Land and Hold Short

On most airplanes, you can trim the elevator by turning a wheel or crank that sets a tab — a flap on a flap — that then redirects the airflow to hold the elevator or stabilator at a certain angle of attack. Elevator trim is fairly important, since it saves you from having to hold constant pressure on the yoke to keep the plane from diving to the ground or going nose up and stalling. Fancier planes also have rudder and aileron trim (the Warrior has a fake rudder trim that’s really just a spring in the control system).

Since I bought my Piper Warrior II in December 2002, the elevator trim wheel has been surprisingly hard to move. Sometimes I almost get used to it, but then I fly another plane and notice that the wheel does not require 20+ lb of force to turn. At every annual inspection, I’ve squawked the trim, and mechanics have replaced the cable, replaced the pulley, and tried various lubricants. It always seemed a bit easier afterwards, but then soon went back to its old self.

This year, I squawked the trim once again, but the mechanic wasn’t satisfied just relubing; instead, he decided to examine the trim tab itself, and he noticed that when you turn the trim wheel, the tab flexes, but that the hinge has seized up with corrosion and does not seem actually to move. I imagine that it has been moving some — since it also acts as an anti-servo tab, the plane would be tricky to control otherwise, and I’m sure that I verified at least some movement on every preflight — but it’s still strange to think that I’ve been flying single-pilot IFR with no autopilot and trimming my plane by flexing aluminum through brute force alone. Man vs. machine, indeed.

There’s really only one thing that air traffic controllers spend a lot of time worrying about, and that’s separation. Separation means that each aircraft has an invisible bubble around it. When a controller is required to separate aircraft, she has to make sure that neither aircraft enters the other’s bubble. If she messes up once, she’s in big trouble; if she messes up a couple more times, she’s fired.

When a controller is not required to separate two aircraft from each-other, he’ll probably still point out traffic and do his best to keep you apart, but if you come too close to each other it’s usually the pilot’s responsibility, not the controller’s. As a result, if you want to get in trouble, the most effective way to do it is to do something that causes a loss of separation — the controllers will let you get away with almost any other bonehead move while you’re in the air, but it you cause a loss of separation, they will have to turn you in to Transport Canada to save their own behinds.

Of course, there are worse ways to get in trouble than with Transport Canada. Even with a fine and penalty, and you’ll probably fly again; get into a midair collision, and the outlook is a bit darker. As a result, it’s very important to know two things:

1. Is the controller providing me with separation?
2. If so, what is she separating me from?

To figure out the answers, it’s important to know what kind of airspace you’re in (note that this applies to Canadian airspace — US airspace has some important differences):

So if you’re flying VFR on an airway at 14,500 ft, you’re in class B airspace, and ATC will be separating you from all other aircraft. On the other hand, if you’re flying IFR into Oshawa airport (class D), ATC is not responsible for separating you from any VFR aircraft in the zone, even though they probably will give you advisories, so keep a sharp lookout when you break out from the clouds.

Note that I haven’t gotten into the other kind of separation here, separation from terrain and obstacles. I think that’s normally both the pilot’s and controller’s shared responsibility, except when the plane is on vectors, but I haven’t double-checked (I always assume it’s my problem anyway).

Nav Canada has decided to go ahead and charge small aircraft a daily fee of $10.00, starting in March 2008, for using any of Canada’s seven busiest airports (and the Vancouver harbour water aerodrome) — that’s on top of any landing fees, etc. charged by the airport authorities. Here’s their announcement. Here’s my response from last February, which still represents my opinion about the charges.

Nav Canada did decide to exempt aircraft from the fee when they divert to one of the major airports as a weather alternate, and they will not begin phasing in the fee this year as originally planned (unless I didn’t read the announcement carefully enough). Sadly, I think that this move may be enough to kill off the rest of the private aviation community at CYOW, ending a tradition that began in 1928 when the Ottawa Flying Club founded the airport.