It’s not often that I write about airplane accidents, but this report makes useful (and sad) reading for PPL students across the country. In August of last year, in Alberta, a Cessna 152 crashed, killing the sole-occupant pilot. The aircraft was owned and operated by an aerial photography company, and had made a forced landing… Read more »
Despite the terrible weather this last month I have been doing various lessons for students in the Decathlon, and those students while experienced enough in the basics of flight and aircraft control have no prior experience behind a constant speed propellor, which which the Decathlon is equipped. As I’ve written previously, there are a range… Read more »
After today’s flying lessons I came away with two thoughts of my own that might be of interest…
It has been a few months since I wrote about crosswind takeoffs and landings and the correct control inputs, so I guess it’s time for a reminder …
This is a short post about some thoughts from a flight yesterday. I was talking a new student – actually someone on their very first flight in a small airplane – through a descent to land…
Commonly in flying a small plane (and in training to do so) it’s helpful to be able to to make approximate calculations of various factors in flight. These usually crop up during navigation exercises, particularly the ad-hoc diversion exercise which has to be planned and executed fairly rapidly from the pilot seat while handling the… Read more »
We’ve had a lot of windy days this last week at CYTZ. A big low pressure system (one of the last of the winter, I hope) to the north east has been pushing strong northerly winds over Toronto, and when the wind comes over the downtown core it creates a lot of turbulence and gusts around the east-west runway at the Island.
THIS POST is a bunch of philosophical points about how to fly better. I hope you enjoy them, and I hope to see you next year.
Dear and wellbeloved student pilots,
Let me get right to the point: to land your airplane in a crosswind you must turn the ailerons into the wind as you touch down. I’m writing you this letter because doing this is proving difficult for some of you, and as a consequence you end up sliding the aircraft sideways across the runway. This is bad for the tires, the undercarriage and my nerves. It has to stop.
Courtesy of Wikipedia: A leitmotif or leitmotiv (/ˌlaɪtmoʊˈtiːf/) is a “short, constantly recurring musical phrase” associated with a particular person, place, or idea.