Category: Decision-making





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Checklists

All recent student pilots will be familiar with the difficulties of the dreaded checklist – that innocuous spiral-bound booklet or laminated sheet of terse instructions and checks whose contents torture and haunt the start of every flight…


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The vacation is over

THOSE of us who have been operating flight training flights from the Island for a while know the last year and a half has been a different experience to the years prior. As far as real estate goes, CYTZ is a very small airport and Porter Airlines took up most of the room. So those… Read more »


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Photo by Thomas Kelley on Unsplash

Electrical health (and safety)

In this post I want to talk about the aircraft electrical system, and some basic knowledge that a pilot should have about it. A student pilot entrusted with responsibility for a single engine piston-powered training aircraft such as the Grob should know it has two sources of electrical power: the alternator, which is driven by… Read more »


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Under, over, or around those clouds?

If you do an amount of cross-country VFR flying eventually you’ll come across a situation where your airplane is headed what looks like right at a bunch of clouds. It can be helpful to know a few minutes in advance, whether, when you reach the clouds they’re going to be at your altitude, or whether you’re going to pass above or below them.




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Photo by Jordan McQueen on Unsplash

Short & soft field takeoffs and the 70/50 rule

Your small airplane has landed in a grass strip, or field, or other confined area, one with which you’re not familiar. There’s a runway of sorts, but it’s muddy in places, or the grass hasn’t been cut for a while. Also it’s not level, like the tarmac runways you’re used to. There’s a bit of an up-slope here, and it definitely slopes down over there.