New Year, New Habits?

Well, we can look forward to a new year with a new season of flying our favourite spots or maybe some new adventures. I can remember several years where I took the opportunity to acquire a new skill, one of which was night flight certification. In Canada it’s an extra 10 hours of night flying with both dual with an instructor and solo flying. I recall the instructor making me wear a hood for the flight from Guelph, Ontario, to Toronto, then allowing me to remove the hood for the dramatic flight around the CN Tower. He asked me to put the hood on again for the return flight, but I did see enough of the shoreline at night to be impressed. In the United States, night flying is just included in the private pilot certificate, but I rather like the Canadian system in this regard.                   

In the U.S. you just have to do five takeoffs and landings at night to be able to carry passengers, but I’m sure a good instructor would do a lot more. Not having done any training in the U.S., I’d be interested to hear from anyone who has, what sort of night specific training you did.

There are many other ways to improve your flying capabilities, but one that sticks in my mind was to have a routine — in my case of meeting other pilots on a Saturday morning for breakfast then flying somewhere else for lunch. The improved safety was a result of all those stories exchanged about things we or someone else had done wrong. I would love to hear from you if you have a story to tell or an opinion to share about how to become a safer pilot.

Just a comment about the safety survey and Raquel’s comment on near misses, I think it might be worth mentioning a couple of my own near misses just to add to the thought process. One was an extended final just to allow me time to get the aircraft to a nice stabilized approach. A local pilot, who hadn’t seen me and apparently didn’t hear my “on final” announcement, decided to cut across in front of me and do a short final, resulting in a forced go-around for me. The other event was an aircraft crossing at circuit altitude at the perfect collision position for me as I was climbing out. Needless to say, we had discussions with the pilots in both events, and hopefully they carried their near miss history in the back of their minds as they approached airports in future. Crossing the field at dead centre is there for a reason.               

As I mentioned last month, if you don’t live close enough to an existing chapter, maybe it’s a good time to think of the benefits of forming one by contacting Phillip Johnson at chapters.EAACC@gmail.com and asking about it. An obvious benefit would be regular meetings with other pilots which would be almost guaranteed to improve your flying safety.

As always, please don’t hesitate to contact me, Ian Brown, at newsletter.EAACC@gmail.com, and I appreciate those who do. Keep sending me you newsletter submissions, and a big thank-you to those that did this month.

We would like to wish you all a great flying year in 2026. Your EAA Canadian Council will be meeting shortly to plan our presentations at AirVenture. If you have specific ideas about presentations you would like to attend, why not suggest them to one of us?