Flying

Circuits With The C182

I’ll prefix this posting with a warning that I’m by no means an expert on this aircraft; I’m simply relaying my initial experiences with the Cessna 182.

This morning I did my circuit check in the Calgary Flying Club’s Cessna 182P. I had already been warned that the 182, being heavier, would simply drop in the flare if you simply cut the power unlike the 172 which wants to fly forever. Of course, anyone who thinks that the 172 will fly forever in the flare has never flown a Warrion, my choice of plane up till this point. The Warrior’s low wings increase the aircrafts ground effect drastically resulting in a landing rollout that can easily be twice as long as it should have been. With that in mind, I didn’t find the transition to the 182 as hard as perhaps some 172 pilots might have. Plus the last time I flew a Cessna 172 was March 2004 so I didn’t have any expectations as to how the 182 should perform relative to a 172.

On the ground, the first thing to note with the 182 is that the aircraft is prone to carb icing; it was 12 degrees Celcius (dew point 8 degrees) and while waiting for ground to get caught up we experienced some icing. Another consideration with this aircraft is that once it gets going it likes to keep going, so you have to be careful with you use of the brakes. Tis is especially true if you have a long taxi and then do a quick run up, you want make sure you’ve given your brakes enough time to cool so as to have braking power for an aborted take off.

The takeoff roll, as previously mentioned is amazing. The power of the 230 HP engine behind a constant speed properllor pushes you back in your seat. And you need to be immediately on the right rudder to counter the propellor torque lest you find yourself perpendicular to the runway. The aircraft climbs like a rocket, so much so that I actually have to lower the nose to have a clear view forward (ya, ya, so I’m short… so was Napoleon). The rest of the circuit is pretty much the same as for any small aircraft, except faster. So, you need to ensure you know the various speeds by memory as otherwise the plane will get ahead of you.

Final in the 182 is where I found the biggest differences to be. With the Warrior, at least for me, you sorta float down to the threshold and do a big flare. With the 182 you really want a nice 3 degree glideslipe and you basically want to carry power and fly the plane all the way down to the runway. Then, instead of cutting the power in the flare, as mentioned above you gradually reduce the throttle until the plane nice settles onto the runway. I actually had probably the 5 best landings today of all time, in spite of the fact that this is an unfamiliar aircraft to me. So either the 182 is a well designed, forgiving plane or I’m a natural. Or perhaps a bit of both?

Update: David wrote an interesting article regarding the Warrior’s flare. Perhaps he’s right and all I’ve flown are older, banged up 172’s or perhaps I need to revisit my strategy in the circuit when flying the Warrior. In any case, it’s a great read (as per usual).
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COPA

I hate to admit it but I only joined the Canadian Owners & Pilots Association (COPA) last year. If it’s any consolation, I feel bad about it. But in my defence, it’s partly their fault; at least I think it is and read on to see why. And don’t get me wrong, I’m usually the kind of person who takes responsibility for all my actions (it’s an Army thing). But in this case I think blame has to be shared across several fronts (cold, warm, battle… take your pick as to my meaning there).

I got my licence just out of high school in 1992 when I was 18 still. At that age, humans do not typically search out associations. At least I didn’t. At that age, I just wanted to live my childhood dream and get my pilot licence. But at that age, it’s a good age to get people hooked onto the benefits of associations. But I had no idea at that time that COPA even existed. And even if I did, I wasn’t likely to sign up from a brochure alone given my typical 18 year old financial situation.

COPA executive and members need to go out of their way to promote the Association. If there’s a fly in, be there. If there’s a manufacturer showing off a new plane, be there. If there’s an air show, be there. If there’s a new ground school starting, be there. Being in people’s face (so to speak) works; for university clubs (I was president of UCalgary’s CSUS) going around to the classes at the start of the year is an absolute necessity. You need to talk to people and explain to them in person what they get out of their membership. And most importantly, you need to make them feel like part of a group. Not an elite group or anything, just a group of peers.

COPA also needs to increase it’s support within flying clubs. A quick run down the list of COPA corporate memberships shows only a handful of clubs and flight schools. Every single clib and school, however, should be a corporate member. But to quantify it a bit, schools that are corporate members should be given an unbiased member level (bronze, silver, gold, platinum) based on the school’s equipment and staff and length of membership (PADI does something similar but I’ve heard it’s mostly driven by money). And along with that, COPA should promote all member schools with solid write-ups on the COPA website. In turn, the schools would promote COPA and association benefits to all students and club members.

COPA should also consider rethinking their membership dues. First, every new student should be given a free trial COPA membership, of perhaps 3 months. This gets the student aware of the association and generates some interest (the monthly newsletter is worth the membership alone). This is where school cooperation comes in handy. Next, COPA needs a cheaper membership fee for students or unemployeed pilots. When I was in university I could barely afford tuition and flew very little. So if I can’t afford to fly I’m not likely to drop $55 on a membership. As I write this it seems silly since I will likely drink that much each night at Stampede parties next week, but to a student $55 is a lot of money. And for the rest of us who are regularly employed, well I wouldn’t mind paying a bit more, perhaps as much $75 (I pay more than that each year to belong to the Canadian Association of Snowboard Instructors).

So if you’re not a member of COPA already, you had best check out their site and join. Or tell me why not. But in all honesty I can’t see why you wouldn’t.

Update: I just read Mark’s entry from his blog and it seems that COPA does indeed give out a free membership after a student completes their solo. But I swear that I never got that back in 1992, so I don’t know if it’s because my flight school didn’t submit some paperwork or the program didn’t exist. I’ll have to check with the CFC and see what they know about the program.
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A Visit To Vulcan

Back in late June, the Calgary Flying Club had planned a convoy to Wetaskiwin to coordinate with the COPA Convention. Unfortunately, the weather had other plans. It looked okay for the trip there, but not so good for a return several hours later. That is, unless we wanted to stay overnight. Perhaps two nights. Thunderstorms were building and things weren’t expected to clear up until the next day… perhaps. I had brought Mike and Gary along for the flight, so we still wanted to go for a trip somewhere. Along with the rest of the pilots involved in the convoy, we decided on Vulcan (CFX6) as our backup destination, though I decided we’d leave first and try to fly over Drumheller (CEG4) and then head to Vulcan. On a side note, Vulcan is typical of small town Alberta; small, rural and quaint. But they’ve transformed themselves a bit to take advantage of the ever growing Trek fans… as seen on the town’s website.

As planned we took off first, headed south to skirt the majority of Calgary’s zone but only made it as far as the east side of Calgary’s city limits before we were forced to head south towards Vulcan due to low cloud cover at less than 900 feet AGL. To the south however, things looked much better with broken cloud at 1500-2000 feet AGL. With better weather ahead, the flight to Vulcan was uneventful.

We landed at Vulcan ahead of the rest of the group, so we waited in the ‘terminal building’, which, although small, had a washroom, was full of old copies of Flying magazine and protected us from Vulcan’s giant mosquitoes. The remaining planes arrived about twenty minutes later after their touch and go fly bys and we all walked across the fairway of the neighbouring golf course to the club house for some late lunch.

After lunch, the weather around Vulcan was starting to look like it could turn bad, which was confirmed by a weather briefing. Calgary was experiencing thunderstorms and the storm front was coming off the mountains and heading our way. The FSS briefer said to expect the thunderstorms to pass Vulcan within 15 minutes. So we waited. And waited. After an hour had passed with no considerable change in the weather at Vulcan, I volunteered to start hoping back towards Springbank given that I still have 4 hours of fuel on board.

High River is only 15-20 minutes from Vulcan and Okotoks is about the same from High River. Our plan was to head towards High River and then Okotoks, turning back at any point that things got worse. And the plan turned out okay; other than two small pockets of rain we encountered no significant weather and by the time we landed at Okotoks and called the others to report on our progress the sun was shining through scattered clouds. From there it was another short hop home to Springbank.

Was it safe to return like we did? You’ll have to trust me that it was, given my flight time, flight experience and ‘lived safely through my twenties’ judgement. Of course, it’s hard to judge this kind of thing anyway without actually being there. Would I have recommended such a flight to a new pilot? Probably not, but in the end, every pilot in command has to weigh the evidence and make the go/no-go decision for themselves. In any case, this flight only solidified my desire to get an IFR rating that much more. The weather at Vulcan was more than good enough to depart and had Springbank been socked in on my arrival, Calgary International would have been a good alternate.
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Starting IFR

Yesterday, I talked to the CFI (that’s Chief Flight Instructor for those of you from the US) at the Calgary Flying Club about a plan for getting my IFR rating. I’d already picked up the required books a few weeks ago so I could get a head start on the reading and was excited to solidify a plan. The CFI went over my expectations, the sylabus, the rate at which I should fly (he suggests three times a week if I can) and the best time to start.

So, that said, as of September I will be officially working towards my instrument rating. I love learning new things so I’m rather excited about it. And the thought of having more flexibility to fly despite inclement weather is a rather good bonus. As I progress, I will be sure to post about my experiences; I was able to find the IFR Diary, which is an account of IFR training in the US back in 1993, but haven’t been able to find anything as thorough that’s more current and/or about training in Canada. So, hopefully after I’m done, we’ll have such a resource.
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Cessna 182 Checkout

For the past 13 years that I’ve had my private pilot licence, I’ve flown relatively basic airplanes; Cessna 150, 152, 172 and Piper Warriors. They were all made in large numbers and all have characteristics that make them good trainers; low stall speed, very stable in a stall, good flight envelope, low fuel burn and fixed-pitch propellors. That means that you’ll find these airplanes at almost all flying schools or clubs you go to, though that’s starting to change as Diamond Star and others make low-end planes with similar characteristics.

But the problem with all these planes is that they’re slow and have a small useful load. So, because of that, and because I want to expand my horizons, I started getting checked out in the Calgary Flying Club’s Cessna 182. The Club’s 182 has a 230HP Continental engine connected to a variable-pitch contant speed propellor. For me, given how much I’ve flown and flown recently, that means two flights; one to do upper air work and one to do circuits.

Since today we did the upper air work, I did all the flying, with my instructor Jason simply explaining any subtleties briefing before I did stalls, steep turns, slow flight and foced approaches. The plane is absolutely amazing. The engine has a distinctive sound that almost purrs. The extra horsepower and fine pitch on takeoff gets the aircraft moving rapidly such that you are almost pushed back in your seat. And unlike the Warrior, the 182 wants to climb from the airport height of 3937 feet, even in the heat of a mid-summer day. Overall the upper air performance of the 182 is similar to that of the 182 except that everything happens faster. The one exception worth noting is that in slow flight the 182 appears to just “hang” suspended in place in the air; it’s amazing.

The constant speed propellor wasn’t nearly as complex as I had expected. The problem with reading about variable pitch propellors, either in books or on the web, is that everyone starts talking about how it works without explaining how it works for normal people. Aviatrix has a good explanation on her blog, employing some good analogies. One thing that I never really understood (I am a programmer afterall not a mechanic) is the relationship between horsepower and speed. I just assumed that more horsepower meant more speed. So if you changed the Warrior’s 160HP engine to 230HP that it would go that much faster. Then, while doing some research I came across an article that stated the (now blatently) obvious: two engines turning the same pitch propellor at the same RPM will produce the exact same thrust, even if one engine has 160HP and the other 230HP. That’s where variable pitch comes in; in a nutshell a variable pitch propeller lets the engine make use of that extra horsepower. I’ll have to search around for the article again because it’s worth a read for anyone who just didn’t understand.

Update: I found an article titled Engines & Propellors which does a pretty good job of explaining about variable pitch propellors and why a pilot would desire a constant speed propellor, which is a special type of variable pitch propellor.
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CanJet review

This afternoon’s flight on CanJet was an interesting experience. Overall, I would say that CanJet failed to make a major impression on me; they are just another airline. They started out well, with a short line up despite the fact that we arrived a mere 50 minutes before our flight. WestJet by comparison had a line up that snaked back and forth and seemed to go outside the terminal. The actual check-in was speedy and Alison and I had seats together thanks to CanJet’s web booking system. Then it was through security and off to the gate with only two minutes to go (there is an interesting story associated with our trip through security for this flight but I’ll leave that for another blog). We flew in one of their 500 series 737s, and like WestJet, they have nice leather seats but no leg room whatsoever. The flight crew were friendly and, unlike most WestJet flights, had at least one bilingual crew on board. The flight deck crew were way more talkative than I’ve ever seen and kept us informed of everything from the flight time, the turbulence, the weather patterns and which of the Great Lakes we were over flying at the time. That said though, we did take up pretty much all of runway 23’s 10,000+ feet of runway as we floated forever and then finally landed rather firmly.

CanJet, like all the other airlines (it seems) is going with ”no extras” business model and as such only provides complimentary coffee and tea. This worked well for us as we grabbed lunch in the airport and only wanted to drink tea. This is where CanJet lost a lot of points with me; they charge for everything else, including chips or cookies or peanuts or canned pop. This in itself is okay, but CanJet charges $2 for a pop. Yes, two dollars for a 355 ml can of pop. Two dollars for a can which I can get wholesale for 50 cents is a complete rip off and something you expect from a hotel mini-bar (Novotel in downtown Toronto charges $2.50). I understand completely that CanJet wants to keep costs to a minimum but charging people four times the cost of a product is outrageous. One dollar would be more than enough to recover any costs associated with getting that can of pop from the factory to my seat at 37,000 feet.

So will I fly CanJet again? Absolutely, but they are not at the top of my list. That spot is still reserved for Air Canada. Why? AC has the most flights to wherever I want to go. I’d rather pay $50 more if I can sleep, work or do whatever a little longer. With Air Canada I can fly around my life’s schedule not schedule my life around my flight. And at least Air Canada still offers me (for now) complementary pop.
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No More Free Meals

When I started university in 1993, it cost me $15 per month to have a phone line in my residence room. Yup, only $15. And that wasn’t a special student discount or anything, it was the regular rate for everyone. Back then Telus was still known as AGT (short for Alberta Government Telephone) and like all phone companies prior to deregulation, they probable subsidized the local rates with their long distance. That’s not to say that local service cost a great deal to maintain, it’s just that AGT didn’t need to jack the local service rates as they had the long distance market locked up. Then along came deregulation, AGT became Telus, and Telus was forced to compete with other long distance carriers. Now, I pay $40 per month for a phone line into my house and long distance is on top of that. Only I don’t dial long distance all that often so there are no overall savings for me.

Last night I was looking at flights to Jamaica and noticed something new on Air Canada’s website. Once you’ve chosen your flight and you’re reviewing your flight details, it shows information about the meal service. And it seems now that, according to the Air Canada website, that “complimentary meal service is now only available on North American flights longer than 4h30m”. So while I appreciate that WestJet and other discount carriers have brought down the cost of flying, I think that those cheap flights have come at huge costs. Airlines are declaring bankruptcy left, right and centre. Governments in turn throw tax payer money into the pot to help out. Shareholders lose money as the share prices plummet. It seems to be a lose, lose, lose and more lose situation for everyone. Sure you could say the end consumer wins because of lower seat prices, but that same end user pays taxes and invests in the stock market and may have a job that is connected to the airline industry.

I don’t have the answer to the problem either, I just know that I’m not happy about having to pay for a meal on a flight. At least if I had the option of purchasing that meal when I bought the ticket, then by the time the flight came around I’d have forgotten that I had to pay extra for it. Of course, I was paying for it before too; it was just all part of the single ticket price. And I’m still not happy about paying $40 per month for a home phone line.
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C-GBPW

I was pleased to come across a site today about the planned sinking of an old Canadian Airlines 737 as an artificial reef on the Canadian West Coast. I’d actually heard about the project last year but had totally forgotten about it until now (thanks Trevor).

I’ve done a bunch of dive trips to the coast in the past few years and have already checked out pretty much all the wrecks that Artificial Reef Society has sunk there. I actually try to do at least one dive trip to the coast per year as I haven’t dove them nearly enough. And unless you are diving them every day, it’s hard to get bored or tired of diving the wrecks, even if you have done them before.

The neat thing that this 737-200 will offer divers is that in Western Canada, pretty much anyone who has flown in the past 30 years has flown on a 737-200. The 737-200 was flown by Pacific Western Airlines (which became Canadian Airlines Internation) back in the day, and now WestJet, CanJet and Air Canada (as Tango and Zip) still fly the 200 series. So when you dive down to C-GBPW’s final resting spot you will be able to say ”I’ve flown on one of these before,” which is rare occurance when diving ship wrecks.

And what’s really cool is that I’m pretty sure that I’ve already been inside this particular 737-200. I don’t remember it specifically, but when I was a baggage handler for Canadian Airlines International in high school I crawled around inside the cargo holds of pretty much all of Canadian Airlines’ fleet. And if your luggage got lost or damaged, I swear it was nothing to do with me. Seriously.
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We Had An 'Air Force One'?

CBC News reported today that the Royal Canadian Air Force Memorial Museum is trying to raise $500,000 to bring a Canadair Yukon CC-106 back from Guayaquil, Ecuador. According to the article, the aircraft once flew the Queen and former prime ministers John Diefenbaker and Lester Pearson along with numerous soldiers throughout it’s career.

Apparently they have a deal to purchase the aircraft for $1000 USD, so I’m not sure why it will take another $498,000 CDN to get the plane back to Canada. Although it seems like a rather big plane, there must be some sort of transport ship that could sail down there, get the plane and bring it back? Of course, what’s $500K really in the grand scheme of things? Especially when the current government apparently gave out several hundred million dollars for nothing…
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