooth landings. I parked the plane, then realized I should top the tanks, so I started it again — the new battery spun it up fast — and taxied over for fuel. Then I started up the engine a third time to taxi back to my parking spot. It probably sounds silly to go on about starting a plane, but I’ve had so many problems since the new year that I was probably more excited about the starts than the actual flying.

So I’m back in the air. I’d like to get up every week or so, even in the winter, to get my chops back — I have no illusions that four successful day VFR circuits in smooth, calm air are enough to prove that my skills haven’t rusted since September.

]]> http://lahso.megginson.com/2010/02/02/back-in-the-air-2/feed/ 3 davidmegginson http://lahso.megginson.com/2010/01/27/almost-flying/ http://lahso.megginson.com/2010/01/27/almost-flying/#comments Thu, 28 Jan 2010 02:56:44 +0000 davidmegginson http://www.megginson.com/blogs/lahso/?p=283 Continue reading →]]> The Bendix is unstuck, I can placard the ELT U/S for 30 days (and stick close to home) while trying to find a new antenna to replace the one knocked off by ice and/or wind, and I have new, better wing covers, so I’m almost ready to fly.

When I arrived at the airport last Saturday, the shop hadn’t plugged the heater back in, so I plugged it in for 90 minutes to warm up the engine and watched a bit of Hot Shots! (!) that was playing in the club lounge. Once the cylinders were warm to the touch, I fired the starter, but it wouldn’t turn the prop — the battery was flat. I plugged in the battery charger, then walked over to find my mechanic (who was working on building a new hangar) and asked him if he’d had to recharge the battery before starting my plane a few days earlier.

“Yep.”

OK, dead battery. To be fair, it was an old loaner from the shop a couple of years ago supposed to tide me over for a few weeks, and it never should have lasted this long. After 45 minutes still not enough charge to spin the prop, and the VRTUcar was due back soon, so I had to give up.

I’m getting a new battery this week, then hopefully everything will line up and I’ll be back in the air for the first time since mid September.

]]> http://lahso.megginson.com/2010/01/27/almost-flying/feed/ 5 davidmegginson http://lahso.megginson.com/2010/01/10/if-flight-simultor-were-more-realistic/ http://lahso.megginson.com/2010/01/10/if-flight-simultor-were-more-realistic/#comments Sun, 10 Jan 2010 21:01:37 +0000 davidmegginson http://www.megginson.com/blogs/lahso/?p=282 Continue reading →]]> … every time you started the program, something different would be wrong with the plane: flat strut, weak battery, missing ELT antenna, broken intercom, stuck Bendix, etc. (I’ve dealt with all of those over the past 12 months). You’d then walk to the virtual maintenance hangar, but find out that it’s Sunday and no one’s there (actually, today, there was someone).

If your plane was OK, you’d get to spend an hour convincing ice-encrusted covers to separate from the wings without ripping, bumping 1/2″ of ice off the fuselage, etc. Your car would get stuck in the snow near your tiedown spot as well, and you’d have to hack a path out with a borrowed ice chipper. In the end, you’d try to knock some of the ice off the covers, put them back on the plane, make a note to book maintenance, and sit for a few minutes watching other people land and take off.

Fortunately (for me, not for them), Microsoft has fired the whole MSFS team, so there’s no risk of anyone reading and implementing this suggestion. Instead of changing MSFS, I want to change real life. I want to arrive at the airport and climb straight into a fueled, shoveled off, uncovered, warmed, preflighted plane idling on the threshold of the active runway. When I finish, I’d like to just taxi clear of the runway, shut down, and toss someone the keys.

I guess I could make this happen, but I’ll have to figure out a way to get rich enough to hire a ground crew first. Suggestions? In the meantime, I’m scheduling time to get a new ELT antenna installed and the Bendix unstuck and lubed, and ordering new wing covers. With luck, I’ll be flying again before the end of the month.

]]> http://lahso.megginson.com/2010/01/10/if-flight-simultor-were-more-realistic/feed/ 5 davidmegginson http://lahso.megginson.com/2009/08/29/where-am-i/ http://lahso.megginson.com/2009/08/29/where-am-i/#comments Sat, 29 Aug 2009 11:55:45 +0000 davidmegginson http://www.megginson.com/blogs/lahso/?p=280 Continue reading →]]> This morning, I took my first stab at supporting the W3C Geolocation API in OurAirports and ourairports.mobi. If you’re using a geolocation-aware browser, such as Firefox 3.5 or recent versions of Safari, and you authorize OurAirports to know your location, your latitude and longitude (or your browser’s best guess about them) should appear automatically in the search box on the home pages.

I’m hoping especially that this will work with the iPhone (version 3 or better), since it’s supposed to support the W3C Geolocation API now. If this is successful, I can add new capabilities, such as an automatically scrolling map, without too much work.

If you own an iPhone, please try out the sites, and let me know what happens. They’re working fine with Firefox 3.5 in Linux, except that Firefox tells OurAirports that I’m in downtown Ottawa, about 4 km away from where I actually am (probably guessing from my IP subnet).

]]> http://lahso.megginson.com/2009/08/29/where-am-i/feed/ 6 davidmegginson http://lahso.megginson.com/2009/08/13/composing-with-navaid-idents/ http://lahso.megginson.com/2009/08/13/composing-with-navaid-idents/#comments Fri, 14 Aug 2009 00:21:22 +0000 davidmegginson http://www.megginson.com/blogs/lahso/?p=279 Continue reading →]]> I need to reward (and re-word) myself with a bit of silliness, after roughing in the first navaid pages on OurAirports, so here is a sentence made up entirely of valid navaid identifiers, with one small cheat at the end:

BUT IT IS ART, AS ANY OLD CAT OR DOG CAN SEA.

Does anyone have any better ones?

(This would be more fun with fixes and airport idents as well. Maybe in a future posting …)

]]> http://lahso.megginson.com/2009/08/13/composing-with-navaid-idents/feed/ 2 davidmegginson http://lahso.megginson.com/2009/08/01/ourairports-comm-frequencies-weather-runways-and-notams/ http://lahso.megginson.com/2009/08/01/ourairports-comm-frequencies-weather-runways-and-notams/#comments Sat, 01 Aug 2009 14:30:34 +0000 davidmegginson http://www.megginson.com/blogs/lahso/?p=278 Continue reading →]]> OurAirports now includes pilot info pages with comm frequences, live weather, runway information, and live notams — for now, it’s accessible though the “Pilot info” tab at the top of each airport page, but I’ll be redesigning the site over the next few weeks, so the link location will likely change.

Here’s sample pilot information for Bahrain International Airport.

Note that it’s not currently possible to edit frequency or runway information. I’ll be adding that ability soon, as well as data for more airports (right now, only larger airports have runway and comm information).

Update: if an airport doesn’t have its own METAR and/or TAF, OurAirports will display the closest ones available. This works in both the main and mobile versions. Look at pilot info for Rivière-du-Loup Airport for an example (mobile pilot info for Rivière-du-Loup Airport).

]]> http://lahso.megginson.com/2009/08/01/ourairports-comm-frequencies-weather-runways-and-notams/feed/ 4 davidmegginson http://lahso.megginson.com/2009/07/25/ourairportsmobi/ http://lahso.megginson.com/2009/07/25/ourairportsmobi/#comments Sat, 25 Jul 2009 22:31:04 +0000 davidmegginson http://www.megginson.com/blogs/lahso/?p=277 Continue reading →]]> There is a new version of OurAirports optimized for cell phones and other small devices. This first release includes search, airport lists, comments, and (what’s not available on the regular site) TAF and METAR reports. There are no maps in the mobile edition, and it is not currently possible to leave comments (they’re read-only). Check it out at

ourairports.mobi

(I developed the mobile site over two calendar days and about one person day. Thanks to my very rushed beta testers, Paul, Blake, and Douglas.)

Tagged: canada-us ]]> http://lahso.megginson.com/2009/07/25/ourairportsmobi/feed/ 3 davidmegginson