Day Thirty-Nine – Brandon or Bust!

Okay, today there was no messing around.  The weather was perfect and we flew to Brandon without any difficulty.  Our route took us northwest from St. Andrews to the northern tip of Oak Hammock Marsh.  From there we flew a course west to Brandon where we stopped briefly for a drink (Pepsi – don’t get excited) and were delayed slightly while a C-130 Hercules practiced touch and go’s on our departure runway.  Hey, I wasn’t going to argue with them and it did give me my first real experience with avoiding wake turbulence.

Our flight back took us over Gladstone, Delta Beach, and Stonewall.  It was incredible to look down on the University of Manitoba’s Delta Marsh Field Station where I used to work some 14 years ago.  Who would have thought?  The entire trip took 2 h 49 m (including our stop in Brandon) and was capped off by one of my nicest landings yet.  Hey, you gotta take credit for the good ones when you can!

Another interesting feature of the trip was listening to the call signs of military traffic along the way.  The C-130 Hercules had the call sign Apollo.  A military King Air (surveillance?) had the call sign Mustang.  I’m also told that military flight instructors go by the call sign Shotgun.  Maybe I should open a contest to blog readers to pick a super-cool, macho call sign for me – what do you think?

University of Manitoba Field Station (Delta Marsh)

Day Thirty-Eight – Solo X-Cross Country to Lac du Bonnet

It is truly an amazing feeling, and I’m not kidding here, to take-off in just over 2000 lbs of steel and aluminium, pilot it to a pre-determined location, and bring it back again safely.  My trip to Lac du Bonnet was pretty uneventful.  I did have to deke around a large cloud of smoke from a nearby stubble fire that, unfortunately, lay right on my carefully calculated heading and altitude.  Sigh…

Day Thirty-Seven – Dual X-Cross Country to Lac du Bonnet and Brandon

Today I flew with my instructor to Lac du Bonnet (short cross country trip) and Brandon (long cross country trip).  Well, we actually didn’t make it to Brandon, but more about that later.

The flight to Lac du Bonnet took less than one hour, but took over three hours to plan!  There are scores of calculations and factors that have to be taken into consideration before a pilot leaves the ground.  You have to pick a destination and plot your course on a map.  Your charted headings need to be corrected for wind direction and speed at the specific altitude you expect to fly at.  As wind will also determine your speed (tail wind vs. head wind), times en-route and estimated arrivals must calculated.  The weight and balance of your aircraft must be computed for safety.  Too much weight on either side of the centre of gravity (balance) can have catastrophic results.  Then you have to file a flight plan and ensure you have all the appropriate documentation on board the aircraft, as well as all the frequencies you will need to communicate with other aircraft and ATC.  Once in the air, winds are never exactly as predicted, so you need to be able to recalculate and update all your information based on the actual conditions as encountered.  There sure wasn’t much time for sightseeing, but I’m told that it should take much less time as I gain more experience.

The trip to Brandon was far less successful.  Hazy conditions from stubble fires, combined with late afternoon sun low to the horizon made it extremely difficult to navigate visually.  We would have made it without any problems, but it would have been of little value to me as a training exercise so we decided to call it a day and return to St. Andrews.  On the way back, though, we did stop briefly in Gladstone where I made my first soft field landing on an actual grass strip!  We’ll try again on Thursday.

Day Thirty-Six – Leaving the Nest

Today was my first solo trip to the practice area.  After a week of soloing in the tightly regulated circuit pattern, it was time to strike out on my own to the practice area and, well, practice.  Today I worked on precautionary and forced landing procedures.  It was nice to have the time to focus on my exercises without the constant communication with air traffic control.  This is not to say that I wasn’t paying attention to what was going on outside the cockpit.  See and be seen!  It’s actually a bit un-nerving to know that ATC isn’t paying much attention to what you and others might be doing in the practice area, but the reality is that most VFR flights are flown in uncontrolled airspace.

Tomorrow we begin cross-country exercises with a short trip to Lac du Bonnet and a longer trip to Brandon.

Day Thirty-Five – Sunday Sightseeing

Today my instructor and I took a more detailed tour of the practice area, completing a complete circumnavigation in just over an hour.  The exercise was designed to build map reading skills and familiarize me with the various areas within the practice area.  As I mentioned earlier in the blog, safety is maintained in the practice area, in part, by knowing where everyone is currently operating.  If I called for the advisory and someone indicated that they were working the gravel pits area 4000 ft and below, I would know where that was and be able to select another area to avoid conflicts.  I tried to find as many landmarks as possible, because tomorrow I’ll be coming out here on my own for the first time.

St. Andrews (airport is about located about mid-image)

Gull Lake

Beausejour

Day Thirty-Four – Scheduled Day Off

As one of my friends keeps telling me, "Keep the shiny side up!"