Summer!

Wow, ok, so summer has arrived on the West Coast.

Last week or so has seen us in the middle of an entrenched high pressure ridge that shows little signs of abating. I saw my first cloud today in over a week.

It was kind of funny actually, I was outside on the ramp with another fellow who has recently earned his Private Pilots License and as we looked at a bank of high cloud approaching in a seemingly organized fashion, he said " ok, so what type of front is that? ". I opined that I thought it was a warm front type of cloud formation, high, advancing cirrus that tapered down to what appeared to be some alto stratus type clouds. I keep an eye on the weather, so I hedged my bets with a " but, as there is little in the way of active systems in our area due to the high pressure, it may also just be orographic cloud from the mountains on the island. "

I like to know what is driving the weather on a daily basis. I check the weather religiously, flying or not. Not so much to try and predict or plan around my predictions of what will occur, but more to understand and learn from what I am seeing. If I know a warm front is approaching, when I look up and see the actual weather, then I know, " A-ha, my Met instructor was right! ".

Turned out I was right, but the system was far to the north of us, but the first band of clouds associated with the warm front managed to reach us this far south. It actually gave us a much needed respite from the searing heat of the last three days.

Out on the ramp, there is no shade. There is only black tarmac, the unrelenting sun, heavy boots, dark coloured uniforms that cover everything but your forearms to protect you from exposure to fuel, hats, ear defenders, sunglasses, utility belts, radios and mikes, heavy rubber fueling gloves and lately, a nice slippery sheen of sunscreen. It gets a little warm at times.

In any case, I wanted to post a quick blog update as I have been more than a little remiss lately. I think this is probably the longest I have let the blog lapse.

I'd like to have readers who keep coming back, to engage with them and hear their feedback on my daily life. I'd like to meet new people who share the same interests as me and have interesting stories of their own to tell. I'd like to keep friends and family updated on my life, without enriching the pockets of FaceBook founders through their prostitution of me and my life's little details. Alas, this kind of necessitates some effort on my part.

Anyways, in a nutshell, the last couple of moths have seen the following in the way of news that I would have liked to share, but didnt...

My wife's pregnancy is progressing nicely. We are down to the last two months now. In fact, only seven weeks to go till D-Day. This is no longer a distant, abstract event. This is happening! We've been very fortunate that her pregnancy has been pretty easy so far. A little nausea, treatable and treated. The usual mobility and fatigue challenges. But for the most part very manageable to date, knock on wood.

I finished my Ultralight Instructor Rating a few weeks ago and have begun instructing at the local ultralight field. I've done a few lessons and a mock flight test so far. I am finding instructing a lot more enjoyable and challenging than I first thought. I feel a very strong pressure to keep packing my head full of all kinds of information, "just-in-case" a student asks me " what type of front is that? " or " what makes the airplane turn? ". But at the same time, I feel very comfortable in the instructing role. I had lots of great advice from really good instructors during my training, all I really have to do is turn around and share those little nuggets with others.

I actually did that the other day with the mock flight test. I pretty much copied the flight test I did for the same rating. I have to remember to mention to the examiner that I did this, in case he pulls this student for the actual flight test. He may need to vary his routine just a little or the jig is up.

I went on a nice little cross-country trip the other day, up to Lillooet. This was a fun trip and had a few twists, so it is worthy of a post of its own, but it was nice to get out of the local patch and take an Ultralight on a long(ish) trip. It took us about 4.5 hours total, round trip.

I was helping put some aircraft into a hangar the other day and the hangar tenants Chief Pilot was there while we were working. We were joking around with him a little because their company, which owns several jets, helicopters and other large and expensive aircraft, also owns a Cessna 182 that he has been flying A LOT lately. Turns out, he is the only one in their company approved to fly it. Insurance maybe, or company-approved training that hasn't been done for the rest of the pilots, who knows. He mock-complained about the situation and one of my co-workers pointed at me and said " well, he needs the hours, let him fly it ". I was mortified, but he turned and asked me how many hours I had. " Around 300 " I told him. He raised an eyebrow and said I should talk to the owner.

I'll do it, but I suspect my lack of an IFR rating is going to preclude my being of any real use to them. It was kind of neat to see this job paying off a little though ,in the network-prospecting sort of respect though.

Anyways, I'll try and post a little more, but who knows, maybe I wont... Lots of things going on, all of them good!

Going to be a daddy soon, getting to fly on a daily basis and not paying for it, loving my job(s) and feeling a little more optimistic about future job prospects.

Ah well, watch my next post be tomorrow night about the tornado that I.did.not.see.coming that flattens my home....

Qualicum Trip

Got to go out on a little adventure today.

I had been talking to one of the guys at work about going flying one day and it came together this morning.

Bruce has his PPL and just recently went out to one of the local flight schools and got checked out in one of their new Turbo-Diesel Cessna 172's. In doing the check out he also renewed currency on his pilots license, since it had been 5 years or so since he last flew.

I need a total of 20 hours ultralight time in order to apply for my Ultralight Instructor rating so we thought it might be fun to take a little cross country trip.

Bruce was much like myself when I did my PPL. Most of my cross countries were pretty local really. We had got to talking at work about how much fun it is flying into new and unfamiliar airports and the whole planning process in putting together a flight to somewhere you have never been.

I'm trying to at least take the written and do a " flight test " for my rating prior to the end of the month. I'm feeling a little hard-pressed though as time and weather are slowly starting to come together to not make it happen.

We had planned on going out yesterday, but we didn't get the weather for our primary destination, nor for our back-up alternate. Theres only a few directions you can fly in out here when the ceilings start to come down.

Our original plan was to go to a little strip up near Merritt, called Quilchena. Apparently there is a neat old Hotel / Restaurant right across the street from the strip and MoGas ( Automobile Gas ) is available from a gas station that neighbors the field. There are pictures at our little flight school building of planes being pulled across the road by hand and right up to the pumps to fill up.

Since the trip up through the mountains requires us to be able to fly through at least one high mountain pass, we would have needed a minimum ceiling of about 7500 Feet Above Sea Level ( ASL ) for a safe trip. And that only gets us through the pass, it doesn't give us much for options to climb out of the valley as the mountain tops would still be shrouded in cloud.

When we got to the field yesterday we didnt even have close to that, in fact ,while we stood there discussing our back up plan, the rain started and within a half hour, our options had dwindled down to the highway to drive ourselves home on.

Back again this morning to try again and while it started iffy, it quickly cleared up quite nicely.

In fact, according to the weather map, there was just the barest hint of a High pressure area, right where our alternate was. It was only there on one of the GFA weather charts as well, the forecast chart prior to our period and after had the High pressure area downgraded to just another curve in the isobars around the Low.

One of the guys who hangars his plane out at the field accepted our invite to tag along and Bruce and I took the Foxbat, while he flew alone in his beautiful little Piper Vagabond.



Basically a clipped-wing Piper Cub. He has upgraded the engine to ( I believe ) a 100 HP Lycoming engine, as well as a few other bells and whistles. A left side door for the pilot and a widened fuselage to accommodate two people in the front instead of tandem seating. He even has a small wind-driven generator hanging off the bottom that charges his battery and gives him Electrical power, something the original Cub lacked.

Off we went, up over the city and through the Downtown Harbour control Zone. I did a little practice with groundspeed checks and using the old whiz-wheel as its part of my upcoming flight test and something I havent done for awhile.



Bruce got some stick-time while I fiddled with a navlog and my trusty E6B.



Give us a smile Bruce!

Through the Harbour and now its up over Bowen Island and along the coastline, north-west bound for the Sechelt area.



Past Sechelt and over a little 8 mile stretch of water between Buccaneer Bay and the bottom tip of Texada Island.

A little detour to check out a small, unpublished dirt strip that sits on Texada. Nice enough lengthwise, but I'm not too sure about the surface condition, would definitely be an emergency-only option till I had a chance to talk to someone who had landed there before, or better yet, walk the runway myself.

The forecast clouds over the island weather stations turned out to be pretty localized and we had clear skies over the Strait of Georgia to climb up and get some altitude for the 10-mile stretch between Lasqueti Island and Qualicum Beach.

I had flown over Qualicum once before on a sight-seeing trip with my brother Jason, up from Victoria. I was freshly annointed with my PPL at that point and when we went to land at Qualicum ( it wasn't our destination, more just to check it out ), the gusty crosswinds had me end up doing a low approach only. It was my brothers first flight with me and I was already scaring myself trying to make a steady approach, no sense scaring him with a not-so-steady landing.




We taxied in and grabbed a couple spots on the grass, just off the main apron. An airport worker came out and very politely told us we wouldn't be able to park there, and directed us instead to another spot down the way. Another gentleman was with him with a clipboard that he was writing in. I thought to myself..." Oh, he must be recording our registration marks for a landing fee or maybe a parking fee... thats funny, I dont remember seeing any fee's in the CFS... ".

We parked over on the grass where they wanted us to and it turned out that the other gentleman was a Transport Canada Inspector doing a ramp check! He went through the whole thing with the pilot of the Piper that flew up with us and Bruce and I watched and listened from a polite distance.

I was a little nervous, figuring it would be my turn next, but once he was done with the Piper's pilot, he wished us all a good day and left. It was actually quite a friendly little encounter and not nearly as sinister as my imagination had it being. I've talked to lots of pilots who have flown for twenty plus years and never been ramp-checked, it was a first for all of us.

Over to the restaurant for a nice lunch out on the patio in the sun and then back from whence we came.



Coming back through downtown Vancouver, got to take a look at the floatplane base of the now-amalgamated West Coast Air / Harbour Air, as well as the Green Roof of the new convention centre.




BC place has also had the inflatable roof deflated, to make way for the new retractable roof they are putting on.

Spronk.

Ever wonder how float planes get around on dry land?

Well, I'm going to tell you anyways.

They use a piece of equipment called " Beaching Gear ".

Essentially a hydraulic lift mounted off the front end of some sort of vehicel so the float plane can be picked up from underneath, down on the boat ramp, lifted into the air and driven around.

Mechanics tend to like working in dry hangars, where all their tools are and they don't have to contort like gymnasts to balance on and work under, a float plane bobbing around at the dock.

We had some fun with that last summer when the Otter went through an engine change and a "splitting " of its radial engine, right at the dock.

Since the aircraft was not flyable, and we had no ramp nor beaching gear to take it out of the water, the entire operation was done at the dock. We did the best we could, with a large plywood maintenance platform placed between the two floats and under the engine and it worked fairly well. But.... theres a lot of oil that comes out of a radial engine when you open it up. So, we strung plastic sheeting up underneath the aircraft as well. Very handy to collect spilt oil and dropped bolts.

The first time we did it, sans plastic, we ended up with a small slick and yours truly had to go diving for parts and tools dropped into the lake at least three or four times.

I am considering heading down to the gulf of mexico and showing those bozo's what I can accomplish with little more than a container of Sunlight dish soap on shore-encroaching oil slicks, but I bet they will figure it out eventually themselves.

In any case... Near where I work is a few different maintenance outfits that do a lot of their work on seaplanes. All of them have at least one set of beaching gear. Its kind of neat some of the vehicles they have mated the lifting apparatus to. Theres at least one Camaro, an Oldsmobile Toronado and a couple other oddball cars as well. Standard practice uses an old half-ton truck that is getting long in the tooth, but its neat to see the creativity of the mechanics.

A while back, I witnessed a beaching incident gone wrong.

The beaching gear is usually placed under the seaplanes " spreader bars ". Horizontal bars that hold the two floats apart and provide lateral strength and stability. The spreader bars are fairly lightweight material ( like a lot of aviation-y things ) but get their strenght in the direction that it is required, by their shape. Like a cardboard tube, very strong if its on end, but can be folded with ease if force is used against it sideways.

Where the lifting platform of the beaching gear pushes against the spreader bars is usually OK, as they lift at the very edges, where the spreader bar attaches to the float itself. At this point, there is an inner piece which reinforces the tube, as well as giving something that you can bolt through the spreader bar onto, to actually attach it.

Unfortunately, if you don't lift at this point of the spreader bar and instead try to lift from a point further in, where there is no underlying reinforcement inside the tube..... Particularly while bouncing down an old wooden float ramp...bad things can happen.

If you look closely in the background, you can see a Beaching Gear-mobile made out of a Toronado..I think. The bars of the lifting platform project forward of the " car " and are just barely visible...They are blue and about fifteen or twenty feet long.



I know the Toronado was a front-wheel drive car so perhaps that why they used it, as the back half of the vehicle is sacrificed in making it into its new configuration.



Oh, this is the same old wooden float ramp as well, being used by a Supermarine Stranraer of Queen Charlotte Airways back in the fifties ( possibly? )



I love how this airport is full of stuff that has been around forever. Old hangars that have seen dozens of airlines come and go. Sometimes run by the same people, different planes and at other times, same planes, different people...

Until they re-paved it last year, you used to be able to drive over the old hangar door tracks of the Boeing Factory that used to exist here, a long time ago...



On the other side of the field is one of my favorite places to walk. Its technically a " jetty ", a breakwater made from rocks. But... for those in the know, its actually a treated water dicharge pipe which takes treated sewage water and discharges it about 4 kilometres out into the Strait of Georgia. The Lovely Wife and I used to run out here whn we lived nearby. I liked it because the trail which runs on top of the pipe as well as alongside it, is marked every half-kilometre. 4 out and 4 back, but I never ran the whole thing in one go.



Oh, and the fact that it is right under the approach path doesn't hurt for a view either...haha.

One of my favorite aircraft types also came in for a surprise visit the other day too.



This is a "super" DC-3.



It popped in unexpectedly for a movie shoot in a nearby town and spent the night on our ramp before heading out the next day. The guys driving it were extremely gracious in giving me the grand tour.



I think it made it even better that it is a working plane as well, not a gussied up show plane. The back half was crammed with spares, tools and of course, oil. Like any good radial engine aircraft, its " Check the Fuel and Fill the Oil please! ".



It took me right back to last summer as well as soon as I stepped in the door. All the smells of a working plane

Spring has arrived

Well, spring is definitely settling in around here.

All the trees have sprouted fast-growing leaves, flowers are up all over the place( have been for awhile actually ) and on any given day you can hear lawn mowers starting out on their first run of the year.

A month or so ago, I started looking seriously into setting out on a Flight Instructing course.

Of course, all the schools I spoke with said pretty much the same thing. " We'd love to take your money, but even in the best of times, we can't promise you a job, and trust us, these are NOT the best of times. ". I also came to the conclusion that I was starting this way too late in the year. The " busy " season for flight instructing out here is in the summer, of course, and I would need a minimum of two to three months to work my way through a Flight Instructor - Aeroplane course and get my flying (back) up to a reasonable standard. By the time I finished the course, most of the schools around here would probably be looking at the middle-to-end of their busy season and getting ready to whittle the staffing down for the winter months.

I did however talk with the manager of the local ultralight field a few times over the last couple of years, and decided to call him up and see what they had in the works. Turns out, they are optimistically looking forward to a busy summer and were looking at hiring a few people, particularly those who might be able to commit on a part time / flexible basis.

More than right up my alley, I've signed up and am about half way through my Flight Instructor - Ultralight rating course. Now, I know you think lawn chairs strapped to lawn mower engines and suspended beneath a hang glider, when I say Ultralight, but I am pleased to report, it is just not so.

There was definitely a period where ultralights evolved somewhat clumsily from the backyard lawnchair contraptions into what they are today, but trust me, those days are gone.

You can still go and get yourself an open-cockpit trike or an old school powered hang glider, but theres a lot more options to choose from nowadays.

One of the biggest changes, I am told, came about in the late nineties, when Transport Canada ( PBUH ), decided to diverge from the US standards of what an " Ultralight " is, and increased the gross weight limits, fuel capacities and a host of other things.

Suddenly, a whole segment of small-aircraft manufactureres could put a product to market without the exhaustive and intensely expensive certification process of a conventional aeroplane. In a lot of cases, smaller "certified" aircraft were made bigger/heavier only because the manufacturer had to only use bits and bobs from other manufacturers that had already been certified, and were not ideal for the purpose, but were far less expensive than trying to certify your own product, even if it made more sense from an engineering standpoint.

Say a small-plane manufacturer wants to use the head light assembly off a 2008 Honda Civic, as a landing light. The civic's headlight bits weigh 2 lbs and put out sufficient light intensity for use as a landing light. Tests in their use in cars have shown they are safe, efficient and durable in a transportation environment. But.... since using them in a conventional aeroplane requires them to be certified anew for aviation use, the cost is too prohibitive for the small company, who is trying to tap into a lower-cost segment of the general aviation market with their small plane. So, they use the old standard, originally certified in 1966, headlight assembly from ( insert obscure small airplane manufacturer long-dissolved and only operated by lawyers and investment bankers making piles of money off the rights to the certification and propietary use sales on long-obsolete, but CERTIFIED, equipment ).

ACME YE OLDE HEADLIGHT RIGHTS CO. sells a spiffy 14 pound assembly, made of fine handcrafted balsa wood and bakolite, encasing a 40 candlepower D-Cell battery-operated headlight.

Your cost to certify the Honda bits: 32,000CAD

ACME SUPER DUPER DISCOUNT rate for "certified" ( and completely obsolete from an engineering standpoint ) parts: 5,000CAD


In any case. One point someone made the other day was; if some of the older lighter aircraft, that everyone considers stalwart old-school, original airplanes were made today, they'd be licensed as ultralights. They fit in the weight category and would be much, much cheaper to sell. Which is kind of the point of the smaller aircraft, to put them within reach of the average pilot. Trust me, theres enough makes and models out there for the higher end crowd if you have a few million kicking around.

Sorry if I get to ranting a little. I see it in peoples eyes when I tell them I'm flying ultralights. They might not say it to my face, but I see it now and then and a few people have made a comment or two... I obviously don't feel the same way, or I wouldn't strap myself into one!

In any case, its been a blast!

The first couple weeks were spent doing groundschool.

Its truly amazing how little you actually know about something until you try to teach it to someone else. Subjects I thought of as having "down-cold" were suddenly giving me doubts, old acronyms were missing letters, formula weren't formulating and it was politely pointed out that the faux-lesson I just presented to my instructor-playing-student contained completely incorrect information. Ugh. Nothing like convincingly teaching someone completely wrong information!

I've built most of my lesson plans for the ultralight-permit syllabus, and still need to do some fine tuning, but we've since moved on to the flying part of the course. I have a few more PGI's ( Preparatory Ground Instruction - lesson plans ) to work up and rehearse / get critiqued on, but it's nice to get out of the books and back into and aeroplane.

Our school has three main aircraft that we train with. One I flew a few months ago on a fam flight / joy ride .

Alas, after my first training flight in this one, there was a hangar rash incident and it is down for repairs.

Hangar Rash is a nice little term used when an aircraft is damaged on the ground, usually during operations putting it into or out of a hangar. Where I work, we have a company policy of a minimum of three people on a tow into or out of a hangar. One person driving the pushing / pulling equipment and two more " wing-walkers " who take up position off the wings and/or tail of the aircraft to watch out for obstructions, walls, other aircraft that the driver may not be able to see as clearly from their position.

Given that a small dent on a wing or tail of a corporate jet can instantly cause tens of thousands of dollars worth of repairs ( I am NOT exaggerating ), this policy is well worth the manpower costs it exacts.

So, I have just finished my checkout on one of the other aircraft, a Rans S-6 Coyote.



( Not the actual plane )

Checkout consisted of a few flights with the instructor and going through some of the basic maneuvers that I would be teaching in it. Takeoff, landing, steep turns, slow flight, power on and off stalls, forced landings, precautionary landings and familiarization with its equipment, performance and checklists.

Now I will be doing a few solo flights to get a little smoother and proficient with the aircraft. My first flight in it without the instructor was an eye opener. Even more than a Cessna, the difference in performance with a single occupant is pretty dramatic.

The Coyote has a Vfe ( Maximum Flap Extension ) speed of about 65 mph. We use flaps on every takeoff as we operate off a relatively short grass strip, every takeoff is a soft field AND a short field takeoff. The aircraft will takeoff in less than 300 feet, so the 1200 foot runway is only " relatively " short. However, it has fantastic climb performance, particularly with a solo occupant, so you have to pitch up pretty aggressively on takeoff to keep the speed under 65mph to avoid over stressing the wings and flaps.

Something else that has been a bit of an eye opener is the rudder.

As it turns out, you actually need to use it in these aircraft.

I'm only half-joking, but its something I definitely need to work on.

On your basic Cessna 152 or 172, the rudder is used to control useful yaw and to counter any "adverse" yaw.

The only problem is, the engineers when designing these docile training aircraft, pretty much took care of all the adverse yaw. Sure, there is some adverse yaw effects that are unavoidable, but they are very slight in relation to some aircraft.

A good example of adverse yaw is Aileron Drag. When the ailerons are used, they deflect upwards on one wing and downwards on the other. This creates more lift on one wings and "defeats" lift on the other. The net effect is that the aircraft banks. Very useful when you want to turn. The problem is that whenever you create lift, you also create drag. So the wing that rises ( has more lift than the other ) has more drag acting on it than the other wing. This drag tends to pull the aircrafts nose in the opposite direction of the one in which you are trying to turn.

On a Cessna, the engineers came up with a couple different solutions to minimize this effect. The ailerons are " differential friese ", they project into the airflow more on the down-going wing in order to create some equalizing drag on the other side . The aileron on the lift-producing ( rising ) wing also project a little of the forward edge of themselves above the wing creating some more equalizing drag.

Net effect, on a Cessna, you roll the airplane with the ailerons and the aircraft banks into a turn and will start to turn in the direction you want it to. You might ( should ) add a little rudder to counter any remaining adverse yaw and make sure its a nice coordinated turn. If you are a new pilot, or just have " lazy feet " you might not put much, or any, rudder in and you will still turn.

I always told myself during my initial training that I would not have " lazy feet ". I listened to the old timers complain about the young whipper snappers and their lack of rudder savvy and mentally affirmed, " I wont be that guy. ".

Sure, I watched the ball in the turn coordinator, made sure it stayed in the middle as best as I knew how. I read Stick and Rudder by Mr. Wolfgang Langeswieche and made sure that whenever I moved the ailerons, I also moved the rudder.

Problem was, the engineers at Cessna cheated me out of a good education. The rudder amounts I put in were mostly a slight pressure on the pedals. Rarely did it need more than a slight nudge to keep the ball centred.

Now, flash forward to my time in the Coyote..... This plane has very simple systems. The compromises that keep it under 1200 Lbs means the rudder has to be used in its original design purpose.

I kid you not, if you do not use rudder, there are times when you bank the airplane and it will do nothing in effect of moving the nose in the direction you want it to. In fact, it is possible to bank the airplane in one direction and with your feet on the floor ( not using any rudder ) turn the airplane in the opposite direction you want it to go.

I finally get what they mean when they say " kick " rudder. The amount of rudder required, and the duration that it is applied is very much like a kick. Firm pressure, relatively quickly, while the ailerons are applied to start the bank, and releasing / applying opposite rudder as the aileron application is taken out.

It took me a few tries to get used to the grass runway and get over my nervousness as to its length ( or lack thereof ), but I actually feel a lot more comfortable on grass now then on a paved runway.

Yesterday I went out working on my checkout on one of the other aircraft, and we did some practice forced approaches in the circuit. This is where the instructor will randomly pull the throttle to idle and state " you have an engine failure ". The goal of the exercise is to make sure you can glide to a landing, on the runway, without power, from any point in the traffic pattern.

When I used to do these during my initial training, it was all about making the runway. A forced approach off-airport exercise was about running through the procedures in trying to get the engine re-started, communicating to ATC and your passengers about what you were doing and where, as well as making a specific chosen safe landing spot.

This time, the instructor asked that I go through the whole procedure while in the circuit as well, instead of just accepting the failed engine and concentrating solely on landing on the runway.

I guess this makes sense. Were it for real, I'm pretty darned sure I'd try to get the engine going before I accepted a gliding approach that "theoretically" should result in a normal runway landing. It did throw me for a little curve initially though, and I'm going to use that as the convenient excuse for a couple of fairly poor approaches. All of which were followed by some pretty darn good landings if I do say so myself.

I laughed about it with the instructor afterwards, I was as surprised as he was that a series of consistently poorly flown approaches, led to consistently decent landings.

I'm pushing to get the majority of the course completed by the end of May. In a perfect world, the whole thing. I need another 10 hours or so of flight in Ultralight category aircraft, as well as a pass on the written and flight tests.

One thing I am really enjoying though, is the atmosphere out at the field.

Most of the students are there because they want to get a license to fly for fun. Very few people will ( intentionally ) start the path to a commercial license with an ultralight permit. So, the main goal for everyone, along with learning of course, is to have fun.

Almost everyone I've met so far has that spark of passion for things aviation, a very good dose of curiosity, but mixed nicely with a its-sunny-lets-go-flying!!!! attitude that is very often absent around the flight schools that are training studious young types dead-set serious on an airline career.

Oh, this happened recently as well.




A Cathay Pacific A340 was the victim of a bomb-scare. A caller in Richmond, BC, according to the news, called in a bomb threat against this arriving aircraft. F-18 fighter jets intercepted it and escorted it down to landing in Vancouver.

The plane parked out on an unused runway and all the passengers offloaded onto busses. I presume to be interviewed.... Their bags were then offloaded and searched as well.

Moio sudno na vozdušnoy poduške polno ugrey

This was one of my favorite visitors during the Olympics. Its a Tupolev 154 ( TU-154 ). Very similar to the Boeing 727, a loud, old-technology jet liner, with three engines arranged at the rear of the fuselage.



I thought at one time that these type of aeroplanes qualified as " Centre Line Thrust " types, but apparently not.



In a normal ( engines on the wing ) configuration, if one engine loses ( or two on the same side if you happen to be flying an extremely cool airplane ) power, a situation will exist where asymmetrical thrust will cause the aircraft to Yaw towards the dead engine. Not having a multi-engine rating, I'm not "formally" trained on this , but I have read a little bit. And I stayed in a Holiday Inn Express last night.

In some prop aircraft, there is the added hazard of one of the engines being the " critical " engine. It is critical, as the rotation of the prop and it's gyroscopic properties, will also cause additional yaw to the aircraft. If both the props are spinning in one direction, one of them will add to the total yaw moment being experienced by the aircraft and the other will subtract in an engine failure scenario. If you have yaw from only one engine providing asymmetric thrust and that yaw is compounded by the yaw created by the prop gyroscopically, you might have enough adverse yaw in the same direction to cause you to be unable to counteract it with the rudder.




This is solved in some aircraft by having the props rotate in different directions, or counter-rotating, if you will. This cancels out the critical engine effect regardless of which engine fails on you.



I imagine the reason all light twins are not counter-rotating is the costs associated with interchangeability of the engines, their mounts and all manner of ancillary equipment that hangs off of them. If they both spin the same way, you can mix and match, all the bits are the same on either side. In a counter rotating set-up, I think everything from the engine mounts to the props would have to be side-specific.



In any case, I guess the 727 and TU154 generate enough asymmetric power, even with their engines being relatively close to one another laterally, that they are not considered centre-line thrust. In fact, when I look up the definition of Centreline thrust, it specifies the "absence" of asymmetric thrust, not the amount of, as defining CL thrust.

Engines on an aircraft are numbered, starting from the captains left. In a twin, the #1 is on the left wing and the #2 is on the right.



In a 3 engine aircraft, #1 on the left side of the rear fuselage #2 in the centre and #3 on the right side of the rear fuselage.

There is an old story that the 727 was nicknamed a " Three-Holer ", not due to the fact that it had three engines, or air intake "Holes" but because it had three Lavatories.



Both the 727 and the TU-154 are loud. Very Loud.

I only saw the TU-154 land, so I can't comment from first hand knowledge on that one, but I fuel and see the 727 depart on a daily basis. The engines are loud enough on takeoff that you can feel it in your chest.

They also send out a giant plume of blackish smoke behind them as they power up for takeoff. I've seen pictures of old DC8s and 707s with the older generation engines taking off, and those kick up an incredible amount of black smoke. If those were around today, the environmentalist crowd would have a stroke.

I seem to recall that some of the older jet engines from that era were also water or methanol-injected. I also remember reading somewhere that the water/methanol was injected into the intake air to cool it evaporatively, causing it to be denser during compression. The side effect was partially burned fuel being shot out the back along with the water, causing a lot of black smoke. I could be wrong and I'm too lazy to google it. meh.

One thing that struck me about the 727 and the TU154 was the fact that the TU154 has a LOT of anhedral and the 727 has a modest amount of dihedral in the wing design.

Anhedral and Dihedral refer to the shape of the wings, wether they slope upwards or " droop " downwards in relation to the fuselage.

If you look at a Cessna 172, a high-wing aircraft, you can imagine that the fuselage of the plane acts like a keel when it is in flight. The weight hanging off the bottom of the wing, serves to stabilize it, just like a keel does in a boat.

So an aircraft with a low-wing, has the destabilizing effect of a lot of weight ( the fuselage ) sitting on top of the wing.

Thus, it is common for a low-wing aircraft to have the wings angle upwards. This moves the weight lower in relation to the wings and stabilizes things again.

In other aircraft, other bits of the plane, the wings, engines, stabilizers, etc, cause so much stability, that they need to " destabilize " things a little to make it possible or easier, to do useful things like being able to turn or climb. This is where Anhedral comes in, raising the fuselage up in relation to the wings.

Stability sounds like a good thing, but you can be too stable as well as too unstable. Some aircraft need to lean on the stable side of the equation, like airliners, as they are designed for heavy loads with smooth, easy flight characteristics. Other planes, like fighter jets, would prefer to be unstable, making maneuvering more dramatic and sudden.

The 727 and the TU154 have similar designs to my uneducated eye. Same engine-thrust setup, with the three-holer design. Similar size wings, fuselage and tail.

So why is the TU154 so obviously " destabilized " with the wing anhedral and the B727 " stabilized " with wing dihedral?

I'm sure there is a valid reason. Engineers, Russian or not, rarely tend to do things without a reason. Even if that reason is simply " because it looks cool ".

One other cool thing I noticed, and this might be related to the stability issue, is where the landing gear go.

On a 727, the fold inward, towards, and partially into, the fuselage. When they are down, they are just outboard of the fuse, under the junction of the wing and the fuselage.

On the TU-154, they fold backwards, into pods under the wing.



The landing gear are fairly heavy bits of airplane, by necessity of their function. Being in between 200,000 plus pounds of metal and the ground in a controlled collision, several times a day for the thirty years kind of dictates it. I wonder if having all this weight out in the drooped wings counteracts things?



I'm sorry, but the landing lights on the IL96 are just wrong.

Maybe its me, but it looks severely buck-toothed to me.


I tried to catch a picture of this while I was driving..

The Russians Are Coming.

Well, actually, they've already left. But they were here.

One of the cool things that happened during the Olympics was the arrival of quite a few Russian built aircraft. We very rarely see some of these birds in North America, let alone Vancouver.



This is the Ilyushin 96, operated by the Russian State Transport company and came with some Russian dignitaries for the games. Rumours had it that Putin was on board, but I'm not sure about that. On further investigation, it looks like it was Medvedev instead.




They did have an advance team come in with an Ilyushin 76 ( a large russian freighter aircraft ) that had motorcade and security gear, but it was in and out so quickly I didn't have a chance to get over and take any pictures. I did get to see it land and takeoff though, that was a treat. The IL76 is actually a lot bigger than I though, I always assumed it to be the much smaller cousin to the AN124, but looking at it now, it is quite comparable.



This one I was very dissapointed to not have been able to see close up, or in flight. Its an Ilyushin 62. Very cool looking aircraft, with 4 engines mounted on the rear, similar to an MD80, but with doubled-up engines.

Like the IL96, once its passengers were offloaded, it took up a parking spot out on Runway 12/30. They parked a couple heads-of-state aircraft out there during the games.

I was actually a little surpised, as they shut that runway down and set up a little military air-base out on the Runway 30 end. This is where they staged the portable hangars for the CF-188 Hornets ( F18's ). My thinking was that if you have the runway all to yourself, with a base on one end where your fighters can be staged, ready to go, why don't you use the rest of the runway to just takeoff on? No delays, waiting for other aircraft to land or takeoff? I suppose in an actual emergency the fighters would get priority, but still, they have to taxi all the way out to the closest departure end. They were sitting on a runway, why not keep it clear and just use that? Runway 12/30 is usually the crosswind runway around here, given our prevailing winds are almost always east-west due to the location of the airport at the end of a valley, alongside the water. Most people around here even call it " the crosswind runway " instead of 12/30 as it is rarely used except in very strong north/south winds, which is very infrequent.

I doubt the CF-188 has any serious concern with anything but the strongest of tailwinds when taking off. I suppose its safer to avoid, but given the rest of the risk management that they accept and deal with as part of their job, I doubt a little tailwind bothers them all that much.




The hangars themselves are pretty neat.

They look to be brand-new, and took them a couple days to set up out on the runway. They are entirely portable, have their own electrical system inside, and open up on both the front and back sides. I imagine this would be handy for a temporary fighter base, as you could open both ends up and start up the jet right inside the hangar and pull out and take off without the delay of being towed out. I suppose you could pull in the same way as well. I never did see them do that though, it was always in and out with the tug and tow bar.




They also set up a pretty elaborate perimiter fence of concertina wire, and had armed gaurds out there as well.

Helio Courier

Saw an open hangar the other day and this thing sitting inside.


I remember seeing these things in the movie " Air America ", but I seem to remember them as being tail draggers.

The pilot was getting ready to take it up flying so I had the chance to chat with him for a few minutes.

This guy has The. Coolest. Job. Ever.

Basically, he works for a major US broadcasting company, and they pay him to fly this aircraft around filming sports events. He does a lot of US Football and of course, they sent him up here to cover the Winter Olympics.

There is a camera operator who sits in the back, working the expensive camera mounted under the left wing.

It was kind of incongruous, seeing all the fancy A-Star helicopters, with ball-turret camera mounts hanging off the front and stuffed with so much high-tech gear that some of the seats had to be removed...and then this guy....

Don't get me wrong, I love it. I think this is a brilliant solution to the problem and most likely extremely cost effective compared to the heli-cam operators.

He also burns AvGas, as this is a piston engine aircraft. From what I saw, he was one of maybe a very small handful of people at YVR burning AvGas during the Olympics. The fuel supplier that provided him with fuel could have easily just given him the keys to the their AvGas truck, the only time I saw it move was to come out and fuel this bird.

Oh, and he can get 10 hours endurance!!! Which he needs on occasion as he has to reposition this aircraft all over the US. At approx 100 Kts, its going to take a while to get across the country!



While they were fueling, I also noticed that he would leave one of the four tanks empty, on the side that had the camera mounted under the wing. I assumed this was to balance out the weight of the camera apparatus.

The coolest thing though that caught my eye was the fact that he has retractable leading-edge slats.

Leading edge slats are a high-lift device, used for changing the shape of the wing to make it more efficient at low speeds.



Most large airliners have them. On take-off or landing, they will be extended, along with the trailing-edge flaps, to change the shape of the wing. On takeoff and after accelerating, the flaps and slats are retracted to make the wing more efficient at higher speeds.

The Helio however, has no use for massive hydraulic systems to operate the slats, so they came up with an ingenious solution.

The slats are basically mounted on sliding rails. When the aircraft is standing still, gravity causes them to fall " out " and be extended. Once the aircraft is moving, and operating in the low-speed area ( where the slats are required ), gravity and the relatively low force of the air hitting them keeps them extended.

If the aircraft accelerates and is no longer operating at " low " speeds, then the slats are no longer required and are in fact hindering further acceleration. The higher air-flow hitting the wing at higher airspeeds however, pushes them up against the leading edge of the wing and holds them up in the retracted position!

I pushed them with my hand and they move very easily, say dishwasher-drawer type of force required.

Sorry, I think that is so awesome. I love a simple engineering solution.

According to the pilot, the retraction / extension speed for the slats is actually the same as the stalling speed for the aircraft.

So yeah, flying a cool aircraft, down low, by hand, over sporting events, all over the US and Canada.

It was just him and the camera operator as well, no support staff or management types hanging around.

Awesome.

I didn't ask, but I imagine he gets a serious amount of flying hours as well.