My 50km flight on Wednesday
This year, I started off with a series of goals:
- SAC Bronze Badge, required before I'd be allowed to fly cross-country. All that I didn't complete last year was proving that I attended an airspace briefing, which was easily accomplished when Transport Canada came to visit us.
- Checkout for solo in the club's DG-505. Unfortunately, some needed repair work has put that aircraft out of service until next year. Disappointing, but there's not much I can do about it.
- FAI Silver Badge, required before I can fly cross-country in the higher-performance aircraft.
Completing the silver badge requires officially observed and recorded flights that include: 1.) A flight of 5 or more hours, 2.) A height gain from release of at least 1,000 meters, 3.) A distance flight of over 50km.
On June 14th, I had a 5-hour, 18-minute flight in BVF, a PW-5, leaving just the 50km distance and 1000m height gain requirements, which brings you up to date with this week.
Well, on Tuesday afternoon, the Wednesday weather looked good enough, and my Wednesday schedule at work was clear enough that I started to plan for the 50km distance attempt on Wednesday. After running some errands and procrastinating, I found out around 11pm that I'd have to get to the club pretty early to make sure I had dibs on the plane I wanted! Not being the kind of person to wake up early and brave Toronto rush hour traffic unless it's absolutely necessary, I drove out to the club at midnight, getting there at about 2am thanks to the 401 resurfacing work, which meant I only had to wake up at 9 instead of 6.
So at 9, I dragged my sorry ass out to the hangar in order to call dibs on C-FSXN, an SZD-51-1. After signing out the daily inspection, I had some time to go shower, have breakfast, and get ready. Mike Kinsner had been hoping to take the club's other SZD-51-1 for his own attempt at a 5hr duration flight, so I encouraged him to take off earlier than me so I could let him find the lift for me. George Haeh was also around to fly DW (LS4), and Jerzy Szemplinski was out to fly his ASW29 -- as well as a few other local flyers and students.
I ended up taking off at 1730Z, which was 1:30pm local time, and sure enough, Mike had found me a great thermal to climb in over the Westfield Heritage Village. As I talk about the flight, you can see the trace along the ground on its OLC page. Clicking on "Google Maps 2D" might make it look more familiar to you.
As soon as I found that lift with Mike, I made sure to fly to the South of Highway 6 and descend down to about 1500' above the ground (AGL) to establish a low point of the flight. This low point would be used to calculate whether I achieved the 1000m height gain or not, and I wanted to be South of highway 6 for that so it would also establish a Southernmost point for calculating the 50km distance.
Well, I joined Mike in the thermal again, and climbed up to about 3,800' above mean sea level (MSL) before the lift started to taper off and I found myself wasting time. I thought 3,800' would be more than enough to get me over to the North end of the African Lion Safari, which got me high enough that I headed North towards the 401 at the foot of the Hanlon Expressway, getting there at 1800Z, and 2,300' above the ground.
There's some sort of quarry at that interchange, which usually means reasonable lift, and I didn't think that 2,300' would be enough to let me safely zip North through the airliner-populated region above the 401. So, I hung around the interchange trying to find that lift for what felt like forever -- but my records show it was just 5 minutes. At 1808Z and 4,100' MSL, I headed North of the 401 for the first time ever, aiming for a nice cloud near the corner of Wellington Street and Wellington Road 32. Man, road naming can be dumb sometimes.
Unfortunately, when I got there, it took me 5 minutes of farting around again at 2,700' MSL before I could connect to the lift. Obviously, something I need to get considerably better at doing! By the time I was climbing and had made it up to 4,000' MSL, George appeared in DW to join me in the thermal, only a hundred feet or so above me. At about 5,250'MSL, George and I both headed North -- him towards Erin, and me towards Fergus.
Twice on my way to Fergus, I stopped in some thermals, but gave up on them halfway because they were weak and hard to center. There were beautiful clouds over a huge factory in Fergus, and everything was looking like I'd make it to Fergus with enough height to connect with that lift. By the time I got to Fergus, I was only down to 2,850' MSL when I started trying to get in to the factory thermal.
Now, when I was scratching around near that factory, I started wondering why the houses seemed so big. 2,850' MSL is 2,000' above the ground at Rockton, where I took off from, and that's the height I was at when I released from tow, and my lizard brain is used to thinking of 2,850' as a decent altitude around home. I told myself that the houses just seemed huge because I had become accustomed to being much higher as I flew up to Fergus, and I concentrated on centering the thermal. I could see plenty of fields that seemed well within gliding distance, though.
Luckily, I was right about the factory thermal! It took me right up to 5,682' MSL in 11 minutes, which gave me time to take a little more stock of the situation. Unsurprisingly, George reappeared from the East to get in the thermal as well. It felt really good to be doing my first 50k and being used as a sniffer by a much more experienced pilot in a higher-performance aircraft!
But that's when I did the math and worked out just how low I'd been when I was scratching over the factory: 1,500' AGL. The ground at Fergus is about twice as high as the ground at Rockton. I knew that. I'd looked it up weeks ago, and written it down in the booklet strapped to my leg. I'd been told hundreds of times to pay attention to rising ground when flying cross-country, and I failed to do it properly.
My N800 was running Cumulus, and flying with that kind of fancy toy was still new to me. I hadn't done enough local flying with it to be completely comfortable, and was mostly flying by maps and landmarks. I was surprised by how much easier it was in the air to navigate by maps/landmarks than by GPS -- far easier than I expected. One thing I hadn't done, though, was switch the altitude display on the GPS from MSL to AGL, so I'd have an easy way of knowing how low I was over the ground.
Had I known the numbers when I was low over Fergus, I certainly would have behaved much differently, especially how I was over a moderately populated area. It's hard for me to say in retrospect what I would have done differently, but I certainly know I wouldn't have been as cavalier about the situation as I was. 1,500' was plenty of height to get safely to a landable field, but would I have clued in about the problem at 1,000' when I had talked myself out of worrying at 1,500'? I don't know. I can hope I would have, and focus on not losing situational awareness like that again. And I certainly need to get good at it without using the GPS as a crutch or as a shoddy excuse.
So, anyhow, George and I got to more than 4,000' over the ground, which was way more than I needed to go the last 10-15km to the York Soaring Club airfield, which was the distance goal of the flight. And, 5,682' MSL in Fergus, minus the 1,500' MSL low point before starting out is a 4,000' height gain, enough to satisfy the 1,000m goal. As soon as I was that high, and within final gliding distance of the goal, the euphoria kicked in.
After about 6 years of being licenced, I'd finally jumped through the hoops! I could do it! Accomplishing something like this was a such great feeling, but not something I can easily describe. I left George (he went back East again) and made a beeline for York Soaring at about 120-140km/hr, getting there with plenty of height to spare. I took a few minutes to circle around and get the lay of the land -- did you know there's a big wind-power generating farm up there? -- and figure out how I was going to fly the circuit and land. (Tip: Power flies left-hand circuits, gliders fly right, which is the opposite of what I'm used to at SOSA).
Landing:
On the GPS trace, I can see a nice square circuit, and I got quite a few compliments on a very by-the-book circuit once I'd stopped. I'd flown a left-hand circuit, though, since I hadn't noticed their oppositeness from the sky. Overall, it took me an hour and 45 minutes to get there (63km from SOSA to York), averaging about 47km/hr.
When compared to Jerzy's flight in the same direction on the same day, it's not all that impressive. He went 391km at about 88km/hr (a short and slow day for him!) but I'm nowhere near that skilled and experienced yet, so I'm still feeling very accomplished. George ran in to some trouble after going East from Fergus, and he ended up having to land in Guelph instead of being able to fly home as he'd intended.
The vast majority of the people I met at York Soaring were very nice -- but with the exception of a very beautiful interior on their Pawnee, I'm very glad I chose to join SOSA when I moved to the Toronto area.
The York Pawnee was their only operating towplane, since they'd sold one and the other two required repairs. Since it was a very busy day for them, with lots of people waiting for a turn in their 2-33s for local flying, the towplane was operating non-stop, except for fuel-ups. I would have needed a 5-6,000' tow to the South over Guelph in order to be sure I could get safely home, but because of how busy they were, York would only be able to provide me with a 5-minute local tow to 2,000' and not the 15-20min tow I needed.
So, that meant I had more time to wander around the York airfield and chat with the people while I called home for a spare SOSA towplane to come back and get me. A big thanks to Terry McElligott for hopping in to the Citabria to come and get me! Not only was I lucky that Terry was generous enough with his time, but Terry only had to take me back as far as the 401 for me to get home, and he then went to Guelph to pull out George in DW, which means George's landout will reduce the cost of my tow out of York!
Once the aircraft was cleaned (I killed a lot of bugs), stowed, and I had a beer in my hand, it was time to start the paperwork. I'd flown with one of the club's LX Colibri flight recorders, but a much older model that didn't have fancy things like USB and SD cards. This recorder is in a tamper-proof case and produces a cryptographically-signed flight record of position and altitude every 5 seconds or so, and that file is needed in order to file the Silver badge claim to the international organization.
Of course, it didn't work.
George and Dave Springford both tried very hard with me to get the damn thing to offload its data (the LCD showed that the flight was stored, but we just couldn't get it out the serial port!), finally giving up around 11pm after trying two different computers, 4 software packages, and two wiring harnesses. Needless to say, that flight recorder has now been removed from service, and is on its way back to the dealer for inspection.
There's about a 5% chance that I'll actually get the file I need in order to prove that I had the flight I had, which is a bit of a kick in the nuts after such a euphoric high earlier in the day. If I don't get the file, I hope they'll let me personally dispose of the retired Colibri.
There's still a lengthy process of witness statements and paperwork that I can go through in order to claim the 50km distance portion of the flight, but there's no way for me to claim the 1,000m height gain without a crypto-signed GPS trace file.
For any of you feeling sorry for me, just remember that the flying part is something that I actually consider "fun," so I won't mind doing the flight over again at all! Sure, I'll hate going through the whole Windows-98 RS-232 flight recorder crap again, but I only really need that to work once.
Coincidentally, the LX Colibri was one of three flight recorders I had with me in the aircraft -- but it was the only one that could produce the approved output for a badge claim. Turns out that the N800+Cumulus flight recorder was off (because I hadn't completely read the manual), so the trace I uploaded to the OLC website came from my WBT-201 that I'd liberated from Mike Hoye.
The WBT-201, though, produces its trace in a crazy binary proprietary format, so I had to use four different pieces of software over two days to eventually extract and compile the trace that you see here. Seriously, GPS manufacturers, aren't we supposed to be living in the future? (Also, I think it's a bold-faced lie to say that your device is a USB device when it really just contains an integrated USB-to-Serial chip and the actual communication with the device is still over serial. I hope your pants die in a fire.)
Tomorrow looks like a reasonable soaring day, but I've promised to help splice and repair ropes in the morning, so I don't think I'll be able to try another 50km+1000m flight tomorrow. Baby Boober jackasses have so thoroughly messed up our flying weather that the planes are all sure to be in high demand tomorrow. If everything works out, though, I might be able to get 1,000m in the PW-5 or L-13 and start the paperwork with Dave and Terry as witnesses to make a manual claim for Wednesday's 50k.
Now, since I know that some of the other non-silver pilots will read this, I'd like to toss in some advice:
* Start flying with Colibris as soon as possible, even for local flying. Going from YeeHaw to Peter's Corners to St. George to Cambridge and back is a great way to build experience without leaving gliding distance back to SOSA, but I really regret not using a colibri and uploading to OLC for those flights. I'd have gained more experience with the stupid flight recorder crap, and uploading local flights to OLC will surprise you with how much feedback and encouragement you'll get from more senior members.
* Read your navigation thingy's manual, practice with it, and even hook it in to Condor for simluator training.
* My kneebook really, really helped. Ask to see it at the field sometime if you haven't checked it out yet!
And for the more senior pilots, no, there will be no beer list unless one of the badge claims is successful. That's only fair, right?
- SAC Bronze Badge, required before I'd be allowed to fly cross-country. All that I didn't complete last year was proving that I attended an airspace briefing, which was easily accomplished when Transport Canada came to visit us.
- Checkout for solo in the club's DG-505. Unfortunately, some needed repair work has put that aircraft out of service until next year. Disappointing, but there's not much I can do about it.
- FAI Silver Badge, required before I can fly cross-country in the higher-performance aircraft.
Completing the silver badge requires officially observed and recorded flights that include: 1.) A flight of 5 or more hours, 2.) A height gain from release of at least 1,000 meters, 3.) A distance flight of over 50km.
On June 14th, I had a 5-hour, 18-minute flight in BVF, a PW-5, leaving just the 50km distance and 1000m height gain requirements, which brings you up to date with this week.
Well, on Tuesday afternoon, the Wednesday weather looked good enough, and my Wednesday schedule at work was clear enough that I started to plan for the 50km distance attempt on Wednesday. After running some errands and procrastinating, I found out around 11pm that I'd have to get to the club pretty early to make sure I had dibs on the plane I wanted! Not being the kind of person to wake up early and brave Toronto rush hour traffic unless it's absolutely necessary, I drove out to the club at midnight, getting there at about 2am thanks to the 401 resurfacing work, which meant I only had to wake up at 9 instead of 6.
So at 9, I dragged my sorry ass out to the hangar in order to call dibs on C-FSXN, an SZD-51-1. After signing out the daily inspection, I had some time to go shower, have breakfast, and get ready. Mike Kinsner had been hoping to take the club's other SZD-51-1 for his own attempt at a 5hr duration flight, so I encouraged him to take off earlier than me so I could let him find the lift for me. George Haeh was also around to fly DW (LS4), and Jerzy Szemplinski was out to fly his ASW29 -- as well as a few other local flyers and students.
I ended up taking off at 1730Z, which was 1:30pm local time, and sure enough, Mike had found me a great thermal to climb in over the Westfield Heritage Village. As I talk about the flight, you can see the trace along the ground on its OLC page. Clicking on "Google Maps 2D" might make it look more familiar to you.
As soon as I found that lift with Mike, I made sure to fly to the South of Highway 6 and descend down to about 1500' above the ground (AGL) to establish a low point of the flight. This low point would be used to calculate whether I achieved the 1000m height gain or not, and I wanted to be South of highway 6 for that so it would also establish a Southernmost point for calculating the 50km distance.
Well, I joined Mike in the thermal again, and climbed up to about 3,800' above mean sea level (MSL) before the lift started to taper off and I found myself wasting time. I thought 3,800' would be more than enough to get me over to the North end of the African Lion Safari, which got me high enough that I headed North towards the 401 at the foot of the Hanlon Expressway, getting there at 1800Z, and 2,300' above the ground.
There's some sort of quarry at that interchange, which usually means reasonable lift, and I didn't think that 2,300' would be enough to let me safely zip North through the airliner-populated region above the 401. So, I hung around the interchange trying to find that lift for what felt like forever -- but my records show it was just 5 minutes. At 1808Z and 4,100' MSL, I headed North of the 401 for the first time ever, aiming for a nice cloud near the corner of Wellington Street and Wellington Road 32. Man, road naming can be dumb sometimes.
Unfortunately, when I got there, it took me 5 minutes of farting around again at 2,700' MSL before I could connect to the lift. Obviously, something I need to get considerably better at doing! By the time I was climbing and had made it up to 4,000' MSL, George appeared in DW to join me in the thermal, only a hundred feet or so above me. At about 5,250'MSL, George and I both headed North -- him towards Erin, and me towards Fergus.
Twice on my way to Fergus, I stopped in some thermals, but gave up on them halfway because they were weak and hard to center. There were beautiful clouds over a huge factory in Fergus, and everything was looking like I'd make it to Fergus with enough height to connect with that lift. By the time I got to Fergus, I was only down to 2,850' MSL when I started trying to get in to the factory thermal.
Now, when I was scratching around near that factory, I started wondering why the houses seemed so big. 2,850' MSL is 2,000' above the ground at Rockton, where I took off from, and that's the height I was at when I released from tow, and my lizard brain is used to thinking of 2,850' as a decent altitude around home. I told myself that the houses just seemed huge because I had become accustomed to being much higher as I flew up to Fergus, and I concentrated on centering the thermal. I could see plenty of fields that seemed well within gliding distance, though.
Luckily, I was right about the factory thermal! It took me right up to 5,682' MSL in 11 minutes, which gave me time to take a little more stock of the situation. Unsurprisingly, George reappeared from the East to get in the thermal as well. It felt really good to be doing my first 50k and being used as a sniffer by a much more experienced pilot in a higher-performance aircraft!
But that's when I did the math and worked out just how low I'd been when I was scratching over the factory: 1,500' AGL. The ground at Fergus is about twice as high as the ground at Rockton. I knew that. I'd looked it up weeks ago, and written it down in the booklet strapped to my leg. I'd been told hundreds of times to pay attention to rising ground when flying cross-country, and I failed to do it properly.
My N800 was running Cumulus, and flying with that kind of fancy toy was still new to me. I hadn't done enough local flying with it to be completely comfortable, and was mostly flying by maps and landmarks. I was surprised by how much easier it was in the air to navigate by maps/landmarks than by GPS -- far easier than I expected. One thing I hadn't done, though, was switch the altitude display on the GPS from MSL to AGL, so I'd have an easy way of knowing how low I was over the ground.
Had I known the numbers when I was low over Fergus, I certainly would have behaved much differently, especially how I was over a moderately populated area. It's hard for me to say in retrospect what I would have done differently, but I certainly know I wouldn't have been as cavalier about the situation as I was. 1,500' was plenty of height to get safely to a landable field, but would I have clued in about the problem at 1,000' when I had talked myself out of worrying at 1,500'? I don't know. I can hope I would have, and focus on not losing situational awareness like that again. And I certainly need to get good at it without using the GPS as a crutch or as a shoddy excuse.
So, anyhow, George and I got to more than 4,000' over the ground, which was way more than I needed to go the last 10-15km to the York Soaring Club airfield, which was the distance goal of the flight. And, 5,682' MSL in Fergus, minus the 1,500' MSL low point before starting out is a 4,000' height gain, enough to satisfy the 1,000m goal. As soon as I was that high, and within final gliding distance of the goal, the euphoria kicked in.
After about 6 years of being licenced, I'd finally jumped through the hoops! I could do it! Accomplishing something like this was a such great feeling, but not something I can easily describe. I left George (he went back East again) and made a beeline for York Soaring at about 120-140km/hr, getting there with plenty of height to spare. I took a few minutes to circle around and get the lay of the land -- did you know there's a big wind-power generating farm up there? -- and figure out how I was going to fly the circuit and land. (Tip: Power flies left-hand circuits, gliders fly right, which is the opposite of what I'm used to at SOSA).
Landing:
Click to viewOn the GPS trace, I can see a nice square circuit, and I got quite a few compliments on a very by-the-book circuit once I'd stopped. I'd flown a left-hand circuit, though, since I hadn't noticed their oppositeness from the sky. Overall, it took me an hour and 45 minutes to get there (63km from SOSA to York), averaging about 47km/hr.
When compared to Jerzy's flight in the same direction on the same day, it's not all that impressive. He went 391km at about 88km/hr (a short and slow day for him!) but I'm nowhere near that skilled and experienced yet, so I'm still feeling very accomplished. George ran in to some trouble after going East from Fergus, and he ended up having to land in Guelph instead of being able to fly home as he'd intended.
The vast majority of the people I met at York Soaring were very nice -- but with the exception of a very beautiful interior on their Pawnee, I'm very glad I chose to join SOSA when I moved to the Toronto area.
The York Pawnee was their only operating towplane, since they'd sold one and the other two required repairs. Since it was a very busy day for them, with lots of people waiting for a turn in their 2-33s for local flying, the towplane was operating non-stop, except for fuel-ups. I would have needed a 5-6,000' tow to the South over Guelph in order to be sure I could get safely home, but because of how busy they were, York would only be able to provide me with a 5-minute local tow to 2,000' and not the 15-20min tow I needed.
So, that meant I had more time to wander around the York airfield and chat with the people while I called home for a spare SOSA towplane to come back and get me. A big thanks to Terry McElligott for hopping in to the Citabria to come and get me! Not only was I lucky that Terry was generous enough with his time, but Terry only had to take me back as far as the 401 for me to get home, and he then went to Guelph to pull out George in DW, which means George's landout will reduce the cost of my tow out of York!
Once the aircraft was cleaned (I killed a lot of bugs), stowed, and I had a beer in my hand, it was time to start the paperwork. I'd flown with one of the club's LX Colibri flight recorders, but a much older model that didn't have fancy things like USB and SD cards. This recorder is in a tamper-proof case and produces a cryptographically-signed flight record of position and altitude every 5 seconds or so, and that file is needed in order to file the Silver badge claim to the international organization.
Of course, it didn't work.
George and Dave Springford both tried very hard with me to get the damn thing to offload its data (the LCD showed that the flight was stored, but we just couldn't get it out the serial port!), finally giving up around 11pm after trying two different computers, 4 software packages, and two wiring harnesses. Needless to say, that flight recorder has now been removed from service, and is on its way back to the dealer for inspection.
There's about a 5% chance that I'll actually get the file I need in order to prove that I had the flight I had, which is a bit of a kick in the nuts after such a euphoric high earlier in the day. If I don't get the file, I hope they'll let me personally dispose of the retired Colibri.
There's still a lengthy process of witness statements and paperwork that I can go through in order to claim the 50km distance portion of the flight, but there's no way for me to claim the 1,000m height gain without a crypto-signed GPS trace file.
For any of you feeling sorry for me, just remember that the flying part is something that I actually consider "fun," so I won't mind doing the flight over again at all! Sure, I'll hate going through the whole Windows-98 RS-232 flight recorder crap again, but I only really need that to work once.
Coincidentally, the LX Colibri was one of three flight recorders I had with me in the aircraft -- but it was the only one that could produce the approved output for a badge claim. Turns out that the N800+Cumulus flight recorder was off (because I hadn't completely read the manual), so the trace I uploaded to the OLC website came from my WBT-201 that I'd liberated from Mike Hoye.
The WBT-201, though, produces its trace in a crazy binary proprietary format, so I had to use four different pieces of software over two days to eventually extract and compile the trace that you see here. Seriously, GPS manufacturers, aren't we supposed to be living in the future? (Also, I think it's a bold-faced lie to say that your device is a USB device when it really just contains an integrated USB-to-Serial chip and the actual communication with the device is still over serial. I hope your pants die in a fire.)
Tomorrow looks like a reasonable soaring day, but I've promised to help splice and repair ropes in the morning, so I don't think I'll be able to try another 50km+1000m flight tomorrow. Baby Boober jackasses have so thoroughly messed up our flying weather that the planes are all sure to be in high demand tomorrow. If everything works out, though, I might be able to get 1,000m in the PW-5 or L-13 and start the paperwork with Dave and Terry as witnesses to make a manual claim for Wednesday's 50k.
Now, since I know that some of the other non-silver pilots will read this, I'd like to toss in some advice:
* Start flying with Colibris as soon as possible, even for local flying. Going from YeeHaw to Peter's Corners to St. George to Cambridge and back is a great way to build experience without leaving gliding distance back to SOSA, but I really regret not using a colibri and uploading to OLC for those flights. I'd have gained more experience with the stupid flight recorder crap, and uploading local flights to OLC will surprise you with how much feedback and encouragement you'll get from more senior members.
* Read your navigation thingy's manual, practice with it, and even hook it in to Condor for simluator training.
* My kneebook really, really helped. Ask to see it at the field sometime if you haven't checked it out yet!
And for the more senior pilots, no, there will be no beer list unless one of the badge claims is successful. That's only fair, right?