One year anniversary

SEE POST ON ENGINE FAILURE A YEAR AGO

One year anniversary since our airplane C-GSCZ a Beechcraft Bonanza (BE36) has had an engine failure and landed on a new york highway while enroute to Burlington, VT.

I personally have done this flight and I must say, there were a lot of trees, and lakes around...not a lot of good fields. Still amazed by their performance that day..

I've also flown the exact same airplane C-GSCZ today enroute to Montreal and well, supersitious or not, ever since that incident, I've paid more close attention to engine and all of its components.


In march actually, another similar type of engine failure occured on another one of our airplanes but was safely and fortunately high enough to land at Billy Bishop Airport near Owen Sound.


This goes to show, your training goes a long way!!

Goneometers, engines failure, and 5 babies!

So I had two exams this week and well one was quite interesting and the other saddening.
Tuesday a bunch of us went to this fairly new library which I always pass through but never noticed before. It was a pretty cool library, it looked so new and high class but I'm sure there are way better ones out there. I was never a library goer before but I'm definitely becoming more interested in them, besides they are free so why not!

Tuesday we studied from 1pm to almost 9pm talking all about Avionics. We had the exam the next day and I thought it was going to be okay. I turned the cover page and read the first question...what the ADF is a Goneometer!?!? Well most of the exam I knew what the question was asking but I don't know if I answered each question fully. Goneometer question...I took a wild swing at it and we'll see what happens in a few days.

From one exam to another, I had my Flight Propulsion or "engines" exam today. We learned all about gas turbine engines and we also had a pretty big project to do throughout the semester. It was a really interesting course and I'm feeling confident about the exam and nervous at the same time seeing as it is an ORAL EXAM. Basically, we go to see our professor (who happens to be a very smart person btw) and we discuss our project and pick one question out of a hat about anything we learned over the course. So I guess luck had something to do with it seeing as my lack of luck resulted in a question in which I did not study fully. I have studied every other topic except for this one. It was about fuel metering with plungers, I had the idea, except I had switched two variables. One variable was the result of the other instead of the other way around which I thought was correct and it wasn't. I also didn't do well on the project as I totally mistaken the whole point of the project and it wasn't specific and detailed enough for my engine.

With that, I'm here stuck with my very first engine failure...safely on the ground.
But hey at least I don't have swine flu ...err H1N1 influenza.

I wonder if raccoons produce a similar effect, because today 5 baby raccoons were extracted from my closed attic that is probably a couple of weeks old. The "exterminator" or "wild animal person" took the babies from the attic and placed them in a box near my backyard so that when MAMA raccoon won't go hiatus when she comes back with her babies gone. Hopefully she finds them in the backyard, relocates them and they become a happy family only to go through our trash in the future.

I love the wild animal guy's facial expression.

Crummy weather to fall down the stairs

For my class year, we don't have school on fridays, however there are some, lots, TONS of homework to do. So the weekend won't really be a weekend for anyone especially in the final stretch of the semester. As for today it was forecast to be raining, low ceilings, and strong winds the whole day. Usually the schedule would be cleared off the night before if the weather forecast is this bad, but today for some reason it wasn't. So people were actually "forced" to go wake up early in the morning just to cancel their flights. It is quite sad actually, and I know how it feels because it has happened to me plenty of times.

So with the rainy weather for the whole day, I figured to just stay home and try and get some work done. I was supposed to go on the simulator at the airport to practice but the laziness bug kicked in plus I didn't even want to travel (via Public Transportation) in this wet and windy weather (whoa alliteration). So instead it's me, my laptop, the internet, and lots and lots of typing for today.

I woke up feeling a little bit sick, with a bit of cold so I'm beside the tissue box once again. As I was on my way down the stairs for lunch, I figured I'd bring my laptop down to try and do some multi-tasking. So with me, tissue box, laptop, and wireless mouse. As I was about to take my second step down the stairs I was also trying to click on something with the wireless mouse...and I slip and fall on my back hard down the stairs. I think part of me inside was still trying to prevent damage to my laptop, talk about selflessness eh.

So as I reach the bottom of the stairs, I slowly put my laptop down and lie down in pain and agony of what just happened to me. I think for like a few seconds I couldn't even breathe, and for the next 5 minutes I couldn't move. My brother, who was in the basement heard my screaming and the loud noise of my epic fall (fail too), he comes up and tells me not to move and starts asking me where it hurts (he's gonna be a firefighter). After a while, I'm on my feet, but my neck and back up until now, still aches.

Lesson learned: don't click on anything while travelling down the stairs with laptop.
Back to Aerodynamic project about wingtip attachments/arrangements.

Storm system and Lake Effect Snow

So I got back from reading week hoping to have my preflight done by the first day or second day back. But both of those chances failed: Monday had rain and strong winds, and Tuesday had strong winds and low clouds. Both of these were caused by the storm over Eastern Ontario around Ottawa, Kingston Region.

The storm produced a very steep low pressure and so isobars were fairly close together around it, and that created strong gusty winds, around 20G38 kt winds from the northwest. The low over to the east created cloud formations over here because we were in the "tail-end" of the storm.

With the winds coming from the northwest, there was also an issue of Lake Effect Snow. Lake Huron was to the northwest and so any cold arctic air with strong winds create possibility of lake effect snow/precipitation.

Cold air gets blown over the lake and evaporation creates convective clouds over to the greater toronto area (GTA), it sucks because it is very short notice and as a result could be a reason for a lot of incomplete or cancelled flights in the winter.

So according to my instructor, instead of completing 0.3 hr of the preflight, he will just do a 1.5hr extra dual instruction to polish some of my weakness from the preflight:
Slow flight and Power On stall entries
Steep turns - to try and go back to entry altitude even within test limits.
Diversion - everything was perfect except I forgot to simulate a call to London
Soft-Field Landing- porpoising or not so soft landing

I won't be able to do this extra dual until next week because we will be away for a Search & Rescue Training weekend from Oct 31st - Nov 2nd. I am pretty stoked about this because we're going to Bankcroft area, and I can't wait how to really learn the things they will teach us (of course I'm not so excited because it's gonna be cold but I'm not complaining)

Anyway, I'll take my camera and post up some pictures of that here.