happylife

Kanku

Kanku is the abbreviation of Kansai International Airport. I used it for the first time when I left Osaka for Kushiro last week. It was a really gorgeous airport built on an artificial island in Osaka Bay. According to Wikipedia, it has two open parallel runways with the length of 3,500 meters and 4,000 meters. "Open parallel" means here that the two runways are located apart with enough distance. Talking about the runway length, 4,000 meters at the sea level is long enough for all the commercial airplanes. They can easily take off and land on the runways under most weather conditions. -- Airplanes need less length of runway at the sea level because of air thickness. -- What I want to mention here is that a lot of extra money must have wasted for the excessive features of this airport. More than 10 billion dollars of our tax has been spent saying "This airport is going to be a hub airport in Asia!" and more money are still wasted to keep and run this airport 24/7 every day. It's quite natural that the finance of Osaka or Japan is in danger.

Contrail

English is sometimes more descriptive than Japanese. This cloud is just called a "plane cloud" in Japanese and we have no other word for it. Lots of Japanese are misunderstanding that "plane cloud" is smoke emitted from the airplane's engine. I think there are less people in English speaking world who have this kind of misunderstanding because the English word "contrail" or "vapor condensation trail" is explaining what it is by itself. If they know this word, they would know what it is at the same time. There are mainly two ways in which this artificial cloud is created. One is that the exhaust gas, which is hot and full of water vapor, is rapidly cooled and condensed into a cloud. It's just the same as when we exhale white breathe in the cold air. It's interesting that we can tell how many engines the airplane has by counting the trails of the cloud. Another reason for the contrail is also the condensation of the air which is caused by the wings. Vortexes created at the end of the wings cause a difference of air pressure and create clouds. Anyway, we can see contrails more often in Canada because the air is cooler and has more vapor in it. There is no pilot and sailor who likes clouds, but this cloud is the only exception.

How difficult?

This is a shot from Abbotsford International Airshow. The airplane is flying upside-down just over the runway at an incredibly low altitude. It seems to be rather a common performance but as a novice pilot I can imagine how difficult it is. He has to control the stick oppositely to the usual position; he needs to push it to get an altitude and vice versa. It must be confusing and he has to do it with his body upside-down. The blood must get into his brain and his vision must be limited. All he can see would be the runway just over his head and the confusing instruments panel. Of course I have never flown like this not only because it is prohibited with the Cessna152 or 172 but because I couldn't make the airplane upside-down. If I turned the yoke as much as possible, the airplane would only get into a spiral dive losing the lift. Only highly trained pilot with a high performance acrobat airplane can fly like this.

Love in the sky

I went to see Abbotsford International Airshow with my friends. It was the first visit after I got the private pilot license, and I could guess what high level skills are required in the acrobatic flights. Different from Cessna 152 or 172, most airplanes had much greater power and demonstrated unbelievable maneuvers such as hammer head turn, snap'n'roll and so on. The bombing by F16 and the slow flight by F17 were impressive. The last of the flight event was the formation flight by Snowbirds. Nine airplanes attracted the audience showing a lot of beautiful formation flights including this "love in the sky." It seems quite simple but I can guess how it's difficult to draw a perfectly shaped heart in the sky. There were quite a few families with little boys and girls, and some of them would become the future pilots.

A helicopter ride

On this day, I was going to fly in a helicopter piloted by my friend. I invited my friend from Redmond, but when she arrived at my apartment, the weather was not good enough to fly the helicopter. We drove around Vancouver waiting for the weather improvement, from White Cliff Park, Horseshoe Bay, North Vancouver, and Steveston. We had several meals on the way and I was almost full. In the late afternoon, we visited Helijet almost giving up the helicopter ride. Although the weather had been improving, the time was too late and my friend told me we couldn't fly on the day. We completely gave up and visited another friend in Downtown, but an hour later after we came back to Downtown, I had a phone call from the pilot who told that we could ride on the helicopter if we could reach the airport in thirty minutes. It was almost the rush hour time, we hurried to the airport and we could catch the helicopter. It was a 10-minute flight from Vancouver International to Vancouver Harbor. The flight was great, but we had to walk back to my apartment to pick up my car and drove back to Vancouver International to get back my friend's car. It's really a great deal to ride on a helicopter!

Maintenance

At the east apron of our airport, we can see a lot of filthy airplanes which seem to have left for years without flying. Some of them are even filthier than my boat. Different from boats, airplanes are regulated by law in details; how often each part of the airplanes should be checked or exchanged in what kind of ways by what kind of people. I have forgotten most of the rules seven months after my flight test, but I remember well that the rules were absolutely strict and detailed. If I could find one of the littered airplanes' owner and talk to him, I might be able to get it for a super reasonable price, but the maintenance fee should be high. Owing an airplane is a great thing even in Canada.

Still alive!

Today I flew to Hastings Field on North Pender Island just north of Victoria with my instructor. It was only a one hour round-trip flight from Boundary Bay. I heard that the airstrip was very tricky to land on because it is a one-way, grass field with a steep slope. "One-way" here means that we couldn't turn around if we failed on the approach because the strip is surrounded by steep valleys. It was so tricky that my instructor took the controls and, uh, what should I say, he failed; his approach was too high, and he overshot the one-way runway. The airspeed was below stalling speed, and I was so nervous that I took off my sunglasses and fastened my seat belt in case of a crash. It was quite natural that I couldn't take a good picture of the final approach. Fortunately, he succeeded in escaping from the valley and was able to land on the second attempt. It was anyway the most exciting experience during the last five years of my life.

Delta Heritage Air Park

It was the first flight in the last five weeks, and it was more than one year ago that I flew Cessna 172 which is bigger and more powerful than the usual 152. I went to Delta Heritage Air Park with my instructor and one Japanese passenger to practice real soft field landings. The air park has a well maintained grass runway and I did three real landings there. Although the soft field landing is one of the flight test subjects, we usually pull over on the final approach at more than 500 feet and we don't actually land on a soft field in flight tests. However this time, I practiced the real soft field landing because we need to do it in the mountain check ride. After one over-shooting, I finally landed on the grass runway which was quite different from paved runways. What I felt most was that taking off from soft field is more dangerous than landing on it. Because of the heavy drag of the soft field, the airplane wouldn't easily get enough airspeed for take-off.

A new license

Today I received a new license card from Transport Canada. The bottom one in the picture is my old license, and the top is the new one. The difference between them looks very slight, but it's rather big for me. The characters of "NIGHT" or "NUIT" in French means I can legally fly at night. I don't think I can fly anywhere at night yet, I want to expand my flyable area gradually. I feel happy when I get new skills and they are authorized like this. I wonder what is my next license after driving, sailing, diving and flying.

ARCAL

ARCAL (Aircraft Radio Control of Aerodrome Lighting) is one of the most interesting airport systems. At most airports except for large international airports, the lights are turned off after the tower is closed. It is off course waste of money and energy to keep the airport lights on over the night, but how do we land on the dark airport at night after the tower is closed?  It's very scary and actually illegal to land on a runway without lights. ARCAL is prepared for such pilots. It's easy to use; just click the microphone button five or seven times within five minutes, then the airport lights are turned on just like the lights in your room. I used ARCAL several times during my night flight lesson. It's interesting to see the illuminated runway coming up from darkness. Anyway, one ARCAL is expired within 15 minutes and the lights are supposed to be turned off automatically. When I was flying night circuits alone and I was just right on final approach, the lights got suddenly expired and I had to click the microphone seven times just before landing over the dark runway. It was scary but the landing at that time was one of my best landings without a creaking noise. I don't know what this means.