Category: Flying

This morning I took Liane for a scenic flight along the Lake Ontario to Toronto and back. That was after I explained to her the geographic impossibility to going to visit the Grand Canyon. Yes, she thought we were going to be able to nip over to the real Grand Canyon, not the one in Pennsylvania. Shades of talking to my English relatives about the reason I don’t just “pop over” to my mother’s place for dinner is that it’s just about as far to her as it is to England.

Anyway, we left Oshawa, looking at some of the familiar landmarks of Whitby, and down to the lake shore. We flew down below the Toronto Class C airspace, and talked to the Toronto City Center tower controller, who was wonderfully accomodating and didn’t give me the sort of rigamorol and vectoring around I associate with any flight talking to Toronto Terminal. We flew in between the airport and the city at 2,000 feet, which gave Liane a good view looking down on the CN Tower. Over Ontario Place, I did a steep turn so we could look down the wing at the Cinesphere and the water slides, and then flew out over the harbour back towards Oshawa. It was too nice a day, and so instead of returning directly to Oshawa, we went past them along the Lakeshore and headed North. I was going to overfly Lake Scugog, but I couldn’t remember what the designation of the special use airspace over the south end of the lake (CYA(T) or something like that) meant, and I didn’t want to violate some regulation. I figured that since it was over the swampy southern part of the lake, it might be to protect nesting water fowl, and this might be a bad time of year for that. I don’t want to disturb them, and I don’t particularly want them to disturb me, either.

On the return, as we were taxing in I heard somebody getting a full route IFR clearance to Rochester. Hmmm, Alpha-21, Victor 252, AIRCO, Victor 31. I’d been thinking about filing that route myself, but didn’t last time because Alpha-21 is a NDB to NDB airway and I didn’t want to fly it in IMC. But it has the terrific advantage of being near to the Toronto airspace – as a matter of fact, it’s pretty much the route I flew on Friday from St. Catherines to Oshawa.

When it came time to leave, the first thing I did was call US Customs. Once again, they required two hours notice, and it was only a 45 minute flight, so I had lots of time to prepare everything else, and just hang around reading in the airport. I filed the same route I’d heard that other guy being given as a full route clearance. But when the time came to depart, Oshawa ground insisted on giving me the full route clearance. I’m guessing that they don’t know what I filed, because I tried to be a smart-ass and so my read back was “Oshawa One, then as filed Alpha 21, Victor 252, AIRCO, V31”. But they didn’t like me throwing that gratuitous “as filed” in there, and made me read it back again without it.

I took off, and contacted Toronto Terminal, and as soon as I did they asked me “What route would you like?” I replied that I’d like the route I filed and was cleared for, Alpha 21, Victor 252, AIRCO, Victor 31. He said “no, do you want along the lakeshore, direct to Rochester, or direct to AIRCO?” Sheesh, is my routing strip being printed in invisible ink or something? “Ok, I’ll take direct to AIRCO.” “Fly heading 200, let me know when you want to turn direct to Rochester.”

Ok, maybe I’m not being a good risk manager here, but for some stupid reason I don’t mind being out of gliding distance of shore if I’m near Toronto, but I don’t want to be out of gliding distance if I’m further than 20 or so miles from Toronto City Center. That’s because I’ve seen the rescue helicopter there at City Center, so I figure that if I were to go down there, the rescue helicopter could probably be en-route before I even hit the water. If I’m wrong about that, maybe you shouldn’t tell me.

So basically my strategy is to go as direct across (and as fast as the plane will go) once I’m outside of gliding distance, and then when I’m within gliding distance of the shore I’ll slow down and turn direct to Rochester. Since this afternoon was quite hazy, I just waited until I could see the shore and asked for and got a direct turn to Rochester.

As I got closer, the controller started vectoring me to runway 4 (the big long runway that the jets use) and said that runway 10 (the not quite as long runway that the turboprops use) was available if I wanted it. I’m an accommodating guy, so I said I’d accept runway 7 if that would help. Runway 7 is the smallest runway, and is actually a remnant of the original triangle of runways back when the airport handled DC-3s, and only piston engined planes are allowed to land there. Sure enough, nobody else wanted Runway 7, so I was cleared to land while I was still about 5 miles out. I don’t know why, but I love that when that happens. Probably because it makes me think that I’m doing the right thing to help everything flow better.

I got to Customs at exactly 17:26. Since I’d called for a 17:30 arrival, I felt like I’d timed that pretty much perfectly. The customs guy wasn’t there, so I pulled out my pre-filled-out CF-178 customs form, and started to get out all the stuff the customs officer had asked for last time – my green card, my pilots license, my medical certificate, and the aircraft’s registration. The officer arrived a few minutes later, and said “Oh hi again. Just give me the form, I saw all the other stuff last time.” Yes, it was the same customs officer as two weeks ago.

Man, I’ve got to sign up for a CANPASS pass.

I flew up here to Oshawa Ontario yesterday evening. In spite of the fact that 90% of the time clearing Canada Customs consists of phoning 1-888-CANPASS before you leave and then 1-888-CANPASS after you arrive (the other 10% of the time, they’ll say “wait there, a customs officer will be with you shortly”), they don’t have customs at Oshawa after 16:30. If I signed up for a CANPASS pass, I could clear customs without the second phone call, which also means you can arrive even when customs is closed. But I haven’t done that yet, so I had to fly to St. Catherines airport to clear customs, and then fly on to Oshawa.

It was a beautiful day, so I filed VFR for a change – mostly because around Toronto it gives me flexibility to avoid them playing games vectoring me all over the place. When I file IFR around there, I file for a nice high safe altitude for over the lake, and then they try to keep me down low and still send me over the middle of the lake, or vector me all over southern Ontario. The straight line between St. Catherines and Oshawa misses the Toronto Class C airspace by about a nautical mile or less, but it does miss it, so I didn’t even talk to Toronto controllers, just climbed until my GPS said it was time to descend, and then kept up there until I was much closer. Altitude is life, and while I trust the club planes a lot more than some random rental, even the best maintained plane can turn into a glider with little warning.

It’s a bit weird to be flying a cross country VFR. I haven’t done it in a while, and the silent radio is deafening. I may do it again on the way home.

Well, I got home. It wasn’t easy.

I called for a weather briefing, and the Canadian side of the border was forecasting only nil-light clear ice, while the US side between Watertown and Syracuse was still calling for light to moderate mixed icing in clouds and precipitation between freezing level and 18,000 feet. I also found out that the clouds to the west and north of Ottawa were in several layers, while those to the south were still solid from about 1500 feet up to above the highest altitude I could reach. I hemmed and hawed, and decided to try the northern route, going from Ottawa to Campbellford (spelling approximate – designator YCF) to Toronto to the little maze of Victor Airways that get you from Toronto to Rochester. It looked like it was going to be pure VFR after about YCF.

At first, I couldn’t start the plane. The very helpful guy at Esso Avitat brought out this humungous pre-heater that is made for jet aircraft but he says they mostly use it for getting the trucks going in very cold weather. 10 or 15 minutes of that, and the engine kicked over in one blade. What a difference a little warmth can make.

I took off, and immediately I was having even more of the electrical problems I’d reported on the way out. The autopilot’s indicator lights (that say “HDG”, “NAV”, etc) were all flashing like crazy. As well, that pinging that was coming through the intercom was a full fledged squeal, so I turned off the intercom. One of the radio flip-flops wouldn’t retune – it was set to 132.20 (Montreal Center) and I was attempting to turn the other Montreal Center frequency at 132.05, but it only flicked between 132.20 and 132.15 and wouldn’t budge. But I moved the outer knob to 131, and then I could tune the inner ring to .05, and then move the outer knob to 132. Weird. Toronto Center was having a lot of problems with my transponder, too, asking me to recycle once, then ident, then report various distances from them. As I got closer that cleared up, no idea if it was something wrong with the transponder or just that I was closer to their antenna. The alternator was nearly pegged, and I recycled it once, and it seemed to help some of the problems, but the autopilot never worked at all, and the squeal in the intercom went down to a ping but never went away.

When I entered the clouds on the way up, I went to a fast cruise climb speed, 100 knots or more, because clear ice can build up on the underside of the wing unseen if you have a high angle of attack. By the time I reached my cruise altitude, 8000, I was in a layer where the clouds were widely scattered at my altitude, so I was in and out of them, but I couldn’t see below or above so I was on the guages the whole time. I really really need more practice flying on the guages without an autopilot. On the way up to my altitude I picked up a thin layer of clear ice, about 2-4 mm in depth I’d guess, on the temperature probe, and what looked more a very thin layer of impacted snow on the wings. I couldn’t detect any difference in flying qualities, and I was still making better than 130 knots over the ground so it wasn’t slowing me down any. Because I was in and out of and then totally above the clouds, I wasn’t picking up any more.

By the time I got to YCF, it was severe clear. I’ve never seen the drumlins in that part of the world from the air before. It was quite startling how clear they were. Toronto Center asked me to descend to 4000 feet, which got me below the freezing level and the ice went pretty quickly. They were quite accomodating about my desire not to cross the middle of the lake direct from YCF to Rochester, and bring me in almost to the edge of the Toronto Class C airspace and letting me climb back up to 7000 feet before sending me over. Not only is the lake narrower there than back at Rochester, I believe the rescue helicopter is based at Toronto City Center so any rescue would reach me quicker there. The funny thing about them getting me what I wanted was that I was heading due West with Buffalo directly to my left (South), and he gave me a climbing right turn to 090 (due East), which I thought was kind of weird. But before I completed the turn or got to 7000 feet he had me continue the turn to 190 (just past South), and then I saw a commuter plane go by straight in front of me at about 5000 feet, descending to land at Toronto. So it was just a clever way of making sure I was higher than the commuter plane before I turned to cross his path.

It was a mixture of frustration and fun, and I’m glad to be home.