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The weather was perfect today, so I took full advantage by going flying. I cleared a couple of inches of snow from in front of the hangar while the engine was preheated with warm air blown up from the cowling exit.
The temperature was -13 deg C (+9 deg F), and clear skies - pretty typical for an Ottawa winter day. The cold air really makes the aircraft perform well. I flew over to Ottawa for several practice instrument approaches. It was quite quiet at the airport, with very little traffic, so they let me fly ILS RWY 32, RNAV RWY 25 and ILS RWY 07 approaches. After that I did some aerobatics and then called it a day.Happy New Year to all!

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We had another big snow storm on Thursday - 19 cm (7.5“) at the Ottawa Airport. There’s now 24” of snow on the patio table in the back yard. I headed out to Smiths Falls this morning to clear the snow from in front of the hangar. I didn’t expect to get flying today, but you’ve got to keep on top of the snow if you want to keep the option open to fly later in the winter.

The storm had passed south of Ottawa, and I knew that the snow was worse to the south. As I feared, there had been quite a bit more snow in Smiths Falls than in Ottawa. I had to slog through knee deep snow to get to the hangar, and there was a four ft high drift at the corner of the hangar which I had to blast through with the snow blower. I’m sure glad I didn’t have to do this with a shovel!

The flying club snow crew were busy, but they clearly had many hours of work to go before the airfield would be open. The wind was straight across the runway, and was forecast to gust up to 25 kt this afternoon. Strong crosswind, slippery runway, and taildragger are not a good combination, so I didn’t bother hanging around after I had cleared the snow from in front of the hangar. The long range weather forecast suggests good weather later in the week, so I’m hoping to get airborne then.


Given the amount of snow we’ve had so far this winter, it is a good thing the flying club purchased this used Sicard Snowmaster blower in the fall. The previous, much older, Sicard blower had become a maintenance nightmare. This newer one seems to be a winner so far.

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We had the first big snow storm of the season on Friday & Saturday. The Environment Canada climate data from the Ottawa airport shows 46 cm (18 inches) of snow from the storm, based on the change in the reported “snow on ground”. My best guess from our back yard is 15".

This back yard shot was taken early Friday morning. We got at several inches more snow afterwards.

Front yard shot, mid day on Friday. After taking this shot Terry and I spent an hour knocking the heavy snow off the branches of all our evergreen trees, to minimize the damage. It was a good thing we did that, as several neighbours have trees with broken branches, but I think ours came through pretty much unscathed.

The slow moving storm had finally passed through by Monday, so I went to the airport to clear the snow from the hangar to the taxiway, and hopefully go flying. I was very happy to see that Smiths Falls had received less than half as much snow as Ottawa. And I was even happier to see that Ron T., the hangar owner, had cleared the snow the day before. I had to clear off what had blown in overnight, but it was a much smaller job than I had expected.

The Smiths Falls Flying Club snow clearing crew were busy getting the airport cleaned off, so I had to wait until mid afternoon before I could go flying.

I did an hour of engine break-in, and used some of that time to study how the Garmin GNS–430W handled holding patterns that weren’t direct entry. I flew the NDB RWY 22 approach at Brockville, followed by the missed approach holding pattern.

The GNS–430 provided roll steering commands to the autopilot for a nice parallel hold entry. It also provided a useful dotted line depiction of its planned ground track for the holding pattern entry.

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I had booked a half day off this afternoon to do some Christmas shopping. But, the weather was so nice that I decided to go flying instead. This time of year you never know when the next good weather is coming, so you don’t want to miss a chance.

I got a 1.3 hr flight in. The engine is working well. I set up the maximum and minimum airspeed protections on the autopilot, as they had gotten reset during the software upgrade. After resetting them I confirmed both protections were working as expected. I also did an autopilot coupled RNAV approach, including a missed approach to the missed approach holding pattern. I don’t know when Garmin added a missed approach holding pattern to the database, but it’s there now, and the autopilot does a perfect job of flying it.

When I arrived at the airport I noted a rare aircraft on the ramp - a Max Holste MH–1521 Broussard. The MH–1521 is a French design, roughly comparable to the DeHavilland Canada Beaver. I saw several of them when I was in France for a year in the 1980s, but I didn’t realize that there were any in Canada. It turns out that there are two registered in Canada. This one had been sold and was on a ferry flight, being delivered to its new owner when the engine oil pressure started to fall. The pilot wisely diverted to Smiths Falls. He was not looking forward to calling the new owner to inform him of the problem. The poor owner had never even seen the aircraft yet.

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I’ve been anxious to get the RV–8 flying again for over two weeks now, but on the the only good weather days were always during the week, and I had major conflicts on each of those days. But yesterday, everything finally came together - the weather was quite good, and I was able to juggle my work schedule so I could take some time off.

It was fairly cool, about –10 deg C (14 deg F), so I preheated the engine for a long time to avoid the need for a long ground run. The engine behaved perfectly during the hour long flight. I spent most of the time at 75% power, testing the autopilot. While the aircraft was down I had sent the Trio Pro Pilot autopilot in for a software upgrade, as Trio had told me that they had improved the altitude hold performance in turns, which was my one major performance complaint. Before, it would lose up to 200 ft during turns with more than 15 deg of bank. Now, you can see the autopilot start to react by raising the nose as soon as the altitude starts to decrease, and it does a much better job of holding altitude. Most turns it kept the altitude within 50 ft of the original altitude.

I discovered a problem with my round dial, analog altimeter. We’re in the midst of a high pressure area, and I had to increase the altimeter setting to about 30.20 to get the altimeters to read field elevation. The altimeter setting knob became much harder to rotate as I tried to increase it through 30.00, and the knob unscrewed from the shaft (it is secured with a jam nut). Something is going on inside the altimeter, and I’ll need to get it sorted out before I fly IFR again.

I finished the flight with two touch and go landings, and a full stop.

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I had hoped against all odds to get another flight off this weekend, but the weather was fairly terrible both days. Low ceilings, or risk of freezing rain, or strong crosswinds - take your pick. There were some sutiable days during the work week, but I couldn’t get away. Oh well. Maybe next weekend.