Canada June - July 2025

Air Canada 861 to Vancouver from Heathrow

I took the Railair Bus to Terminal 2 from Guildford Railway station, it cost £16 (last time it was £10.50p), still better than a taxi fare!

The Air Canada flight attendants on this flight were fantastic, had a sense of humour, and did an excellent job, so it was easy for me to give a positive review when this was asked for. It was highly unusual for Air Canada to be this good on a flight. I was to find out later that this was an exception!

I arrived at Vancouver at 15:15 Pacific Daylight Time and was picked up by Alice... We joined David and Gloria at Blenz Cafe in Steveston.
They had Thai Iced tea... Got to try that! It was awful.

I was of course up and awake at 04:00 the next morning.
Robert had left a key for me to use his apartment downtown on Burnaby Street in Vancouver.
I ate some Cheerios, and then Greek yoghurt upon which I dropped a lump of orange marmalade, tea of course...
Still hungry, I went onto Vancouver's famous Davie Street (LGBTQ) and had bacon, scrambled egg, tomato, toast, butter, jam, and coffee.

It's important to eat when you are facing jet lag.

The next few days I wandered around, met up with friends and two of my brothers.

On Sunday (15th) Alice picked me up and we went to Langley Airport for lunch at Adrian's restaurant.
My sister Catherine also turned up as she lives nearby.
The objective was to drive to Abbotsford and recover Alice's Cessna 172 (180hp) which was parked in the weeds.
It had been leased to a school, and they had not used it, and so it was a money pit for Alice... Better she have it back at Boundary Bay and rent it out to trusted pilots.

I had the honour of flying the aeroplane back to Boundary Bay, and then it was wash while you wait... I washed the aeroplane by David's hangar.

I nice and clean Cessna 172

Victoria 17th June

Daryl hadn't flown for a while, and wished to visit John in Victoria.
I know John from Vancouver, and he has been to our Thursday night Pub night here in England.

We took the Tomahawk across to Victoria and were given a lift over to the Bleue Moon Cafe where they serve
 a lot of British favourite foods. I had broccoli and cheese soup, a ham and salad sandwich and a ginger ale.

We joined downwind right for 13 at Boundary Bay on our return.
Slowed down, and with flaps applied, to fit in with the traffic on the opposite circuit.

Squamish 18th June

I drove up the Sea to Sky Highway to Squamish to catch up with Colette and and others.
There had been a forest fire to the east of the airfield and so a Temporary Restriction was in force within a circle that contained the airfield as well.
This RAT was kept in place even though they was no longer a need for aerial fire fighting.

We went to see Francois (more correctly Franz) who was a well known flight instructor in the Vancouver area, and he was a good friend to me over the years.
Unfortunately he had a knee operation - blood clots, and then a prostate operation - more blood clots, and these led to minor strokes which ended his flying career, and have now rendered him out of it in a nursing home in Squamish. It is a sad state of affairs, not an end that such a vital human being should suffer.
On the plus side of this day trip, I met up with little Erik who was at work, and then Russ who spends half his time in Thailand.

Sechelt Touch and go 19th June

Thursday morning I went to Ultima Medical in Richmond and renewed my Canadian Class 1 Medical; I became a Commercial Pilot again.
It cost me $381.15c CAD and included an ecg.

In the hangar at Boundary Bay I joined the Flyer Livestream for a bit of entertainment at 11:30am (19:30 BST).
At 14:05 local I was airborne with Rory in his Cardinal to fly through Harbour airspace to Sechelt for a touch and go.

I was invited for coffee in Kerrisdale and so I was faced with Vancouver's notorious traffic jams.
This is one very important reason for not living here, give me Bangkok any day!

Pilot Competency Check

With more than twenty five hours on type, and a valid Commercial Pilot Licence I was able to
carry out the training and evaluation flight for Colette's Operating Certificate requirements.

Oops, Colette has only one l when spelled correctly.

Savannah Ultralight

I was looking forward to do some seaplane flying on this trip, but unfortunately this was not to be...

I was asked to help out with this Savannah fitted with amphibious floats which had flown across Canada.
It's stall speeds were listed as 35mph clean, and 30mph with flaps applied, but when I throttled back there was a lot of buffet and the nose went down as if in a stall at 70mph indicated airspeed. I applied power and the slipstream re-engaged to elevators.
With a little power I could reduce the speed to 60mph IAS (Vfe) and I applied the flaps, and again as I reduced the power the buffet and nose down effect returned.
I first I thought the wide chord scimitar blades of the propeller blanking the slipstream at idle might be causing this, but now we believe it is the forward Centre of Gravity (CG) suffered by many floatplanes.
The original Zenair 701 has an inverted airfoil for it's tailplane and elevators together with Vortex Generators on the elevators themselves. These add a lot of downforce on the tail... So this aeroplane appears to be suffering a tailplane/elevator stall.
Floats cause a nose down pitch force and being too nose heavy (CG) causes a nose down pitch force; these combined, the tailplane and elevators must provide a compensating tail down downforce. If the tailplane and elevators stall (inverted), then the aeroplane will pitch nose down.

You don't want an engine failure and to suddenly pitch into the water... All is well if power is available to provide enough slipstream to keep the tail feathers effective.

After two test flights we tied the Savannah down, had a cup of tea, and instead flew the circuit in the Citabria.

The restricted airspace moved east enough to allow us to do 9 circuits.

 Class 2 Flight Instructor Renewal Flight Test.

Renewing my Class 2 Instructor Rating is required for credibility where-ever I instruct in aeroplanes, and so I accepted the horrendous cost of a flight test.
My rating expired on the 1st December last year.
So Alice flew me to Courtenay and back... Bob Leroux still examines for instructor ratings after he retired from Transport Canada, and was looking forward to flying the Tomahawk, an aeroplane he had instructed in in his early days.
The flight test went well enough and my rating was renewed...
The cost: $684.00c for the aeroplane, $525.00c flight test fee, and $35 for Transport Canada. Canadian Dollars.
I've been saving my Canadian pension funds for this. (My Canadian pension is less than my UK pension).

The Canon EOS 450D camera proved to be a disappointment.

The flight back, Alice PIC.

Pitt Meadows 24th June.

There would be a lot of work for me here in BC if I should care to accept it, but from what I heard in the practice areas I'd be in a swarm of Cessnas vying for space in which to fly with endless position reports to be listened to while still trying to give verbal instruction.
Visiting friends is important to me and so at Pitt Meadows I dropped in for tea and a cookie with Amy at Amy's Flying School, and for a tin of beer with Steve at his Classic Flying Training School.

Weather was too poor to fly at Squamish.

Birthday Flight

I took the Tomahawk for a solo flight over American Point Roberts, did a few turns and stalls...

 Delta Heritage Air Park Fly-In

Saturday morning we flew the Savannah again, Jay had replaced the propeller for one with narrower blades... It made no difference, the aeroplane still tucked it's nose down. Very unpleasant.

So I obtained permission to land at Delta in the Citabria. Delta Heritage Air Park has a grass runway and schools here require their renters to have experience and to get permission to land on grass.
The Fly-In was very nice, and I met up with many old friends.

This is what the Savannah needs.

My favourite

A bunch of us went for food at a Thai restaurant on my birthday.
This was followed by a visit to a bakery for 'pudding'.
Across the road from the bakery there was another Thai restaurant that had my favourite dish.
Alice and I went there on Sunday evening, aroy mak mak.

BTW: I flew with Leigh in the Cessna 172 earlier on Sunday.