Pilot Iso

Fall flying

2006-10-02T06:30:00.000-07:00

Oh man. I've been doing a ton of flying lately in order to cram in as much on floats as I can before the weather gets too cold- I just haven't had time to write about it.

And oh man, it's been great flying too. The weather has been pretty soggy but so long as we've got a 500' ceiling or so we're up in the air. We've been doing a lot of river landings to get them hammered down. Yesterday was a blast; Y would have me land on the little S-shaped creek leading into the Macintyre Pond, keep the power up and stay on the step and make a hard left to enter the pond and follow it out again along the creek, and then exit stage left after a sharp C-shaped corner, power full to take off. So cool.

And it's duck hunting season now too so marsh landings to pick up missing ducks or low passes to check out who's at what cabin are becoming the norm. Awesome.

And a neat trick I learned a few weeks ago: do a normal crosswind landing on the inboard float, then add juuust enough power to stop the plane from settling down and fly along on the step on that one float. OH, IS THAT EVER FUN.

I'm Disrespectful to Dirt. Can you see that I am serious?

2006-09-18T11:49:00.000-07:00

(Original post written 09/18/06)

Long time no write! It's been busy.

With lots of flying, at least. I was out and up pretty much all weekend, which was great. But oh, Saturday. Have you ever had so many things go wrong in one day that it actually stops being frustration and becomes funny instead? That was my Saturday in a nutshell.

It started with fog. A lot of fog. Y and I were planning on flying north at nine-thirtyish but the dense fog put the kibosh on that notion pretty quickly. I didn't mind waiting it out, though; I fussed around the plane down at the dock while Y went to clear brush around the duck blind. It was a nice warm morning otherwise, very calm and peaceful. For an hour or so I did the walk around, pumped floats, cleaned all of the windows, inside and out. I got back on my hands and knees and scrubbed the floats again. The end of summer algae on the lake is getting pretty gross, and there was a black line of gunk on the floats that I rather took umbrage to. BY CRICKEY CRACK COCAINE, THOU SHALT BE BANISHED TO THE LAND OF WIND AND GHOSTS.

Soon the fog began to lift... everywhere but at the lake. An eerie solid white blanket hung over the water. I kept scrubbing. When I looked up again the fog was gone. Just gone, snap, like that. And beautifully on cue, a Lancaster bomber thundered overhead, so low I could read the registration and gape. What a surreal moment.

Y arrived shortly after and we gabbed about the Lancaster for a while, then hopped into the plane and pushed off the dock. Y began to get the engine started while I fought with the headsets. The next thing I notice he's turned to face me with an 'uh oh' look on his face. The master switch is on. And likely has been left on since the last time we were flying, which was a couple days again. The prop doesn't budge an inch when we try the ignition. Ohhh crap.

We paddle back to the dock and tie up, then fetch the charger from the garage and hook it up. It's gonna take an hour to get enough of a charge in the battery to get the prop turning enough to catch. I crawl off to the farmhouse to die of embarrassment. Y ribs the heck out of me and then heads out to cut more brush.

An hour later we troop back to the plane to see how she's charging. The ammeter needle on the charger is still depressingly low; we had it set to trickle rather than boost. As I sit on the float and take a firm hold on the thing, Y warns me he's going to handbomb the prop to see if that will get it started. I'm about three feet behind the prop at this point, so I hug the charger and use it as a shield. As if!

He only has to swing it once before it roars into life. Sucked into the slipstream, a startled bee whips back against my arm and clings there. Evidently irritated by this inadvertant yet epic manoeuvre, it gives me a good sharp sting to express its displeasure and dies honourably on the spot. I yelp. I used to be mildly allergic to bees when I was a kid. But I don't seem to be swelling up or dying now, so I shake it off and turn back to the plane.

Y has to fly some sightseers this afternoon and would like to have the battery at least partially charged before then; no way does he want to have to hand prop the plane at their cottage. We give each other crafty sidelong looks. Time to go flying up north? You know, to charge up the battery and all. Hells, yes.

Y handbombs the prop while standing on the right float, which gives me the willies from the left seat. The day is beautifully calm and smooth as we climb out. I'm just turning to head towards Hastings and the Trent River when I hear Y give a yelp this time. He's looking back down at the farm. Christ, one of the field gates are open and his cattle are loose!

I make a hasty circuit and begin to come back in to land. But wait, at the last minute he ask me to do a low pass along the shore instead. I do so, because I love making low passes. Y spots his wife heading out towards the field to round up the cows in the fourwheeler. She waves as we go overhead. Saved by Mrs Y!

By this point the cloud and visibility had both gone up enough that we could head out for a little northern exposure. After first following the Trent River a ways past Hastings we turned towards Crowe Lake and began hitting every lake we could find, landing on some two or three times in different places if they were large enough. And this being Ontario and thus about seventy percent water to begin with, there were plenty of those around.

It was an awesome two hours. The weather even turned a little brighter, which is to say the overcast thinned a bit and made things smooth, calm and light. It was a great flight. Nothing beats simply cruising about the Kawarthas at 500' or less, watching Canada's gorgeous Shield countryside whip past. A couple highlights included:

- one powerboat that put up a pretty good race while I was taking off of Round Lake. I had just settled the plane two wingspans over the water and was pulling up the flaps at about 60mph when I heard Y remark that a boat was trying to follow us. Sure enough, when I looked to the left there he was, racing alongside. He kept up with us neck and neck as I was climbing out at 77-80mph and then broke off when we were close to the shoreline, waving goodbye as he turned back. I waved the wings back at him.

- thundering past the Chippewa II, giant old fashioned double-decker steamboat based on Stony Lake. I had just done a touch and go and while climbing out I veered gently to the right to avoid this thing. It was a really magnificent looking boat, with all sorts of dining tables and potted red flowers on the upper levels, all filled with people. I could see them watching the plane as we went overhead. Lots of them waved too.

- landing on Chemong Lake. I've been using that lake as a reliable landmark since day one, so it was kind of a funny, nice sort of feeling to finally drop in on it. Sort of a 'there, made it,' kind of feeling. Now, Pigeon Lake, I'm looking in YOUR direction!

Back at the farm we landed for a quick break to charge up the battery a little more (this time on boost rather than trickle), and for a drink and some baloney sandwiches (which I hated as a kid but enjoy now, go figure). A half hour later we jump back into the plane to head off across the lake to get in Y's sightseers. I fly us there, land and taxi up to the dock of the cottage; a whole bunch of happy looking people are waiting for us, not to mention a number of curious onlookers who have walked out onto neighbouring docks to check out the plane. I pop out, the hosts grab me and whisk me off to the barbeque taking place in the back yard, Y pops into the plane with the first two sightseers and off everyone goes.

I'm dropped into a muskoka chair and plied with food and drinks, most of which I'm successful at politely fending off (except the dip, it was excellent.) Everyone wants to wants to know what it's like being a pilot, so we chat airplanes and cottages for a while. It turns out one of the women there absolutely loves flying and wants to get her licence herself. I'm highly enthusiastic about that idea. Their three dogs prowl around me suspiciously for a while, but after I accidentally drop a few nacho chips on the grass they're happy to welcome me on board. Everything smells like hamburgers and smoke.

When Y is finished flying flightseers I pile back into the left seat and off we go again. From the sounds of things the people were absolutely thrilled with the flying and want him to come back again, so he's happy. I'm completely stuffed with free food at this point, so I'm happy. And the prop is now turning over easily with none of the previous sluggishness, so it's happy too. Everybody's happy.

Except my dog when I get home, who has been outside all day and is clearly a bit pissed about it. He skulks around under the bed for a while but cheers up quickly enough when I dump his dinner into his bowl. Good boy.

Sunday's flying was excellent too, another two hours or so. Windy as hell, but good for practice on the river.

Thwarted by Love

2006-09-12T09:06:00.000-07:00

Wiiiindy night for flying last night, which was actually kind of a bonus... I think I've been getting spoiled by all of the calm and lovely nights we've been enjoying lately.

Couldn't fly all weekend thanks to a wedding up on North Bay. Monkey cry!

On the plus side, we're trying to get up on a big all-day trip north this Saturday, just for the experience of getting to land on as many different lakes as possible. Hopefully the weather will pull through like a trooper.

I have... nothing more to say XD. Actually, I'm just in a rush as I type this. Gotta run!

No more peaches

2006-09-08T06:44:00.000-07:00

Last night was, yet again, another nice night for flying. I'm going to miss evenings like these when it gets too dark to fly. Thanks to work the latest I can get out is 6:30pm during weekdays. That sucks. I'm really going to miss flying during the week. I hate being restricted to weekends. What a depressing thought to contemplate. I have a feeling that over the winter months I'll get a lot of use out of the night rating, at least until my contract at the studio is up and I'm cut loose again.

Freedom! LOL, unemployment.

But anyway. There are still a few weekday evenings left that I can cram flying into before I start really cramming on weekends, so I'll take advantage of them while I can. Last night was beautiful. It was also fairly uneventful, other than the fact that my landings were all pretty nice. It was bound to happen sooner or later, hur hur.

And while we were taxiing out onto the lake we spotted another plane passing overhead. It circled and made a second low pass in front of us and we both recognised it as another 170 owned by a friend- in fact, for those who may be reading this that remember the story I gave a while back about the 170 on wheels that flew side by side while I was on final- it was that dude! He's a really nice guy. His plane is gorgeous too, holy cow.

The season's almost finished for peaches too, I noticed :(.

But we just want to party!

2006-09-05T06:32:00.000-07:00

The remnants of Ernesto had been forecasted to trudge all over the east coast days in advance of the Labour Day long weekend, so no one was really surprised when they did exactly that. What a damp, cold, gloomy weekend; the solid overcast hung at treetop level for two days straight and dumped a steady rain the whole time. On the plus side we didn't get hit with the 80km/h winds that forecasters were ominously warning of. Even the rain didn't get very heavy. It just didn't stop.

Saturday and Sunday I spent at the airport, alternately in the restaurant chowing down on homefries and soup and other people's onion rings and in the hangers watching them work on their airplanes. Observing the installation of the inverted fuel/oil system for the Pitts was especially fun. Its new Ellison throttle body injector is pretty sexy. This weekend it had the linkage for its throttle manufactured and installed. I discovered that I really enjoy metalwork and welding, or at least watching the process.

Nine to five at the airport... jeez, I wish I could do this during the work week.

At least Monday was marginally better. The clouds crept up to a spectacular 1000', then 1200', then 1700'... and the rain finally stopped. Amazing! Back at the airport, a group of us trooped out to the field to watch another fellow fast taxi his (wheel) pantless RV6 up and down bravo to test the nose wheel for shimmy. The nose wheel didn't budge, but boy, the mains were having a good go at it. The pilot didn't feel it at all from the cockpit, and evidently in this airplane the mains are known to naturally oscillate like that. Okay!

Twenty minutes later I was getting squashed back in the right seat as it took off for a circuit and a local flight north. Between the 180hp up front and the constant speed prop I got squashed pretty good. Boy, that plane can accelerate. It was fun to fly too, as the pilot was kind enough to turn control over to me shortly after leaving the circuit for a trip up north along Chemong and Clear Lake. I get to fly more airplanes that way! Back at the restaurant over lunch they joked I must have ridden in most of the planes on the field. I think that's actually not too far off the mark.

I really need an airplane of my own. Demmit.

But that afternoon I got up flying myself at the lake. Floats and the left seat, AHHHHH. No better combination! Thanks to the moody overcast and offshore wind I did a boatload of crosswind takeoffs and landings. Good practice. Speaking of boats, we spotted the OPP cruiser trolling up and down the lake and eagerly followed it a while to see if it would pull over any boaters, but it passed by the local traffic and continued on its boring way down the lake. We gave up and flew elsewhere. The OPP, takin' a cruise, bein' cool on the Labour Day weekend. Solid.

Y had a sightseeing flight to do at four o'clock, so at three-thirty we paused and I flew him to the resort. A Maule was taxiing in just as I landed, right on top of a boat wake, argh. With the 170 tied to the dock Y got the Cub ready for the sightseers, a wife and her young son, who were there early and lingering to look at all of the planes. The Maule was getting refuelled so I ambled over to take a look at it for a while myself, then ambled on back to the 170 to check one of the float compartments while the Cub scooted off across the lake. One of the left compartments had a lot of water in it when I pumped it earlier, and I wanted to check if it had leaked at all again during our flight or if it had simply been filled thanks to a loose plug and the steady weekend rain.

Thankfully it was dry. While I had the float pump out the husband of the sightseeing wife and another older son wandered over to check out the 170 and chat. They liked the all-metal look of the Cessna and its four seats and wondered if they could get a ride in it. With marvelously polite humour and tact I said no.

We chatted airplanes for a while. He wanted to know what it was like being a pilot and flying on floats and, seeing as that is one of my favourite subjects, I was happy to give an overview as best I could. He enthusiastically told me about his desire to buy a Mosquito ultralight helicopter and fly it himself. Cool. I've never even heard of an ultralight helicopter before. He had the ultralight permit or was going to get one, then? Oh, no. Apparently in the US you can fly this thing without one, or without any required training at that. Eeeek.

No pilots license or certificate of airworthiness is required, but Innovator will still give $2000 of the price of the helicopter for the buyer who shows proof of 10 hours of dual training. We Strongly recommend continuing through to a student permit (solo) at a minimum.

That's 'Strongly', with a capital 'S'. I wonder if this thing is available in Canada yet. I can almost hear the screams from Transport Canada now. Not my cup of tea, but I tried not to look too alarmed as the fellow enthusiastically went on to describe it. I'm saved when Y and the Cub arrives shortly after and everyone wanders back over to see how the flightseeing had gone. The son looks happy and the wife is laughing. Later on as I taxiied out in the 170 Y explained how they had caught the OPP boat pulling doughnuts in the middle of the lake, evidently for the hell of it. They had started circling overhead in the Cub as well, the cops had spotted them and quickly stopped and slunk off. I laughed my head off to hear it. Come on, the Coast Guard are covering the tunes!

The rest of the flight was fab. Enough good takeoffs and landings to keep me happy. Then Y informed me that, by the way, there's a giant snake loose on the lake. WHAAAT THE HELL.

Oh crap, I ran over Kehaar

2006-09-02T21:03:00.000-07:00

Excellent flying last night! Another smooth, calm night with nice winds, perfect for low flying and river landings. We did a number of them over on the Otonabee and they all went really well, much to my surprise. It was one of those fun evenings where we took advantage of the mild weather to land on some really narrow little channels and practice the art of turning on the step from crosswind to straight into the wind in order to lift the outboard float first. It's rather like rocking the plane out of the water on takeoff one float at a time and feel very cool when it's done successfully.

While I was on final for one landing I spotted another small airplane turning sharply away from us a short distance away; my first thought was, hang on, was that dude just following me? My second thought was, what the heck is that, some sort of ultralight? It really did look very small and dainty. I landed on the river and took off immediately again. As I was climbing out I told Y about the small plane I had spotted tailing us during final. He pointed back out the window at the little airstrip a club of RC fliers use for their model airplanes. Well. That would certainly explain the smallness!

The rest of the flight was fab. It was just one of those evenings where I was finally on the ball for everything, and where every landing and takeoff was good and solid. We both had a great time. I did take out a seagull on one landing though. Ouch.

I was landing in a little bay on glassy water, so I kept near a weed bed in order to have some sense of where the surface of the lake was. I could see the stupid bird bobbing amidst the weeds while I was coming in on final, but assumed it would either hear or spot us coming a long ways away and flap off on its own initiative. Well, no. When I flared with power to keep the nose high for the glassy approach and began the shallow decent I lost sight of the bird straight ahead. The next thing I knew the plane was gliding onto the water- and then shortly thereafter heard a gentle 'thu-thump' against the right float. Aw crap.

Y had me take off and make a tight circle at the end of the bay so that we could go back and see if I'd actually hit the bird or not. At 200' or so we flew over the scene of the crime, the two of us peering down into the water. I couldn't see anything but weeds and briefly entertained the hope that we'd only thumped into a small wave and that Kehaar had flown off safely. But then we both spotted the white corpse bobbing in the lake below. Whoops.

But there was no damage at all to the float or the prop or to the airplane in general, so no worries there. Well, except for the seagull. But hey, peaches and ice cream afterwards!

Spooky

2006-08-30T18:29:00.000-07:00

Boy, was last night beautiful for flying- a nice sunset and wow, talk about smooth air! We did some rate one turns and steep turns just to take advantage of it... well, also, they're just fun to do as well. I was happy to see I can still do steep turns without loosing altitude. Whew!

Lots of crosswind takeoffs and landings, a handful of river landings - including one on the Indian River that was really fun given how narrow and windy the Indian is - and plenty of glassy water landings to boot. One glassy landing on the river really beautifully illustrated just how eerie and difficult glassy water can be; it was like landing into a black hole. And that was even with the banks of the river nearby! Very spooky.

What a great night. With vanilla ice cream, peaches and maple syrup on top. Mmmm.

Rhino's

2006-08-28T13:20:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was pretty much a complete write-off for flying; the visibility was 2 miles or less and the ceiling around the Peterborough area lingered at 800' or so. Plus, the rain was pretty terrific at times. I ended up spending the day in a friend's hanger. I can certainly think of worse places to spend a rainy weekend.

Saturday was much nicer and I was back up at the lake. For the first twenty minutes Y and I flew over the location where a canoeist had drowned early that morning in rough water; the SAR guys were still searching for his body. No life jackets on board, and the fellow who drowned didn't know how to swim- jesus. Talk about a preventable tragedy. This lake has really taken its toll on inexperienced or ill-prepared boaters this year.

At any rate, Y was one of the the search and rescue guys sent to search for the canoeist, but had eventually been called off. He thought we might be able to see more from the plane, so off we went. We definitely had a better view straight down into the deep water and weedbeds than the police and SAR boats on the water, but still we saw not a trace of the body. For my part I was occupied with flying the plane and keeping an eye out for other traffic. Twenty minutes of steep circling at 600' agl has given me a newfound appreciation for SAR pilots.

When the police helicopter flew in we quickly broke off and made ourselves scarce, not wanting to get in their way. Y turned to me and asked if I was hungry for a burger over at Bewdley. Hells, yes! and YUM, might I add. So off to Bewdley we went.

Landing at Bewdley renewed my mistrust of boat wakes. The water there was positively boiling with boat wakes largely thanks to a bass tournament that had fishermen zipping in and out of the marinas lining the shore. Landing on that ruffled water was like landing on ball bearings. Yeesh. It gave me an increased respect for keeping my feet active on the rudders at all times.

We taxiied up to an empty dock, shut down and drifted in to tie down the plane. Several tipsy fishermen offered to help us but we were good to go. No sooner did I jump off the float and onto the dock than a girl in a local college hoodie dashed up, grinning and breathless. That was the first time she'd ever seen a plane land on the water before! It was Really Cool! Y pointed me out as the pilot. She ran over and shook my hand. Wow! Were we staying a while? Would we let her know when we were taking off so she could watch? Completely surprised at this unexpected reception, I said sure. She skipped off. I tried not to swagger much as we headed across the road to the restaurant.

You know Bewdley, you say? Then yes, THAT restaurant.

We picked a table by the window and watched boaters, arriving motorcyclists and the people that were wandering over to look at the plane. After burgers, friends, a couple Cokes and a grilled cheese sandwich for me we headed back to the dock, although not before giving the hoodie girl a friendly wave and a holler to let her know were on our way. The rest of the flight was spent on more relentless crosswind landings and takeoffs over by the marsh, as well as a few shortfield landings and takeoffs in the pond. it was a good day for it, with a stiff south-east wind.

Another hour and a half! Then it was back to the airport for more hanger loitering.

Roaming storm

2006-08-24T06:10:00.000-07:00

I was up again last night at the lake. I didn't think I'd manage to squeeze in any flying time between the scattered rain and the fact that the days are getting shorter (NOOOOOO) but I managed to get up for 45 minutes before low fuel sent us scarpering back for the farm.

We ended up getting lightly rained upon the whole time, but the big black storm was hovering further south over the Lake Ontario shoreline and we thus escaped a good dousing. It was pretty interesting watching that storm cell go about its business, actually. It slowly drifted west to east, lingered over the Grafton area a bit and then seemed to double back and chug its way back towards Wesleyville. Lake Ontario storms have a weird life of their own; it's pretty neat watching them. From a distance.

The flying was pretty nice, though. Smooth air, smooth landings, very calm and grey and relaxing.

Comerants vanish!

2006-08-21T10:59:00.000-07:00

We ended up flying up to the Orillia seaplane fly-in this Saturday, which was awesome. Good food at the barbeque and tons of float planes to poke around including the usual assortment of 172s, 180s, 185s, 206s, Citabrias, J-3s and Supercubs, plus two Beavers, a Bushhawk and a tiny J-2 that was for sale.

We tied up at shore instead of having the plane driven out of the water and up the ramp- great! Except as soon as we jumped out of the plane and into the lake to push it closer to the shore we found out that the rocky bottom was covered in zebra mussels. You know what its like to walk barefoot on zebra mussels? I shall say no more. Later on I hit the airport washroom and pulled off my socks and shoes to inspect the damage. Not only were my feet cut up a bit, but little bits and slivers of zebra mussel shells were wedged in the cuts. Having no tweezers on me at the time, I chewed off one of my fingernails and used it to pry out the slivers. I'm so hardcore.

Taking off for the trip back home was rather alarming as well. Between a leaky left float compartment and a wake that broadsided us from the right the plane went veering sharply to the left towards the shore immediately after lifting off the step. Y yanked the power off and brought the plane down before running out of lake ahead of us, but boy... that was scary few seconds. We taxiied back out into the lake, shut down, pumped the floats again and took off again, this time along the lake rather than into the bay, all without further incident. Lesson learned: a) never trust a leaky float compartment, and b) wakes are treacherous and to be avoided when possible. Rar!

I was up yesterday as well. All morning long the rain was just hammering down at the lake and the overcast was so low it was dragging through the tops of trees as a cold front swept through, but by mid-afternoon it had cleared up enough to go flying. Float flying anyway!

The ceiling didn't lift any higher than 600' agl the whole time we were up and the wind was a bit gusty, but other than that it was actually pretty nice flying. After a couple of landings over on the river Y threw down the gauntlet: we were gonna try some spot landings. The target: a lonely little windswept island with a single dead tree standing in the middle of it, the bare branches full of big black comerants. I was to have the plane landed and fully stopped as close to it as I could. I am a low-time sack of crap pilot, but oh boy, I've always been pretty competitive and I can't resist a challenge. THE HUNT... IS AWN.

On the first landing I nailed it, stopping so close the cormerants burst out of the tree and fled to the marsh. Y hooted and declared it was horseshit luck. Laughing my head off, I took off for attempt number two.

I got that one too, although drifted about ten feet past the island on the third. Still close enough to scatter comerants, awyeah! We took a time-out at this point to land over by the marsh; Y had spotted a discarded boat bumper washed up on the shore that he wanted to pick up. We taxiied in, grabbed it, backtracked and took off again for Spot Challenge Four and Five. Which I also nailed, HOOAHAHAHA. Man, that was fun.

Another 3.5hrs float time for the weekend. I think I'm up to 43.5hrs total on floats now... slowly but surely!

Crosswind

2006-08-17T07:38:00.000-07:00

My damn computer for jerks is in the shop getting its feelthy problems sorted out. Harsh! So here I am at work on Thursday typing about flying that happened on Tuesday. Scandalous!

It was flat out raining all day Monday so I just held off until Tuesday evening instead. It wasn't even a nice light rain that I could have ventured up into, but a dreary, foggy kind of rain determined to get everything out in it thoroughly soaked, in an unfriendly sort of 'you're soaked, your friends, soaked, YOUR FAMILY, SOAKED' sort of way.

Tuesday was kind of windy but much nicer, complete with a blazing red sunset at the end of the day. I was a bit depressed to see it, mind you; the days are getting shorter again. What a gyp.

Anyway, it was a great flight, if pretty uneventful. We took advantage of the offshore wind to do a hell of a lot of circuits, all of which went surprisingly well, including some tricksy crosswinds around the islands. After the 30, 35kts winds of previous evenings the 20-25kts range is beginning to seem more and more tame by the day. I think I owe Y a huge thank you for this, since not only is he perfectly willing to take me up in poor weather for a bash at circuits - if you want to fly floats commercially, he'll remark dryly, you'd better get used to flying in less than favourable wind and weather - but he also drills in a hell of a lot of crosswind takeoffs and landings. It's pretty easy to get complacent about them when you're on floats since you often find yourself with more opportunities to land into the wind at your leisure, but so far I haven't been given a chance to. Good!

And it just makes sense too. In a strong offshore wind you're running the chance of bashing the hell out of the floats taxiing out into rough water just so that you can take off into the wind, whereas you could otherwise taxi in the smooth water sheltered by the shoreline and take off with a crosswind granting a lot of lift as it whips around the edge of the shore. Similarly, why risk landing in rough water out in the middle of the lake when you could land crosswind in a much more sheltered channel? On the downside, since water is hardly a solid landing surface you really have to watch you don't snag a lowered wingtip, much more than you would on wheels.

But boy, is it ever fun to take off and get about a wingspan over the water, hoist up your flaps, barrel up speed in ground effect and then step on the rudder to snake the plane into the wind. Add Excitement 10x Alpha if there's an island with a big dead tree loaded with comerants directly in front of you.

Green light

2006-08-13T19:06:00.000-07:00

I haven't been able to fly since Monday thanks to busy schedules surrounding airplanes, which, well, sucked. But! This weekend I was up in a friend's IFR Cardinal RG on Saturday, then back on floats this morning. And this afternoon it was another fellow's RV6A, a super fun airplane to fly. So was the Cardinal, for that matter. And the 170... well, that goes without saying!

200hp in the Cardinal... whoosh! How cool. My sad 150 training sure showed itself in an ass-backwards way as I brought this plane into the circuit. Joining downwind went something like: power back, trim, glance... power back, trim, glance, power BACK, TRIM, GLANCE, does this plane ever want to slow down?

A very nice airplane, though. Although I must admit, nothing looks quite as strange as a retractable-gear Cessna. Save for maybe a Caravan on wheels. Hee hee. I love Caravans. I think they're a fantastic airplane. But I can't help but grin at the sort of squared-legged sprawl to their main gear. Like a cornered gunslinger. Or a guy with his trousers hiked up around his armpits. Heh heh!

Flying at the lake was awesome, as always. Lots of glassy water and river landings today. Y had me landing on some hella narrow spots in the river today, including a weedy little channel that cut through a swamp, no more than fifty feet wide with an even narrower belt of clear water through the middle of it that I actually ended up landing on- the rest was green weeds and lilypads. Excellent!

While loitering in the hanger with the Pitts I was invited to go up flying in the RV6. Just after takeoff I was handed control - more right seat flying - and we spent about an hour and twenty minutes flying between Stoney Lake and Lake Ontario, Grafton and Bowmanville checking out private strips. Man, that plane is fun. Talk about sensitive on the controls!

Usually when flying another person's airplane from the right seat I turn control back in the circuit, either on downwind or final for them to land since I really don't want to botch something and roll their beloved airplane up into a tight little ball. But on final I had a nice approach set up, so he went, eh, this looks good- bring us down to short final at 70-75 kts or so and I'll take over to land. And then on short final he remarked, hey, this looks like it's gonna be a pretty nice landing! ... so, what the heck, I landed. I was pretty surprised to see that after a month and a half of solid float flying I could make a good landing on wheels from the right seat. And a first in a low-wing aircraft at that. Man, those low wings really block all sight of the ground when you flare, don't they. Bastards!

Mutually surprised at my success (I'm sure!) we decided to go around and give me a shot at another circuit. The amount of right rudder needed during takeoff in that plane took me by surprise. And I found out on base that while I could pull on ten degrees of flaps (manual) with my left hand with minimal discomfort, trying to yank on full flaps was beyond the ability of this righty. The second landing was much rustier, but heck, I was still happy. I love flying floats, but okay, I admit I've kind of missed that view of the runway from final to touchdown.

I must not have been too bad, at any rate; afterwards in the hanger the fellow remarked that so far I'm the only person he's let fly, and land, that airplane, and that he had confidence in my flying if I would ever like to go up with him again. Awww. I thought that was a very nice thing of him to say.

Got to tinker a bit more with the Pitts this weekend too. Whenever that airplane taxies past I'll be able to sit back and think to myself, yep, I tightened screws in that plane. Intense!

Put a quarter in it

2006-08-07T18:12:00.000-07:00

More flying this weekend! I only just landed and got back from the lake so I'll keep it brief as I'm hella tired.

After the weekly Saturday breakfast at the airport I was invited to join a couple friends on a flight up to Edenvale for the Classic Aircraft fly-in. I actually hesitated on this one; I was due to fly at the lake later that afternoon and I didn't want to be late for that. I came this close to turning down the offer. Thank god my brain caught up a moment later.

One fellow (Q) took up his Flybaby while the other fellow (W) and I went in the Taylorcraft, since if you're going to fly to a classic fly-in you might as well take a classic aircraft. I love this Taylorcraft, so I was pretty happy when he turned control over to me as we were climbing out of the circuit. What a fun plane to fly. It's pokey and docile and with those great big long wings it lofts like a kite in an updraft, but it's such a pleasure to handle I really don't mind. It was a perfect day for flying too, sunny, smooth and warm.

It took a little over an hour to get to Edenvale, about a 75nm trip. The airport was pretty easy to spot from a distance thanks to all of the biplanes buzzing around it and landing/ taking off from the paved runway and the parallel grass strip. It used to be a British Commonwealth training base back during WWII and was reopened in 2004- boy, it's nice hearing about an airport opening for once. We landed amidst a busy circuit and linesman ferried us off to parking. Watching photographers gallop alongside the plane to snap pictures was definitely a first for me. I waved!

There were well over a hundred aircraft parked on the infield, with dozens more over by the Rotax hangers. It was pretty sweet seeing the classic and vintage planes outnumbering the more 'modern' assortment of Cessnas, Pipers and homebuilts for once. I wouldn't have guessed there were that many Tiger Moths flying in Ontario. We grabbed a wagon ride over to the flying club and hangers, bought lunch and wandered some booths, but most of the time was spent checking out what everyone else had flown in and talking to other pilots. The Tiger Moths and the Spitfire were, predictably, mobbed.

Leaving was a bit of a zoo, but a well organised one. No electric starter in Taylorcrafts, so I sat and held down the brakes and flipped from L to both mags when W got the prop going. Ten minutes later we discovered that over by the fuel pumps Q needed a hand-prop himself and so we taxiied over to give him a hand. More people snapped pictures as we taxiied over to the grass strip. I don't blame them. The T-craft is great.

I flew us back home, which took about an hour as well- there was next to no wind up there. Amazing. Along with another friend in his 170B we all hit the air-to-air frequency and wondered what Q had won in the draw on the way back. Once in the circuit back home W asked if I'd like to try landing the T-craft- hells yes, I would. But I've flown only floats for the last month and I have zero taildragger time, so I declined. Once on the ground he gave me some instruction on taxiing taildraggers and I took us back to the hanger in a rather wobbly line. Whewlord. They aren't kidding when they say you only stop flying a taildragger when the engine is shut down. It's not difficult- it just really makes you stay on your toes to stay ahead of the plane, or rather make the plane stay ahead of its own tail. But I'm itching to get a lot of taildragger time, so I soaked up the experience like a sponge.

After thanking W I ran straight to the lake. The wind was dead calm, the weather was gorgeous and my flying could be described as lacklustre at best. Yeesh. You'd think that with such nice wind and water conditions I'd have been able to pull off better landings than I did, but WROOOONG! [/Lex Luthor] I think I had one or two nice ones, but the rest were pretty bleah. Maybe next time.

Sunday I spent the whole day at the airport for the sole purpose of spending the whole day at the airport, mostly in the hangers. While there I witnessed one of the hairiest landings I've ever clapped eyes on, one that started when a 172 landed halfway down the runway with hard bounce that turned into a nasty wing-wagging porpoise that, ironically, only ended when the nose oleo compacted with a CLUNK we could hear across the airport. I'm still amazed the prop didn't strike. The pilot had to get a ride back to Oshawa while the plane remained at YPQ for repairs. From one of the hangers a couple of us watched the poor guy linger around the plane waiting for his ride. Later on I got to tinker around with the Pitts as it had its battery removed and moved forward of the seat to correct its CoG. Tinkering is fun!

Today I was back up for breakfast. I ran into a friend halfway across the ramp and ended up going flying around the lake in his nice little 150. He turned the plane over to me after leaving the circuit. I did almost all of my training in a 150, so it was a fun misty watercolour memory moment. On the downside, more right-seat flying, which I've decided I'm not too keen on. It's probaby a good thing I have no desire to become a flight instructor.

And this afternoon back to the lake for more of the goodstuff. I get there and the wind is gusting between 30 - 35kts. We pushed the plane from the dock, jumped inside and no sooner did we get the engine started than the plane had weathercocked back towards the dock thanks to the offshore wind. We quickly shut down, dropped full flaps and sailed backwards until the wind had pushed us back a safe distance. An old man fishing on his dock nearby had been watching us with some amusement and hollered that we needed to drop a quarter into it if we wanted to get it going. Ahaha, y'old fart XD.

After a few circuits it became pretty obvious it was just too windy; the turbulence was horrible along the shoreline and the water was whitewater rough and littered with rapid black gusts, ideal conditions for an overturned airplane. We landed, headed back to the dock, tied down and decided to change the oil in the plane while waiting for the wind to die a little. I ended up in the water with my shoes off sitting astride one of the floats holding a tube against the release valve while piping hot oil flowed down into a bucket; the top of my hat is now a greasy black mess thanks to me whacking my head under the engine. There was no way I was letting that tube slip, though. Getting sprayed with hot oil was considered a major downer in the medieval ages, and the same goes today.

After pouring seven quarts of nice fresh oil back into the plane we trooped up to the house and had dinner. The wind had calmed to a more reasonable 20kts by the time we were finished, so we trooped back down and jumped into the plane. Nonsensically, my landings were pretty good tonight. It was a bugger landing straight into the sun though. Not only did the streaks disappear in the white glare off the water, the black gusts did too. The last landing for the night I came in on a cautious crosswind just to keep the sun out of my eyes. I am not a big fan of those offshore winds, let me tell you. On the plus side, you can get some crazy lift around points and islands!

Storm

2006-08-03T08:08:00.000-07:00

I tried to get up flying last night, with emphasis on 'tried'. The wind shifted from south to northwest and jumped up by a good ten kts while I was pumping the floats, even as giant black clouds piled up to the north. I had to tie down just to keep the plane from being blown into the other side of the dock. Not a good sign!

For a while we just stood on shore watching the line of clouds race in and tower up into mammoth embedded thunderstorm cells, and marvelled at the speed in which the front was approaching. Trees were thrashing and whitecaps were bucking about all across the lake. It soon became evident that we were sitting in the middle of a hole that was socking in, and that in less than an hour we would be getting very wet and very windblown very quickly. We opted to ground ourselves and go eat a bowl of peaches in the house instead.

*thumbs up*

Sure enough, about an hour and a half later back at home we got an excited phone call from a friend who was at his cottage up north; a tree had been blown onto his roof, five more trees were down in his yard and all of the power lines had been ripped from the side of the house. Crickey. Somewhat astonishingly, our own power stayed on despite the furious wind that hit the area when the squall line rolled in. I think we've been slammed with bad storms so often that all of the weak trees have already been weeded out and blown down. I probably just jinxed us by mentioning it.

Today is looking much better weather-wise, so with luck I'll be flying tonight. And hey, thanks to the cold front our sweltering temperatures had dropped into something much more seasonable. Score!

Flying, washing

2006-07-30T18:21:00.000-07:00

Oh man, great weekend for float flying. If you know where my Flickr gallery is, then you know where to go to find my photos and blurbs about the flight up north I took today. Go west, young man!

Upon returning Y and I did some touch and goes, a short field back on the pond, a river landing, refuelled, and finished up the day cruising the lake at a leisurely 100' to wave at boaters travelling along the Trent waterway, making a wide circle at the end of it to land at the farm. This pretty much confirmed what I had suspected all along: I like flying low. As he remarked, after flying like this would you want to go back to wheels? HELLS NO. What a life.

Yesterday was mostly spent washing the plane. Holy cow, you should see my knees; they're bashed and bruised from kneeling on the floats to scrub algae. It was worth it, though. The plane looks great. Every time I looked at her today I felt terribly pleased to see her so nice and clean. And I tell you, I would rather be out on the lake in the sun and heat and bees and thunderstorms (hooboy, did we get nailed yesterday) , covered with sweat and soap and wax washing dead insects off an aeroplane than in a nice air conditioned office anyday. And Mrs Y even dropped by with the four- wheeler and a balogna sandwich for me at around lunchtime, which I ate in the shade of the wing on the dock with my feet propped up on the closest float. I just love being around planes. I can't wait to get a flying job.

But the thunderstorms, AI YAI YAI. I managed to get in some flying yesterday, but it was by ducking between them. Finally the sheer volume of rain sweeping grimly in forced us out of the sky. But today was beautiful and sunny, perfect for a trip up north.

Dark evening

2006-07-26T19:44:00.000-07:00

The winds were 15 gusting 22kts and there were dark storm and rain cells prowling around the lake. Visibility was hovering right around 3nm and a thick haze surrounded the shorelines. Thunder rumbled in the distance. The overcast made the evening even darker and gloomier than usual. So of course we went flying.

Actually, it turned out to be a lot of white-knuckled fun. It sure as hell was good practice in less than ideal conditions. Fierce whitecaps and long wind streaks kept us in the more sheltered channels, where downdrafts and gusts were getting blown in from shore. Rough, rough, rough. Somewhat humorously though all of my landings were pretty good. All of that crosswind pratice seems to be paying off. I did almost mow down some ducks though. Never assume the dopey buggers will swim out of the way of an approaching aeroplane until the very last heart-stopping minute, is what I learned. Five minutes later when I came back for another go the ducks had moved aside and boaters daunting the weather to fish had replaced them. Right on my nice smooth landing site!

The best part was the short-field practice over at the pond. The first attempt was floaty crap and I went around for another go. The second time was much better thanks to chopping power and veering away from the trees to coast over the swampy fringe instead. The third was an approach over the river leading into the pond and the landing turned out great. I was pretty chuffed about that. All were touch and goes, and it was a thrill to race over the rushes in ground effect before having the airspeed to zoom up and out into the ugly dark sky. Fun, fun, fun.

It was hairy landing back by the dock, though. Yeow!

Whew. I'm too tired to type. Bedtime for bozos.

Lake St. John

2006-07-23T17:34:00.000-07:00

Y and I flew up to the Lake St. John seaplane base this morning, which was great; it's one of the busiest in Ontario and I've been itching to head up for a visit. It's pretty nice flying someplace where the lake is full of airplanes and the paved strip is eerily silent. There was a 180, a 172 doing circuits and a J3 on straight-in final ahead of me when I was two miles out. I had to drop flaps and slow right down to avoid overflying the J3. It made an amazing landing too, skimming just over the edge of the swamp before touching down. The pilot didn't even have to backtrack to get back to the docks at all, but simply landed, stopped and taxiied right up to the ramp.

The flight over was very nice. We had to make a circle around the Elmhirst grass strip after taking off to avoid some traffic and another around the city of Peterborough but the rest of it was over the local lakes and farmland. There was a fair bit of turbulence at 2000' but nothing we hadn't seen before. The floats tend to dampen out a lot of it too, a pleasant side effect that almost offsets the drag issue. The sky was full of airplanes, not surprising to see on a sunny Sunday. We had a good time chatting and watching for nearby traffic with one ear turned to the radio. Even fifty miles out we could hear a good deal of float traffic heading up to Orillia.

Six miles out from the base I heard a 180 make his inbound call over Canal Lake... eight hundred feet above us. Whup! I get on the horn right away to announce my position, only to discover that the PTT switch doesn't seem to be working. Dah. I deliberately tried to step on some distant radio calls to confirm it wasn't activating at all. Nope, no joy. We decided to just fly in NORDO. Y wasn't concerned so I wasn't either. Well, maybe a little at first. But as soon as we get within sight of the base and I saw the great big lake I had to land on my worries evaporated. This isn't a 100' wide paved runway. There's plenty of room for everyone. Heck, there's plenty of room in the bay alone for everyone.

I come in with a little too much power, float a bit and land long, but the landing is nice and soft, one of those landings you barely feel before you hear the water rush against the floats. As we turn left and backtrack we watch the 172 land, bounce and land again in a big cloud of spray before going full power for the touch and go. We both winced. Y remarks it's better to land long than land hard like that and bounce. Woo!

Back at the base we found an empty dock and tied up the plane. We spent the next half-hour or so walking around the shore and hangers taking a look at all of the beautiful aircraft on floats, much to my delight. There are a number of Super Cubs, 172s, 206s and 182s there- and of course plenty of 180s and 185s. Y teaches me how to tell the difference between the two- it's all in the tail. Almost every airplane there is on straights or amphibs; very few are on wheels, the ranks of which include a pair of 150s, a cute little 140 (I love 140s!) and the tinest helicopter I've ever seen. The float planes hugely outnumber the wheels. And they're everywhere. There's even an unfortunate 185 tied behind one of the hangers. One of the float instructors told us it made a forced landing in a swamp not too long ago. Inside the same hanger we also found the bent, ruined wings of a 172 that stalled and went down into the swamp on the approach to the base. Poor plane.

Eventually we wandered back to the dock, although not before veering over to check out the J3, which I approached with the same sort of reverence a religious person might display while walking up to the Shroud of Turin. I signed the pilot guestbook in the office and then we trooped back to the plane, untied it and paddled out into the bay. The 172 had finished its circuits at that point and taxiied back to refuel, so I had the whole bay to myself for takeoff. During the climb out Y reached into the back seat for our bottles of water and dropped mine right into my lap; it was full of floating ice chunks and I was wearing shorts. We both got a laugh out of my startled howl.

On the way back we watched other planes buzz by, including a Cherokee circling very low over some lakeside property on Sturgeon lake, and talk about Oshkosh. Y has flown into it many times before and remarks that the 170 would be a great plane for the two of us to fly down into the Osh seaplane base for the event. No third person in the back, just our gear and extra gas. If he weren't booked to fly solid this week we would have done it too. I lack words to describe how awesome that would have been. I would LOVE to fly that trip. Maybe next year!

But today, it was back to the farm for wild blueberry crisp. Mmmmmmm.

Testing!

2006-07-22T14:38:00.000-07:00

HIHO. Chances are if you're reading this you arrived here via my old journal and already know who I am, but just in case, hello and welcome to the flight journal of aspiring bush pilot Lex aka retrolex, aka charlietango aka Charlie... christ, I have a lot of online nicknames these days. I'm a low-time float pilot from Ontario building time towards my commercial licence, at which point I'm aiming to get a flying job up north. Or even a dock job leading up to a flying job- I'm not picky. I'm also not married or committed to anything other than flying, so I can afford to be. Pretty rad. Who wants to touch me?

Currently I work in computer animation as the character texture artist at Canada's largest animation studio- yes, the one with the Carebears. Shut up. Yes, I'm looking to get out of computer animation and into flying full time. Yes, I'm aware it's far more likely I could earn a good living in animation in half the time than if I were to get into commercial aviation. No, I didn't eat a lot of paint chips as a child. Yes, I really do love flying that much. I'm obsessed with it. It's pissing about in my blood and it's never coming out. I've wanted to be a bush pilot since I was six years old. It's all I think about. There's nothing else I want to do. Well, I kind of want to go make some soup for dinner. But other than that...!

Pilot Iso! Yeah, I spent days agonising over what to call this thing. I suck so hard at names. Then I was staring at my desktop image at work, a photo I took of the panel of the PA-12 I flew my float rating in, and happened to glance at the radio. Bingo! Inspiration strikes in the form of the pilot iso switch. For the non-pilots out there, basically it's this little switch that isolates the pilot from the intercom while remaining connected to the radio. He'll hear the radio reception and sidetone but not the co-pilot or any of the passengers. Pretty handy if your passengers are chatting while you're trying to talk or listen to the radio, and a lot more graceful an option than turning around and yelling for everyone to shut the hell up. Given the nature of an online journal, I thought it was appropriate.

Well, anyway, that's about it. As before, this will probably wind up an extremely informal flight journal and place to talk about anything related to flying that pops into mind. There's not much else I think about, trust me. If you're looking for any sort of insightful, education or professional commentary on aviation, uh, I'd better stick up some links to better blogs or something.