Chauvinists Live
I was walking home from work this afternoon and saw something I have yet to see in the 21st Century; a real, live chauvinist. At the corner of 17th Avenue (the famed ’Red Mile’) and 14th Street SW while waiting for the light to change, a woman in her late twenties, out for a jog, ran up from behind me. She was reasonably pretty, with a rather skimpy running outfit given that it’s April… in Calgary, which could easily still mean snow. In any case, she was certainly the nicest thing at this particular intersection.
After the light changed, she carried on with her run along 17th Avenue and I carried on with my walk home. As I finished crossing the intersection, I heard a series of “woo’s”. I looked up to see a white crew cab truck, typical of one you would see in construction or the oil patch, with a 40-something guy sticking his head out of the passenger window. And what was he wooing? Yup, the young woman jogger.
I never understand that mentality. Did the man honestly expect the woman to stop jogging and run after the truck? Or was the guy just trying to impress his friends? Although we’ve likely all done the ‘impress your friends’ thing, for most people that stops once you graduate from university. In any case, the chauvinists live. And it made me laugh. And to the woman’s credit, she just kept on jogging.
IFR Lesson #16
At this point in my IFR training, I can get the aircraft in the air, navigate to where I want to go and hold in place there, but I can’t land. At least not if the weather is overcast such that I don’t have visual on the airport from my cruise altitude. So now that we’ve finished up with holds, we are moving onto approaches, which will allow me to follow a procedure down to, hopefully, a safe landing at the desired airport.
We did a handful of approaches at two different airports this afternoon: the VOR 25 at Calgary International (CYYC) and the VOR A at Empress (CYEA). Like all the training thus far, the first time doing VOR approaches is a bit of a gongshow. Everything seems to come too fast, mostly because I’m too slow. I’m too slow with FITS check, too slow with my CRATOG check and too slow trying to get the aircraft settled down and ready for the approach. But it was good to be done holds. Holds are brutally boring. At least I find them as such.
Sim Time: 1.5 hrs
IFR Lesson #15
Today’s lesson was simply a ground brief on approaches. Yes, approaches. Finally. In talking with my instructor Jason today, it seems that my thoughts on people quitting were right. According to Jason, most people that start IFR training but never finish end up stopping somewhere in their holds training. Good times. Did I mention I’m happy to be past that part of the training? Of course, I suspect that there will still be holds in my future sim training, but at least that will just be part of an approach now.
Approaches, in a sense, are the easiest part of IFR flying as everything is basically spelled out for you on the appropriate CAP; outbound on this heading, turn this direction for the procedure turn, descend to this altitude here, etc. Granted there are various methods for starting the approach after reaching the initial fix but everything after that is written down on the CAP. And if you don’t follow those instructions to the letter, not only are you breaking the CARs but you risk running becoming one of those CFIT statistics, especially in mountainous terrain.
That’s not to say that expect approaches to be easy. Although you need to review the approach plate before starting, you need to be sure that you are at least one step ahead of the plane so that you aren’t fumbling around from one step to the next. And thus far, staying ahead of the plane has been my biggest challenge.
KDE 3.5.2
KDE 3.5.2 was released yesterday. So, in keeping with tradition, my Latitude C840 churned away last night and built it under Gentoo. And I’m happy to report, once again, that KDE 3.5.2 (built from source under Gentoo) appears to run just fine.
Groundspeed: 155 kts
Ali and I flew up to visit our friends in St. Albert yesterday evening. We had planned to leave between 4pm and 5pm local time but we were running behind. And that was okay anyway since Mother Nature was playing havoc with us anyway. Up until 1730h or so, the weather around Calgary was completely socked in. But then, like magic, the sky cleared and our only issue was a small pocket of cloud around the Red Deer (CYQF) area.
By the time we arrived at the flying club, did the walk around and packed our luggage, it was 1855h when we started up. Our wheels up time was 1906h; a mere two hours behind our scheduled time, which actually worked out okay as it would allow me to stay night current. As we climbed up to 6500 feet, the small, rolling hills below our route started to fill with misty-like fog, which made for a scenic start to the flight.
As we leveled off and our climbing power was transferred to cruise speed, our groundspeed increased to 125 knots, thanks to a forecast wind of 180 @ 25 Kts. Abeam Red Deer to the west, the wispy fog and low broken cloud began to dissipated leaving a clear route for the rest of the trip. We watched a Peace Air aircraft descend and pass below us and although both of us were talking to Red Deer Radio, it weird to have another aircraft so randomly close when there’s so much space above the ground. But it was good reinforcement for my ‘all lights, all the time’ policy.
Shortly after passing Pigeon Lake (22 nautical miles south-west of CYEG), our ground speed picked up and was averaging 140 knots (+/- 5 kts), which to date is the fastest cruise to date I’ve achieved in CFC’s 25-year-old Warriors. And neither of the PA-28s have wheel pants or any of the other goodies that help achieve a faster cruise. And the best was yet to come, because as we approached Villeneuve (CZVL) and left 6500 feet for 5000, I achieved yet another new speed record. With the RPM just in the green and in a 500 fpm descent, we were able to hit a peak groundspeed of 155 knots. Amazing. More so considering that the PA-28-161 has a fixed-pitch propeller driven by a 160 hp engine. And while the handbook says that you should get 112 kts TAS, I’ve always found it to be more like 105 kts.
We were cleared direct to a right-hand base for runway 08, which made for an interesting crosswind final approach. But in the last 100 feet the wind became calm and we landed with ease, a mere 1 hour and 19 minutes after our take off from Springbank.
IFR Lesson #14
Jason called me this morning and asked if I could come in early for my sim booking. The ceilings at Calgary/Springbank were fluxuating between 300 and 1000 feet, so pretty much all his bookings (in fact all the club’s bookings) were cancelled. I agreed, and after gobbling down some breakfast and swinging by Zymeta to restart our Telus ADSL modem after a power outage, drove like a maniac out to the club.
When I arrived at the airport and turned onto MacLaurin Drive I was suprised to see a retractable on what looked to be a fast approach… with gear up. Ever the optimist I figured the pilot must be doing it on purpose, though in the back of my mind I wondered if I might see my first accident. Of course, with ceilings so low that no one was in the circuit, I’m sure the tower controller was watching the aircraft and had it not been some sort of authorized maneuver, would have told the pilot that his gear was up. In any case, by the time I had parked the car, the aircraft had pulled up and seemed to disappear into the cloud.
Today was another day of NDB holds, again with wind. My grasp on holds is much better now. I have no issues with the type of entry to use and I am almost to the point where everything just flows. But that only happens when I am able to keep ahead of everything, which I sometimes find a little hard to do with the elevator so touchy on simulator. I can see hand flying holds and approaches to be a lot fun for real but there is something to be said for an autopilot that will do most of that for you while you write down a clearance or set up for an approach.
For example, today I accepted a hold clearance from Jason (aka ATC) and as I was figuring out everything I blew by the beacon. In this case, Jason let me fumble around for 15 seconds until I simply asked if he could put me back again so I could get organized and try again. While I realize that simply isn’t possible in real life, today is training and a man can only fall behind and fumble around for so long before frustration sets in. The second time around was much better.
I am, however, still trying to account for wind from hold to hold, when it’s more than likely that this will never be the case. So I have vowed to never again try to account for the wind on the first ‘lap’ unless I’m 110% sure of where the wind is coming from. The Garmin GPS in GXHO has a cool feature where you tell it your magnetic heading and airspeed and it tells you the wind speed and direction, which would be awfully handy for times like this. The other lesson I learned today is that no matter how good you are, you are rarely going to execute a hold that is perfect, mostly due to fluxuating wind direction and speed. Up until this point, the possibility of that had never entered my mind but I guess the Wlite software we are using is smart enough to vary the wind.
Overall, today was a good sim day and I’m glad to be leaving holds behind now (for the time being) and moving onto approaches.
Sim Time: 1.1 hrs
Rrroll Up The Rim To Win 2006
There’s a fairly new Tim Hortons’ just a block from the Zymeta office and so Ali and I have been stopping there on our way to work to pick up coffee. The ‘Rrroll Up the Rim’ contest for 2006 has started and I began on a high note: my first three cups were winners. I won a coffee, followed by two donuts. Three for three isn’t bad. But I’m now at three for ten and I saw this morning in the store that the odds of winning are 1 in 9. So that means I will likely have to drink another seventeen coffees before seeing another winning cup. And it’s more than likely that the contest will be over by then. Sigh.
Now With Knowledge
I re-read the IFR Diary this evening. I hadn’t read it since well before starting my own IFR training (back in October 2005), and it was neat to read it again, only this time understanding most of what was written. When I first read it, I used it to try and figure out what to expect for my own training, but didn’t know what the 5 T’s were, what the protected side of a hold was or what the heck a DME arc was. But now, with many hours of sim time and even more hours of homework and studying, IFR Diary is an even more enjoyable read, given that I know or have experienced most of what the author is writing about.
The other great thing about the re-read was my ability to check out the various airports mentioned using either Runway Finder or directly via Google Maps. I found that especially helpful in day 8 of the article when the author requests a ’low approach on 27 to land on 33 at Oakland. Unless you you’ve been there before (for real or in a sim) or have seen the bird’s eye view, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to imagine how this might work. At least I couldn’t.
More Content
I hooked up with a buddy of mine last week who had recently moved back from a multi-year stint (including a marriage) in Australia. He’s an avid music collector and, like me, owns an ecclectic mix of CDs. So in exchange for lunch and a handful of beers, he loaned me his CD collection, which for the past 5 days I’ve been ripping to digital format so as to add to Zymeta’s collection. So far I’ve ripped 1073 tracks. Good times.
IFR Lesson #13
This afternoon’s work in the simulator continued where we left off last lesson; NDB holds. Only now we’ve added realism… wind, that is. I think I’ve now reached the point where people who never finished their IFR training most likely stopped at. Why do I think that? Because for the past 5.1 hours in the simulator all we’ve done is drive around in circles. Or in this case, racetrack patterns disguised as something cooler by calling them ‘holds’. That’s not to say that I am bored or that I am the master of all things hold related, but I can see now why people might quit. This phase of the IFR training is boring, monotonous and, at times, frustrating.
The thing with holds is that whether it’s a VOR, NDB, DME or some other fix, essentially it’s all the same. The other things that change are the entry method, the instrument(s) used, and the crab angle. The entry method used depends on your heading to the fix relative to the outbound heading in the hold. The instrument(s) used depend on the fix type. And the crab angle depends on where the wind is coming from and at what speed. Everything else is the same. But that didn’t stop me from turning the wrong way on an offset entry to a non-standard lefthand turn NDB hold. Made worse by this magical wind that seemed to be blowing from whatever direction would make my predicament; or so it seemed.
My problems are partially due to two week time lapse between lessons. It’s hard enough to make headway at one lesson a week, but one lesson every two weeks is almost impossible. But by the end of the lesson, I was getting back into NDB holds and holds in general. And more importantly, I was starting to be able to handle holds with wind. Alsa, based on today’s overall performance, Jason decides that next lesson we will do a few more NDB holds before moving onto approaches.
Sim Time: 1.4 hrs
