Information Echo

The story about the TFR’s that have been put into place around the Detroit / Windsor area for the Superbowl is all over the blogosphere now. Anyone who reads a variety of Aviation blogs has surely heard about it already, and those who don’t follow blogs will likely come across the NOTAM if they intend to fly into the area, and preplan as they should be.

For the non-pilots that read my blog, a “TFR” is a “Temporary Flight Restriction” that surrounds a specific area. By it’s nature, it’s temporary, usually being activated in times of high security requirements.

A TFR is noted as a “NOTAM” (Notice To Airmen) on the Nav Canada website. You can view the actual NOTAM here, if my link works correctly. (The NavCan website is often not direct link friendly)

I was reading Land and Hold Short this evening where the issue was being discussed.

My comment there was pretty straightfoward;

I think it?s rediculous that TFRs are issued for sporting events. GA is the group that suffers the most from these, yet GA aircraft are the ones least likely to be chosen by anyone with nefarious thoughts about using an aircraft for a terrorist/attack purpose.

For Transport Canada to run lockstep in this was simply a matter avoiding being picked out as the ?stubborn neighbour to the north? once again by every media outlet in the USA. We all know that if TC had simply snubbed their nose at the TFR on our side of the airspace, it would be all over the US newspapers in one negative fashion or another the next day.

Yes, the superbowl does present a nice number of people all comfortably together in a single confined space, which in the greater reality does provide a reasonable ?target??but is a TFR really going to stop someone from acting out their plans regardless, providing they do so before any defensive aircraft arrive on the scene?

And even if they do, would they shoot down a stray 152 to ?protect? the Superbowl?

If the 152 ended up containing a lost pilot who had accidentally stumbled into the airspare, or who didn?t catch the NOTAM due to lack of preflight planning, what would the stories be in the newspapers then?

I think it?s all rather silly, myself. For the Prime Minister, or the President, I can understand. For a sporting event, not so much.

What?s next? Should every Nascar race, Stanley Cup game, etc etc deserve a TFR as well?

My comment on being called the “Stubborn neighbour to the north” wasn’t meant to be anti-American in any fashion, but it’s no secret that the American media is all over Canada whenever it comes to security related issues. As my comment mentions, if Transport Canada didn’t extend the TFR into our airspace, and the TFR only ended up covering American airspace, what would the media think?

I’ve no doubt they would grab onto the fact, and run with it.

Flight Nest mused about this as well, also expressing the seemingly unnecessary nature of the TFR to begin with, and making note that initially TC did not extend
the TFR into our airspace.

Without this extension, the TFR was effectively useless, since aircraft could merilly fly right up to the Detroit Michigan border as long as they remained on the Canadian side of the airspace.

However, the TFR has now been extended into Ontario, running in lockstep with the FAA TFR.

Thankfully Canada has very few TFRs that effect our ability to enjoy our skies. When the Prime Minister flies around, nothing much of note happens airspace-wise, and it seems to take alot to put one into effect on this side of the 49′th parallel.

I frequently read about TFR’s in the USA however, with many bloggers expressing displeasure or dissapointment over cancelled flights or delayed training as a result.

I don’t want the same situation to become more frequent here.

There’s no doubt in my mind that Transport Canada was pressured into putting this TFR into place for what amounts to a game of football. Yes, it’s the “Superbowl”, but it’s not exactly a meeting of world leaders, or some sort of world-changing event of national or international importance.

It’s just a game.

Does it really deserve a TFR?

The AOPA has a very interesting article on the whole situation here. Rightfully so, they feel that the Superbowl TFR is a complete waste of time and effort as well.

I awoke this morning to what could only be described as the best flying weather I’ve personally had a chance to fly in for several months.

My efforts to preplan as much of the cross country as possible was foiled by several things I won’t bother going into here. Suffice to say not much happened.

The result was that, as I somehow expected would happen regardless, I ended up at the airport with quite alot of work left to do.

We started with a long brief in order to get the planning done. As I also suspected would happen, alot of the cross country planning has indeed completely and totally slipped my mind.

Eventually however, we made it through the plan with time to spare. I felt much more reassured after having done it again that I can work my way through it from here on out.

I filed the flight plan, and before long we were getting ready to head out.

I learn that the fuel truck is apparently in the shop, so we have to taxi the plane over to the fuel pumps to fuel manually. Oh, the humanity!

I pile into the plane and start checking my plans against the compass swing card, at which point I realize I’ve fogotten my PTT switch. Doh.

That solved, we taxi, the flight plan is opened, and we’re away.

The air is beautifully smooth, and out climbout to our set heading point of Port Perry is uneventfull.

I set heading over Port, and set out for Lindsay. When I tune the MF, it’s humming with other aircraft at the airport, so we keep a close eye. I pick out the airport againt the snowy landscape fairly easilly (surprising even myself) and setup for a flyover to check the windsock. I confirm the active, and start decending on the north side of the field. Another plane comes in and passes to our west, and we follow him into the mid-left downwind for runway 31.

He lands and calls clear, but for the life of us we can’t see him as his white aircraft has blended into the snow covered taxiways. The runway is otherwise clear, so we continue the approach, and spot him on short final, a comfortable distance off the runway. Another plane holds short at the end as I make a nice short field landing.

I’m quite happy that I’m not feeling or showing any rust after a month and a half of not flying.

I backtrack right away, but we offer the other planes the opportunity to depart before us - they politely decline, so it’s a quick turnaround, and we are up again within a minute.

An overhead climb out of Lindsay back to 3500, and I set heading for Peterborough.

The Peterborough MF is strangely quiet. I forget to call the Unicom first, but it’s rather moot since we caught the Peterborough AWOS beforehand. A traffic call results in no answers.

Again I spot the airport a good 4 or 5 miles out, and it’s not far off our track.

Our approach puts us on a nice setup to cross over the airport and do another picture perfect mid-left downwind circuit join for runway 27. Still not another soul near the airport, so it’s a gentle pressure-free approach.

I get challenged to see if I can make the first taxiway, which is only a couple hundred feet past the threshhold. From the appearance on final, I can’t judge the
perspective well enough to see if it’s a reasonable distance, but I setup for a short field landing regardless, never one to pass up a (safely performed) challenge.

On short final, it’s clear that this is a non-challenge - I’ve landed in much shorter distances. I’m down on the numbers, dump the flaps, and gingerly apply the brakes, but quickly release them for lack of need, and then putter along to the taxiway.

We take a brief break here on the taxiway. There’s a 172 doing an runup, and we figure we’ll give him the opportunity to depart before us if he’s interested, but he seems content to wait for us instead. P points out some of the points of interest at Peterborough airport, including the restaurant…which I hear is pretty good.

I’m sure future $100 hamburgers will ensue.

I call us taking the active, and we’re up again shortly thereafter.

Our track back to Oshawa puts us on pretty much a straight out enroute climb to 4500 feet. The haze is being intensified by the sun, and the visibilty suffers quite a great deal as a result, but the air is still as smooth as a babys behind - it’s beautifull up here today.

The 152 decides it wants to fight with me a little on altitude once I level out. It’s entirely my fault - I kept distracting myself with navigation or something else when I should have just trimmed properly to begin with.

I’m reminded of the “Aviate, Navigate, Communicate” saying, and I toss everything else out the window briefly while I stabilize the cruise and trim properly. No more problems, and I takeup nav and comm again.

There’s about 8 or 10 minutes of downtime to do a little sightseeing as we track along. The haze obliterates what would have been a nice view of the Toronto skyline, but there’s still the usual sights below to gawk at.

Nearing Oshawa, I begin our decent and grab the ATIS. Tower asks us to call at 4 miles, and clears us right base for 30. Shortly afterwards they ask us to Squawk Ident.

At about 4 miles, tower calls me instead of the other way around….2 other planes in the circuit. I’ve got visual on both, no problem.

I join the base, and make a nice leisurely approach and landing.

As the flight draws to a close while taxing back, I have that “Hey - that was a great flight!” feeling like I used to get early in my days of being a student.

Everything went smooth, I felt totally collected and ahead of the plane at every turn, and the mission was accomplished.

Gotta love it!

So, a reservation is made next weekend for the first passenger. Who my “victim” will be, I’m not quite sure of yet.

The weather is looking OK for tommorows cross country. Not spectacular, but probably satisfactory enough (barring any last minute weather oddities) to complete the flight.

Ground brief is at 10AM, Flight at Noon’ish. I’ll be up bright and early planning the flight, as best as possible.

I expect to feel like a complete fool tommorow with how little I remember of flight planning. This is going to be painfully clear come the ground brief, and I’m going to need some remedial lessons during such.

A question for the experienced pilots out there - How often, after you finished your training, do you sit down and manually (Paper, pencil & protractor) plan a flight?

Or, as I suspect, do you rely on flight planning software along with the handy-dandy GPS, having let “manual” flight planning go by the wayside after you no longer had to “officially” do it this way?

Anyhow… I’m sure all of the avid bloggers have now read about the story about Flight Attendants figuring they’re worth the same pay as pilots.

I could go on about my opinion, but Aviatrix has pretty much expressed exactly what I would have had to say about the issue. Find her entry here.

Anyhow, hopefully by this time tommorow night I will have jumped through the last remaining hoops, the cross country will be done and out of the way, and I’ll have another new blog entry about how it went.

Hopefully…

Today was one of those days where I was reminded that I need to stop being an early adopter of new technology.

This affliction of mine has caused me, over the years, to spend umpteen thousands of dollars on “Hot New Technology” that ends up crashing in price once it reaches mass market saturation.

A few quick examples would be the following, all of which reside in my theatre rack:

- A $1290 DVD player (One of the first retail models available in North America)
- A $990 Laserdisc player.
- A $700 DAT deck.
- A first generation ($1000) DVD Recorder.

All of the above have been replaced by:

- $29 DVD Players
- $24 CD Players (Or use the $29 DVD Player as double duty to play CD’s as well)
- $249 for a DVD Recorder (Saw it at WalMart today).

Let’s not even go on about the Laserdisc and DAT player. At least I got a few years use out of the Laserdisc player.

The rest of my house contains other fine examples of technology that I paid a great deal for when it first came out, that is now mass market cheap.

So, keeping with the routine, I subscribed to a new payment service called Dexit a few months ago.

The system is run by Bell Canada, and (I thought) was gaining increased acceptance in the Toronto area. I was a little dissapointed after the fact to discover that acceptance is only common at limited retailers in the Greater Toronto Area, and it doesn’t really extend into the area where I live, but does cover some of the areas where I work.

I hope it eventually reaches wide coverage, as it stands to be a good system for “quick and cheap” items like your morning coffee, or a can of pop and a chocolate bar at the local convenience store.

Anyhow.. Dexit is a RFID based system - the Dexit “tag” stays in my wallet, and paying for a purchase at a store that accepts Dexit should be as easy as placing my wallet (and included tag) onto the Dexit terminal untill it beeps. No PIN numbers to enter, unlike the ubiquitous Interac debit system that is almost everywhere here in Canada.

The advantage over Interac (or “Debit”, as we all call it) is that it should be instant and quick, versus the somewhat longer “Swipe and enter pin number” process of Debit. It’s also practical to use for a small purchase (Again, using the coffee example) versus Debit.

I’ve had the tag in my wallet for some time now, and had the first opportunity to try it out today. I was in a rush at work, I didn’t have much cash on hand, and I was thirsty - no problem, I’ll just stop at a local Pizza Pizza store and pickup a drink, and pay using my nifty new Dexit tag. I have $30 loaded on it.

So, I order my drink. After my initial shock at the rediculous $1.70 price for a bottle of pink grapefruit juice (Really - WTH?) I tell the clerk that I want to pay by Dexit.

First problem - where the heck are the Dexit terminals? Eventually, I locate them - jammed behind the napkin dispenser and a desktop display poster near the till.

Then, the guy presses 9000 buttons on his till, and the terminal prompts for my tag.

I wave my tag. Nothing. He pushes more buttons. I wave it again. Nothing.

I take it out of my wallet and smack it alone on the Dexit terminal, thinking perhaps my leather wallet was blocking the RF..
although it shouldn’t. Still nothing.

He asks me to try the other Dexit terminal. It’s equally as burried and impossible to find as the first, but I dig it out regardless. It doesn’t work either.

The clerk is confused, and tries to “reset” the system. It doesn’t help. He proceeds to punch another 3000 buttons on each of his two touch-screen tills, but still no success.

Thankfully there’s nobody lined up behind me, so I don’t feel like a complete idiot, but I must admit that the “Easy and Quick” payment system Dexit is supposed to be was anything but.

Eventually, I give up and leave the drink behind. Believe it or not I’ve run myself so low on cash I don’t even have $2 for a drink. There are no bank machines nearby, so I ended up waiting untill later and grabbing a drink somewhere else.

So, where did technology get me today?

It made me realise that I need to stop buying it so early, and wait untill prices crash. It was also supposed to make my life easier by making “small purchases” more convenient, but it ended up taking 5 minutes of my life away instead trying to make the “Easy & Convenient” technology work.

I guess we’ll all have to carry cash at least a little bit longer….

Why did I know this would happen? I had to scrub my intended flight tommorow for the aforementioned familly function, and as I suspected would happen, the weather forecast for tommorow appears to be offering probably the nicest flying weather we’ve seen here in Southern Ontario in a very long while.

Aaarrrrghhhhh!

I’m going to fool it though, I think…. If it means an unpaid day off work to get this freaking flight done and out of the way, I’m going to take it. Ol’ mother nature will sure be confused when I’m at the airport on a Wednesday! Ha!

Ok, with that out of the way… I was reading the IFR Pilot blog this evening and noticed he had posted an accident report.

This prompted me to check the Canadian Transportation Safety Board website to see if there was any news on a few occurences at my home airport in the last while. I usually check the reports once every month or so to see what there is new.

Sure enough, I came across this report on a Short Brothers SD3-60 over-run that happened last winter.

The remnants of that plane sat on the northern field of the airport for quite some time, presumably untill the TSB and insurance companies were done with it, at which point it was cut up and hauled away.

It was an interesting read - definately pilot error on that one.

I looked once again for a report on the fatal crash during Oshawa’s airshow last summer, but there is nothing there as of yet. These reports take a long, long time it seems, even for an ultralight crash.

I also came across another report from 2003 that related to a flight out of Buttonville airport. The flight began normally, and then degraded as the engine began to loose power.

Here’s an excerpt:

Trying to regain power, the pilot ensured that full throttle was selected, checked the positions of the primer and magnetos, and switched fuel tanks. When these attempts were unsuccessful, the pilot selected the carburettor heat to the hot position, observed a further decrease in engine power, and reset the carburettor heat to the cold position. The engine was not producing enough power to maintain level flight and return to the airport, so the pilot searched for a suitable location for a forced landing. The aircraft was over a

See anything wrong with the above?

Sure enough, the rest of the report indeed attributes the crash to carb ice.

But why would a commercial pilot with 1200 hours (500 on the 172 type) do this? It was drilled into my head that in a real carb icing scenario, when heat is applied, it *will* result in a further loss of power untill the ice is melted and the engine can regain power. It also seems to be common sense in a rough engine situation to immediately place carb heat in the full on position, and then start the rest of the checklist.

It seems that entire crash was a result of a bad carb heat decision.

I always feel like I’m tempting my own fate when I make posts like this, but I always find it interesting to sit down once and a while and read the accident reports to see what went wrong, why, and what could be done again in the future to avoid it.

Apparently Bon Jovi had a little slippery runway incident himself today. All fine, apparently, but I’m sure there will be another TSB report to read in a year or so.

So…anyone flying into Oshawa early tommorow morning and want to take me up for a half hour or so so I can get a flying fix?

Maybe I need to go to the other flight school at the airport, play stupid, and go for a $50 famflight.