Switzerland from the air

I was in Switzerland recently where I spent a few days on a advanced diving course and then de-toured into Germany to see my parents.

The return trip from Zurich was in the morning and I was at the airport very early, so I decided to check out their observation deck that I read about on airport's website. I thought it would be some high structure away from all action. 2 Swiss Franks got me admission and having gone through security check, I was soon walking towards the deck. And walking… and walking some more, seeing some funny contraptions along the way.

After about a mile (on the top of one of the levels, so on a roof essentially), I came to the deck – which was almost right next to one of the runways. With the mountains in the background! I really missed my semi-professional camera and long lenses, but alas, with 3 overweight bags full of scuba gear, all I could pack was my little travel camera, Canon G9. The runway adjacent to the deck was used for landings and it was neat to see different names on the airplanes, compared to the familiar North American ones. They also had the radio transmitting the talk from the tower, so for a while I was back in aviation photography nirvana listening to conversations and shooting airplanes. Too soon it was time to leave least I’d be shooting my own airplane departing without me.

The weather was nice with little puffy clouds and as we climbed and turned, i could see the airport from my window.

We then flew over Zurich and Lake Zurich and headed towards the mountains. Soon afterwards, the sun was too bright to shoot anything.

Coming near Toronto, i was puzzled to see a dusty red layer immediately below the clouds. As soon as we went into that layer on descent, i realized, it must have been smog as the visibility below clouds was terrible. But it did not matter - i was home. This time for longer than a few days.

Frankfurt - Toronto from the air

Life never turns out the way you planned it, but I guess making the best of what’s thrown at you is part of the fun. I had all kinds of plans to start my glider training and finish my night rating, but life and family matters interfered causing me to be away more than home for the past three months.

"Away" meant Europe where i have travelled twice recently. This meant flying big airplanes, including 777 (as a passenger of course). On a recent trip back from Frankfurt (to see my Dad who is in cancer treatment in Germany), an approach pass went right over downtown Toronto and of course I had my camera ready.

Leaving Frankfurt:


Somewhere over Germany in rainy weather:


Breaking through clouds on descent to TO:


Flying over Yonge Street with downtown in background and another plane headed for parallell Rwy:



Downsview Airport:

Aerobatics Squared. Part 2, The Noise Returns

At some during my glider aerobatics adventure, my instructor mentioned that he and another 2 people own the Decathlon. “That Decathlon”- he said, pointing towards the yellow and blue plane that I initially thought to be another Citabria. Having almost jumped out of my skin at the thought of seeing my dream plane face to face, I asked if I could go look at it later. Instead, he extended me an offer to fly in it.

Just then I felt like I was at the gates of flying heavens: I got a chance to fly a glider, do acro in a glider and i was about to fly my dream airplane and may be even do some acro in it. My stomach tried to insert a meek “but you just did 20 mins and may not have it in you” in the endless stream of happy thoughts, but I told it to stuff it, we were going to fly that airplane even if it was straight and level.

It was not of course. Moving the glider back to starting position, finding parachutes (the ones we used in the glider stayed with the glider), visiting facilities, fuelling the plane, pre-flighting the plane all took time and my stomach settled enough that I knew I could do at least one acro figure and I wanted it to be the one that I have not flown before, but desperately wanted to experience with a qualified instructor on board.

Inverted spin.

It was incredible and not scary at all. To me, the rotations looked different than an upright spin, but that was probably because I knew we were inverted starting it. Had I not known, I’d probably not be able to differentiate inverted from upright. I would have loved to try one more, but I was concerned that it would leave little stomach tolerance for anything else, so we did other things instead.

I managed to fly a decent enough loop to hit my own wake, several somewhat ugly hammerheads (i never got truly vertical and forgot about aileron inputs in a turn) and some rolls. I mentioned to the instructor that I could never fly Citabria inverted for long enough due to extremely high stick force required to keep the nose up and next thing I know I was flying inverted in the Decathlon.

The Biggest difference between the Decathlon and Citabria is symmetrical airfoil in a Decathlon, making inverted flight MUCH EASIER. Keeping the nose above horizon was so easy that I decided to try turning (I never got to turning in a Citabria as I just was not able to keep the nose up long enough). Turning was funny as the plane turned opposite direction from upright for a given aileron input, but the rudder inputs were still the same as in upright, so while my brain knew all that, making it work inverted took some doing. Eventually, I rolled upright. Few moments later my stomach interrupted the flying Nirvana and asked to be delivered to the ground, pronto. We complied.

I got a little confused in the circuit with the power settings (it had a variable pitch prop that I never flown before), and had to slip almost all the way to landing, but managed an almost nice 3-pointer.Almost, because I pulled the stick back too fast and ballooned a bit. Saved by instructor, as usual.

And that was the end of the flying for that day, but I stayed on the field for couple more hours taking few pictures of the other people flying the Decathlon (used above); some unusual gliders and a lot of pictures of the tow planes. I was a perfect way to unwind after my double aerobatics.

Tow plane (Pawnee) coming to land:

Pawnee landing:

Glider tow:

Unusual (powered) glider:

I am definitely coming back there. Soon.

Aerobatics Squared. Part 1, The Silent Flight

I have been looking into glider flying since before I got the power license. There was something very appealing about the silent flight and the terror that must ensue on every landing (at least from the power pilot’s view). Another attraction for me were the tow planes – as far as I know, they were all tail draggers. In theory, this meant that, by joining a gliding club, I could do both power and silent flying. And it gets better than that as I discovered during the weekend in early May.

Few days prior to the weekend, while looking for something else, I Googled “glider aerobatics”. One of the sites on the very first page led me to a gliding club right here in Ontario, about 90 mins drive from where I live. I inquired about an introductory acro flight and they responded right away that they could do it on a Saturday that was coming.

I woke up on Saturday tingling with anticipation and made my way to the field by 9am. It was still early and only a few people were there. I met the Chief Instructor, who would be my dual instructor and the guide for the morning, as well as the rest of the acro instruction team.

The club had a “vertical mile” ride which was endless acro, but all performed by the pilot. Given my tiny bit of acro experience and my 150+ power hours, the instructor suggested that he’d modify the program so that I could do a lot more flying. I screamed YES! before he even had a chance to finish the sentence.

Getting to a glider sitting in a grass, I noticed the parachutes on the seats. They had up to date re-pack notes in them and detailed egress briefing that followed gave me “warm and fuzzy” feeling that those guys and gals really took their safety seriously. I liked that.

I brought my camera to the field, but obviously could not take it with me. Luckily, one of the instructors agreed to take some pictures for me. I did not realize it, but he kept shooting after we took off, so I have neat pictures of the tow pilot AND my first ever glider landing!

Settling in a glider, few things struck me as very different from power planes – the seating position had quite a bit of a recline to it, so it felt like I was in a very comfy (albeit slim) reclining chair; and endless visibility through the bubble canopy. The other differences had to do with the absence of the noisy engine and all the things that go with it like headphones and fuel and engine gauges.

The instructor explained that he’d do the first bit of the tow until we hit a 2,000 ft and then he’ll let me try. Until then, I have no clue that the tow part was difficult – after all, how hard could it be to fly the glider that is attached to the plane by rope? I found it out, as soon as he gave me the controls, that it was a quite a handful, but with a little bit of guidance (and two “I have control” rescues) I was able to fly it the rest of the tow uneventfully. Key there was not overreacting and not overcorrecting.

As we reached 5,000 ft, I released the tow rope and the fun started. We discussed what we’d fly and agreed that we should fly the basic acro figures that I was familiar with, such as loop, rolls, Hammerheads. The procedure was for instructor to fly the figure first with me following up on the controls and then for me to try.

We did our first loop with the instructor doing the flying and me following him on the controls, while desperately trying to remember what key positions were there, where I was supposed to look at what time and thinking why on earth did I not at least review my acro notes from last summer?

And then the loop was over and it was my turn to fly one. I tried and immediately discovered that pitch control on a glider was WAY MORE SENSITIVE than the one on a Citabria. Instead of pulling with all my might, it just took a little pull to whip skywards. Likewise, relaxing the stick coming to the top was supposed to be a slight movement which mine was not, so we had a bit of negative G on the top. Surprisingly, even though I could not think of the sequence, my body remembered what to pull and where to look, so the next few loops were a bit cleaner (but I think I was still pulling a bit more abruptly that necessary). Funny, I had the opposite problem in a Citabria – I was not aggressive enough with the stick.

Then we did a few rolls, which were fun (although I completely forgot all the rudder works aside from initial input) and instructor demonstrated hammerhead, which I was not allowed to fly myself as it requires a kick at precise speed to avoid the tailslide. As we were flying into it, he mentioned to watch for the silence as the glider turned – I was not sure how much more silent could it get, but compared to the dead silence that ensued in a vertical turn, the wind noise as glider flied through the air seemed thunderous.

After about 20 mins, my stomach politely enquired about how much longer the torture would continue. I hoped I’d last a bit longer, but decided not to push it and informed the instructor that we were done with the upside-down part. We were still quite high, so I got a chance to fly for a while, doing turns, stalls and even gaining some altitude in a thermal! Unfortunately gaining altitude involved a continuous turn and my stomach did not like that either, so away from thermal and towards the Rwy we went.

Circuit and landing were much easier compared to the towing part. Main idea there was arriving at the key points at certain altitude and flying a stabilized approach from there using speed brakes to shorten or extend the glide path as necessary. I did not think I’d have any difficulties with the landing phase after a few flights, but take offs will take a while to feel in control.

And that was not the end of the fun that day, but more on that in the next post.

Tower Visit

It was a rare quiet night at Buttonville airport. Only two planes doing the circuits, but the two pilots kept thing interesting with one making a position report with a different call sign (me) and the other overshooting the landings (we later found out she was practicing night overshoots). As I tried to remember how to land the Cessna (“are you going to put in flaps?” “Oops, forgot about those”), my instructor chatted with the controller. One thing after another led to the invite to visit the tower to the crews of both planes. We accepted the invite, finished circuits, tied down the planes, piled into my instructor’s car and soon were driving the labyrinth of back roads that apparently let to the tower as we were soon walking up the stairs.

I never got a chance to visit the old tower that was in the same building as the flight school, so had nothing to compare it to, but the new state-of-the-art modular tower was impressive. State of the art, because it is very recent. Modular, because it can be disassembled and shipped elsewhere in case Buttonville ever closes up. It sits in a better position compared to the old tower as controllers have unobstructed views of both runways and most of the taxiways and apron.
The tower had several floors. Second floor housed what could be defined as a typical apartment. It had a rest room (with a couch for sleeping), a rec room with some machines, washroom and shower, computer station and a complete kitchen. The purpose of all that was to make sure controllers could relax when they had an ‘off’ time during their shift. I did not write down the details, so won’t quote exact numbers but in a typical shift, the controllers would have several on and off periods and, having the facilities on site, meant they do not have to leave the facility. Sometimes the controllers get to work a shift that ends late at night and the next shift starts early in the morning, so they can just stay and sleep right there.

But the main attraction of the tower was of course the command post. It occupied the top floor, had a circular layout and wraparound windows so that controllers could see everyone over and around the field.

One controller was at work monitoring both ground and tower frequencies while the other showed us around. The lighting in the tower was at minimum intensity to make sure that occupants preserved their night vision. All the instruments (and there were quite a few) were dimmed as well.

The off-duty controller showed us the radar data on the computer and how it worked. Using radar computer at the other end of the room (away from working controller), we were shown how to turn on the different layers (altitude slices) and how much traffic that adds. I was very impressed with how much information could be on a radar. Given YKZ’s proximity to YYZ (Toronto Pearson), radar showed a lot of Air Canada traffic, their call signs, altitudes and destinations. We later turned all extra layers off and saw the visual take off of a small plane from our field and then his appearance on a radar.

We then went away from the high tech and looked at the brilliant low tech solution designed to track all the airplanes in the circuit and coming in. That solution involved rectangular metal plates were sliding up and down inside the box with the name of the plane written on then in erasable markers. Once the plane first contacts the ground, it gets its own rectangle that gets into one of two boxes depending on whether or not plane was intending to do circuits or go away from the zone. More over, all the airplanes in the circuits would be stacked inside the box in the order in which they are cleared to land. Very neat!

Afterwards, we spent what seemed like a few minutes chatting about controllers' pet peeves (misreporting a reporting point, stepping in the middle of others’ conversations, ignoring busy frequency and talking too much were among the “favorites”) and listening to stories.

Time flew by and soon I discovered we’ve been in the tower for over an hour and it was time to go home, which I did, reluctantly. It was a very worthwhile visit for me. I now understand much better “how it works” and hopefully won’t be annoying controllers too much in the future.

Ice Capades

(Simcoe ice shots at the end of the post)

“Flight line, this is OYR”…I released the button and waited for answer. It did not come. I thought may be my handheld radio was not working and powered up the plane radios. “Flight line, this is OYR” yet again was met with nothing but silence. My buddy and I looked at each other in complete disbelief, frustration written all over our faces.

It was a few months of not flying or flying at night, and a few months of not flying, period, for my pilot friend. The weather was supposed to be miserable for 5 days straight, but as my booking time came up, the skies miraculously parted, winds died and plane was available and had nothing broken in it. There was just one little problem. There was an icy rain the night before and the airplane was covered in ice blobs of various size and we could not raise maintenance over the radio to ask for the de-ice. With ice covering the critical surfaces such as wings and tail, we could not fly.

The sun was starting to shine and melted some, but not enough for me to deem it flyable. We thought of turning the plane so that sun would reach all the surfaces, but thought better of it as winds were starting to pick up and natural melting would take time that we did not have.

Running out of ideas and time, I remembered something: “Do you have an old credit card?”. My buddy looked at me funny, until I mentioned that I read about people cleaning the ice of the planes with the credit cards. Naturally, in that story, the protagonist was stuck in the middle of nowhere in Africa, while we were standing on the apron of one of the biggest flight schools in Canada with sizeable maintenance department, but at that moment we could as well have been in Africa, as if that plane did not get clean in the next 30 mins, we were not flying anywhere.

Desperation and desire to be in the air made for an incredible teamwork and, with a little help of the sun, loosening some of the ice, we scraped the plane clean in 15 mins and soon were strapping in for a local flight.

I was happy to have my pilot buddy along as I really enjoyed our night flight a few months ago. Plus I wanted to take some shots of the ice status of the usual diving spots, so having a second pilot in the cockpit would allow me to concentrate on a camera instead of trying to fly and shoot at the same time.

We had a bit of the wind up our nose and our progress towards the Lake Simcoe was slow, but I knew we’d pick up the time coming back, so was not worried. We chatted about training and renting successes and frustrations and daydreamed about plane ownership – the usual thing pilots do.

Soon, we arrived at the Lake and I passed controls to my buddy, and pulled my camera. For a next little while we flew towards the diving spots and then my buddy was executing various turns as I tried to get a good angle. The lake was still completely iced over, but the ice was very thin in a lot of places and I predicted it would start cracking and disappearing within a week.

Eventually, the time was up, I took the controls back, flew us back home and even managed a fairy decent landing. A happy end. And the pictured turned out OK too.

Cooks Bay and our left wing



Kemperfield Bay - still very frozen, but very thin ice.




Go Trains at Barrie terminal. I take the Barrie Go trains to work, so was neat to see where they parked them over the weekend (the service is Monday to Friday).

Centennial Beach

Big Bay Point Dock, 2 angles

The point

Current Again

Realizing that the longer days were coming fast and I better re-start my night rating soon, I booked a flight with the same instructor that started my night rating and got me hooked on it by flying over downtown Toronto.

The Wx was crappy in the days coming to my booking, but cleared few hours before we were to take off. The plane was available and even had all the lights working and I surprised myself by remembering all the radio procedures, so we were off to a good start. As we took off and climbed, I only had a brief chance to admire the brightly lit outline of the downtown Toronto as my instructor took control and handed me the hood as I still needed over an hour of simulated instrument time.

For the next hour we flew to and from the Simcoe VOR as I was trying to keep the plane straight and level while chasing the needle on the instrument. It mostly worked. During that hour, I had flown a few 280 to full 360 degree turns and noticed the leans a few times when, as I returned the airplane into straight and level, it felt like I was initiating the turn instead. First time caught me by surprise and I started to correct a perceived turn that my brain was telling me I was in, only to look at perfectly straight airplane on the panel. Next time I watched for the effect and, fully knowing I was straight and level, was still surprised that my body was telling me I was turning. Here’s the FAA document with pictures that explains the effect known as a subset of Spatial Disorientation.

http://www.faa.gov/pilots/safety/pilotsafetybrochures/media/SpatialD.pdf

Eventually, it was time to go back to the airport and I got to enjoy the view a bit as hood came off as soon as we got into the zone. As we got closer, we listened to the tower radio and determined that it was a relatively quiet night with only one other airplane in the circuit and one controller working both tower and ground frequencies.

My radio calls up to that point were all without a hitch, so no one was more surprised than myself when I keyed my mike to report OYR (the plane we were in) passing a reporting point and called ourselves VLD instead. There was a pause on the other end of the radio and then controller cleared us into the right downwind “assuming we were an OYR”. He then proceeded to tell the other plane to taxi Echo instead of Bravo, at which point everyone had a good laugh and the crews of the two planes were invited to visit the tower when we were done our circuits.

More on that in the next post.