Through The Mist Darkly

The Rollout of Virgin Galactic’s White Knight 2 which will carry the reusable space module into orbit.  Sir Richard Branson and Burt Rutan are seen under the right empenage.

Sometimes technology is particularly beautiful.

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Week 4 of ground school.  Focus was on engines and airframes.  More and more information is coming fast and furious and I think my head is just about full.  In two weeks, I’ll be writing my PSTAR exam which is a critical milestone for my license.  Minimum pass rate is 90% so I’ve got some studying to do.  Luckily, it comes when we’re on vacation so there will be some cram time available.

Just over a week to go before my medical.  Again, a  really critical step.  No pass, no license.

This morning, spent nearly 1 1/2 hours in the air.  Today’s training was on turns.  Mild, medium and steep turns finished up by a collision avoidance turn.  That one was fun!  Cut the power, bank about 45 degrees to the right and dive 500 feet while turning 90 degrees.  Scared the crap out of me when the instructor did it but was a real blast when I did it myself.  Total flying hours are now 5.10. 

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test

Bombardier CRJ

Clicking on the image should open a larger version.

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Busy week in the Private Pilot License training.

Flight Instruction

Spent an hour in the air on Thursday morning.  The day dawned rainy and overcast but it cleared up just a few minutes before we took off.  Steve let me handle the entire taxi and takeoff which gave me a chance to really feel how the steering and rudder control works.  In flight, I concentrated on the rudder and started to get good control.  Just like driving a car, the secret is small corrections all the time.  Once established in the training area, we worked on climbs and descents.  Every airplane has optimum speeds, power setting and attitudes for different scenarios.  I have to know everyone of them for the exams and the goal of this flight was for Steve to demonstrate, me to practice and try to get a feeling for each one.  For those keeping count, that gets me up to 3.7 hours out of the minimum 45 required.

Ground School

Thursday evening was Class 3 in Ground School.  Information about types of airspace, radio procedures and flying in different weather and altitude conditions.  Lots more things to memorize.

Serious Fun

Installed Microsoft’s Flight Simulator X yesterday.  Along with 747’s, floatplanes and fighters, they also have the Cessna 172 like I fly at the club.  Amazingly realistic!  The instruments are identical and the characteristics appear to be authentic.  Only problem is, controlling the airplane using the keyboard is nothing like the real thing.  A solution is at hand by purchasing and installing a controller that looks and acts like the control column in the Cessna.  I’ll try and pick one up this week.  It’s so easy to get engrossed with this program.  I’ve already “flown” a number of circuits from Brampton Airport and I even accomplished a take-off from Downsview ending with a landing at Pearson International.  Ok, that’s not really realistic because the chances of me landing at YYZ in anything but an emergency situation are really, really slim.  Landing is where you really run into the limitations of keyboard control but I hope the new controller will take care of that.

Busy, busy, busy.

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Since it’s a rainy day, I took the opportunity to upgrade the site.  Categories are all screwed up but everything else seems to be OK.  Also switched the theme to the same one used over at my photosite ‘1440 Moments’.

Things will change as I play with the setup but it’s a much nicer look IMHO.

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Geek alert!!  For months now, the comments section has been broken due to a MySQL error.  It’s fixed.  Good news – if anyone cares, they can now leave a comment.  Bad news – spammers, start your engines.

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Week 2 of Ground School and the intensity is starting to build.  This week we covered the flight instruments.  The picture shows the console of the Cessna 172 like I’m flying now.   The 6 most important instruments, called “The Six Pack” are directly in front of the control column and we went over what they are, how they work and all the errors they’re prone to display during normal operation.

A heck of a lot to know but we had a good instructor.  I was looking forward to putting the new knowledge to work during my instruction flight yesterday but the morning broke with dense fog that made flying impossible.  That’s 2 weeks out of five that I’ve been unable to get into the air.  Trying again this Thursday morning.

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Bombardier announces the official launch of the new CSeries with a Letter Of Intent from Germany’s Lufthansa for 60 aircraft.  The plane will be built in China (fuselage), Northern Ireland (wings) and Mirabel and St. Laurent Quebec (cockpit, aft fuselage and final assembly).

The CSeries is positioned to fill the need for smaller, fuel efficient aircraft in the 110-130 seat range.  It will be powered by the revolutionary Pratt & Whitney Geared Turbofan engine.

Initially announced in 2004 as a concept, this announcement moves it from the drawing board to the manufacturing floor with the attendant creation of more jobs in a sector that is going through some very rough times.  The CSeries promises to be the right airplane for these times of high fuel prices and lowered expectation for airline load factors.  Airbus, Boeing and Embraer will have some catching up to do.

Quotes from the release:

“Today is a great day for Bombardier, our customers, our employees, our shareholders and our suppliers. I am proud to say that we have met our business plan objectives: a technologically advanced aircraft family, a strong pipeline of orders and repayable investments with governments and agreements with key suppliers. With the latest in system technologies and aerodynamics, the CSeries family of aircraft will revolutionize the economics and network strategies for airline operations in the 100- to 149-seat commercial market. It is another example of our commitment to designing and manufacturing innovative aircraft that will ensure our continued industry leadership,” said Pierre Beaudoin, President and Chief Executive Officer, Bombardier Inc.

“At Lufthansa, we are committed to a balance between commercial success, environment and business policies oriented toward sustainability,” said Nico Buchholz, Senior Vice President, Corporate Fleet, Lufthansa. “Our initial evaluations of the CSeries family of aircraft and discussions with Bombardier over the last few months have evolved and made us believe that the CSeries family of aircraft clearly meets our stringent requirements for sustainable fleet development, both in terms of environmental and commercial requirements, and flexibility for the future. We are proud to be a part of its launch.”

Both the announcement of the launch and the decision that a significant amount of manufacturing and assembly will be done in Canada bodes very well for the future of aviation in Canada.  Bombardier Aerospace is truly a Canadian success story built on the de Havilland Canada company which was formed 80 years ago.

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I’m now up to 2.7 hours of actual flight time.  That’s spread over 3 flights with my instructor who continues to be extremely patient while he pushes me through the training course.

Yesterday, we spent 1.3 hours aloft while he attempted to instill the concepts of level flight.  Flying straight and level sounds easy but there are so many things that effect an aircraft in motion that my head was spinning by the end of the lesson.  The idea is that the pilot has to learn to fly the airplane without relying too much on the instruments.  If you’re staring at all the dials, you can’t keep a lookout for other aircraft and other things that you could hit and certainly ruin your day.

Our training area is just north of the Brampton Flying Club and starts at the Caledon gravel pits.  Getting there, you have to observe minimum levels so you don’t piss off the residents and maximum levels so you don’t stray up into the area of the sky where the big boys fly as they approach Pearson International Airport.  Cessna 172R + Boeing 767 = big piles of smoking debris all over the countryside.

I’m learning how to fix the horizon to a point on the windscreen to ensure that we fly without gaining or losing altitude.  This allows me to spend more time scanning (which is done by dividing the windscreen into 6 imaginary quadrants that you scan by looking at each of them in quick succession).  Pretty straightforward when you’re at cruising speed.  Of course, everything changes when you change the power settings.  Speed up and the nose pitches up and your horizon reference changes.  Slow down and it changes once again.  Turning has its own reference points and, of course, everything changes when you combine a turn with a change in altitude.  I have to know how to maintain my altitude (or change thereof)  and heading in all these situations and it all comes with an understanding of how the Cessna handles and hours of experience.

All aircraft have a magnetic compass and most have a heading indicator controlled by a gyroscope.  In level flight, the magnetic compass is quite accurate and the heading indicator has to be manually set before take-off and every 15 minutes or so during flight.  So why not just use the magnetic compass?  When climbing, descending or turning (banking), this instrument becomes very unreliable.  That’s when the heading indicator takes over.  In a climb, the magnetic compass points to a more northerly heading than the actual direction of flight.  When descending, it errs to the south.  Corresponding errors are encountered when banking left or right.  Sometimes the errors are huge.

My brain had turned to mush as we headed back to the aerodrome so I asked Steve to handle the landing to give me time to sort things out and concentrate on what he was doing and how the aircraft was responding as we did.  Good thing.  We were on final to Runway 33 when some Bozo (BTW, rest in peace Larry Harmon) decided he would take off at the same time.  Steve calmly responded as we watched for the departing runway in time for us to continue the landing.  I would have gone absolutely crazy so it was a really valuable lesson.  Things happen quickly up there.

So only 42.3 hours (minimum) to go before I can qualify for a qualification flight.  Next scheduled flight – next Saturday.

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One session down, 14 to go.  Started ground school this evening with the topic “Theory of Flight”.  Not a whole lot that I didn’t already know and the instructor is one of those who reads PowerPoint slides to you.  Thankfully I’ve got lots of manuals so I can study at my own pace and in much more depth than he was covering.  Perhaps the instruction will get more intense as we progress through the other topics.

I thought I would be the oldest student in class but there were a few others with greying hair sprinkled in amongst the kids who all looked to young to drive, let alone fly.

Tomorrow, if the weather gods allow, I’ll try to get my second in-air instruction with another one on Saturday.  Hopefully I’ll be able to keep my head on straight this time and actually learn something.  I was so giddy (and scared) during my first flight that I don’t really remember a whole lot about what was actually happening.  No doubt the instructor is actually going to start teaching me now that they’ve got me hooked.

So I’m off.  A signature in my Pilot’s Training Record and three hours of ground school under my belt.

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Canada Day 2008.

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