Flying December 2011

I had four nice flights in three days after Christmas. On Boxing Day, I went for a quick ride with my friend Mark. He has a classic Cessna 172, a 1957 model, I think. It has nothing in the way of modern features, though he has redone the upholstery, and it looks pretty nice inside.

Before we could fly, Mark had to clear the snow from in front of his hangar. I installed the battery while he did that. By the time we were done, weather was starting to approach, and we figured we'd better hurry up and fly, or we wouldn't be flying at all. The wind was blowing about fifteen knots, but only twenty degrees off the runway. We taxied out, took off, and flew a circuit. As we climbed out from the touch and go, we noticed that the city was shrouded in rain. Considering the temperature was close to freezing, it was an easy decision to make the second circuit the last. We landed, taxied back to the hangar, and just as we started to push the airplane in, the rain started.

I had a five hour credit on the Winnipeg Flying Club's Cessna 182, that I had to use by the end of the year. Mark had a buddy, Derick, who wanted to go to Cross Lake. I'd never been to Cross Lake, but it seemed like a pretty easy flight, about 250 nm straight north. It would be the farthest north I've flown, though.

The forecast suggested the possibility of a front coming through Winnipeg by early evening, so we wanted to get back by 7 pm. We met at the flying club shortly after ten, packed up, and took off just before 11 am.

The flight up was unremarkable. Mark took control shortly after take off, and proved adept at precisely following the track demanded by the aircraft GPS. As we approached Cross Lake, we tried calling the UNICOM, but got no answer. Because of that, we flew an inspection pass of the runway, and then joined the circuit for landing. The runway was a bit icy, but not bad.

Derick's brother came to the airport to pick us up, and then gave us a nice tour of the town, and the neighbouring reserve. Not exactly the prettiest place in Manitoba, it seems like fishing might be about the only thing to do. There is no obvious industry, only a Northern store, a couple of hotels, police and fire stations, and quite a few churches.

We returned to the airport, and I called the weather briefer to find out that the front I was concerned about was not going to arrive until after midnight. We packed up and departed just after 4 pm. The flight back to St Andrews was a bit longer due to the headwind. The most noticeable feature of the return trip was the near absence of lights on the ground. There are only a few towns along the route, and most are quite small. There were fairly long stretches where only one town's lights were visible, and sometimes none at all.

We landed in St Andrews just after 6:30 pm, fuelled the airplane, and put it back in the hangar.

I had started installing the skis on my Challenger II, but hadn't finished because I needed to replace a spacer. In the time it took to make one, the snow had mostly melted, and I was beginning to wonder if I should take the skis off again. The night after the flight to Cross Lake, though, the front came through, and dropped an inch of snow, good enough for me. I finished the ski installation, and then took the Challenger for the first flight in three months.

I was concerned, again, about the weather, as the cloud seemed a bit low. I took off, flew a couple of circuits, and everything seemed good. I let the airplane climb a bit more on the next circuit, and ran into cloud at about 600 feet above ground. Hmm, lower than I thought. I decided to stay in the circuit, and fly until I ran out of ceiling or daylight. It cleared a bit after a while, and I ran out of daylight after an hour's flight.

With that flight, I passed 200 hours pilot-in-command in the Challenger. About sixty of those hours have been on skis.

There are more photos from the three days' flights here: http://bit.ly/rptuJV.

Korean Airlines Cargo B747 at YWG

A Korean Airlines Cargo Boeing 747 dropped in to Winnipeg on Sunday to pick up some cargo for Brussels.

The flight from Chicago to Winnipeg:

http://bit.ly/sj50si

The flight from Winnipeg to Brussels:
http://bit.ly/sCfMqm

Military looking for a few good volunteers in Arctic search and rescue

A Winnipeg Free Press article about the military's attempt to increase participation in CASARA in the north.

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/military-looking-for-a-few-good-volunteers-in-arctic-search-and-rescue-134137713.html

JONATHAN HAYWARD / THE CANADIAN PRESS Enlarge Image

Members of the Canadian military walk past communication towers for Iqaluit as they search the Arctic during an exercise in Iqaluit, Nunavut, on August 24, 2009.

OTTAWA - The Canadian military wants to expand search-and-rescue coverage in the Arctic, but is looking to private contractors and civilian volunteers to fill the ranks.

The fatal crash this summer of First Air Flight 6560 and the recent death of a rescue technician last month — both in Nunavut — dramatically underscored the dilemma the government faces in responding to northern emergencies.

Experts have repeatedly warned the opening up of the Arctic will make cases like those more common.

The notion of beefing up search coverage in the Arctic, where the military has little year-round presence, has been under active discussion for over a year, according to briefing documents prepared for the country's top military commander.

Contrary to popular perception, finding lost hikers and downed aircraft in the vast tracts of wilderness in southern Canada is not exclusively the domain of the military.

For over a quarter century it has relied on a group of dedicated, trained civilian volunteers who come complete with their own aircraft. The military provides them with spotter training and some equipment.

The Civil Air Search and Rescue Association — or CASARA — makes up about 25 per cent of the country's air search capability.

The military is hoping to replicate CASARA in the North, a briefing note for Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Walt Natynczyk indicated last November.

Using civilian contractors "represents a measured, economical" improvement to rescue capabilities in the North, but more importantly it delivers more "timely" searches pending the arrival of military aircraft and helicopters from the south.

Maj. Jay Nelles, of the Air Force's readiness branch, says response times — or at least the ability to get to incident sites — would be greatly enhanced.

The inability to deliver "rapid response" to a northern incident is the kind of stuff that gives military planners nightmares. In some cases, it takes hours to get an aircraft into the region and that's even before a search can get underway.

In the case of the Oct. 27 death of Sgt. Janik Gilbert, initial reports said it took three hours for a Cormorant helicopter to arrive after a boat of missing hunters was located and rescue technicians had entered the frigid waters west of Baffin Island.

Still, having a dedicated civilian search arm in the north might not have saved Gilbert.

The CASARA-North proposal is mostly geared to fixed-wing aircraft and the absence of helicopters in the Arctic is something the military would still grappling with.

In southern Canada, there is easy access to a fleet of recreation planes, where 2,500 pilots, navigators and trained spotters make up the backbone of the civilian search association. It is a different story in the thinly populated north, where aircraft tend to be owned by commercial interests.

The Northern Air Transport Association has been trying, on behalf of the Air Force, to encourage companies to charter their aircraft — at market rates — to National Defence for emergencies.

Nelles said they've met with some success, but the biggest challenge has been finding qualified spotters to volunteer among northern communities.

It costs Ottawa about $2.8 million a year to fund civilian search and rescue in southern regions and there is no current estimate on how much an expansion in the north would be.

Cruising around Google Maps yesterday, I came across the 45 degree view of the Pima Air Museum in Tucson, Arizona, which I visited in 2004. One of these days, I'll have to post some photos.

Iceland Review 04.10.2011 | 06:30 Winnipeg Falcons to Play at Iceland Ice Hockey Cup When the Winnipeg Falcons, a team comprised of ice hockey players of Icelandic descent, returned to Canada after becoming the first Olympic champions in ice hockey in Antwerp, Belgium, 1920, they were given a royal welcome. When Winnipeg returned to the NHL ice hockey league in the summer of 2011 they considered naming their team the Falcons, but ended up deciding on the Jets, Morgunbladid reports. Nevertheless, the Falcons were resurrected to compete at the 2011 Iceland Ice Hockey Cup in Egilshöll in Reykjavík next weekend, held by local team Björninn. “We want to contribute to restoring Iceland’s economy by spending a few dollars while we’re here,” said one of the Falcons’ team member Grant Stefanson. As with their predecessors, most of the Falcons’ players are of Icelandic descent. Stefanson said it is natural for them to honor the name of the first Olympic champions in ice hockey. They will play their first game on Thursday.

Air France A320 F-GKXC, in Winnipeg for a 4C check

We had an Air France A320 in Winnipeg for a 4C check for a few weeks. The 4C is a fairly heavy check, and this one had the added tasks of a triple landing gear change, and an engine change.



It all went quite well. I was in the right seat for the engine run up, the first time I've done a run on a new engine - new from the shop, that is, not really new. I don't know how many hours the other engine had, but the temps and RPM on the new engine were almost identical to the other engine.



Once the check was essentially complete, the airplane was pushed outside, so that we could bring in an Air Canada A320 for our regular Phase Check. The few remaining snags were completed in fantastic autumn weather, and the airplane headed back to the Caribbean, where it's normally based.






This is the engine we changed, a CFM56-5B4/P. The way things worked out, I wasn't involved in removing the old one, or installing the new one, but did all the accessories (with my crew of two other guys, not just me), and did all the inspections.

While I'm posting A320 photos, here's one of an Air Canada A320 from an angle I could never get:
Click Here to view the photo

Photos: Airbus A320-214 Aircraft Pictures | Airliners.net

For the last two weeks, we've had an Air France A320 in the hangar for a 4C check. It's just about done now, and I had the opportunity to do the ground run on the airplane on Tuesday. Here's a photo of the airplane from Airliners.net:
Click Here to view the photo

I hope to get a few photos of my own shortly.

Where I've Been

So I travel a bit. Here are the two apps I originally used on Facebook that show the countries and cities I've visited.


On the Where I've Been map, red is a place I've lived, blue is a place I've visited, and green is somewhere I want to go, someday. The formatting is a bit wonky - not that I tried hard to get it right - so you can enlarge the map a bit, and then drag it to see the eastern countries I've been to.


The travel map doesn't have anything to explain, I think. On the other hand, it doesn't seem to do anything, either. Just a list of cities and towns I've been to, on Google Maps.

• Create your own travel map or travel blog.
• Top holiday rentals at TripAdvisor

Still rockin' in overdrive - Winnipeg Free Press

Still rockin' in overdrive - Winnipeg Free Press:

By: Rob Williams

Posted: 09/25/2011 12:18 AM 

Randy Bachman and Fred Turner still have some gas left in the tank.

The reunited members of Bachman-Turner Overdrive are back on the road as Bachman & Turner, cranking out their hits from the 1970s along with some new songs filled with the same spirit as their old material, even if they don’t leave the same impression.

The duo and their band stopped in their hometown of Winnipeg Saturday night, treating a heavily papered crowd of 5,500 at the MTS Centre to a trip down memory lane on a bill that could have taken place in 1975: Paul Rodgers and Blue Öyster Cult served as the opening acts.

"It’s fabulous to be back in our hometown. I’d like to say happy birthday to Fred’s mom and thank her for letting Fred play in my band way back in the ’70s. And thank you all for a great life and a great ride. The music that has come out of here has been phenomenal. To us, you’re number one," Bachman said as an introduction to the jazzy Looking Out For #1.

Bachman & Turner played all their old hits and deeper album cuts, including Hey You, Not Fragile, Let it Ride, Takin’ Care of Business and even American Woman, the only Guess Who song the group covered during its 80-minute set. During You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet, the band invited 14-year-old radio contest winner, Kyle Zacharkiw, on stage to play guitar and the teenager earned some well-earned applause for his work, including tackling the song’s famous solo.

Bachman and Turner are both 67, but on stage their ages didn’t make a difference. Turner, in particular, sounded as great as ever as he barked out old favourites like Let It Roll with his gruff voice adding some extra grit to the rock anthem. He showed off his smoother side during Blue Collar, which included two impressive jazzy Bachman guitar solos.

Bachman naturally dazzled on the guitar all night, whether he was soloing or playing some of the best known riffs in Canadian music. Opening act Rodgers isn’t known for his guitar skills, but for his voice. 92 Citi FM DJ/musicologist Howard Mandshein introduced the co-headliner by calling him "God’s favourite vocalist." There’s no way of knowing whether that’s true, but Rodgers hasn’t seemed to have lost any of his vocal power.

His pipes got a good workout during his 75-minute set as the 61-year-old touched on highlights from his time in Bad Company and Free. He started with Can’t Get Enough of Your Love and pulled out all his signature hits and more obscure material along the way, including Honey Child, Mr. Big and crowd favourite Feel Like Making Love. His set started during the fourth quarter of a close Winnipeg Blue Bombers/Toronto Argonauts game, which had crowds of people surrounding television sets in the concourse and lounge area, cheering and jeering. The conclusion of the song Bad Company coincided with the end of the game just as the clock ticked to zero after third-string quarterback Justin Goltz got sacked, adding some boos to the cheers. (Don’t worry Paul, they weren’t for you).

He wrapped up his set with the sweet ballad Shooting Star, which turned into a giant sing-along, as did Rock ’N’ Roll Fantasy. The slow chugger Walk in My Shadows took the energy level down a notch before All Right Now — released in 1970 — got the crowd back into it and gave them one more chance to sing along.

Blue Öyster Cult opened the show with a quick 35-minute set that touched on their best known radio hits — Burnin’ for You, Godzilla and (Don’t Fear) The Reaper (which earned plenty of shouts for more cowbell) — along with a couple of fan favourites, most notably Cities on Flame with Rock and Roll off their 1972 debut. Despite the short set, lead guitarist Buck Dharma still managed to show off his skills by getting two solos in.

And a couple of crappy cell phone photos from the show:

 Paul Rodgers

Bachman Turner

'via Blog this'

A robot that flies like a bird - YouTube

Ornithopters are becoming reality.

A robot that flies like a bird - YouTube:

'via Blog this'

Rex Murphy: A decision so dumb, only a government would make it

ROGERIO BARBOSA/AFP/Getty Images

A Canadian Forces Sea King helicopter with British Prince William on board takes part in a search and rescue demonstration in Dalvay by-the-Sea, in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island on July 4, 2011.

• Comments 
• Twitter
• LinkedIn 
• Email 

Rex Murphy  Jul 23, 2011 – 1:41 PM ET | Last Updated: Jul 23, 2011 3:48 PM ET

Some decisions are so strange, so inexplicable, that they defy analysis.

Way back when, there was a Liberal government in Ottawa that shifted a weather forecasting centre — a facility whose assigned zone included Newfoundland — to another province. Now I should give the federal authorities some credit: They didn’t move it to B.C. It was not a continent-wide shift. That was too much even for Ottawa. Instead, it was “only” moved to Nova Scotia. But as I hope to demonstrate, it may as well have been sent to the Sahara.

Previously, the weather centre for Newfoundland was in the centre of Newfoundland. Gander to be precise. But by a process and logic known only to the elected and bureaucratic wizards in the inland capital of Ottawa, it was decided that the more appropriate location was the capital city of another province.

Halifax is a beautiful place. It even has great weather. But Halifax is a long way from Lanse aux Meadows. It is a long way from the fabled Northeast Coast, where in spring the icebergs play and such fogs are generated as leave visitors agape and trembling. It bears no climactic commonality with Trepassey or Corner Brook, or Marystown or Joe Batts Arm. Halifax could be on Mars as far as having any relationship with the fearsome singularities of Newfoundland’s awesome atmospherics.

In this one respect, on the weather front, Newfoundland is unique. It stands alone, shrouded in impenetrable mists and answering to the rhythms of its own weather gods. Newfoundland weather is not a little like the world of subatomic physics; a buzz of random and paradoxical probabilities, a thing that may be observed but not measured or, contrariwise, measured but not observed, and not either, ever, from Halifax. It is a wonder and a despair.

Not surprisingly, the Liberals were smacked about very soundly for their decision, mocked and scorned by all rational observers everywhere. And, also not surprisingly, when that cold-hearted rationalist Stephen Harper finally made it, albeit as a minority leader, to the prime ministers’ chair, he moved the damn weather centre back from the exotic locale of Halifax to its proper and useful home in the centre of the island portion of my climatically wilful province.

“Three cheers for Stephen Harper” was the cry on every Newfoundlander’s lips for this move (there were other problems some may recall, but let’s stick to weather today, and talk about Danny Williams another time).

All this I recount only as prologue for an almost equally inexplicable choice, currently being considered by this same Stephen Harper, to another service in Newfoundland, even more central than that of the weather.

Scarcely had Mr. Harper captured the PM’s job again, this time as a majority leader in the last election, when one of his ministers came out with the equally ludicrous decision to move search-and-rescue operations: Last week, it was announced that the co-ordination centre in St. John’s (along with one in Quebec City) was slated for termination, with services relocated to Halifax and Trenton, Ont.

And according to reports circulating this week, the Department of National Defence’s search-and-rescue services might soon be privatized. (Currently, the job is done in partnership between DND and the Coast Guard, which is overseen by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans). If that happens, there’s no telling where the services would be relocated.

What is in the air in Ottawa? How do such absurd notions take root in the federal mind? Would they ever take similar steps in regard to, say, the regulation of Lake Ontario shipping?

Search and Rescue is not some toy service. It concerns life and death. And considering the tragedies that fret the history of the province over the centuries, this would not only be a wrong decision, but an offensive one, as well.

Naturally it is being, and has been, protested by everyone who can breathe and count to six. I cannot believe it will stand, and no one can believe it should. But the question remains: How could such an odd policy change be one the first considered by the majority government of an otherwise clear-thinking Prime Minister?

My only explanation is that it serves to illustrate this unshakeable axiom: Some decisions are so dumb that only governments can make them.

National Post

Rex Murphy offers commentary weekly on CBC TV’s The National, and is host of CBC Radio’s Cross Country Checkup.

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/07/23/rex-murphy-a-decision-so-dumb-only-a-government-would-make-it/

Day Trip to Whiteshell Provincial Park

On Sunday, I took a drive to Whiteshell Provincial Park, east of Winnipeg. Along the way, I stopped at whatever looked intersting, and so I wound up at Seven Sisters Falls hydro dam for a while.

















I have flown over this dam on a search and rescue exercise. The tower at the left of this photo was so close, I felt I could reach out and grab it. The sensation as you pass over a tower like that is really quite surreal, you feel like you're hanging in the air for a few moments. The dam itself is quite impressive. It's holding back a lot of water, and the water thunders as it pours out of the chute.

















Whiteshell Provincial Park is just east of Seven Sisters. There's a nice little museum at Nutimik Lake, fairly close to the park entrance.





















The museum has a collection of stuffed animals representative of those found in the wild, and also a couple of good displays about the native peoples who lived in the area several hundred to a couple of thousand years ago. This is a display on wild rice farming.

















A small display of native artefacts, showing pottery shards, stone tools, and worked copper. Some of these items date back more than 2,000 years.

















Close to the Whiteshell Museum, there are some petroforms that date back hundreds of years. Petroforms are shapes created from rocks, intended to represent things. The things, in this case, are fish, turtles, and snakes, as well as some geometric shapes. These are located at Bannock Point, an area of open rock amongst the trees. It's quite a large area, several football fields in size, and easy to get turned around. There are no signs to lead you back to the trail.

The first image quite clearly is intended to be a turtle. Turtles are one of the most common shapes, and some of the less distinct shapes were probably turtles at some point, too. Although it's not possible to date the petroforms - it's all rock, after all - it's estimated that some of the shapes may have been created over two thousand years ago.

















A very nice snake, created from rock.

















My camera facial recognition software identified this as a face. I personally have no idea what it's supposed to be.

The whole area is considered sacred to the local natives, and there are cloths hanging in the trees everywhere around the site. I have seen the same type of cloth offering at Devil's Tower National Monument in Wyoming.


















I walked along the Pine Point hiking trail next, which turned out to be a long, straight walk, without much of a pay off. There's a nice set of rapids / small waterfall at the end of the trail, that's shallow enough that you probably wouldn't want to take your canoe through it.

The rapids at the end of the Pine Point trail.

Non Search and Challenger Cruise

I had an extremely early wake up call yesterday morning, when I got a call to go on a search for a missing boat at Moose Lake, Manitoba. The phone range at 4:55 am, and I was out at the airport by 6 am. Not long after getting to the airport, the missing boat and people were found, all unharmed, apparently, and the search was stood down.

















In the evening, I took my Challenger ultralight for a flip, something I haven't been able to do much this year. It was a beautiful clear evening, and very smooth. I took off just before 9 pm, and did some local flying around Oak Bank. I spotted two hot air balloons at the south end of Winnipeg, so I flew toward them, just to have a little look. One balloon had just set down in a field, and the ground crew was already on scene to help collapse the bag. The other was a bit further south, just crossing the floodway (photo above). I hung around for a few minutes, and then headed back to Oak Bank.

Before calling it an evening, I did a few circuits, and took this shot of Oak Bank airfield, with the town behind it.

Maintenance Regulations—There Aren’t Many

Here's a good article by Mac MacClellan about light airplane maintenance in the US. The rules in Canada aren't much different.

The rules for airliners are different, but unfortunately there's often not much guidance for inspectors as to what's serviceable and what's not. It points out the need for experienced and dedicated aircraft maintenance engineers to maintain the airplanes on which you fly, and makes me wonder why there's not more of a protest against maintenance outsourcing to other countries. Of course, I'm a bit biased in this area. But if you fly, maybe you should be, too.


Maintenance Regulations—There Aren’t Many

By J. Mac MacClellan


I had a chance to meet Mike Busch, the Savvy Aviator, a couple of weeks ago when people who write for Sport Aviation magazine got together to chat in Oshkosh. I really loved talking to Mike because he and I have written a lot about how badly most piston airplane owners misunderstand the FAA regulations governing maintenance of their airplanes. There just aren’t a lot of rules.

Read the rest here: http://bit.ly/ixHMSi.

Winnipeg Free Press News Cafe Social Media Day

I missed a bit of work yesterday to attend Social Media Day at the Winnipeg Free Press News Cafe. I really had no idea what to expect. The News Cafe is a new, and rather unique, idea of the local newspaper, to allow the public to interact more directly with its journalists. How exactly that works, I haven't had much of a chance to find out, but today was my first look.

I've been at the cafe a couple of times before, when there were no events. The food was excellent, and there's a pleasant ambience for a news junkie like me, with copies of the Free Press scattered around, and free internet (apparently - I haven't tried that yet).

I thought I was going to be late, but it started at 2 pm, not 1. That guaranteed I would be late for work. By 2 pm, there were very few open seats, and very little capacity left in the air conditioning. The session itself featured three speakers: John White, who spoke about the concept of the New Cafe, and the various social media that the Free Press uses to allow the public to interact, including Facebook and Twitter. The second speaker, John McDonald, talked about the importance for businesses of keeping up with what's being said on social media, and how to create new business opportunities from it. The third speaker, Alisha Paul, spoke on moderating comments on websites, but that was the point I had to leave for work, so I missed most of her talk. Fortunately, the speakers' talks are available on the Free Press website. I will see her talk yet.

This was a great introduction to the potential of the News Cafe. I look forward to more events like this.

Canadian Aviation Historical Society

I'm just back from Edmonton, where the Canadian Aviation Historical Society held its latest convention. The convention took place over five days, and some events were held in conjunction with the Alberta Aviation Museum. It started on Wednesday, with a directors' meeting in the afternoon and a Meet and Greet at the convention hotel in the evening. The Meet and Greet was a much livelier event than usual at these things. The organising committee, including CAHS president Danielle MetcalfeChenail, had gathered some excellent prizes for draws and auctions. One item given away was a pair of Westjet passes, which was a great fundraiser for the society. I won a nice framed print of Katherine Stinson, a pioneer pilot, on an early airmail flight.

On Thursday, the group headed to the Reynolds Alberta Museum in Wetaskiwin, for a tour. RAM is based on the collection of Stan Reynolds, a Second World War pilot and later owner of a car sales dealership. His collection was donated to the provincial government, and it's now an official provincial museum. It's quite an amazing place. The main building houses great displays of early cars, farm equipment, and other items. There's a separate building that houses most of the airplanes, and also is the home of Canada's Aviation Hall of Fame. There's a storage building which is not generally open to the public, but we got a guided tour through there, too. The airplane most people would notice is the replica of the Avro Arrow, which was used in the Arrow movie with Dan Akroyd. The most interesting airplane for me wasn't even a complete airplane, it was the hulk of a Fairey Swordfish that's awaiting restoration... someday. In the evening, we held the annual general meeting of the CAHS.

The speakers programme ran on Friday and Saturday, and featured a range of subjects mostly relating to Alberta aviation history. Some of the subjects included "Wop" May, Tom Lamb, the High River air station, early search and rescue in the RCAF, and archaeological aspects of a SB-17G crash site.

On Friday evening, we had the option of going to a Swing Dance, organised by the Alberta Aviation Museum, but ten of us, including me, went to the Edmonton Eskimos - Calgary Stampeders CFL exhibition game instead. The museum put on a "Bush Pilots Dinner" on Saturday evening, that was well attended by museum volunteers and convention goers. After the dinner, we had some presentations, one of which, on the importance of preserving and presenting history, really stuck with me.

Sunday wound up with the Alberta Aviation Museum's Airfest, a fly in and open house. I helped man the CAHS booth, and wandered around the museum's extensive collection. Amongst other things, they have two CF-101 Voodoos, a Sabre, a CF-100 Canuck, a Barkley-Growe (looks like a Beech 18 with fixed undercarriage), and a Boeing 737 in Pacific Western colours. Vintage Wings of Canada also flew in their Sabre in Golden Hawks colours. There was also a Yellow Wings tour Stearman there.

Challenger Winter Rendezvous

Here's a nice video of a place I'd like to go, the annual Challenger Winter Fly-in at Montebello, Quebec.

A regular evening shift at work this week, with only a couple of notable occurrences. On Monday, I did the post maintenance ground run on a CFM56-5B equipped A320. There is a notable difference in power between the 5A and 5B, about 20% at max thrust, if I recall correctly - which I probably don't. Because we do the runs fairly late at night, we often taxi the airplane to a remote point on the airport. I'm not taxi qualified, but fortunately, one of the guys on the crew is. We have reached the point where he allows me to make the complete taxi out and back - though he is amusingly quick on the brakes if he thinks I'm going too fast.

We got out to the assigned spot, did the run, and headed back. The run is quite simple. We start the engines, other members of the crew carry out any required leak checks (oil filters, hydraulic lines, etc), close the fan cowls, and then taxi. Out in the boonies, we point into the wind, and bring both engines to 60% N1 (fan speed). We then take one engine to about 87% N1, watching the vibration indication on the ECAM (electronic centralised aircraft monitor, I think? - we just call it an ECAM). The limit is 4 units, and it's rare that we see it above 1.5. We bring the engine back to 60%, and do the same on the second engine. Then we're done. We taxi back to the hangar and do paperwork.

The A320 is a beautiful airplane to taxi. It's basically a big Cessna 172, and other than having to use the tiller instead of the pedals to steer, the process is about the same. The airplane can be brought into remarkably tight spots. I have about 25 minutes worth of A320 full motion flight sim time, and it flies like a Cessna 172, too, very nice.

On Friday, I did three tow jobs, two of them Embraers, and the other an A320. We had an Embraer at the terminal getting fuel, when the competitor's ground crew decided to try to slip a 737 past the Embraer's nose. Well, they might have made it, if the tractor hadn't already been hooked up, but they were taking much too long. So we got them to go the other way, and we towed the Embraer out first, which made more sense anyway.

On Saturday, I got to fly in the flying club's Maule MXT7. We had a CASARA exercise in which I wasn't supposed to fly, but one of the other guys got sick, so I stepped in. The club has a limit of -20C for flying, as apparently the engine seals (or prop seals, maybe) fail if it's too cold. Fortunately, it was only -17C, and the front of the hangar had been plowed. I made two flights, with a navigator and two spotters on the first trip, and a navigator and one spotter on the second. The trips were pretty basic, with an unfortunate lack of a real training objective, but one spotter did manage to find a bison herd. There were also a few snowmobiles, hikers, and ice fishermen about. We also chased down a very easy training ELT on the second flight. After three hours in the air, the heater wasn't having much effect any more, so we were pretty happy to finish up.

Back to day shift this week.

Work

On Monday, we had an A319 in for a wing check. I wound up with the ops check cards. Ops checks are system checks to ensure the proper function of various components. Amongst others, I had the RAT auto drop, the blue hydraulic system internal leak check, and the rudder centring spring check.

The Ram Air Turbine (RAT) is a small propeller beside the left wheel well, that automatically drops when certain conditions are met. It provides electrical and hydraulic power sufficient for getting the airplane to a nearby airport. To do the RAT auto drop, you use a computer in the cockpit to simulate an airspeed greater than 100 knots, and then pull certain circuit breakers. The RAT drops when it detects that electrical power has been lost.

The blue hyd system internal leak check is done by connecting the hydraulic test stand to the blue system ground connection, increasing pressure to 3,000 psi, and checking the flow rate. The flow rate has to be below 1.5 US gallons per minute, more or less. In this case, it was 1.1, so very good. Not so good - a sticking gauge that led to us overfilling the reservoir, a big mess, and quite a bit of unnecessary farting around.

For the rudder centring spring test, the input shaft for the rudder is disconnected. Another person runs hydraulics from the cockpit, and I pushed, then pulled on the shaft to move the rudder right and left. A very simple test, it takes longer to set up than it does to run (which is actually true for many of the ops checks).

On Tuesday, we had an A321 in for a wing check. I did the inspection on one wing, which went quite well. No snags worth talking about, which is normal for wing inspections. I have almost never found anything major on a wing inspection. Wednesday was another wing check, on an A319. Nothing exciting there.

On Thursday, we had one of our older A320s come in for a gear / fuselage check. I did the inspection on the passenger doors. I found that the L1 door, the normal passenger entrance door, had excessive play at the upper connection to the support arm, and so we had to remove the door. Once the door was off the airplane, I took apart the lifting arm mechanism and was in the process of reshimming when the shift ended. This airplane will still be in the hangar on Friday, as there is a major flap repair that couldn't be done in one day. So Friday will probably consist of re-installing the door and checking the fit - mostly because I wrote a separate snag for that, and it couldn't be done with the door off.

Building an Air New Zealand A320

I ran across this cool time lapse video of an Air New Zealand A320 getting built and painted:

Back to Work

I had a couple of weeks off over Christmas and New Year's. It was pretty quiet, except for the ELT search.

I was back at work on Tuesday, 4 January, on day shift. Day shift generally means inspections, which I like. The airplane arrives around midnight, we start on days at 7 am, do the inspections and some routine work, and finish at 3:30 pm. The evening crew fixes the snags and gets the airplane out. The next morning, it flies on a regular passenger flight.

The airplanes I work on are nearly exclusively Airbus A320 series, which are great airplanes to work on, very well designed from a maintenance point of view.

The airplanes come in for one day, and we do one-third of a C Check each day. The C Check is divided into phases - fuselage and gear, wings, and engines and tail. This week we had two engine checks, one wing check, and one fuselage / gear check. It's pretty random.

Generally, engine checks have the most work, and fuselage / gear checks have the least.

On the engine checks, you have to remove lots of panels to expose the inside of the pylon, open the fan cowls, and open the thrust reverser halves. Generally two to four people will unbutton the engines. Once the panels are off, I can start the inspection - although of course you're looking around the engine as you're taking off the panels, too.

On Tuesday we had an A319 in for an engine check. I inspected the left engine (for some reason, I always inspect the left engine, not the right), and came up with about twenty snags, which is a bit more than average. Most of the snags fall into the "preventative maintenance" category - fix it now before something expensive develops. It's extremely rare to find something really serious - so rare it's called "killing the airplane", meaning the airplane won't go out on schedule. I found a variety of damaged clamps, bushings, and bonding wires, that needed replacement.

On Friday, we had one of the ex-Canadian Airlines A320s in for an engine check. I don't like those airplanes as much, they are slightly non-standard. This one was very good on the engine inspection, though, about seven snags. Fifteen snags is probably average, so I had no complaints about this engine. Having few snags makes for an easy inspection, you can take a bit more time and be very thorough.

We had a wing inspection on Wednesday. Again, the first hour or so is spent removing panels, and then the inspection can begin. Wing inspections are generally pretty easy, I have never found a major mechanical fault on a wing. The inspection covers the visible part of the wing structure, the slat and flap drive mechanisms, and the aileron.

Fuselage and gear inspections are the lightest checks, usually. I inspect the passenger doors, and occasionally the landing gear. On Thursday, I had quite a few snags on the passenger doors, and we had to sling two of them. On one door, there was play in the connection between the door lifting mechanism and the support arm - wasn't so bad, but it was a slow day, so we fixed it, taking about an hour to do it. On the other door, the support arm bearing was shot, and had to be replaced. That's a fairly big job, two people for about four hours. The biggest problem we encounter in repairing these items is usually that the hoist point plugs won't come out, and you spend quite a bit of time extracting / destroying them.

So I'm back on evening shift this week. If anything exciting happens, I'll put it up.