Land and Hold Short: on flying small planes.

The last time I flew was mid September, just before I was due to renew my medical. Things didn’t go as expected, and I had to get through an obstacle course of health, work, and then mechanical issues (this after going through another set of obstacles last spring to renew my IFR rating).

Today I went to the airport with a huge fear of failing again. The last three times, something was wrong, and the plane wouldn’t/couldn’t fly. I arrived hoping that the mechanic had put in the new, fully-charged battery I’d asked for, that the engine heater was working, and that the plane would actually start. I saw the old battery sitting in the baggage area, so I knew Red had put in a new one, and I put the old one in my trunk. The engine was warm to the touch from the heater, so I knew it was good. I uncovered, preflighted, pushed the starter, and — just like last time — the prop turned only a few degrees and stopped.

The battery was flat again, or else the starter was shot. If a second battery was flat, that would mean that something (a short?) was draining it even when the master was off, so yet another round of troubleshooting and maintenance. I plugged in my battery charger (in case it might help), drove back across the field to the shop, walked into Red’s office, and asked him if the battery was fully charged when he put it in the plane. He said yes. Then he added something:

“It was late in the day, so I didn’t install the new battery. I put it in the back of your plane, and meant to leave a note.”

So the old battery was still in the plane, while the new battery was in my trunk. That meant there was still hope I might actually fly. I borrowed a pair of pliers, drove back to the plane, swapped batteries, took the cowl cover back off (I’d put it back on to keep in the heat), and fired the starter.

The prop spun.

The engine fired and kept running.

I did a long, detailed runup and a high-speed taxi first, to make sure that all the controls were functioning properly after maintenance (a “high-speed taxi” involves almost talking off — going fast enough down the runway to take most of the weight off the wheels or climb a few inches, but not high enough that there would be a problem if a control cable snapped, etc.). No problem. I taxied back around and took off, flying four left-handed circuits.

Back in September, my landings were sucking a lot, but after everything I’d been through fortune was smiling on me. I flew four nearly-perfect circuits, with four textbook-smooth landings. I parked the plane, then realized I should top the tanks, so I started it again — the new battery spun it up fast — and taxied over for fuel. Then I started up the engine a third time to taxi back to my parking spot. It probably sounds silly to go on about starting a plane, but I’ve had so many problems since the new year that I was probably more excited about the starts than the actual flying.

So I’m back in the air. I’d like to get up every week or so, even in the winter, to get my chops back — I have no illusions that four successful day VFR circuits in smooth, calm air are enough to prove that my skills haven’t rusted since September.

The Bendix is unstuck, I can placard the ELT U/S for 30 days (and stick close to home) while trying to find a new antenna to replace the one knocked off by ice and/or wind, and I have new, better wing covers, so I’m almost ready to fly.

When I arrived at the airport last Saturday, the shop hadn’t plugged the heater back in, so I plugged it in for 90 minutes to warm up the engine and watched a bit of Hot Shots! (!) that was playing in the club lounge. Once the cylinders were warm to the touch, I fired the starter, but it wouldn’t turn the prop — the battery was flat. I plugged in the battery charger, then walked over to find my mechanic (who was working on building a new hangar) and asked him if he’d had to recharge the battery before starting my plane a few days earlier.

“Yep.”

OK, dead battery. To be fair, it was an old loaner from the shop a couple of years ago supposed to tide me over for a few weeks, and it never should have lasted this long. After 45 minutes still not enough charge to spin the prop, and the VRTUcar was due back soon, so I had to give up.

I’m getting a new battery this week, then hopefully everything will line up and I’ll be back in the air for the first time since mid September.

… every time you started the program, something different would be wrong with the plane: flat strut, weak battery, missing ELT antenna, broken intercom, stuck Bendix, etc. (I’ve dealt with all of those over the past 12 months). You’d then walk to the virtual maintenance hangar, but find out that it’s Sunday and no one’s there (actually, today, there was someone).

If your plane was OK, you’d get to spend an hour convincing ice-encrusted covers to separate from the wings without ripping, bumping 1/2″ of ice off the fuselage, etc. Your car would get stuck in the snow near your tiedown spot as well, and you’d have to hack a path out with a borrowed ice chipper. In the end, you’d try to knock some of the ice off the covers, put them back on the plane, make a note to book maintenance, and sit for a few minutes watching other people land and take off.

Fortunately (for me, not for them), Microsoft has fired the whole MSFS team, so there’s no risk of anyone reading and implementing this suggestion. Instead of changing MSFS, I want to change real life. I want to arrive at the airport and climb straight into a fueled, shoveled off, uncovered, warmed, preflighted plane idling on the threshold of the active runway. When I finish, I’d like to just taxi clear of the runway, shut down, and toss someone the keys.

I guess I could make this happen, but I’ll have to figure out a way to get rich enough to hire a ground crew first. Suggestions? In the meantime, I’m scheduling time to get a new ELT antenna installed and the Bendix unstuck and lubed, and ordering new wing covers. With luck, I’ll be flying again before the end of the month.

This morning, I took my first stab at supporting the W3C Geolocation API in OurAirports and ourairports.mobi. If you’re using a geolocation-aware browser, such as Firefox 3.5 or recent versions of Safari, and you authorize OurAirports to know your location, your latitude and longitude (or your browser’s best guess about them) should appear automatically in the search box on the home pages.

I’m hoping especially that this will work with the iPhone (version 3 or better), since it’s supposed to support the W3C Geolocation API now. If this is successful, I can add new capabilities, such as an automatically scrolling map, without too much work.

If you own an iPhone, please try out the sites, and let me know what happens. They’re working fine with Firefox 3.5 in Linux, except that Firefox tells OurAirports that I’m in downtown Ottawa, about 4 km away from where I actually am (probably guessing from my IP subnet).

I need to reward (and re-word) myself with a bit of silliness, after roughing in the first navaid pages on OurAirports, so here is a sentence made up entirely of valid navaid identifiers, with one small cheat at the end:

BUT IT IS ART, AS ANY OLD CAT OR DOG CAN SEA.

Does anyone have any better ones?

(This would be more fun with fixes and airport idents as well. Maybe in a future posting …)

OurAirports now includes pilot info pages with comm frequences, live weather, runway information, and live notams — for now, it’s accessible though the “Pilot info” tab at the top of each airport page, but I’ll be redesigning the site over the next few weeks, so the link location will likely change.

Here’s sample pilot information for Bahrain International Airport.

Note that it’s not currently possible to edit frequency or runway information. I’ll be adding that ability soon, as well as data for more airports (right now, only larger airports have runway and comm information).

Update: if an airport doesn’t have its own METAR and/or TAF, OurAirports will display the closest ones available. This works in both the main and mobile versions. Look at pilot info for Rivière-du-Loup Airport for an example (mobile pilot info for Rivière-du-Loup Airport).

There is a new version of OurAirports optimized for cell phones and other small devices. This first release includes search, airport lists, comments, and (what’s not available on the regular site) TAF and METAR reports. There are no maps in the mobile edition, and it is not currently possible to leave comments (they’re read-only). Check it out at

ourairports.mobi

(I developed the mobile site over two calendar days and about one person day. Thanks to my very rushed beta testers, Paul, Blake, and Douglas.)

If you’re a pilot, you probably catch yourself thinking “where’s the nearest airport?” when you’re reading about any place online. I have a web site, OurAirports, that can help to answer that question, but only at the cost of going to the site, typing the placename into the search box, and then waiting for the results.

The bookmarklet

To speed things up, I’ve written my first bookmarklet, a tiny bit of code that runs in a browser bookmark.

Find airports

Click on this link, hold the mouse down, and drag it to your bookmark bar (updated so that a new page doesn’t open when you select “cancel”):

The bookmark bar is usually just above the main part of the browser window. You can highlight any text on the web page you’re reading (such as a placename or address), then click the “Find airports” bookmark to open a new window/tab showing the closest airports. If you don’t select any text with the mouse, a dialog box will pop up prompting you for a search string.

Examples

(In each example, the text to select is in italics.)

Airport codes work very well. Select LAX or EGLL with your mouse, then click the “Find airports” link to jump straight to the airport page on OurAirports.

If you’re thinking of visiting the Prime Minister of Canada, highlight 24 Sussex Drive, Ottawa with your mouse then click on your “Find airports” bookmarklet.

I like to fly my family to Manhattan. Teterboro is almost as close as LaGuardia, and a lot less expensive.

I hear that Ayers Rock is very dramatic down under.

Thinking of helping mankind? Perhaps you’d like to fly aid supplies into Darfur or Zimbabwe, assuming the governments would allow you in.

On 11 June, for the first time I failed a flight test, an IFR renewal (private pilots have to refly the IFR test every two years in Canada). I resolved immediately to get my rating back, so I went up twice with a great instructor and fellow Cherokee owner Jean René de Cotret from Rockcliffe, after which he was comfortable signing me off for a retest.

The retest

With Jean’s letter in hand, I did my complete IFR retest on 29 June. Without a rating, I had to scud-run my plane in marginal VFR the 7 miles from Rockcliffe to Ottawa Macdonald-Cartier under a low ceiling to meet the examiner. We zipped through the ground portion: sadly, the simulated emergencies were things I’ve actually experienced in IMC, like a failed ASI, and trying to get ATC’s attention when I have ice accumulating on the airframe, so I didn’t have to think long about the answers.

We took off into actual IMC for the flight portion of the test, which lasted an hour including taxiing, clearances, etc. This time I did the radio work, since we were on an IFR flight plan (many thanks to the Ottawa terminal and tower controllers for reserving me a slot at noon on a busy IFR day!). I was a lot more comfortable talking directly with the controllers, rather than doing simulated radio work with the examiner in VMC conditions. I won’t bore you with a play-by-play, because this was my fifth time flying the IFR flight test, but everything went great (including a shuttle descent in the hold), and I have the IFR endorsement back on my license.

Filing IFR again

I’ve accumulated several hours of actual IMC in the week and a half since that exam, including a flight from Ottawa to Waterloo last Saturday (the return on Sunday was VFR), a flight from Ottawa to Rivière-du-Loup through a low-pressure system on Tuesday, and the return flight to Ottawa through the same low-pressure system yesterday.

I canceled a baseball flight to Toronto City Centre on Canada Day because I don’t like embedded thunderstorms that I can’t see coming (that’s the same reason I waited overnight in Rivière-du-Loup), though I could have flown it with my StormScope and ATC advisories, and have done that before — it’s just that it’s not fun. Without my instrument rating, though, all three trips would have been canceled — it really does make a huge difference in the ability to travel, and I’m feeling much more confident hand-flying in the clouds after a couple of hours of review training. I started on my instrument rating right after I finished my PPL, and have never regretted the choice.

In spring 1976, I failed grade 7 French.

It was my delinquent year — I was almost two years younger than the other kids, starting the school year in 1975 still aged 10, and as hormones pulled my slightly-older friends in new directions, I found a different outlet, testing how many rules I could break without getting caught. Despite my failure, I joined the grade 8 French class the next year, paid attention, didn’t cheat, and ended up second in the class with 89% (my hormones had kicked in, and girls became more interesting than acting up).

In spring 2009, I failed my biennial IFR flight test.

In Canada, unlike the U.S., we have to redo the complete IFR flight test every two years to maintain our ratings. I passed in 2003, 2005, and 2007, but failed yesterday due to altitude deviations. I now need to be signed off by an instructor, then take the full flight test again. That may put an end to any hope of family trips or Hope Air flights this summer: without an instrument rating, it’s not really practical to fly on long trips around northeastern North America, unless you’re willing to wait 2 or 3 days for weather to clear at each stop.

Because of work, I haven’t flown much in the last year and a half. The hood/foggles don’t bother me, and I’m still good with the radio work, IFR procedures, heading control, and needle tracking, but I need to get back up and regain my altitude control. The Transport Canada test standard is +100 feet/-0 feet for IFR, and I dipped 50 feet below four times in my two approaches. Next time, I’ll remember to target 50 feet above minimum altitude as well, to give myself some wiggle room.

Aftermath

Obviously, as a 700-hour pilot with nearly 100 hours actual IMC, I was shocked and disappointed at the result, but I also recognize that it is my responsibility to fix the problem rather than looking for excuses. It’s important not to fall into bad habits, no matter how long you’ve flown, and it’s probably time for some recurrent training anyway. When I arrived back at my home airport, I went straight in and booked a two-hour lesson for next Tuesday with an IFR instructor. I’ll have him evaluate my flying, then we’ll put together a plan to get my altitude control back to test standards (as well as anything else that might have slipped).

The examiner (a very nice man, and a talented, 20,000+ hour pilot) felt terrible about failing me — he said I obviously know what I’m doing, had 4/4 on much of the test, probably just needed to go up once to get a sign off from an instructor so that I could redo the exam. I’m prepared, though, to work at this all summer if I need to.

Failing once in a while is good for the soul — if you never fail at anything, then you’re not really trying in life — but I don’t want to fail this particular test again, and with my confidence badly shaken, I’m afraid of messing things up next time that I took for granted this time (like holds and NDB approaches) even if I do fix my altitude control. I need not only to brush up my skills, but to get my confidence back.

A good day, all the same

Despite all this, it was a good day yesterday. First, I realized that I really do still care about flying — my first reaction wasn’t to give up, but to book some lessons and get back on the horse. Second, the Red Sox came back from a 1-3 deficit at the bottom of the 8th to beat the Yankees again, for 8 straight this season. And most importantly, I celebrated 21 years married to my best friend, and that easily trumps any flight test results.

When I was up practicing holds today, I realized something important: it’s not concentration, but lack of concentration that makes a good pilot.

Sure, on the ground concentration can be a good thing: you check weather and NOTAMs, plan your flight, preflight the plane, etc. giving your full concentration to each task, one after the other. But once you’re in the air, concentration is the last thing you want.

Hollywood wants us to think of pilots as alpha-wolf masters of concentration, flying the plane by sheer will power, but that doesn’t have much to do with being in a real cockpit during a real flight. Remember that wierd kid in your elementary school choir who could never focus on the song or conductor, but was always glancing up at the ceiling, down at the floor, at the kids beside him/her, at the door, out the window, etc.? That’s a future pilot.

The thing is, when you’re flying, there are lots of things happening at once, and every one seems to need your attention all the time. You simply can’t focus on a single task and finish it. Concentrating on tuning the radio? Guess what, your altitude just changed by 200 ft. Trying to get the gyro compass set correctly? Looks like you just blew through your next checkpoint. Trying to figure out where you are on the map? Maybe you should recover from this incipient spiral, first. It’s like driving a car, but with more speed, (sometimes) nothing visible out the window, and an extra dimension and two extra axes of rotation thrown in.

When a plane has two pilots, I imagine that they can divide up the work to some extent so that one can concentrate on something while the other flies, and certainly, an autopilot can help a lot, but I imagine that even on the flight deck of the most sophisticated airliner pilots have to keep their focus moving, all the time.

When you go to the other end of the spectrum — say, a private pilot (like me) flying single-pilot IFR in turbulence with no autopilot — it’s all about lack of concentration. Need to retune the radio? I can’t just look at the dial and keep turning until the right frequency, or the turbulence will have knocked me 20 degrees off course. Instead, I turn it two or three numbers, then back to the AI, ASI, AI, HI, TC, ALT, AI, turn it two or three numbers then back to the AI, ASI, AI, HI, TC, ALT, AI, check the oil pressure and temperature then back to the AI, ASI, AI, HI, TC, ALT, AI, turn the radio dial two or three numbers then back to the AI, ASI, AI, HI, TC, ALT, AI — that’s not necessarily the exact order of my scan, but you get the picture. If I have to look up an approach plate or a frequency in the CFS, it’s the same thing: two or three page turns at once, then back to the scan, then two or three more page turns, etc.

I once did 9 hours of that in a single day in IMC for a Hope Air flight, and I wanted to sleep for a week afterwards. I don’t know how commercial pilots like Aviatrix can do it day after day (I know she often flies without an autopilot, too).

Update: pix at the Rain Aviation Blog (via Dave Rooney’s comment).

My home airport, Ottawa Rockcliffe, was hit by severe winds yesterday: I’ve heard from 18-24 airplanes damaged, at least 10 of which are write-offs.

After supper today my spouse and I drove to the airport to check the damage. On the way there, driving along the Rockcliffe Parkway (past the fields where the RCMP Musical Ride horses graze), we could see a zig-zag line of mature trees snapped in half, while trees only metres away had not a twig disturbed.

Volunteers had spent the day clearing up at the airport, but the damage was still apparent: some planes with bent wings, others on their backs, and one smashed up against a fence and flattened so that you could barely tell it had been a plane. Most of the damaged planes were high-wings, which makes sense (if you’ve ever tried to taxi a high-wing plane in strong winds, you know what I’m talking about), but there was also a Cherokee Six on its back, having bent the vertical stab of the Cessna beside it on the way over.

Most planes, however, looked untouched. There were two badly damaged planes within 100 metres of my tie-down spot, but not only did my plane look OK through the fence (except rotated 5-10 degrees in its spot), but a big snow scoop that had been leaning against the box behind my plane hadn’t even tipped over. When I can get into the airport, I’ll check the control surfaces more closely for damage.

Given how specific the damage was — one plane might be totalled, while its neighbour was untouched — I suspect a tornado, though I haven’t seen official confirmation yet. Tornadoes aren’t incredibly common here in Ottawa, but they do happen. My brother, who lives a few kilometres from the airport, lost a window and a few screens to heavy winds. Someone my daughter knows in our neighbourhood had a roof ripped off a house. In my yard, one lawn chair blew over, and … er … that’s it. No branches down from the trees, no garbage cans blown around. Parts of the city lost power. My spouse and I were watching TV in the basement, and never even noticed the storm.

Here’s how some recent tweets describe flying:

LizaBelle30: Flying is like throwing yourself at the ground and missing

elysiancoffee: flying is like preparing oneself for a big performance in which I only become an instrument

johnnyo312: flying is so horrible now, the food is worst than McDonalds, service is very bad. Flying is like riding the greyhound bus.

Janellematthew: Flying is like driving at 40,000 feet

softserve: Flying is like being tattooed - it doesn’t get real excruciating until the three hour mark.

(Idea stolen from “Google is Like…“, which in turn was stolen from “CSS is like…“.)

Yesterday, I asked what WWII plane you would have chosen to fly. I thought my answer was not so obvious — I expected to see a lot of Spitfires, Mustangs, ME-109s, Zeros, B-29s, etc. — but two other people have already mentioned it in the comments to that posting. Oh, well.

The plane I’d have chosen first is the de Havilland Mosquito.

Doing more with less

I like the Mosquito because it exemplifies the best of engineering practices — stripping away features instead of adding them. The Mosquito design started as a medium bomber with two engines, three gun turrets and a six-man crew. Performance sucked. Their first impulse was to add two more engines. Any techie reading this will instantly recognize the first step in a f**ked project: two more engines make the plane even heavier, and it will have to carry more fuel, so it will fly slower, so it will probably need more guns to defend it, etc. etc.

But then something went right. Some suggested removing one of the gun turrets. Hey! The bomber’s a bit faster. Let’s try removing another turret. Hey, it’s so fast, why have guns at all? Take out the weight of the guns and ammo, and the four crew members to fire the guns, and the Mosquito was flying like nobody’s business. But that wasn’t the end. If it’s that fast, why carry lots of heavy metal armour? In fact, why not build the airframe out of wood?

Virtuous circle

As usually happens with successful projects, unexpected benefits began to appear. England was full of furniture factories that couldn’t contribute much to the war effort. However, their high-quality, low-fault-tolerance woodworking skills were exactly what was needed to build the Mosquito. (The English were good at that kind of improvisation: they also trained workers in bicycle factories to repair heavily damaged Spitfires, freeing the Supermarine factory to concentrate on building new ones.)

The light bomber version of the Mosquito could fly at almost 350 knots, comparable to the fastest (pre-jet) fighters in World War II, and comparable even to some modern light jets. It was so fast that it also saw uses as a fighter-bomber, a pathfinder plane, and even as a pure night fighter with radar equipment installed. The Wikipedia article quotes Hermann Göring’s opinion of the Mosquito in 1943, after a Mosquito squadron attacked a Berlin radio station, knocking him off the air:

In 1940 I could at least fly as far as Glasgow in most of my aircraft, but not now! It makes me furious when I see the Mosquito. I turn green and yellow with envy.

The British, who can afford aluminium better than we can, knock together a beautiful wooden aircraft that every piano factory over there is building, and they give it a speed which they have now increased yet again. What do you make of that?

What, indeed? Less is more, worse is better, the simplest thing that can possibly work, KISS — whatever you call it, stripping away features and striving for simplicity is the heart of great engineering.

Note: the Mosquito also has great geek cred, since it’s the plane that was used to evacuate quantum physicist Niels Bohr out of Stockholm (in the bomb bay, no less).

Runners-up

My #2 choice was the Douglas Dakota, known as the C-47 to the Americans, or the DC-3 in civilian life. It was the workhorse of the allied transportation effort, and the from all accounts, a great plane to fly.

My #3 choice is a little more unusual: the L4 Grasshopper. I’m not providing a link for that, but those of you familiar with that plane can provide more info in comments, if you’d like.

Here’s a question for the aviation bloggers reading this posting: if this were World War II, and you could have a two-year mission to fly any military aircraft you chose (from any country), what would it be? To make it easier, I’m going to wave my cyber-wand and make two things happen:

1. You can be any age, gender, or physical condition. Even if you’re a 55-year-old, overweight, bald female with an astigmatism, for the sake of this exercise you can be a 21-year-old male track star with a baby face, a mop of hair, and lightning-fast reflexes.

2. You won’t hurt anyone but yourself. If you choose a bomber, I guarantee that all your bombs will fall on unoccupied factories of no historical significance. If you choose a fighter, the crew of any plane you shoot down will bail out safely. etc. (too bad that didn’t work in real life).

So what’s your favorite WWII plane, and why? If you want, list your 2nd and 3rd choices as well. Mine is coming up in my next posting (hint: it’s not obvious).

Four and a half years ago I complained about a Temporary Flight Restriction (TFR) for President Bush’s visit to Ottawa. I like President Obama a lot better than I liked President Bush — and I’m very excited that he’s making his first foreign visit as president to my city — but out of fairness, I still have to complain about the TFR.

You see, a TFR isn’t a very Canadian thing. It’s not that we don’t know what fear and terrorism are — around 1970, bombs were going off in Montreal, and a provincial cabinet minister was kidnapped and murdered; even more recently, the Iranian embassy here in Ottawa was bombed; 24 of the 9/11 victims were Canadian; and the police in Toronto recently arrested a bunch of bozos who were talking big about doing terrorist stuff, though it’s unlikely they were smart or motivated enough to pull anything off. It’s just that, like the British with their IRA crisis, at least some of us have learned that heavy-handed security doesn’t actually solve problems; instead, it makes people more scared, and when people are scared, the world becomes more dangerous for everyone.

So we don’t shut down hundreds of square miles of airspace for our amusement parks, our Prime Minister, or even our Queen. In fact, our Prime Minister sometimes walks his kids to school. Before 9/11, you could essentially fly right past the windows of Parliament; now, you have to fly 1,000 ft AGL over Parliament, or 0.5 nm away, but you can still fly pretty close (and even those restrictions don’t apply if you’re landing or taking off IFR under ATC control).

‘Nuff said. Here’s the TFR for the president’s visit next week:

CYOW DESIGNATED AIRSPACE HANDBOOK IS AMENDED AS FOLLOWS:
1) CYR537, PARLIAMENT HILL ON, REVISED TO READ: CLASS F
RESTRICTED AIRSPACE IS ESTABLISHED WITHIN THE AREA BOUNDED
BY 12 NM RADIUS OF 452529N 754159W (PARLIAMENT HILL),
SFC TO 12,500 FT MSL. NO PERSON SHALL OPR AN ACFT WITHIN THE
AREA EXC FOR STATE ACFT, MIL, POLICE OPS, REGULARLY SKED
COMMERCIAL PASSENGER AND CARGO CARRIERS, EMERG OR HUMANITARIAN
FLT AUTH BY ATC.  FOR AUTH ACFT OPR WITHIN CYR537,
THE OPR RULES FOR EXISTING AIRSPACE APPLY.
DLA MAY BE ANTICIPATED.
0902191600/0902192030.
2) CYR539, OTTAWA ON, CLASS F RESTRICTED AIRSPACE IS ESTABLISHED
WITHIN THE AREA BOUNDED BY 10 NM RADIUS OF 451921N 754009W
(OTTAWA/MACDONALD-CARTIER INTL), SFC TO 12,500 FT MSL. NO PERSON
SHALL OPR AN ACFT WITHIN THE AREA DESCRIBED EXC FOR STATE ACFT,
MIL, POLICE OPS, EMERG OR HUMANITARIAN FLT AUTH BY RCMP AT
1-888-420-7958.  FOR AUTH ACFT OPR WITHIN CYR539, THE OPR RULES
FOR EXISTING AIRSPACE APPLY.
0902191515/0902191545 AND 0902192210/0902192255.
3) CYR540, OTTAWA ON, CLASS F RESTRICTED AIRSPACE IS ESTABLISHED
WITHIN THE AREA BOUNDED BY 30 NM RADIUS OF 451921N 754009W
(OTTAWA/MACDONALD-CARTIER INTL) EXCLUDING CYR537 AND CYR539.
SFC TO 12,500 FT MSL. NO PERSON SHALL OPR AN ACFT WITHIN THE AREA
DESCRIBED EXC FOR STATE ACFT, MIL AND POLICE OPS, REGULARLY SKED
COMMERCIAL PASSENGER, CARGO CARRIERS, EMERG OR HUMANITARIAN FLT.
FOR MIL AND POLICE ACFT OPR WITHIN CYR540, THE OPR RULES FOR
CLASS G AIRSPACE APPLY. FOR OTHER ACFT LISTED ABV, OPR WITHIN
CYR540, THE RULES FOR EXISTING AIRSPACE APPLY.
OPR PROC FOR ALL OTHER ACFT ENTERING, EXITING OR TRANSITING
THROUGH CYR540 AUTH BY ATC SHALL:
-PRIOR TO FLT PLANNING INTO CYR540, HAVE AN AUTH NUMBER OBTAINED
FM THE RCMP 613-949-1737, 18 FEB 1300 TO 2100,
OR 1-888-420-7958, 19 FEB 1200 TO 2300. THE REQUEST WILL INCLUDE
THE NAMES AND BIRTHDAYS OF ALL PERSONS ONBOARD.
-HAVE FLT PLAN WITH AUTH NUMBER IN THE REMARKS SECTION IN ORDER
TO OBTAIN CLEARANCE TO OPR WITHIN CYR540.
-BE ON AN ACTIVE IFR OR VFR FLT PLAN WITH A DISCRETE CODE
ASSIGNED BY ATC 1-866-WXBRIEF AND SQUAWK THE DISCRETE CODE PRIOR
TO DEP AND AT ALL TIMES WHILE OPR WITHIN CYR540.
-REMAIN IN TWO-WAY RDO COM AT ALL TIMES WITH ATC.
-ACFT DEP FM AN AD WITHIN CYR540, MUST ESTABLISH AND MAINTAIN,
AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, TWO WAY RDO COM WITH ATC.
-PRIOR TO ENTERING CYR540, ACFT MUST ESTABLISH AND MAINTAIN TWO
WAY RDO COM WITH OTTAWA TML 127.7.
-ACFT ARR OR DEP LOCAL AD WITHIN CYR540 AND AUTH ACFT TRANSITING
THROUGH CYR540, REQUIRE AUTH FM OTTAWA TML FRQ 127.7.
DLA MAY BE ANTICIPATED.
0902191500 TIL 0902192300

Basically, unless you’re security, an airline, or medevac, don’t fly within 30nm of the Ottawa Airport from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm next Thursday below 12,500 ft MSL, period. That’s actually harsher than the typical presidential TFR in the U.S.

Update: removed Le Bourget.

ICAO Class A (”class alfa”) airspace is the strictest of all, allowing only IFR operations (without special permission). In the U.S. and southern Canada, most airspace between FL180 and FL600 is class A (the floor is higher as you get further north in Canada).

Even the busiest airports rarely designate their control zones as class A: the U.S., for example, contains 15 of the world’s 30 busiest airports by passenger traffic, but they are designated only Class B (”class bravo”), so routine controlled VFR operations are still permitted (I’ve flown my warrior into some of them, IFR and VFR).

Around the world, however, there exists a tiny handful of Class A airports. Here are the Class A airports I know about so far:

• Ben Gurion International Airport, Tel Aviv, Israel
• Charles de Gaulle International Airport, Paris, France
• El Dorado International Airport, Bogatá, Columbia
• Gibraltar Airport, Gibraltar
• Heathrow Airport, London, UK
• Le Bourget Airport, Paris, France
• Orly Airport, Paris, France

There appears to be no single reason for the designation — it’s certainly not due to traffic alone. Tel Aviv is probably Class A for security reasons, being so near hostile soil, and Bogatá’s designation may have something to do with drug smuggling. Heathrow is busy (though not as busy as some U.S. airports), but it also operates in very confined airspace. Gibraltar has about three scheduled flights a day — go figure. (It’s near the Spanish border, but many major airports operate very close to international borders; many busy airports also operate near high terrain). Le Bourget has no scheduled flights at all, but Parisians are Parisians, and zut alors! if London has one Class A airport, Paris will show them by having three two.

Reagan National Airport in Washington DC has additional restrictions that make it similar to Class A, but is still designated Class B. Does anyone know of any other Class A airports that I’ve missed?

Rumour says that Microsoft layed off most or all of the Flight Simulator development team this morning (Gamasutra, Gizmodo). Microsoft (originally, Sublogic) flight simulator has been around for 29 years — I first tried it in ‘82 or ‘83.

If the stories are true, why not sell it, instead of shutting it down? Lots of other software companies would be thrilled to have such a popular and prestigious title, and it wouldn’t compete against anything else at Microsoft.

In any case, whether you’re an aluminum-and-15w50 pilot practicing approaches, or a gamer who does all your flying on a computer screen, there are still choices. Here are the two best candidates:

• FlightGear — an Open Source flight simulator that runs on most computer platforms. The scenery is a bit rough around the edges, but it’s solid and usable.
• X-Plane — a commercial product that already gets some retail distribution. It has a very devoted following, though I’ve never liked the demos I’ve tried as much as I’ve liked FlightGear and MSFS.

I’m looking forward to hearing more news. The huge MSFS developer community must be in shock (as well as the many small companies devoted entirely to producing MSFS add-ons).

While we don’t have all the details yet, it sounds like amazing work from a US Airways crew, ditching a jetliner (a 737?) into the Hudson River today (story) right after takeoff from La Guardia Airport. According to witnesses, the landing was smooth, the plane stayed upright and afloat, and all 148 passengers and crew were able to be evacuated off the wings to nearby boats.

That’s a non-trivial accomplishment at any time, but especially with an apparent engine failure right after takeoff — a very busy time on the flight deck — when the crew had no time to prepare mentally for the ditching. Expect “double engine failure immediately after takeoff over water” to be a popular simulator exercise for airline pilots for the next while.

The British Government has approved adding a third runway to Heathrow Airport (CBC News story). There has been huge opposition to this, mainly from environmentalists. I believe (a) that the environmentalists’ reasoning is completely misguided, and (b) that they’re right, anyway.