Common Frequency Areas Survey

I am conducting a research project on Common Frequency Areas such as but not limited to 122.9, 123.02, 122.92. I am mostly doing the study for the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). The study is about the hazards that could be associated with Common Frequency Areas. Such hazards in uncontrolled airspace can be extended to operation within uncontrolled aerodromes.

I have put out a short 10 question survey which would take less than 5 minutes. I would appreciate it if you were to take a short period of your time to help with this research project. My goal for this research is to identify and confirm the hazards and to help increase safety by making an awareness of such hazards.

The survey can be found here http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/PY6673Q


Any information given is de-identified and will be used solely for the purpose of the research and nothing else.
Any questions and/or comments can be directed to ramzel14@gmail.com.

Thank you for your time.

A momentary lifetime

Do you ever imagine yourself standing on a cliff. The ocean right before your very eyes as waves crash upon rocks so old as the water right beneath your feet.

You look into the distance wishing the wind could take you with it. To soar above the calm and stormy seas below you, sailing across wherever the wind will take you. It would bring you over tiny uninhabited islands surrounded by white sandy beach populated by nothing but trees as green as the Earth once was and exotic wildlife living to survive another day. Birds, tankers, airplanes full of people would pass you and you notice them as little as they notice you. The clouds are now above and below you, blanketing your view of the earth and the rest of the universe. You are stuck in between.

It's uncertain when you will arrive at your destination, and even that is unknown all by itself. But it doesn't matter. For at that very moment, you finally feel a part of something, being away but completely one with nature. And you no longer feel pain nor fear nor anger nor sorrow. There's absolutely nothing you can worry about even if you tried. You feel neither young nor old, nor aging. You are just what you are in that instance: unchained, able and free-spirited. You feel the world changing and adapting to your nature and not the other way around.

There are moments in our lives when all our worries seem to briefly disappear. So short and limited yet they can last a lifetime.
I live for those moments.

Umpteen hours in a day

There are theoretically 24 different timezones in the World, running every second and every minute of the day continuously. (Without taking into account places that do or don't use daylight savings time). So to the bare minimum, ideally, there are at least 24 different people living in all different times of the day.

In some cases, if the timing is perfect, it's possible to have a day last up to around 47 hours. (It took me a while looking at my globe lamp to figure this out) If a person moves from the west side to the east side of the international date line at the appropriate time. Now that's not even that complicated, how about living right at the North (and South) Pole? What timezone do they operate and well how do they tell when the day starts and ends? Maybe there's no right timezone.

A day is defined as a full rotation of the Earth about its axis and lasts for approximately 24 hours. But whether you get more or less than 24 hours in your day, it doesn't really matter. What matters is what you do with what you have. Like a lot of things in life, a day is valued with how you spend it and in most cases, who you spend it with.

You may find yourself having 47 hours for one day, but if you don't spend it the way you want or need to spend it, what is it really worth? They say our days here on Earth is numbered, but does it really matter when you don't use every single unit of your time remaining to its fullest potential?


Find what it is you deserve, what it is you want, and/or what it is you need and go for it. As cliché as it may be, life is for living and you have full control of it...right now!

"What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable"
-John Green (An Abundance of Katherines)

ONE presentation to go

I got one more 20 or so minute presentation on our applied research project and its progress so far.
then i'm free..

i also found this today

http://www.senecac.on.ca/school/aviation/irc/

I remember it being taken. You can tell that I'm smiling :D

SMS and TC

A week ago we had a Transport Canada Civil Aviation Safety Inspector Aviation Enforcement come in to talk to us in class.

She talked about how they go about their business and that "voluntary compliance" are the keywords.
They don't go out looking for people who don't abide by the regulations but if they see something during their cyclic inspections, or due to a report of an incident and accident and you get caught, she spoke to us how they go about it as well. How many hours we are given to report an accident and all the penalties that we can face and the steps we can take.

She also mentioned that they are there to protect us and the paying passengers that use Aviation. Talked to us about the complaints that they get from people about noise, some were reasonable and they looked into it. But some were just weird because at one time, a person complained about airplanes flying too low over their house and after searching on google map, it was found that her house is right under a short final for one of the runways so they couldn't really do anything.

She used the words "we're not out to get you" but...there are still laws to follow.

Its amazing how much (in some how little) influence Transport Canada has on air carriers/operators. I recently found out that a float plane association has been created over to the west for British Columbia float plane operators.

The news article can be found here

This somewhat ties in to Safety Management Systems (SMS) that are still continually being phased in for almost all operators. The ultimate goal is for each carrier to assess their own operations and have a system in place to catch threats and errors and be proactive and generative instead of just reactive (do something only when an accident occurs).

I have taken a course in SMS however, there are still a wide range of standards and all the little details to be learned. I believe that it is a great tool to have especially when you're out looking for a job. It's that one extra boost for you above the rest who may not have a background in SMS.

Polar Navigation and POW

Today started just as any other normal day. I got to school for an 8AM annual mandatory winter operations briefing. Apparently it is mandatory by Transport Canada for each Air Operator, including our school to have ground instruction or refreshers on Winter Operations every year. Or so I think/heard.

After that, we had Aircraft Design class where we handed in our fuselage design.
Our fuselage was a long range aircraft capable of 365 passengers in 22 First Class, 70 Business Class, and 273 Economy class seating configuration.

After that, I was about to kick and complain about the upcoming French class when I remembered that it wasn't class today but instead, we had two war veterans come in to talk to us while our Professor baked us a cake shaped in an airplane...more or less.

First was a WW1 Royal Canadian Air Force veteran that worked as a gunner in the Halifax and Lancaster for some time. He told us about a story in 1943 where he had been on a bombing mission somewhere over Germany and was shot down by the left wing of the airplane. 5 of the 7 occupants of the aircraft safely jumped with parachutes into German territory where they were eventually captured. He then talked about his time over at the German prison camp where "The Great Escape" had occurred and how he helped create the tunnels and how secretive everything was. He said he was fortunate that he wasn't chosen as one of the 200 to go out that night, which only 76 successfully escaped but 50 of which had been caught later on and killed.

A second slightly younger, RCAF navigator whom flew in the Korean and Vietnam wars talked to us afterwards. He was talking amongst pilots so he was allowed to use jargons, most of which we understood. One question he asked actually surprised me. He mentioned that he had done a lot of flying around the North Pole and asked us this:

What would your track be if you were to fly from the North Pole to Vancouver, and the class gladly said...well south! 180 degrees.
He said yes that's right, how about if you want to go to Halifax...and slightly confused we answered SOUTH?

And that was the problem...over the north pole...all directions was SOUTH! And so it required a completely different grid system for navigation. They have used a lot of "ancient" navigation ways, since they didn't have the convenience of the GPS back then. They actually used a grid system which used the Prime Meridian and parallel lines to it, and used that as a north and they flew grid tracks instead of true/magnetic tracks.

He also told us about his time flying in the C130 Hercules, where he was...if it wasn't for chance...would've been shot down by a SAM fired by someone which actually killed the airplane that had taken off 30 seconds before them.

Situational Awareness requires some thinking

Today in Human Factors class, we further discussed Tony Kerns Airmanship model. How discipline, skill and proficiency are the foundation of good airmanship. Along with the pillars of knowledge of our self, our team, our aircraft, our environment and the risks involved create situational awareness for ourselves and therefore gives us good judgment and decision making.

When talking about situational awareness, it was discussed that the definition of SA is
the accurate perception of what is going on with you, your aircraft, and your surrounding in the past and in the future.
Situational awareness is where the understanding of what has happened, what is happening and what might happen overlap.

Now with the video attached below which I've seen awhile ago...it kind of ties into this kind of thinking and how we can keep situational awareness.

Since situational awareness involves thinking of the past, present, and the possible future, I could say that we have to be thinking in the 5th or even 6th dimension in order to keep situational awareness.




4th dimension is time and thinking in this dimension allows us to see things as a line. What has happened and what is happening is connected by the series of decisions, luck/fate, and actions of others.

5th dimension takes this further and says that thinking in this dimension is almost projecting ahead to the possibility of different options in the future. It is in a way some form or step of a decision making process. If we see or think in the 5th dimension which is a split, it allows us to choose the best possible outcome that we want.

However thinking in the 6th dimension is possibly the best way to maintain situational awareness as it allows us to continually assess the past, present and our intended future/outcome. For example, we get ourselves into a situation we don't necessarily like and want to turn the situation into a more suitable one. We can think in the 6th dimension, a fold, and see what our actions, decisions in the past could have been in order to project into the desired outcome that we want to happen now. After that, we can see where we actually are and where that desired outcome is, and how it connect and how we can move ourselves from here to there.

I got confused after the 6th dimension but I can still show the second part of the video.