A passenger in the Harvard trainer shows the boy the interior of the cockpit he just rode in while the pilot disembarks. View larger.

Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum
Mount Hope, Ontario
(Hamilton International Airport)
www.warplane.com

Continuing the aviation theme for this weekend, I opted to stay out of the direct glare of the sun today and drove west, to the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum at the Hamilton Airport. It’s been a while since I’ve been there, and I was overdue for another visit. It’s amazing what a difference new equipment makes — I went for more depth of field this time around, highlighting details I couldn’t capture before.

I got to fly in this plane last November! What a thrill! I was telling someone yesterday while watching the air show how exciting it was to fly in the DC-3 Dakota, except I’d forgotten the name of the plane. This is why I try and make an effort to tag and label all my photographs: memory failure! I often do a search on my own photos and website entries just for this purpose. It’s BUGS me to no end when I can’t recall something, especially when it was not so long ago — less than a year, in this case.

one shady character

Two weeks ago I was the successful bidder of an online auction for health charities through work. The prize was a one-hour ride for two people in Durham Regional Police’s new Air1 helicopter. Oh, and this baseball cap.

One bidding war, a couple of weeks of waiting for the Sergeant in charge to return from holiday, two security checks, and a flurry of emails about dates and times and approvals from managers later, my friend and I have a date booked and we’re taking half a day off. Woo-hoo!

I wonder if this means I can speed a little in the Durham Region and get away with it…

Some more pics from my exciting first flight in the pilot’s seat on May 30, certainly an event that will remain in my memory buffer for some time to come.

I had to put the seat all the way forward to reach the pedals and the instructor had to go find a cushion for me to sit on so I could see over the panel. (Click on the pic to see comments from Eric, thatguyeric on Flickr who has a great aviation-themed website over at aeronaut.ca. If you’re interested in aviation, go check it out.)

I’d been planning this flight for some time, but of course everything depends on the weather. Booking far in advance isn’t worth a hill of beans if the weather is crappy.

The other consideration was the instructor. As with any service providers such as doctors, mechanics, dentists, lawyers, hairdressers, what-have-you, knowledge and skill are important but there is an element of personal dynamic that influences your experience. You may travel ridiculous distances to continue your patronage or you may never want to make another appointment again.

One reason I chose not to dive into flight instruction before finishing ground school is to give myself time to see enough instructors and get an idea of their teaching style. Everyone learns differently and most of the guys in my classes were already flying. One student told me he didn’t really like his instructor but he wasn’t about to switch midstream. I don’t want to fall into that trap, it’s just too expensive an activity to regret any of it because of rash decision-making (and worse yet, feeling unable to walk away).

Ali was the first person I had contact with when I visited the flight school back in January. He happened to be at the school when I dropped by, so I talked to him about what I wanted to accomplish and what my motivations were, so I didn’t have to rehash it all when I talked to him about flying on May 30. The only thing is, he didn’t teach any of my ground school classes except one, so I made a point of attending it when it came around again at the beginning of May. And I’m glad I did, because my whole experience on May 30th really couldn’t have been any better (in non-weather terms, that is).

I may be biased, but everyone who’d ever flown with David and spoke to me about it heaped praise on his skill as a pilot and a teacher (he wasn’t a CFI, but he was instrument-rated, had almost 800 hours of flying over 10 years and had flown with many CFIs). He never hesitated to tell me what he thought of other pilots, and consequently whenever I meet one, I can hear David’s voice in my ear, whispering an opinion or some observation about that person. There are pilots he told me I should not fly with, and I’ve not flown with them. Not having a license or experience as a pilot, I don’t have a basis for judgement except for whatever David passed along to me and simply a gut feeling.

I’m happy to report my gut was just fine on the 30th.

more…

Flying has always been to me this wonderful metaphor. In order to fly you have to trust what you can’t see. Up on the mountain ridges where very few people have been I have thought back to what every flyer knows. That there is this special world in which we dwell that is not marked with boundaries; that’s not a map. We’re not hedged about with walls and desks. So often in an office the very worst thing that can happen is you could drop your pencil. Out there’s a reminder that there are a lot worse things that can happen, and a lot greater rewards.

–Richard Bach, television interview

I don’t have any aerial photos to show this time, not because we were grounded by the hazy weather but because I was sitting in the pilot’s seat.

more…

It’s been a big weekend of photography, attending exhibits and visiting venues for two major annual events that ran both Saturday and Sunday — Wings & Wheels, Doors Open — and dipping into a third, Contact (which runs all of May). Aviation, architecture, and photography, what could be better?

After all this running around I’m in serious need of a nap, so I’ll post a few of my favourites over the past two days for now:

Technorati tags: Doors Open, Wings & Wheels, Toronto, architecture, aviation

Wings & Wheels 2007
Toronto Aerospace Museum
Downsview Park

The full story of this Canadian aviation legend can be found here. The story behind the replica is here.

The photo set thus far from Day 1 of Wings & Wheels 2007 can be viewed using PictoBrowser:

Technorati tags: Avro Arrow, replica, aviation

Wings & Wheels 2007
Toronto Aerospace Museum
Downsview Park

This fellow asked me to take a picture of him in his MG in front of the Arrow replica. Far be it from me to say no when someone actually asks for his picture to be taken! (Doug, I will send you the links to full-size versions of all the photos by email.)

There isn’t much that can get me out of bed at 6:30 on a Sunday morning… except flying. Alan and I had a windy morning, but was it ever good to get up in the air again!

I’m decompressing from a long day of work and flight school. I get home late (after 11 o’clock), and then I want to do as little as possible.

I see this barn every time I drive to flight school. There was a lot of traffic today and I was already late, so I stopped to take a photo with David’s Panasonic. I’ll get better shots during the day when the light hits the east side of the barn, so I’ll save that for when I do weekend flights.

Ordinarily I wouldn’t be at flight school on a Tuesday, but I needed to make up this class on flight instruments which I’ve missed TWICE due to bad weather, then scheduling. The other reason is to talk to the instructor, who I met back in January when I first visited Brampton Flight Centre. This is the only private pilot license class he teaches, and another student mentioned to me that his friend recommended this instructor. The other reason why I wanted to talk to him was to see if I could book him to take me up for a hybrid instruction intro flight (it’s about half the price of a regular flight) on May 30 and extend it to make it into a memorial flight for David’s birthday. David would’ve turned 40 years old on May 30, and if it was over the weekend instead of a Wednesday I would drive to Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome. As such, I think a memorial flight is the next best thing.

Of course, this is all weather dependent, and that’s the dilemma I faced last year when I scattered David’s ashes. But all’s well that ends well, so this year if it rains I would just go up another day.

As it turns out, the instructor said I can’t extend the intro flight, so I made a regular booking for the 30th. If I get a brilliant sunset, that would be gravy. But mostly, I just need to get up in the sky.

At least the good news is higher on the scale of goodness than the bad news rates on the scale of badness.

The good news is that I finally learned, exactly one month after my aviation medical, that I passed it! Whew, what a relief! The doctor’s office got clearance from the cardiologist and will be sending the appropriate form off to Transport Canada. I’ll finish ground school sometime in May, write my PSTAR exam, and finally get off the ground!

That was the first message I got at work while I was at the conference yesterday. The second message was from the camera shop where I brought the Pentax K-1000 to get cleaned and diagnosed. They said the water damage was extensive and would cost a whopping $250 to fix! I deliberated over that for a while, and decided that

1. it was still cheaper than buying another film camera
2. I have three lenses and a couple of filters for it
3. it’s a good camera that should last for another (?) years, as long as I’m careful
4. plus, it was David’s.

I also thought about shopping around for another repair quote, but I’m short on time: I want to shoot a wedding in film next weekend and camera repairs take a while. With all the running around I’d have to do to pick it up from this shop and take it to another, it wouldn’t get done in time. Oh well, at least I can shoot film again!

I checked my bank account, and my income tax refund was deposited this morning. It only took nine days from the time that I e-filed it, so that was timely — a few hundred dollars of it is going right back out again.