Flying

Athabasca In Two Hours

On Friday afternoon I flew up to Athabasca with my wife, my dog and 100 pounds of camping gear/luggage. And with full fuel we still had weight to spare, though the baggage area was completely full and the back seat was half full with my laptop bag, my flying bag and our dog.

Weather at Springbank was reasonable, with 3000 ft ceilings, 30+ mile visibility and winds from the south. Takeoff was uneventful with not even a peep from Scout (our dog) who had crashed out during the runup and we were off, cruising at a reasonable 120 kts thanks to the tailwind. Our filed flight plan took us north parallel with Highway 2 (now renamed Queen Elizabeth II Highway) since Athabasca is basically north of Edmonton. This meant that we would pass over Edmonton International airport and I was hoping to get a glimpse of some activity and perhaps take a few pictures worthy of Airliners.Net. Unfortunately, the though the weather was cooperating, the airlines weren’t; there was hardly any activity at the International and I didn’t see anything worth taking photos of.

About 30 miles back from Athabasca, we encountered lower clouds, turbulent air and rain, which we flew through the remainder of the trip. Although my wife wasn’t keen on the weather, Scout didn’t seem to mind and I don’t mind the rain at all. It was the first flight in the rain for me this season so it was nice to have a “refresher”, so to speak. We cleared the rain just as we entered the circuit and had probably my softest landing ever, which I try extra hard to do since my wife isn’t keen on takeoffs and landings (in any aircraft, including airliners). Total time, gate to gate, 2 hours, 11 minutes. Nice.

On Sunday, I took a couple of friends for a local flight around the Athabasca area and overflew their cabins at North Buck Lake. Again the weather cooperated long enough to get the flight done but we encountered heavy rain on our return and landed a bit long and a bit hard due to gusting crosswinds. But the flight was worth it because the scenery around Athabasca is so beautiful.

On Tuesday afternoon, we reluctently left North Buck Lake and returned to CYWM where we were greeted (as expected) by the friendly folks at Alberta Central Airways. They helped push our Warrior out of the grass parking spot and kindly sold us some fuel. As I was paying, I gave some free (but not all that helpful) advice on recovering some lost data (as I software developer I get those kinds of questions all the time). Then, we packed up the plane and headed for home.

Once again, the winds were in our favour; at one point the GPS was showing a ground speed of 130 kts. Nice! The weather on the return trip was interesting to say the least. All reports on paper showed things as a maginal flying day; low ceilings, gusting winds and thunderstorms or devloping storms throughout our route home. The actual weather, though, wasn’t all that bad. CYWM was overcast with 3000 ft ceilings, no rain and 30+ mile visibility and I knew that I could get as far as Edmonton so off we went. When we hit Edmonton, we flew through rain while over the city and then clear skies between Edmonton and Edmonton International. Then, over the International, driving rain again followed by clear skies until just outside of Red Deer when it was raining again. And then? Reasonably clear skies until just outside the Calgary area when everything was socked in again. I’m totally serious. But, the weather was still above minimums and we landed softly and smoothly on runway 34. And just like the way up to CYWM, in two hours and four minutes we were back home at CYBW again.

And for the record, I didn’t think about anything work related all weekend. Not once.
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Flying To Athabasca

On Friday we are flying north to Athabasca, with a quick stop en route at Edmonton/Villeneuve to pick up some friends. We’ve done this trip several times before but this time I’m hoping that my wife will move from navigator to co-pilot. She really enjoys keeping the maps and monitoring our progress so I’m hoping now that I can get her more comfortable with the controls, at least comfortable enough so that I can take a bunch of pictures along the way.

The other exciting element to this trip is that this will be our dog’s first cross-country trip. It’s not his first flying experience though. He’s flown twice in the baggage compartment of a 737 and last month, I took him on a short flight over the city. He was actually much better on the city flight than he is on longer car rides. Our dog used to be quite good in the car, quietly curling up in the back seat. Now, however, anything longer than 15 minutes and he’s whining. So I was pleasantly surprised on his first flight that he simply curled up in the back seat of the Piper Warrior and slept. I hoping that he will do the same on this longer flight.
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Air Racing

I’m not a big fan of Flash-based websites. Not at all. I think that too often Flash is used to make a site look cool, but when it comes down to it the site disappoints because there’s no solid content or information. But, this afternoon I was looking for some air race information and found the Red Bull Air Race site. Amazing. I’m not sure if those air race guys are good pilots, crazy pilots or just plain crazy, but the flying they do is amazing.

The Red Bull site is exactly what Flash should be used for. You can watch a race take place and you can choose the camera angle to watch from. Want to know what the pilot is thinking? No problem, just turn on the commentary. It’s like a DVD but all within your browser. Very slick.
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Driving to Edmonton

It was a long drive home from St. Albert tonight. We left far later than we had planned; we were just having such a good time with our northern friends. Add to that the fact that we left such that we were on the road over the dinner hour and hate eating crappy fast food.

The whole way home I would picture in my mind where we would have have been had we been flying, up until just north of Red Deer, at which point we would have been unpacking the plane had we flown. It was at that point that we decided that there was no real good reason why we shouldn’t fly for these trips. Why should we bother having a good weekend away from home only to be dragged down at the end of it all because we have a boring 3 hours drive ahead.

Instead, we will rent a plane from the club from now on and to keep things interesting we will try and vary our route. Of course, it might mean that we have to eat Mac & Cheese more often… though it’ll be worth it.
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Snow

I had to postpone my trip to CYXJ until April 28. This morning I woke up at 6am to melting snow on my front porch and a fine mist as I walked the dog. Springbank (CYBW) had 700 foot ceilings and Edmonton Intl had 200 foot ceilings. Fort St. John, however, was fairly nice weather-wise… not so with everything in between. The forecast for later in the day looks pretty good, as does tomorrow, but unfortunately that will be too late.

Instead I entertained myself with videos on the FlightLevel350.com site like this amazingly low landing at SXM.
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Snow? In mid-April?

I’m flying to Fort St. John tomorrow. Unless of course the forecast for snow tomorrow comes true. It’s nice for the past two weeks and then Mother Nature rewards my patience with snow?
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Runway Renumbered

I haven’t flown in the Kelowna area since I left the Okanagan in 1993. Last month I was showing off FlightGear to someone who lived in Kelowna, so I started up the program and told it I wanted to start on runway 33 only to be told that runway 33 didn’t exist. I was a bit puzzled since I was almost positive that CYLW’s lone runway was numbered 15/33. And when I pulled out my CFS to double check, the CFS confirmed what FlightGear had told me; runway 33 does not exist and instead the runway is 16/34.

I then checked the Internet for some news of the renumbering of the runway but couldn’t find anything. In any case, today I feel validated thanks to Google’s latest offering: satellite images directly linked to their mapping site. Type in an address and get a computer generated map. Then click on the “Satellite” link in the upper-right corner and just like that, you are viewing a zoom-able bird’s eye view of your map. And by accident I ended up looking at the Kelowna airport and what should I see but a runway numbered 15/33.

The satellite imagery has varying levels of zoom and some areas a better for coverage than others. But the site uses the same dragable system as the regular map site, which is simply amazing, especially when looking at the satellite views.

Update: Check out the Calgary Airport using the new satellite imagery on Google. Once you find it, you’ll see an aircraft holding short for 34. So far so good. Now head straight south from there and check out the golf course to see an aircraft on short final for 34. Amazing!
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City Tour and a Near Miss

I finally got around to flying over the city yesterday. I’d actually tried to overfly the city on the return from a flight to Drumheller last summer but the Calgary Terminal controllers were too busy and wanted nothing to do with me.

But last night it was quiet, and since we were the only GA aircraft around we had free range of the city so long as we remained “west of MacLeod Trail and south of John Laurie”. The sun was starting to set as we reached the city and the amazing orange sunset added to the fun of the flight. My wife and her friend Cara were along for the ride and both girls were ecstatic at how close we were able to fly to the tall downtown buildings and more so that they could identify our Bankview homes from the air. I have to admit that seeing your house from a new perspective is rather neat.

By the time we left the downtown core and headed back towards Springbank, the sun had long since set behind the majestic Rockies and “official” night was rapidly approaching. That meant that the wildlife changing of the guard had taken place and that daytime animals like geese and rabbits were replaced with animals of the night like owls and wolves. And it was just after touchdown that I had my first near miss since getting my licence over ten years ago; a fox ran across the runway not more than 50 feet in front of the aircraft. Because of my airspeed at the time all I could do was gasp and hope for the best; and it was everyone’s lucky day because no animals or aircraft were hurt in the incident.
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Flying to Fort St. John

In a couple of weeks I’m flying a friend up to Fort St. John. It’s a good fit. I like doing cross-country trips and want to build hours and he needs to go up north to do some quick fixes for a client. And I’ve never been north of Athabasca, so it’s also a chance to visit some new airports too.

I’ve already basically planned the route, using VORs only so as to practice my navigation skills. But since I’ve never been to CYXJ I thought that perhaps I would do a mock flight on FlightGear. It’s not that I don’t have faith in my abilities to read a map or navigate to the airport, it’s just that it’s always nice to know what things will be like when you get there. In the Army we called that a recce; at the very least you did a map recce by looking over your map but an actual recce was always preferred.

So the best way for me to do a somewhat realistic recce was to do the route on FlightGear, which has surprisingly realistic terrain. Though since the flight from Springbank is just over four hours, I skipped the long cross-country and just started the flight from Dawson Creek, which is only 20 minutes flying time away. The result? Basically the same as I had pictured things in my mind from looking at the map, only the computer did it all for me, validating my mental picture. Is it helpful? I think it is, so long as you don’t get over confident in your plan (since you’ve flown it on the simulator multiple times) that when things don’t go as you expect that you don’t know what to do.
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