Dan's Landing

One of the most frustrating ATC exchanges I have heard

Let me set it up for you: Swiss air 1311 experience bird strike after take off and declares an emergency. Russian ATC is seemingly oblivious at how to handle an emergency and makes a stressful situation even more so by pestering the pilots for unnecessary information. Once on the ground, engines shut down, the pilot asks for an inspection from the fire crews and a tow. The finale is the greatest though:

1311: “Did you contact our company?”

ATC: “I don’t have contact information for your company. In any case, what would you like me to tell them?”

I must warn you, the facepalm level is high in this video:

The following is a dedication to the ATC people involved in this emergency:

Cirrus crash near Buttonville, Ontario (CYKZ)

A sad event transpired today: an airplane crashed in Markham after taking off from Buttonville Municipal Airport (CYKZ).

Here are some news reports about the crash:

Here is the aftermath

My condolences go out to the families of the victims.

Winds Aloft Calculation

A commenter on a post regarding the PPL tests had trouble with the following question:

The average wind applicable to a direct flight from Winnipeg (CYWG) to Brandon (CYBR) at 5,500 ft would be
(1) 290°M at 30 kt.
(2) 290°T at 30 kt.
(3) 310°M at 31 kt.
(4) 310°T at 31 kt.

FDCN CWAO 061920
ISSUED 1200Z 07 FEB 2007 FOR USE 6-17Z

3000 6000 9000 12000 18000 24000

YWG 2825 2728-07 2932-10 2935-15 2939-26 2841-38

YBR 3030 3132-06 3133-10 3135-15 3041-28 2948-40

YYQ 3529 3428-13 3229-14 3130-19 3032-32 2733-42

YYL 3327 3435-10 3338-14 3337-19 3136-31 3038-44

He got as far as interpolating the wind speeds and directions at 4,500 feet by averaging the respective values but did not know how to proceed after that. Here is how I solved it:

The pertinent information is as follows:

	3000	6000
YWG	2825	2728-07
YBR	3030	3132-06

Between 6,000’ and 3,000’ there is a difference of 3,000’. The altitude required is 5,500’ which is 2,500’ above 3,000’ (or 500’ below 6,000’ depending how you look at it. For the purposes of this example I will be using the 2,500’). There are two steps to this problem:

Find wind speed and direction at the required altitude at the respective airports.
Average them to find the the average wind.

Step 1: Finding wind speed and direction at the respective airports

I will show you the calculation for YWG. Follow the same steps to find the values at YBR.

Wind Direction Adjustment = (270 – 280) * 2500 / 3000 = – 8.333…
Wind Speed Adjustment = (28 – 25) * 2500 / 3000 = 2.5

Wind Direction = 280 + –8.333… = 271°
Wind Speed = 25 + 2.5 = 27.5 kt

At YBR the wind direction would be 308° and wind speed would be 32 kt.

Explanation: Finding the wind at non-reported levels is simply a matter of properly interpolating the information you are provided. In this case I used a weighted average to give me the values I needed. One thing to keep in mind with this calculation is that order is important. The order I followed was going from 6,000’ (I took the values here) to 3,000’ (subtracted these values) then back up to 5,500’ (multiplied by the weight, 2,500/3,000 and added to the values at 3,000’).

Image showing the order of calculation: First find the difference between the values at the different

Another way to think about it is you will be going 2,500 / 3,000 = 83% of the way from 3,000’ to 6,000’ so you add 83% of the difference between measurements at the different altitudes to the values at the lower altitude (or you subtract 17% of the difference from the values at the higher altitude).

Step 2: Average wind

Average wind direction = (308 + 271) / 2 = 289.5
Average wind speed = (32 + 27.5) / 2 = 29.75

With rounding, the applicable wind is from 290 at 30 kts. Keeping in mind that the FD reports directions in degrees TRUE leads to the correct answer being (2) 290°T at 30 kt.

Notice that these calculations assume the change from one altitude to another is linear which may not always be the case.

How would you have solved it? Leave your reply in the comments!

2010 Canadian Aviation Expo recap

The 2010 Canadian Aviation Expo took place during the weekend of May 1st to 2nd. I had the chance to attend again this year but I wasn’t as impressed with it as I was last year.

The usual suspects were all there:

Cessna with its Caravan, 172 and Citation Mustang
Diamond with its DA40, DA42 and D-JET
Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum with all of its heritage CAF airplanes

Attendance was much smaller than last year with only a few airplanes parked outside of the museum. As well, there were not many people walking around taking in the exhibits.

The one participant that grabbed my attention was Air Safaris International which organize flying trips around Australia and more recently introduced a tour of Eastern Canada. The tours look like a great adventure and someone has actually made a movie about taking part in one of them. It’s definitely something I’d like to try when I get some time and some money. Check them out at http://www.airsafarisint.com/.

Does anyone know if there is something similar to these tours somewhere closer?

Here are some pictures I took at the aviation expo. Enjoy!

Solo Short Cross Country

I flew my short cross country solo back in February during reading week. It was a cold, overcast day with quite a bit of snow on the ground. Having not flown for over two weeks, the first flight of the day was a checkout with Ashley making sure I haven’t forgotten how to fly.

As soon as the check out was complete and we were down I set to getting the weather and doing all the other final flight planning things which needed to be taken care of. The waypoints on this flight were a bit different than on my dual cross country. The Brantford to Tillsonburg leg was still the same however I did not go to Kitchener-Waterloo. Instead, from Tillsonburg I took off and headed for the south end of Cambridge, the red dot on the map below.

Water tower at south end of Cambridge The flight preparation complete, I handed it off to Mark, the manager of the airport and an instructor at Brantford to look over while I was walking around the plane. I headed outside, made sure GINS was all ready to go: fuel tanks full, oil good, brakes and tires looking good, etc. Mark cleared me to fly and reassured me that I will be in radio range of CYFD the whole time.

I took off from runway 29, made a right turn to climb to altitude then came over the airport for the set heading point and off to Tillsonburg I went. The whole way there I was trying to match what was on the ground to what I was seeing on the ground. This worked well until I approached CNQ4 and realized I could not find the airport yet again. I tuned the Tillsonburg frequency and there was a lone aircraft broadcasting as it landed full stop. I frantically searched the ground and for an airport but I could not for the life of me find it. I maintained cruise altitude (the higher you are, the better your field of vision). As I was beginning to lose hope and considering turning back to Brantford I gave it one more shot. Through the windscreen I could see a fairly large city at my 10 o’clock. Looking at the map, the only city it could be was Tillsonburg so drawing a line to approximately where I was put me…right on top of the airport. Looking down, beneath GINS’s main gear I could see Tillsonburg airport gliding below me. I turned toward the city, flew an appropriate distance away then turned around, made the radio calls needed and proceeded with an uneventful touch and go.

You can see my flight path on the map below. This was recorded by my iPhone (don’t worry it was stowed away in my flight bag and I didn’t take it out until I got back to the clubhouse).

As I took down the time I left Tillsonburg I realized it was getting close to 16:00 EST. I remembered seeing the plane booked at that time and there was no way I would make it to Cambridge and back to Brantford in time. I made a quick radio call to the Brantford Flying Club asking what they would like me to do: come back or continue with my cross country. It seems while I was flying the booking at 16:00 was cancelled so I had the airplane for the rest of the day. “Brantford Unicom, GINS, roger. See you in half an hour,” I said and continued on to Cambridge. The second and third legs of the cross country were uneventful. Finding the water tower in Cambridge was straight forward and coming back to Brantford posed no challenges.

All in all it was a fun flight and I was happy that I didn’t lose myself and give in to frustration when I wasn’t able to find CNQ4. Map reading is a skill I will continue to practice and improve.

Next up: diversions and the long cross country!

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