Life's QRH

When in sorrow - John 14
When others fail you - Psalm 27
When you have sinned - Psalm 51
When you worry - Matthew 6: 19-34
When you are in danger - Psalm 91
When God seems far away - Psalm 139
When your faith needs stirring - Hebrews 11
When you are lonely and fearful - Psalm 23
When you grow bitter and critical - 1 Corinthians 13
When you feel down and out - Romans 8:31
When you want peace and rest  - Matthew 11: 25-30
When the world seems bigger than God - Psalm 90
When you want Christian assurance - Romans 8: 1-30
When you leave home - Psalm 121
When your prayers grow narrow or selfish - Psalm 67
When you want courage for a task - Joshua 1
When you think of investments and returns - Mark 10

If you are depressed - Psalm 27
If you are losing confidence in people - 1 Corinthian 13
If people seem unkind - John 15
If you are discouraged about your work - Psalm 126
If self-pride takes hold - Psalm 19
If you want to be fruitful - John 15

For how to get along with others - Romans 12
For understanding of Christianity - II Corinthians 5: 15-19
For a great invention/opportunity - Isaiah 55
Paul's secret to happiness - Colossians 3:12-17
For dealing with fear - Psalm 347
For security - Psalm 121:3
For assurance - Mark 8:35
For reassurance - Psalm 145:18

Mistakes

Mistakes aren't made at a moments notice. They are brewed over a period of time in which of it has been hidden from the obvious and the visible. Sometimes common sense may not make sense because there has been a lack of understanding of the general view or perspective of the idea or thought. The reality of the relativity of situations and scenarios are always going to have biased judgment of what has been or what seems to be happening or what we predict the outcome to be.

But when it's all said and done, when bad things seem to lead to worse things and further to things that are unknown, the human capacity is truly the last line of defense and tries to adapt to these unfamiliar ground in which lives and property may become endangered.

For the sake of our own learning and the learning of others, mistakes have to be made. No they are not wanted or greeted with a big welcome, but with the outcome resulting from these mistakes, nor they are frowned upon when they do occur.

"Learn from the mistakes of others,
         you'll not live long enough to make them all yourself."

Flight Computers

  

OUT WITH OLD AND IN WITH THE NEW.

So I've recently made the switch/conversion from the E6B to the CR flight computer. More specifically I have chosen the smaller CR-2 version of the device. Now the E6B was great for all the functions that I had to use it for. There was nothing wrong with it that made me get the CR flight computer. It was actually in one of my courses (Air Carrier Procedures) that required us to purchase the CR flight computer.

This is for the assignments and the future applications that the CR flight computer has capabilities of.

• It does every single function that the E6B did plus a few extra more.
• It's one piece and the one I got is much smaller so it's easier for storage or when I have to use it in flight.
• It's much easier to do flight planning calculations in terms of track, wind, and heading and all the jazz since you don't have to keep turning the discs so many times which can produce errors along the way.
• It has greater range for speeds in terms of groundspeed since the E6B can only go up to 260kts.
• The downside is that since it is a smaller device, the markings are much smaller and tighter therefore there are more estimating involved and can therefore produce minor errors.
• Also the E6B slide rule is great for drawing track lines on the map which is better than a flimsy plastic ruler, not to mention it has written valuable information that can help a pilot in training (or any pilot for that matter) for quick reference.
• The E6B also has space to put instructions on how to use it and the CR flight computer does not, but those instructions are just wasteful space once you got used to using the computer.

All in all, the E6B is great for initial training and flight planning but as a pilot moves to a bigger and faster airplane, more functions are required to do calculations and the E6B simply cannot perform some of those tasks, like calculating Mach Number according to altitude and temperature, and so on. The E6B is just limited plus its bigger and cannot fit into my pocket like the CR-2 can.

The CR flight computer is definitely an improvement over the E6B...but as technology is ever so vast and fast moving, the requirement to use a CR flight computer is all the more unlikely with the FMS/FMC's on board new generation aircraft. But if there's ever that event of an electrical failure or you just simply operate at a small charter company with FMS unequipped aircraft, the CR flight computer is the way to go.

Summer 2010

So it's been too long since I've posted on this. Mainly because there I had really no ideas on what is actually appropriate to post on this particular blog.
I have plenty of other social networking sites that I use like:
Twitter - which is connected to my facebook for some reason and will be mostly updated because it's so easy
Dailybooth - a daily photo blog of my life and trying to interact with others through pictures
Youtube - ideas and projects into motion picture. HOwever I need more ideas for this.
Tumblr - some of my creative or random thoughts come here...
Flickr - some pictures that may be creative may be posted on this

and so on but I was still not quite sure what to put on pilotsdiscretion.

However things are about to change! wooo!
Summer 2010 is going to be filled with exciting stuff as I will be working for Cameron Air for a coop work term the whole summer. They operate C206s and Caravans and on floats so that should be fun.

I have been making a lot of videos for youtube lately because it's so much fun and I like to share my days, thoughts, and so on with the rest of the world.r

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.

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!!

Checked out and licence in

So today I finally finished my Bonanza Checkout and so I'm good to go for circuits and then cross countries. The adrenaline that goes with flying with an engine that you don't fully trust due to the engine failures in the past is amazing. It's good in a way that, now I am more watchful and careful with engine management than before...and keep me on my toes with those forced approach practices.
In a way, the past engine failures has helped SOME people become better pilots.

Anyways yesterday I finally received the long awaited blue "aviation document" from Transport Canada after waiting for almost two months when I first submitted it. I like it because the medical and licence/ratings are all in one package. Plus it's harder to lose it because the blue just stands out very easily.

I also have fallen into the temptation of getting a BlackBerry. But it was a good move on my part because my old phone is like a C150 while this BlackBerry is like a PC-12....relative comparison of course...I've got nothing against 150s ..but absolutely loves PC-12s!