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Understand how to use VOR and ADF Nav aids to orient yourself anytime

VOR cessna 172 flytime

Nav aids like the VOR and ADF are there for you to use anytime you should need them. Having a solid understanding of these navigational (nav) aids is important and goes beyond training offered to us as private pilots, but is available for us to learn to become proficient aviators, particularly if we are regularly flying long distances, with passengers, at night, or any combination of those.

Basic nav instruments can be valuable

In a typical aircraft used for flight training, usually a Cessna 172, we’ll often have a VOR, ADF and GPS.  When we’re training for our private license, we typically aren’t introduced to these tools, but we do learn about them briefly in ground school. In commercial training, we learn about all of these in more detail and must become proficient at them, as we’re expected to demonstrate their use on a flight test. But it should go beyond that. Even if you’re not training for a commercial license, you should be familiar with these nav aids and how to use them. In case the weather should deteriorate, particularly at night, you’ll be much safer.

These basic instruments can help you create a situational ‘mental map’ of your location, a mental map that will become invaluable should you get lost or encounter adverse weather and are forced to divert. 

Preparing for a worst case scenario

Having the simple, yet valuable information provided by these basic instruments becomes extremely important in case the worst should happen. What if you take off with a shaky forecast, and fly into some weather? We’ve all been told that if we head into clouds or low visibility we should note our heading and begin a 180 degree turn into the reciprocal heading.  But how about if we just loose visibility, flying into an area of low cloud or haze? We need somewhere to go, so how do we find it? We have to find a suitable place to divert to, and knowing where your ADF and VOR stations are on the map can help us get there. 

A flight instructor gave me instructions for a simulator session to use as training in these instruments. The exercise has many practical applications for flying in both day and night, as it helps orient you in reference to a station and an airport, to help get you land when you need to terminate your flight due to deteriorating weather. It’s better to try to land at an airport than planning a landing in a field

The VOR

The VOR transmits 360 single radials from a specific station. When you select a specific radial on your VOR instrument, you’ll be able to see which side of the VOR station you are depending if you see a “TO” or “FROM” flag.  For example, say you are lost somewhere in the vicinity of Springbank airport in Alberta, and you want to return to there and land. You’re not sure which way you should head to get back to your airport. Knowing the frequency for the Springbank VOR, you tune it and immediately you’ll be able to get information of which side of the station you are on and how you should track to get back there. 

Where am I?

Here is an example.

Once you tune your VOR to a station, select radial 150.

If it says TO, that means you’re on the other side of that radial. If it says FROM, you are on that side of the radial. 

The ADF

Your automatic direction finder, or ADF is a basic instrument that transmits location information on the AM band. To use, tune it to a non-directional beacon (or NDB). The arrow on the ADF will always point to the station. 

ADF flytime alicja gados
The ADF on a Cessna 172. The ADF always points to the station.

These stations will eventually be shut down in Canada, and Transport Canada has been planning to decommission the stations for years. This planned decommissioning is not happening quickly. They still remain, and will likely be around for years to come, and while they do, are a basic, though valuable navigational tool that you can use to orient yourself. 

Where am I?

To use, once you tune the ADF to the specific NDB frequency, listen for the morse code. That is how you know you have the right NDB. Now, note where the arrow points. 

The arrow always points to the station. To head directly to the station, align the nose of the airplane at the top of the instrument (0 degrees). To depart with the station directly behind you, align the arrow to point directly behind the airplane. 

A real life example

You depart Calgary/Springbank on a VFR flight with paying passengers heading north to Rocky Mountain House. The GFA shows a cold front moving through the area from the northwest with deteriorating ceilings and visibility over the next six hours.

On your way out to climb runway heading of 350 to 5500′, you intercept and track outbound of the Turner Valley NDB (299) and continue the climb to 6500′. 

From Calgary International, you can track the V306 airway (116.7) to track outbound (away from) Calgary towards your destination. On your way along the track, you can tune to the Sundre NDB and to track your progress also and report when you’re abeam the station (when you are passing the station on your left hand side). 

So, you know where you are and continue en route.

The ceiling drops. Now you have to descend to stay VFR. You descend to 4500′, taking note that there are towers in the area that are close to that altitude. Tune the Red Deer NDB (320), and use it to keep track of when you pass the James River, not abandoning the flight quite yet.

The weather gets worse  – it now becomes unsafe to continue, and no longer VFR.  Now you abandon your original course and aim for the closest airport – that is Red Deer. You’ve already got the NDB tuned to Red Deer, so you just turn and track direct to there, climbing back up to 5500′.

Enroute to Red Deer, you experience a vacuum failure. This means you’ve lost your heading indicator and attitude indicator, and you’re now flying partial panel, using your turn and bank coordinator as the best indicator of your attitude, cross referencing the airspeed and VSI to confirm. 

You’ll cross the Red Deer NDB at your altitude of 5500′ and begin a descending, rate one, right turn to get to runway heading of 345 (the runway you’re aiming for will be runway 35). This is a timed turn, so you’ll have to note your heading going into the turn and make sure your turn is consistently rate one throughout. Or else you may over or undershoot your runway, and you don’t want to spend any more time flying around in precarious weather with limited instruments. 

Once you land safely, there is great reason to celebrate. You have just used your skill to get your passengers, yourself, and your airplane down on the ground safely.

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Simplify Flying: it’s attitude plus power equals performance

I’ve had the pleasure of flying with a retired airline pilot who really made me think about flying in an entirely different way. His view demystifies flying into it’s basic, component parts to understand a complex task and achieve a certain goal. Attitude plus power equals performance.

He maintains that after over 20 years of airline flying, he found there are two very important concepts in flying airplanes. Once these concepts are understood, will help you understand aviation and flying at it’s core. The most important concepts in aviation are ones we have all heard before, and it’s impossible not to overstate their importance. They are:

  1. Aviate, Navigate Communicate; and
  2. Attitude plus Power equals Performance.

Think about what flight training is trying to achieve. Yes, you are trying to pass your flight test, at a minimum, but you can certainly do better than that. You can be a great pilot. Why practice stalls and spins? To avoid entry, to recognize if one should occour, and how to recover. 

Let’s relate it to a few examples. 

Once our wheels are off the ground, we are in a ‘risky environment’ where it’s important to keep vigilant.  When we are airborne, our one and only task is no minimize the risk, using all of our knowledge and resources. So break it down into what you have to achieve once you’re wheels up.

Remember clearing turns? We do them so we can be safe and check for conflicting traffic, and not just because they are a flight test item. Risk mitigation is also why we have standardized procedures for uncontrolled aerodromes.

On takeoff, after rotation, the airplane is just passing through a very slow speed at a low altitude. On the 172 we rotate at 55 knots, so after we rotate it’s close enough to stall speed to warrant extreme attention, particularly given our proximity to the ground. When you rotate, will you pull the nose up excessively? No, of course not, you can easily enter a stall that way, a departure stall, and you won’t have the leisure of altitude to recover.

So when we depart, we use the combination of attitude and power to produce the desired performance that we want: a climb. When we recover from a stall is it necessary to push the nose down excessively? Not really, and if you think about what stall practice is meant to achieve, we really should avoid pushing the nose down too much.  If it works on a take-off, it should work on stall recovery. If we push the nose down too much, we’ll loose altitude, and if we stall close to the ground that can be dangerous.

The purpose of stall practice

Stalls are a great case in point. Stall recovery has no practical application in everyday flight like short field, soft field landings, navigation, circuits and so on. We only learn them so we can avoid them, learn to recognize when we are in one, and know how to get out of them. Licensed pilots who don’t fly professionally will find stall recovery skills atrophy after awhile, because unless flight training, stalls are something we want to avoid. 

What produces a stall? A high nose attitude where the angle of attack of our airplane can no longer sustain flight. Your attitude is nose high, the airplane will automatically drop the nose because it wants to fly.  A nose down attitude will break the stall, and the application of power will allow you to return to a normal flight attitude. Attitude plus power equals performance. Aviate: break the stall, return to normal flight, navigate: establish where you are; communicate: this includes communicate with your airplane. Why did it stall?  

How about the forced approach?

The forced approach is a good example. With an engine failure, we’ve got to: (1) aviate: establish the best glide speed, establish a controlled approach and landing; (2) navigate by deciding which is the best field to land our airplane at; and (3) communicate, make a mayday call on 121.5 and give our passengers, if any, a full off-airport emergency safety landing briefing.  For the forced approach, we use best glide speed, a combination of attitude and power (in this case, lack of power), that produces a level of performance: the descending glide.

cessna 172 lake view
cessna 172 lake view

A heap of metal

Remember the airplane is just a “thing.”

The airplane is not alive. Many things on the flight test and flying itself can cause confusion, and above all, anxiety, which can take the fun out of flying. When learning to calm anxieties, it’s helpful to think about the airplane having no feelings or malicious intent. It’s just a heap of metal that you control and has no goal or agenda of it’s own. It’s simply a tool, a tool that you, the pilot, control.  You are flying the airplane and the airplane is not flying you.

A blend of two important factors, attitude and power, will produce the environment that we can control. Like a car, the airplane is a predictable thing. When given certain parameters it will always do the same thing. Nose up? Airspeed will decrease. Nose down? Airspeed will increase. No power? It will enter a descent. Full power? It will climb. Winds will push the airplane in known directions, crosswinds will have a known effect on approach paths, and so on. 

It’s all well within our control.

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Women in Aviation Worldwide Week 2014

Did you know this week, March 3 – 9 is Women of Aviation Worldwide week?

Every year, the Women in Aviation international hosts a week promoting aviation for women.

During this week, over 300,000 women are expected to participate in many of the aviation events encouraging them to consider aviation as a career, in order to improve the number of women in the industry. This global outreach worldwide week is organized by non-profit company the institute for Women of Aviation Worldwide (iWOAW), which aspires to improve gender balance in a very male-dominated air and aerospace technical industry.

So how unbalanced is it for women anyway?

While women represent half of the world’s population, in aviation the numbers are still pretty dire in terms of gender representation.  For example: less than 2% of aircraft maintenance engineers are women, less than 5% of airline pilots are women, and less than 10% of aerospace engineers are women.

Raymonde de Laroche, first licensed female pilot.
Raymonde de Laroche, first licensed female pilot.

The annual week long event this March is an international week of awareness which celebrates women in aviation.  It’s always held at the same week of the year, around March 8 because on March 8, 1910, a pilots license was issued to a female for the first time – to Raymonde de Laroche.

Females around the world are invited to visit their local flight school to learn more about flying and aviation.   Many flight schools are hosting free “first flights” for women.  Check your local flight school if they have any promotions.

We had a look at what events were registered for our area. Sadly, there are none in Alberta where we are located but there are events in B.C., Manitoba, New Brunswick, Ontario and Quebec. Lots of great events in these provinces – see if there is one near you.   In the U.S., there are activities in 18 states. See what’s happening in your state.

Women of Aviation Worldwide Week - This cool image is from iWOAW.org
Women of Aviation Worldwide Week – This cool image is from iWOAW.org

 Fly it Forward

Aviators around the world are encouraged to “fly it forward” by introducing a woman or girl to the world of aviation.  This could be taking them up for their first flight, for example, so that they can experience flight and know that the field is open to pursue it as a career.

The organization also presents awards to the organization, flight school, airport, pilot, instructor or other supporter who help in this endeavor. The weekly awards include:

Most female friendly airport: introduces most non pilot females to aviation during the week;

Most female friendly flight training centre: introduces the most non-pilot females to aviation during the week;

Most dedicated female pilot: woman pilot who introduces the most female non-pilots to aviation during the week; and

Most supportive male pilot: male pilot, non-instructor, who introduces the most female non-pilots to aviation during the week.

Last year, Canadian Waterloo-Wellingon Flight Centre was recognized as the most female pilot friendly training centre worldwide. This is thanks to their hard work promoting this important event.  This flight school is hosting many events during the week – including a fly in on March 8.  Check out their many exciting events.

There are some great challenges that are being held – one is an art contest, and there is also a first to solo challenge. The latter requires prompt action after the week and will go to the female who solos first after having discovered aviation during this week. This includes a prize of $1500! Pretty cool.

Check out the website for women of aviation worldwide week and for the institute for women of aviation worldwide.

Thank you so much to Women of Aviation Worldwide for organizing this amazing event year after year, and to all the businesses for participating and promoting aviation for women!

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How to master the power-on stall

The departure stall

Throughout my training, I have done a lot of stalls, and eventually got the point where I was quite comfortable with them. Power off, power on, including the more advanced high power stalls.  I was rather surprised when doing my full review of everything before my flight test, when my instructor asked me to demonstrate high power stalls I became rather nervous and was unable to perform one without throwing in the aileron on recovery.

I had let my training lapse and it had been quite awhile since I’ve done these more advanced stalls.  A few power-off stalls allowed me to feel comfortable with them again but I continued to struggle with stalls using higher power settings, which cause sometimes a very pronounced wing drop due to asymmetric thrust, slipstream and other factors.

Why do we learn power-on stalls?

The power-on stall is basically a departure stall. We practice this stall to simulate a stall on departure, when we have a nose high attitude and high power settings (full power for take off).  How could we stall on departure? If we fly into IMC on climb-out, hence loose the horizon and become disoriented, possibly succumb to an illusion that we are level and not nose-high enough (not reference or trust our instruments which tell us that we are in fact in a climb) and we pull back too much.

The airspeed bleeds off, and without knowing it we are nose high. As the aircraft reaches stall speed one of the wing drops off and when uncorrected, can enter a spin. At low altitudes, we have  no time to recover. Before long we can be nose down in a spin with no altitude to spare.

Cessna 172 about to stall. Image from airfactsjournal.com
Cessna 172 about to stall. Image from airfactsjournal.com

Stall/spin accidents

There are a number of these stall-spin accidents every year, and most of them occour at low altitudes.  According to an AOPA study, from 1993 to 2001 stall-spin accidents accounted for 10% of all accidents and 13% of all fatal accidents for fixed wing aircraft weighing less than 12,500 pounds.   An earlier study by the FAA Small Aircraft Directorate analyzed a sample of 1700 stall-spin accidents as far back as 1973 and found that 93% of them began at or below pattern altitude, which was 800 feet back in the 1970’s.

So the reason we learn a high power stall is to avoid a dreaded departure stall and to recover quickly, with minimal loss of altitude, and in coordinated flight (avoid a wing drop).

More rudder coordination is required

The reason why a power-on stall can be more challenging and more scary, is because it will require more use of rudder than a power-off stall.  We must remember not to use aileron, ONLY rudder, because not is only aileron ineffective in a stall – the wing is stalled – it can also exacerbate or aggravate the  wing drop in a stall, making it even more banked.

Anticipate a wing drop

Generally with a power-on stall, we will get a wing drop. Because of asymmetric thrust and slipstream, we generally see the left wing drop. Recall the left turning tendency of the aircraft at high power settings, for example while on the takeoff roll. On the takeoff roll with full power we always apply plenty of right rudder to keep the aircraft on centreline.

However we will not always get a left wing drop, it can, in fact be the right wing that drops, requiring the use of left rudder instead of right to correct.   There are many reasons for this: one wing could have more fuel than the other and be heavier, it can also vary with the prevailing winds. So it is important not to anticipate one wing dropping but to watch which one does and react appropriately.

So one wing drops, so there is a tendency for us to use aileron to correct.  This is very natural. In a stall, we have to fight the urge to use aileron and instead, “step on the rising wing.” (thanks to my instructor Steve for the tip – it works!)  This means to use rudder instead of aileron, in the same direction if the rising wing:

Left wing drops (right wing rises): instinct will tell you to use right aileron – use right rudder instead

Right wing drops (left wing rises): instinct will tell you to use left aileron – use left rudder instead.

Check out this video as a power on stall develops into a spin. Looks like the student puts it into a spin (on purpose, note how he uses aileron) and the person in the right seat, likely the instructor, recovers.

How can I become more comfortable with these types of stalls?

In a word, practice will make them easier, as you do them over and over again and you are able to control them, you will regain confidence. Another great tip is to visualize the manoeuvre and talk yourself through it, when you are not flying. I used visualization and imagined one of the wings dropping, and what I would do. Eventually lost my fear as I learned I could control the airplane with rudder.  It is important to use rudder opposite to the turn to correct the wing dip as fast as possible, and to leave the aileron in neutral position.

Like anything with flying, repetition will help you learn and feel more comfortable over time. Practice means everything!

 

 

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Flying out of Springbank Airport

Approaching CYBW, right downwind 25 for final.

If you live in Calgary or the surrounding area and are thinking of getting your license, you have a few choices when it comes to flight schools.  The closest airfield to Calgary where you can get your license is Calgary – Springbank (CYBW), about 30 minutes from downtown Calgary.  There are currently four flight schools at CYBW.

Control tower at Springbank Airport.
Control tower at Springbank Airport.

The four schools are (1) Calgary Flying Club,  (2) Springbank Air Training College (SATC), (3) Fly Right, and now (4) Springbank Aero.   The biggest schools are my flight school: SATC, and Calgary Flying Club; they have the largest fleet of aircraft and the most instructors on staff.   Fly Right and Springbank Aero are smaller.

Springbank Aero re-opened May 2013 at Springbank Airport.  They are back in operation after briefly loosing their CFI (Chief Flight Instructor).  They have hired a new CFI and are ready to accept students as of last May.  This flight school has been in operation for over 15 years before the brief closure. They are located off of taxiway Charlie – so like the Calgary Flying Club, they are a shorter taxi to the runway.  They have 3 Cessna 172’s for single engine training and their twin engine is the Piper Twin Comanche which has been recently refurbished.

The Calgary Flight Training Centre is also an option for those who live in the area, but they fly out of the Old-Didsbury Airport, which is further from Calgary (almost an hour north of downtown).  The advantages are a smaller airport and far, far less busy airspace.

Big school or small school?

The advantage of going with a larger school are generally there are more resources available in terms of aircraft and instruction.   Also, ongoing private and commercial ground schools are generally found at the larger schools. Smaller schools sometimes don’t run formal classroom teaching unless they have enough students – but the ground schools may be administered online.  The benefits of a smaller school are a more personal experience and better availability of aircraft.  A smaller school will have less students and won’t be as busy – so better odds that your instructor will have more time for you and your chances of booking an aircraft short notice are likely better.

The CFS entry for CYBW. Procedures are very overwhelming when you first start flying here.
The CFS entry for CYBW. Procedures are very overwhelming when you first start flying here.

Read some things you should consider when picking a flight school.   Also, some things you should consider if you are deciding whether you want to learn how to fly or a laugh about why learning to fly is a bad idea.

Happy flying!

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Lesson Log

My coveted flight log

Today I read an interesting story on the Flying Magazine website about keeping a journal of “flying lessons” throughout your flying career. They suggest that it is useful to write down the things you’ve learned from every flight.  For the article, click here.

I’ve kept a log book like this since I’ve started flight training. I can’t express how useful it has been. From my first flight where I clung to the control column with an iron fist, being too scared to even look outside, to doing my first takeoff, my first radio calls, my first stalls, to gaining more aptitude, losing my fear, and being able to confidently fly on my own and take photos at the same time – it’s all there in chronological order.  It’s fun looking back at some of my old entries and seeing how far I’ve come.  There are also useful bits of information that I always refer back to. I mark important sections such as when I learned specialty takeoffs and landings – soft field and short field – and other exercises like slow flight, stalls, and circuits, for the first time.  I also highlighted the point when I switched airports and instructors.

I highly recommend a book like this during flight training. What’s more, is this type of tool can be useful throughout your flying career, since a pilot is always learning. A quote I really like is one I’ve read in a book about flying – where a student pilot asks his instructor how long it takes to learn how to fly and he responds “I don’t know, I’ve never finished.” A good motto to take along? I’m not an experienced pilot, but I know enough to know that with flying, you never stop learning.