Cross country to Brockville

The weather has been beautiful all weekend and luckily I had a plane booked so I really got to enjoy it yesterday.

I asked JK and Steve if they wanted to join me for a flight to Brockville and back. They both said yes, and Steve even brought his GPS receiver with him.

The planned route down was Ottawa (CYOW) to Smiths Falls (CYSH) to Brockville (CNL3). Then on the way back the route was Brockville (CNL3) to Morrisburg (CNS8) to Ottawa (CYOW). I had the plane booked for three hours so we had lots of time.

Here is the actual route we flew (in yellow) that Steve recorded with his GPS receiver:

Originally I had booked CVO for the flight, but it was taken off line about a week earlier so I was re-booked on PMR. Friday night I was checking out the booking page and I noticed that CVO was back online so I switched my bookings back to it cause it’s a much nicer plane and it’s got a bigger engine.

After doing a favour for Brad (soaking one of his students) we got underway. I was hoping to use the GPS unit in CVO so we could compare it against what Steve’s unit was telling us but as usual, I couldn’t get it figured out and I had other things to keep me busy so…

I flew my planned route with some input from Steve’s GPS receiver (the odd “a bit left or a bit right” from Steve) and it did a damn good job of getting us where we were going.

Our first ‘stop’ (it was actually a touch and go) was Smiths Falls. Here is the circuit I flew there:

Trev and Julie met us at the Brockville airport (even though we were quite late) and we all jumped into Julie’s car and ran to a convenience store to get a snack. Then they drove us back to the airport and watched us take off.

Here is the circuit I flew into and out of Brockville. As you can probably see, one of the trackpoints was a bit off. I didn’t actually fly like that.

Our last stop (another touch and go) was in Morrisburg. We flew along the St. Lawrence until we got there. I had to cross over the field at 500′ above circuit height, then descend to circuit height and cross back over to join a mid left downwind for runway 25. The resultant track that Steve’s receiver recorded is pretty cool:

After that it was back towards Ottawa to finish the trip. Oh yeah, about 15 miles outside of Ottawa I figured out how to use the GPS unit in the plane.

All in all, not too bad. I was rusty since I haden’t flown in a month. As you can see from the pictures I’ve posted, my circuits weren’t quite ‘square’ so I could definitely work on that. My landings weren’t stellar, but they weren’t crap either so… It was fun though, and I think the boys had fun too so I’d call it a successful trip.

P.S. I’m definitely getting a GPS receiver soon. Just need to figure out which one. I liked Steve’s, but I don’t like the fact that it has a serial connection to the PC (rather than USB). I also need to find one that has Mac compatible software.