QNE/QNH

[Liquid_Charlie]

One of the blatant safety issues in Canada is the wide open spaces and lack of accurate altimeter setting. I for the life of me could never understand why we weren't like Europe and most of the world and be cruising around on flight levels. I use to see it every day guys on different altimeter setting try to work out separation and one stupid dick at +500 in IMC it narrows the margin considerably. Uncontrolled airspace and I ask these guys why are you at +500 in IMC and the common answer was"we don't have IFR fuel" who fucking cares. Some guys lose all perspective and trying to appear legal trumps lives -- WTF

[David MacRay]

I am like a Pharisee with rules but am always amazed at someone who is afraid of breaking rules and willing to risk their life to abide by them.

I was on final into Abbotsford to watch the air show and my brother was having an issue, I thought it might be his ears. I leveled off and forced him to explain what was going on instead of just landing and risking rupturing his ear drum. Even though it was very busy, ATC was actually totally awesome about it when I explained what was going on and why I did what I did.

[Colonel]

Back in the day, nobody gave a shit what ATC said. Those guys taught me to fly.

These days, everyone is terrified of ATC and having a CADORs filed on you is
literally worse than death. Pilots would rather die, than offend the all-powerful
ATC who are the sharp end of TC.

Us old guys are a little puzzled by this irrational fear, which leads to this:



I know he shouldn't have gone flying at all that day with the wind, but ....

I would have told ATC I was taking off into wind. ATC might have filed a
CADORs on me. As a 20th century pilot, I prefer to have an intact aircraft
in the hangar and a cranky letter in my mailbox, than what a 21st Century
pilot would prefer, which is a crashed airplane and the paper intact.

Get a grip, people. It's just fucking paper. The objective of the paper is
ostensibly SAFETY though you would never know that from TC,
who's objective is CONTROL through PUNITIVE POWER AND RETRIBUTION.

I have never crashed an airplane in a lifetime of flying, but I have received
plenty of mail. I am very comfortable with that choice, which I understand
makes me a BAD PERSON.

Next time anyone is talking to TC, can you ask about my laptop and phone?

[David MacRay]

I was waiting for the wind to calm down once in one of the Dakotas. There was a guy telling my brother he should find a new pilot, eventually it was better and off we went.

Even the P-STAR has a question where the answer basically states, if ATC wants you to do something dangerous you should do what you need to stay safe then inform ATC of your intentions as soon as possible.

Pilots somehow forget that.

[David MacRay]

I also meant to ask, when did CADORS become so fashionable?

They seem pretty common. I never got one for what I did back then in Abbotsford. I believe that would result in one now.

[Liquid_Charlie]

You can't have a shit without producing a Cadors and then you have TC bugging you for the reasons why - what a piss poor useless level of policing.

Pilots somehow forget that.

.

This is not to be confused with refusing or accepting a clearance. Also a lot of pilots won't tell ATC what they need, sure in busy airspace restricts this but in quieter spots tell them the altitude you need to stay out of the shit, even in approaches because they are minimum altitudes no maximums and if your aircraft is capable as well as the driver you can stay in the sunshine a lot longer.

I have had a few occasions where I do then advise, one of the most often was WX deviation on HF communications over the water and out of radar. By the time you communicated with ATC through New York Radio it would be too late.

[Liquid_Charlie]

I know he shouldn't have gone flying at all that day with the wind, but ....

I see this guy on You tube and he seems like an out of the box designer for back country. He is a rich extremely well equipped guy, not sure what his back ground is but he seems to taken on this hero persona. I have to question if his stick and rudder skills are surpassed by his technical delvings or is he just one of these types, as the colonel has eluded too, that rules trump everything. His new project with his modified cub I think with dune buggy gear is interesting but nothing to his other one, maybe that much A/C made him a little nervous.

[Colonel]

hero persona

Before this crash, he toured around the country, showing off his incredible
airplane which he flew incredibly well. He was the hottest stick around.

Hell, at my home airport, at an AOPA fly-in before the crash, I watched him
take off after a ridiculously short run and climb out at a 70 degree angle,
again and again. The hottest stick in America, dude. No one was more
skilled at high alpha than he was, or so we were told, and so he demonstrated
at every airport in the country. And that's cool.

But then he wrecks, because the biggest baddest 21st century pilot is
afraid of ATC?

What the fuck is this world coming to?

ATC can make suggestions to me. If I like what they suggest, I will do it,
but if it's a bad idea, I'm not going to do it. ATC are not pilots. They
don't understand the limitations of every different type of aircraft out
there, and I have no fucking idea why 21st Century pilots think that they do.

ATC's job is NOT to bully pilots into crashing and get nasty letters mailed
to you if you don't crash.

ATC's job is to co-ordinate the flow of aircraft, and frankly, I can generally
do that at least as well as they can. For over 25 years I flew at an uncontrolled
airport where we routinely mixed antique NORDO and 400 knot surface jet
aerobatics. Without ATC. Unlike ATC, I understood the limitations of all the
different aircraft because I flew them all.

[Slick Goodlin]

I never got one for what I did back then in Abbotsford.

Do you know that for sure? A great many CADORs are filed such that the private airplane owner/operator is never informed, nor do they need to be. In most cases the ones filed involving privately owned airplanes only ever make it back to the pilot because of some local weenie who reviews the CADOR file daily and wants to get you as upset over everything as they are.

Screw up with a commercially registered plane and the company’s Principal Operations Inspector will be calling your Ops manager or Chief Pilot over it, who will in turn ask you about it.

Some TC inspectors feel differently than I do but the purpose of the whole CADORs system is just data tracking to solve problems. If an airport has say twenty instances a month where a taxi instruction gets screwed they then look for trends. If the same plane does it every time it could be a pilot problem, if it’s a different airplane each time then it’s probably signage or something.

[Colonel]

That's a very kind interpretation. Where I used to live, a CADORs was treated
as evidence of a contravention by the pilot, usually resulting in a licence suspension.

I remember I was ferrying a Pitts back, I think from Waterloo. It had no transponder,
and I have no idea how the owner got it there. Maybe on a trailer. Anyways, you need
a transponder for Waterloo airspace, so I phoned up the Tower - a huge deal to get their
number from NavCan who doesn't want you to talk to ATC under ANY FUCKING CIRCUMSTANCES -
and they said sure, you can depart without a transponder. Just this once. Just the tip.

All I needed to hear. So I get in. Shittiest radio you can imagine. Call up ground, tell
him I wanna taxi for departure and I've cleared the no-transponder departure with tower.
Ground was cool. Runup, over to Tower and remind then, no-transponder departure.
He's cool with that. Off I go.



I think that was it. I was an idiot and stopped for gas in Peterborough, which used to
be a nice airport but has been over-run with (cockroaches) a puppy mill. Don't go there.

Weeks, maybe months later. The airplane is long gone. TC Enforcement calls me up
with a boatload of attitude. Turns out that Waterloo Tower had filed a CADORs for me
taking off without a transponder, and Enforcement wanted to lay a charge against me
for contravening regs.