Tag Archives: aviating

Control feedback

Control feedback is important to pilots. Through the yoke or stick, we can feel what’s happening with the plane; for example, are we pulling or pushing too hard on the stick? Are the controls mushy, indicating that we’re close to … Continue reading

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Hiatus and Return

I took a six month break from flying — basically, work, a long wait for new fuel caps at my annual, and a family vacation in London (UK) got in the way. I also managed to prove the third rule … Continue reading

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Search and Rescue near Algonquin Park

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. … Continue reading

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Why checkpoints matter

Let’s say that you’re going on a 300 nm (550 km) flight — a typical distance for a cross-country trip in a small plane — VFR, without radar coverage.  You file a flight plan, take off on time, but don’t … Continue reading

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The fuel and weight dilemma

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 … Continue reading

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The summer flying dilemma

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, … Continue reading

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My Top Five New Year's Flying Resolutions

I’m late on this (sorry, other air-bloggers), but here goes … Expand my horizons. This year, I pushed my southern limit a bit by flying all the way south to Dulles Airport. My other extremes flying from Ottawa are Sault … Continue reading

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How we navigate

This BBC story describes a study about how the human brain navigates. On the street They hooked up London cabbies to an fMRI machine, and observed which parts of their brain were active during different tasks while driving around London … Continue reading

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Dead airspeed indicator

The incident I flew through some light snow showers on my way to Kingston with my daughter this morning, so I turned on the pitot heat just before joining the circuit to make sure the pitot blade was clear. At … Continue reading

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Now what?

In about 650 hours of flying — most of it in my Warrior — I’ve seen and done just about everything I can see and do at this level and live to tell about it. I’ve flown into busy international … Continue reading

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