My flight instructor greeted me this morning with the news that he had procured a flight test date for me, and it's the end of next week!!! I'm only three days into my two weeks straight of flying every day (weather permitting), and so I was a little taken aback. To be honest, I feeling a little overloaded. On the other hand, having a date etched in stone makes it very real, and gives me a very specific goal to strive for!!
funny sign posted on the board in the briefing room at K-W Flight school
Something that really struck me on my dual cross country west recently was the stark contrast of general aviation communities at the airports enroute, as compared to the lack thereof at CYTZ. Although training at a busy, controlled airport like City has its advantages, and taking off and landing with such a stunning view each time is inspiring, I am sadly missing the type of thing I observed while flying "out west" the other day. Both Tillsonburg and Kitchener seem to have fairly active flying clubs; there are bulletin boards, cafes and loads of friendly people around. I believe this positively affects the flight training climate at the schools there; the general atmosphere was far less tense at both locations than I generally find it to be at Island Air!!! People just sort of seemed happy to be there. Interestingly, a cursory glance at the Waterloo flight centre's website indicates a disproportionately (in a good way!) high number of women involved. The influence is evident in the number of female and children's faces featured on the school's website. Women or no women, though, the general aviation community at both the airports we visited was evident. I wish we had more of that in Toronto. A goal, maybe, if I ever finish my PPL!!! When I first began learning to fly 3 years ago, I remember being overwhelmed with the radio work at a fairly busy controlled airport. I soon developed a few "cheat sheets", to provide myself with some scaffolding. Several of my ground school peers quickly adopted these as well, as they proved to be quite useful. I used them for several months, until I developed enough confidence to make radio calls "on the fly" (pun intended). As I recently returned to flying lessons, I realised that you can forget a lot in six months of not flying! So, to take some of the load off, and allow my brain to focus on other things while in the plane, I revisited my old friends. With a few revisions, they find themselves on my kneeboard once again! Here they are, below, for anyone new to flying who may want to use them:
With the possibility of finally attaining my PPL afresh on the horizon, I was chastised by my flight instructor girlfriend for not having a proper pilot log. It’s true, my PTR is up to date, and at some point, I had a proper paper and faux-leather bound pilot log, but the latter has been missing for at least 3 months if not longer, and it was certainly not up to date with my PTR. So, I set about researching online Pilot Logs and apps that might inspire me to get my record keeping in order. I figured my iPad was less likely to get lost than some old uni-purpose book! Although I'm a dues-paying member of the PEI flying association, I don't get to participate all that much.
Firstly, I don't have my PPL yet (fingers crossed for July-- that's a whole other story, blog post update on Vera's never-ending flight studies coming not too soon!!!) Furthermore, I don't own a plane. Finally, I'm only on the Island about 2 months a year. So, there's not much to get involved with, really. But tomorrow morning, I will be celebrating my fellow pilots from afar, as they collaborate to introduce the young 'uns in the area to general aviation. The association will be hosting a "COPA for kids" event, which involves registration of kids as they come in, guides to get kids to various staging areas, "Ground School" and, of course, a short circuit around the area so that the kids get to actually fly in a plane. My girlfriend and I did an informal little kids' flight a few months ago for my own offspring and two other kids here at CYTZ... it was good fun, and a great way to introduce them to the joys of small aircraft flying. Too bad there's no longer a flight school on PEI... but who knows? If they build enough interest... ??!! Barry, Brian and friends... I'm praying for good weather for y'all tomorrow! See you in July! Despite the crappy weather (rain and fairly low ceilings), we decided to head out. Since our original plan to fly to Oshawa and enjoy lunch at the famed but not-yet-visited-by-us Mandarin buffet did not align with the METARs or TAF, we elected instead to fly out west a little, and show our friend our apartment from the sky. This was followed by a city tour around the CN tower and then, once on the ground, we had some very rich poutine at a local greasy spoon, followed by tea and cake at the Red Tea Box on Queen. (click photos to enlarge) This was my first time in a small plane since my last flight lesson, on Christmas Eve, so I was pretty excited, regardless of lousy WX! With an CYYG-tower-working friend visiting from PEI, it was time to avail ourselves of the Nav-Canada connection, and visit Toronto Centre at Pearson. Our new ATC friend gave us a great tour... Wow, what a cool place!!! Every area has its own specialty (for example, northern Ontario, or East/West), and the folks who work there focus specifically on traffic in that area, and become experts in that area. In the section that deals with incoming traffic to YYZ from the east, we got to see how all traffic is funneled into a sort of digital "box" on the screen, oriented depending on the runway in use, from which they are handed over to the tower for arrivals. The people who work this area area also see GA traffic in the "practice area", and the ATC guy there told us horror stories of two targets he has often watched, both well within their legal rights, converge and just barely miss one another, due to not being in communication with Toronto Centre. We got to see how radar coverage is affected by altitude, for example, how far away they can see our little Cessna 150s when we fly our cross-country easts, depending on how high or low we fly. In general, higher is better. (Though of course it takes forever for our little planes to climb to altitude!) In the nucleus of the centre we met the flow control people. They coordinate all the take off and landing times. With a plan landing on average every two minutes per runway at Pearson, this is no small job! It was interesting to get a sense of the big picture. A delay of 2-3 minutes from one airport can create chaos at the destination airport, and sometimes, not everyone follows the rules and plays nicely!
Visiting Toronto Centre was an eye-opening experience, and I feel like I have a little better understanding now, that will serve me well as a pilot. We almost got to see the tower, too, but were late for a plane booking at CYTZ, so we had to go. Next time! Got to introduce some children to general aviation today… My pilot girlfriend agreed to take the 11-year-old twins from a rather unique family I volunteer with flying today. So, she waived her fee, and I emptied out the remaining few dollars I had on account at the flight school (from when I was still taking lessons) , and each boy got to go up in the front seat of a 150. In between kids, Mel (the owner of the flight school) helped marshal the plane in, and we kept the engine running while he and I safely got one kid out and the next one in. Sadly, there wasn't any time to squeeze in a flight for me (I haven't been in the cockpit since my last lesson, on Christmas Eve 2012!), but it was still a pretty neat adventure to be a part of.
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Welcome to Vera's Flight Brain...Here I will attempt -- hopefully not in vain -- to share my connections to previous knowledge. Or I might share a few random thoughts loosely connected to flying, too, as well as any useful resources I may stumble across in my studies.
AuthorVera C. Teschow is a certified teacher and mother of twin boys Alex and Simon. In addition to documenting her flying lessons, she also blogs about babies, teaching and life in general. Categories
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September 2013
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