Special Thunderstorms

A probably not so recent anymore AIM update identified two changes in the publication for which I wanted to look up the details.

The following airports have been identified for SPECI criteria for significant temperature changes between hourly reports: about half of Canadian airports

It then lists almost half of Canadian airports, the biggest ones. Normally an aerodrome observation, called a METAR is published once an hour, but if one of a number of specific significant changes occur, like precipitation starts or ends, or the ceiling or visibility changes past a specific limitation, they issue a special update observation called a SPECI. It's pretty clear from the descriptions that they are aimed at given a pilot the best chance of making the right decision about whether or not she can land there with her equipment and training.

It doesn't say why they have added temperature to the criteria. Temperature in and of itself doesn't offer the same impediment to landing as fog, hail, or thunderstorms, but a sudden change in temperature indicates the passage of a front, which could mean an abrupt change in weather, or sometimes freezing rain.

The second change is to Met 3.13 and I was curious when I looked at it what they had changed.

(a) active thunderstorms–the cumulonimbus (CB) symbol is used when thunderstorms occur, or are forecast to occur, over a widespread area, along a line, embedded in other cloud layers, or when concealed by a hazard. The amounts and the spatial coverage (in brackets) are indicated as:

ISOLD (isolated) – for individual CBs (less than 25%)
OCNL (occasional) – for well­separated CBs (25 – 50% inclusive)
NMRS (numerous) – for CBs with little or no separation (greater than 50%)

It looked the same as I remembered. As an instructor I used to teach students to match ISOLD to FEW (1-2 octas), OCNL to SCT (3-4 octas) and NMRS to BKN (>4 octas), where an octa, or maybe it's an okta--damn you really forget this stuff when you're not lecturing someone on it every day--is a one-eighth proportion of the sky. I houled out an older paper copy of the AIM and looked up what it used to be, and the old version omits the bits that are in parentheses in the lines quoted above. I wonder how I knew it, then. I guess it was in the old, old version, the AIP and somehow didn't get added to the new AIM until recently.

That's exactly how lore is created, but someone added it back in, so now it's information again. I love lore. Especially when it's incorrect but it can be traced back to a loopily logical origin.

Morse Code, Part II

This is continued from a previous post on how I remember the signals for various letters in Morse code. So far we've done V B U D E T A N S H I and O. Here's the rest of the alphabet.

More Dashes

From the previous post on the topic, one dash is T, like the top of a capital T. Follow on from this to remember that two dashes is M, like serifs on the tops of an M. Okay no one draws an M that way, but you can imagine it. I have three more letters that I think of as dash-based, even though they aren't entirely made of dashes.

There's W which is a dot and two dashes: . _ _

You could think of that as E followed by M and concoct a story about the M saying "eee" because it was upside-down, turning it into a W, but I just hear it as "da WHIS KEY" like in the song, "Coulda been the whiskey, coulda been the gin ..."

Opposite to W is G: two dashes then a dot. If your name begins with G you can think of it as ME, but for non G-named folk it's "GO GO g!" Hey, I didn't say these were going to be really good ways to remember the letters.

My last dashy letter is J, a dot followed by three dashes (. _ _ _ ). It's the only letter that has three dashes and something else besides, and its the longest Morse letter. It was in the identifier of an airport that took a long time to get to while I was training. If the letter goes on for a long time and you can't remember what it is, maybe it's a J. Or maybe it's a number. I'll have to do those later.

Palindromes are Branchy

The letters with Morse the same backwards as forwards are the branchy letters. I continue to have weird ways of equating the dashes and dots with the shapes of the letters. K is a dash, a dot and a dash _._ and I just discovered that I can't put it in parentheses or it looks like an ASCII butt. That in itself is possibly more memorable than anything I can say next, but before I knew that, I thought of the dot as the upright of the K and the two dashes as the "branches" going off in different directions. X is like K but more so, with its branches going off in all directions, so it gets two dots in the middle. Imagine it an X-wing fighter _.._ if you like.

X and K ones have the dashes on the outside, but the curvy letters P and R have the dots on the outside. There's R ._. and then P ._ _. which is annoying, because the P ought to have one less dash than the R, to represent the fact that it is exactly like an R, except missing the little downwards branch. I've always had trouble with P.

Rhythm

Obviously you have to learn all the letters by rhythm eventually if you want to be any good at this, but some of them I know only by rhythm, because they say their own names, or something I can easily associate with them.

C _._. CHARlie CHARlie
F .._. Happy BirFday (you have to say it with a lisp)
Q _ _ . _ God save da Queen (I don't know if that works for non-commonwealth people)
Y _ . _ _ becomes instantly familiar to Canadian students, as it begins the identifier on almost every nav aid colocated with an airport, so you can't not recognize it. The few that don't begin with Z, and there's even a RUSH song commemorating YYZ, the main airport serving the Greater Toronto Metropolitan Area, that has the rhythm of YYZ in Morse, giving you also
Z _ _ ..

That leaves only L. I can never remember L. If I don't know what it is, it's L. . _ .. I try to say it as "a LOLlipop" but that's not working for me.

Later I'll do numbers. At first I thought, "ah, I don't need numbers and they look hard" but some nav aids do have numbers in their identifiers, and they are actually super easy.

Morse Code, Part I

One of Amelia Earhart's weaknesses was that she did not know Morse Code, and it seems that information wasn't communicated to the ships that were providing weather and guidance for her during her final flight. I don't know Morse Code well enough to send and receive sentences, and I discovered that I can't read visual flashes at all, but I can understand all the numbers and letters at the slow speed broadcast by nav aid identifiers.

I was triggered to learn by a ground school instructor who related what he thought was an amazing story about a student who didn't have to look at the dots and dashes provided on the charts while he was identifying the nav aid, because the student had "memorized Morse Code." I knew that memorizing Morse Code was not an amazing feat, and it sounded like a way I could get an advantage in the air. I knew already that if you can spend thirty minutes on the ground to save one minute in the air, you should do it. And you can probably learn Morse Code well enough to understand nav aid identifiers in about thirty minutes. It is not that hard. This post and the next couple are my hints for achieving that skill.

First thing is, and this doesn't count in your thirty minutes, because you'd have to learn it regardless and you probably know it already, is the idea of "dots and dashes." Morse code is produced by pulsing a signal. It doesn't have to be a wire or radio transmission or use a special device. It works with any signal. It could be light, sound, touch, arranged objects. The only requirement is that it is possible to differentiate two sorts of signal. The way to do that is usually long versus short, which is why this suggestion wouldn't work, even if the guns had been operational. Although it's a space ship, so maybe they could have pulsable laser guns.

Each letter in Morse code is between one and four pulses long, in some combination of short and/or long pulses. In transcribing a message, the short pulses are written as dots and the long ones as dashes. The short pulses are also called dits and the long ones dahs. If, like me, you learn by memorizing what things look like, you can picture each letter as its corresponding sequence of dots and dashes. They're just some associations that I use when I forget which letter is which. My suggestions here are not predicated on visual learning, though. There are also a stunning number of mnemonics on Wikipedia's page on the subject.

Morse Code You Probably Know Already: O S V

It's classic rock, but if you've heard The Police "Message in a Bottle" just once, you've heard about sending out an SOS about thirty times, so you should know what that is. The official Morse code distress call is an S, O, and S sent out with no spaces between. That's three short, three long, and three short signals. The triangle is the official shape of distress, and three is its number. All you have to do is remember that S is the three dots (...) and O the three dashes (---). O is fatter, while S is skinny, so S can is the fast three and O the slow ones.

The other letter you already know is V (...-), instantly recognizable in the "da da da dum!" of Beethoven's fifth symphony. The symphony has even been used as a code signifying victory, for that reason. You can learn three more letters in relation to V.

Letters Related to V: U B D

This is just me, so maybe this doesn't work for you, but here goes. You already know V (...-). The written letter U is just like V except without the point. The Morse U (..-) is just like V with one fewer point, too. In Spanish B and V are extremely similar sounds, so I have no problem remembering that B (-...) is V reversed. And a capital D is shaped like a capital B except with one fewer thingy. Thus we get D (-..), one fewer thingy.

The Commonest Letters: E T A

If you've ever played with word games or cryptography, you know that the most common letters in English are E, T and A, in that order. Samuel Morse must have known it too, because he made them the simplest codes. E (.) is a single dot, the commonest letter and the fastest to send. A lower case e is a bit like a single dot, too. If the font is small enough: e e e . Meanwhile, T (-) is a single dash. Like the one on top of a capital T. If you put E and T together you have A (.-). But that's not how I remember A.

The A-N Beacon: A N

One of my favourite pieces of navigation history is the four course radio range, or the A-N beacon. Its operation is dependent on the fact that A (.-) and N (-.) have opposite signals. And that's how I like to remember A and N.

Hi Dots: H I

We know one dot is E and three dots is S, which leaves two dots for I (..) -- eyes are after all two dots in the front of your face -- and four dots for H (....). I think Morse code enthusiasts probably have a special Q-code for greeting one another, but if they wanted to say "hi" it would be an easy six dots.

That's enough for today. The next part of this post isn't finished yet, so there might be a few posts in between.

AviWAITion

This post got lost. I've been trying to slip it in where it wouldn't look out of place, so it's been floating around with my scheduled posts. I'm just going to jam it in here, out-of-place and out-of-season. You can say it's jet-lagged. Tomorrow the Cambodia saga will start.

I'm in Moose Jaw, where the nice engineer and his apprentices are replacing the left engine turbo wastegate, and there's a part that has to come by FedEx, so I have a day of waiting. Fortunately I'm good at that. I just pretend that every place I'm in is somewhere I have come on purpose for a holiday. I've been to Moose Jaw before, so I've already seen the historical re-enactment in the underground tunnels and admired the almost movie-set ready historical main street, and the murals. But I wouldn't mind going back to the park, and maybe I'll go swimming in the mineral springs again.

One time I was here, my work partner was a casino gambler and an expert wheeler dealer who wrangled rooms in the Mineral Spa Resort & Casino at the same price as the hotel chain we normally stay in. Seeing as it's a holiday weekend, and I'm a negotiation pussycat, that didn't happen this time, but I can still pay the admission fee and go 'take in the waters.' I'm actually more in a swimming mood than a soaking mood, and the public pool feeds off the same mineral springs, so I head there. It's next to the park, anyway.

As I walk across the Boston Pizza parking lot (there's either a Boston Pizza or a Tim Horton's in every hotel parking lot in Western Canada), I spot something shiny on the pavement. When I'm airside, my FOD detection circuits compel me to pick any metal objects off the ramp in order to prevent them from being ingested by aircraft engines or taking chunks out of people's propellers. I pick up this one too. It's a brass shell casing ... ah no, it's an unused small calibre bullet. It probably rolled out of someone's truck or came out of their pocket as they got out of the truck. But now what do I do with it. I feel a responsibility not to chuck it back on the ground where kids might play with it. I don't want to put it in the garbage where it might be incinerated. And my normal approach of letting weird pieces of metal rattle around the bottom of my pocket or suitcase until they end up in the jar next to my washing machine isn't going to cut it with airport security. Plus hey, unexploded ordnance.

I wander down Main Street (isn't this sweet: it's actually called Main Street, not 50th Avenue) past an object in the grass by the railroad tracks that was there yesterday and that I'm 95% sure is a dead cat, but I'm not going to go closer and confirm. See I'm smart enough not to take on responsibility for ALL the awkward to dispose of objects on the streets of Moose Jaw. While I'm walking I make up a sentence that describes the town. The moose sat on real caribou hides and stood on fake hyena rugs. I'll leave it to you to figure out why, apart from the moose reference, it is useful and appropriate.

I have lunch in a little Thai restaurant and read a tourist brochure, which mentions a local business with the address "420 High Street." No prizes for guessing what kind of business it is. That's a few blocks away, and perhaps they sell hemp paper postcards along with their other wares. I walk down that way, but although their sign says they open at eleven, they're still closed at two. Typical stoners. I instead buy a postcard at, of all places, a windshield repair shop. They are a general everything glass shop, including figurines and other glass art, so they have arty cards.

On the way east towards the park there's a police car parked with its lights flashing, but no car pulled over near it. The officer is sitting inside doing paperwork. I come up to the window and he looks up suspiciously to ask what I want. For a moment I wonder how stupid this is going to sound, but I don't have to say any more than "I found a bullet ..." before he becomes friendly and says he'll take care of it for me. Done with less hassle than I was anticipating.

The park is not huge, but it's well laid out with hills and different levels and a river with happy ducks floating on it. It's good for people watching, and it's culturally acceptable to strike up conversations with strangers in front of ducks. You can also talk to strangers in used bookstores (but not new ones) and in health food stores, and in the line-up at a regular grocery store. You can talk to strangers on the street, too, but you have to be careful to pick someone of approximately matching age and apparent economic status. Real life is not like a social MMORPG where you can talk to anyone who crosses your path without alarming them.

The public pool is next to the park, and it's a hundred year old building with the word NATATORIUM graven in its stone façade. It's also closed with some scaffolding up and workers in hardhats. I can see that the outdoor pool is still empty. Just as well. Meanwhile I have received a text that they may have the airplane ready for me this afternoon, so I probably shouldn't be in a swimming pool. I wander up to the museum, which is in the park, but as I go down the stairs into the exhibit hall I lose cellphone signal, so that's off limits, too. Cellphones give you a limited sort of freedom when you're on call.

Walking up a back street towards the hotel, I pass an old funeral home. It's a current funeral home, too, but I see its history in the fact that the doors to the garage for the hearses are clearly carriage house doors. I'm sure hearses pulled by black horses came through them for years before they invested in a motor hearse. Also, and perhaps it's just the power of suggestion, but the adjacent "funeral parking only" lot doesn't have aisles and stalls like a conventional parking lot, but instead just aisles, running lengthwise down the lot, so the cars must park in nose to tail columns, as if they were waiting for a ferry or stopped in a California freeway traffic jam. I picture that being exactly the way you would park a large number of horses-drawn buggies. The lot is paved and there are no hitching posts, but I can imagine the parking routine staying unchanged for a hundred years.

The Europeans must be laughing at me, sitting in cafés that have been in the same place for three hundred years, but in western Canada things are so new that hundred year old stuff is of historical note.

I see a gopher poking out of a hole and try to take a picture, but it runs back down the hole, at which point a different gopher pokes out of a further off hole. I dart back and forth with my camera in a giant game of live whack-a-mole until one of the gophers takes pity and lets me snap a shot.

After all that, the airplane isn't ready before the shop quitting time, so I go back to the hotel and read my e-mail and other things on the Internet. There's an update from John, the person who got me into the KC-130 sim. He describes an interesting problem at a simulator facility in Texas: On two airfields you landed below the runway, on the third you landed about 30 feet up then ran into an invisible wall. Both problems were "mostly fixed."

Aviation Abbreviations

I try to make each blog entry understandable in itself, even to people who aren't familiar with aviation abbreviations, but some unexplained jargon creeps in. Sometimes I think that I've explained something recently enough, or I'm in a hurry, or I forget altogether that something is an abbreviation. These things become words unto themselves after a while.

Some of the expanded abbreviations don't match the letters in the abbreviation. That's just the way life is. If I haven't expanded a particular abbreviation in the list below then either it doesn't stand for anything worth expanding, or I forget what it stands for. Definitions given are not official, complete or completely accurate, just enough to allow you to understand them in context. Some of the terms only apply in Canada and/or may mean different things in other countries. If there's no pronunciation, either I forgot to put one or I only use the abbreviation in writing and don't say it out loud.

See (or add to) the comments for variation in usage or pronunciation and pedantic expansions on the definitions.

A&P (eh 'n' pee) - American equivalent of AME

ADF (eh-dee-eff) - Automatic Direction Finder - cockpit navigation instrument that uses ground-based radio beacons. It can also be used to listen to AM radio.

AME (eh-em-ee) - person certified to supervise and sign for repairs and modifications done to aircraft

AMO (eh-em-oh) - licenced airplane repair shop

ATIS (eh-tiss) - a recorded message broadcast at some airports describing the weather conditions and the runway in use

CAME - Civil Aviation Medical Examiner - a doctor who is licenced to certify pilots fit or unfit for duty

CARs (cars) - Canadian Aviation Regulations - the rules of the air for Canadian pilots

CFS (see-eff-ess) - book listing facilities (runway, frequencies, services) information for Canadian aerodromes

ETA (ee-tee-eh) - Estimated Time of Arrival - when I think I will get there

ETE (ee-tee-ee) - Estimated Time Enroute - how much longer I think it will take to get there

FA (eff-eh) - Flight Attendant - a person other than a pilot who is responsible for passenger safety during a flight

FAF (faff) - Final Approach Fix - a point lined up with the runway a few miles back

FBO (eff-bee-oh) - Fixed Base Operator - an airplane service station at an airport

FO (eff-oh) - First Officer - a pilot who is second-in-command of an aircraft

FSS (eff-ess-ess) - 1. Flight Service Station 2. Flight Service Specialist - Source of aviation information such as weather

GFA (gee-eff-eh) - Graphical Area Forecast- A regional forecast in the form of a weather map

GPS (gee-pee-ess) - Global Positioning System - Usually refers to the GPS receiver, an instrument that provides navigation information

GPU (gee-pee-you) - Ground Power Unit - A cart with its own power that can be connected to an airplane on the ground to provide power to electrical systems or an extra boost for starting engines

IFR (eye-eff-are) - Instrument Flight Rules - 1. flying with reference to instruments alone, 2. IMC 3. capable (pilot, aircraft, etc) of #1

IMC (eye-em-see) - Instrument Meteorological Conditions - weather that requires IFR #1

LNAV (el-nav) - Lateral Navigation - A type of GPS approach

MDA (em-dee-eh) - Minimum Descent Altitude - Lowest altitude a pilot may legally descend to before seeing the runway

METAR (may-tar or meh-tar) - an hourly report on weather at an aerodrome

NDB (en-dee-bee) - Non-Directional Beacon - ground-based navigational beacon. Occasionally misused to mean ADF

NOTAM (no-tam or no-t'm) - an advisory of a change in procedure or a non-weather hazard to aviation

PIC (pee-eye-see) - Pilot in Command - 1. the crewmember on an airplane who has ultimate responsibility for the flight, regardless of who is actually manipulating the controls 2. time logged by a pilot while acting in that capacity

PPC (pee-pee-see) - Pilot Proficiency Check - 1. A recurring flight test to establish and maintain commercial qualifications on a particular type of airplane 2. the qualification thereby obtained 3. (verb) to arrange and pay for such qualifications

PRM (pee-are-em) - Person Responsible for Maintenance - the company official who is legally liable if the aircraft is not properly maintained

RNAV (are-nav) - navigation not dependent on ground facilities, nowadays usually GPS

TAC (tack) - Terminal Aerodrome Chart - a 1:25,000 chart for VFR navigation in the United States near a major aerodrome

TAF (taff) - a forecast for weather in the immediate area of an aerodrome over the next 12 to 36 hours

TC - Transport Canada - the regulatory authority that governs aviation in Canada

TSB - Transportation Safety Bureau - the Canadian body that investigates aviation accidents and makes safety recommendations

TT - Total Time - the total number of hours logged by a pilot in all aircraft

UTC (you-tee-see) - Coordinated Universal Time - a time that is the same all over the world, regardless of time zone or Daylight Savings status

VFR (vee-eff-are) - Visual Flight Rules - 1. flying by looking out the window, 2. weather that allows #1, 3. only capable (pilot, aircraft, airport, etc.) of #1 (as opposed to IFR)

VMC (vee-em-see) - Visual Meteorological Conditions - Weather that allows VFR #1

VNC (vee-en-see) - 1:50,000 scale VFR Canadian aviation navigation chart

VOR (vee-oh-are) - 1. a type of navigational beacon 2. aircraft navigational instrument that receives its information from 1

VTA (vee-tee-eh) - 1:25,000 scale VFR navigation chart for Canada

YQT (why-queue-tee) - if it's three letters and starts with Y or Z it's probably a Canadian airport identifier. It doesn't stand for anything, just represents that airport, which usually I will have already named before using this form. YQT is Thunder Bay. These aren't usually spoken in conversation unless the name of the airport is longer or harder to pronounce than the identifier.

Z or Zulu (pronounced "zoo-loo" in either form) - UTC

I'll update this as I use more abbreviations. If any explanations are missing, wrong or unclear, please leave a comment on this blog entry, and I'll add, fix or explain it. Unless you're just being pedantic, in which case I'll leave your comment for people who like that sort of thing.

If the jargon you don't understand isn't an abbreviation, try this Aviation Dictionary website.

That's the Way to Make a Living

I might be at dinner with company clients and be asked something like, "Can you start at four-thirty tomorrow morning?" I have to quickly do duty time math and determine if that will be legal, considering that I need eight hours sleep.

It's not incredibly difficult to think, "four and a half minus eight is negative three and a half, plus twenty four is twenty and a half, so that's 20:30," and thus determine that I have to be in bed by 20:30. But remember that I was probably up at four the morning before the evening on which I was asked to make the calculations. And whenever you have to do calculations through midnight it's easy to make mistakes. But thanks to Dolly Parton & Co., there's an easier way.

The theme song "Working Nine to Five" describes an eight hour work day, but for me it provides the perfect guideline for the eight hours I need to sleep. I just say it to myself in my head as "Sleeping Nine to Five..." and then adjust each end by an hour or so to match what the client is asking for. In this case four thirty requires me to get up at four, an hour before five, so I have to be in bed an hour before nine, or eight p.m. I can smile sweetly at the client and say, "Certainly, as long as we're done here in time get me back to the hotel for seven thirty."

Those of you who have philosophical objections to reporting for work at four thirty in the morning may prefer to remain at your nine to five jobs.

Bits of Paper

I mentioned going over aircraft documents before flight in the new-to-me airplane. I want to say more about that. There are a number of documents that must be on board in order to fly. It's part of preparation for flight. Canadians often remember these with an acronym mnemonic like ARROWILL (there are lots of variations).

C of A: Certificate of Airworthiness. This is a bit of paper about 8" by 5" that usually dates back to the manufacture of the airplane or its importation into Canada. It certifies that if everything else is done right (maintenance, loading, operating specification, annual airworthiness reports) that the airplane is considered airworthy in Canada. I expect to see an original document, but have flown before with a certified fax.

C of R: Certificate of Registration. This bit of paper shows who operates the aircraft and for what purpose (i.e. commercial or private use) it is registered. It is usually a multi part form, so that when you sell the airplane or move, you fill out parts of the form to send in and keep other parts to use as a temporary C of R while the changes are being processed. I've flown airplanes where the C of R on board was an official fax or letter from Transport Canada acting as an effective temporary C of R. This is common with short term leases, and I've caught one of these a week before it expired, giving my company time to get on it and get me a new one.

Radio Licence: Because I make radio transmissions from the airplane, in Canada I meet the legal definition of a radio station. I carry a Restricted Radio Operator Certificate, restricted to aviation, that is. I can't go running an AM talk show in my spare time with it. Once upon a time the airplane itself required a radio station licence, but those are no longer required for flight in Canada or the U.S. The government body responsible recognized one day that airplanes were regulated up the wazoo already, and that it there was no utility in giving them a bit of paper regarding it. If I had a mission to fly in St. Pierre (a French possession off the coast of Canada) or Mexico, or further south, I might need to apply to Industry Canada for a radio station licence for my airplane. I'd have to look into those countries' regulations.

POH: Pilot's Operating Handbook, i.e. owner's manual. There has to be paperwork on board telling me how to operate all the systems and installed equipment. When the new fuel tanks were installed, a supplement was added to my manual. No one ever dares remove anything from a POH, so when you're dealing with an old airplane you may have to go through four different autopilot supplements until you finally find the one that is currently installed in your airplane--and placarded inoperative. You've seen me mention from time to time that I pull out the POH to check something. That's why it's there. I trust my knowledge, but I verify with the manual. So for obvious reasons it has to be the correct manual. If your airplane is so old that there never was a manual, it can pass a ramp check with a handwritten list of speeds and a letter from an aircraft association. I've seen it done. I've also ferried an airplane where the POH was about six mimeographed sheets, and most of it was with respect to systems that were no longer installed. I remember I determined the approach speed by noting what speed it took off at and multiplying by one and a third. I love it when book learning is useful in the real world.

Weight & Balance: This isn't the form I fill out before every flight to show that the aircraft is not over weight or out of C of G. Not all operators are legally required to do that before every flight, only to ensure the airplane is loaded within limits. The W&B form that must be on every flight is one showing the empty weight and C of G and listing the maximum weight. If components are changed on my airplane I always ask if this requires a W&B amendment. I have caught errors in this document before. I remember one where the airplane had been modified to carry more weight, but the W&B didn't match. It's okay to have the W&B faxed, so long as it's legible.

Insurance: Got to have proof of insurance on board. It might have the pilots names on it. It might say "all pilots approved by XYZ company and with N hours experience in complex multi-engine aircraft." I once found one that said (in a Canadian aircraft), "all pilots with an FAA licence." Problem was that I didn't have an FAA licence at the time. It turned out in the end that it was okay to fly because the Canadian airplane was insured with an American company that had defined an "FAA licence" to include a Canadian licence, but I refused to fly the airplane until it had been demonstrated to my satisfaction that I was insured to do so. I think the insurance companies can also define "up" as "down."

Licence: My pilot licence. I have to have mine on board for every flight, along with the medical certificate. The medical used to be called the "licence validation certificate."

Logbook: This is not my pilot logbook, which never needs to be on the airplane, but the airplane's journey logbook. American airplanes don't have these. (It's not the same as the technical logs: Canadians have tech logs in addition to the journey logbook, but a Canadian technical logbook is never allowed to go for a flight in the airplane it pertains to). There's a wrinkle here that allows the journey log to be left behind if there is no intention to land at a different airport. This allows this often bulky document to be left on the ground by aerobatic performers. The journey log is usually a letter-sized bound book with numbered pages. You can buy them in hardcover or softcover versions. (Hint: buy the hardcover. It's not a beach novel. You want it to last). Some companies use custom-printed numbered forms inside some kind of binder, so they have carbon copies for the various departments and crewmembers.

The basic documents for an American airplane are much smaller than the the Canadian ones, about the size of an index card, and I've seen American-manufactured aircraft with a little plastic pouch built into the interior, by the pilot's knee to keep the documents. On Canadian-owned airplanes the pouch is usually half torn off from people trying to keep pens in it. Canadians typically keep the documents in a ring binder or a pouch of some sort. Sometimes they are in an envelope glued in the back of the journey log.

Soon I have a story for you about an oops regarding bits of paper.