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Flying
Start Update History
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2013
16 February: Accepted
some text link advertising that will pay for the site
hosting and perhaps inspire me to update the site a little.
Also used a WYSIWYG HTML editor on the site for the first
time.
2010
September
21: Restored
site from back-ups. Updated Section 12 to reflect the
September 2006 edition of the PSTAR.
July:
The hard drive on the server hosting Flying Start underwent
some kind of terminal meltdown while I was out of town for the
summer. Wade put up a temporary page promising a wildly
optimistic restore date.
2004
18 December: I discovered that Transport
Canada plans to replace the AIP
in the spring with a new document called the TC
AIM. In the meantime you can download the AIP as a
PDF.
10 November: I didn't win the award, but I
received an Honourable Mention.
29 October: I
found out that I was nominated for the 2004 "David
Charles Abramson Memorial" Flight Instructor Safety
Award.
20 September: I just received an
e-mail informing me that the Flying Start USA/Canada
Glossary page was featured in Flying
Magazine. It's not even finished! I felt obliged to update
it a little.
12 June: Added my first impression
of the LightSPEED Thirty 3G, and fixed some typos pointed out
to me by e-mail.
5 April: Fixed some broken
links, added a couple of new ones (links, not broken links)
including the Weather to Fly video clip series on the
Student
Pilot Resources page, under Transport Canada. I also
updated my headset
page with a (not favourable) report on the David
Clark H20-10. Flying Start is now the top Google hit for
"aviation headset review." The David Clark company
may come and break my kneecaps soon.
25 February:
Added some more photos to the flightseeing
page.
15 February: Answered questions
on converting licences between countries, added a page on
Boundary
Bay radio procedures, enhanced my explanation of
procedures to
cancel a MAYDAY, and put some warnings in the commentaries
about questions that schools mark incorrectly. Unfortunately I
can't help you much if your school's answer key has a
mistake.
14 February: As of today, Flying Start
has its own internet domain: flyingstart.ca
12
January: Fixed a few links (thank you for reporting the
dead ones) and added more movies, notably Air
Panic, one of the worst air disaster movies I've ever
seen. The site is due for a revamp soon; it's starting to get
spidery.
2003
10 December: I watched a horrible airplane movie,
and received a report on another. The movie
page has been updated accordingly.
8 December:
I just discovered that Transport Canada moved the root
page for the CARs last month. The links to individual
sections of the CARs seem to be working, but I'll be looking
for any broken links. I can't use an automatic link checker
because Transport Canada's site rejects robots.
25
November: Added some photographs to the flightseeing
section. Please tell me if the images are too slow to load
and I'll tweak them. I'm still short a few pictures: I would
be happy to give you credit and a link if you have an
appropriate photo to donate.
I realized that my
headset reviews page
was the seventh most visited page on the site, and I hadn't
even finished it -- it was still in point form. So I finished
it, and added a few photographs. Now all you people searching
for "aviation headset reviews" will not be
disappointed. "Aviation headset reviews" is the
third most popular search that finds Flying Start. Number one
is, predictably, "pstar" with "tomato flames"
in second place.
Added a few more photos, courtesy of
Alex G., to my aircraft
antennae page. Alex sent me enough photographs for a few
new pages in the aircraft parts section. See more
of Alex's photos at airliners.net.
12 November:
Finished the preflight
inspection section for now, and finally put the
sightseeing page back
online.
10 November: Started a section on
preflight inspection, pointing out various parts of the
airplane. And I took actual airplane photographs, instead of
creating bizarre MS Paintbrush art. I'm not certain where I'm
going with this, but there were lots of airplane pictures in
my to-do bin, and now that they are all scanned, I can throw
them out. I also added a few more stories.
22
October: Flying Start was offline for most of the day. Our
service provider had some -- possibly flood-related --
technical problems. Also part of November 7th we were down for
a Flying Start server back up, but in general the site has
good uptime. Thank you, Wade.
(Warning, Wade's site plays a loud sound effect).
2
October: I added some information on the new
computer-administrated
exams at Transport Canada, and answered a request for
landing advice.
24 September: I
reorganized the My
Students area so that only information that needs to be
protected is under the password, and so that navigation is
simpler. I still need to add specific information for
Pacific Flying Club
students.
11 September: I updated my
Banner Towing
page, adding prices and an explanation of how the banner
gets on the airplane, complete with really sketchy images
created in Microsoft Paintbrush, a style familiar to Flying
Start fans.
28 August: I have accepted
a job at Pacific Flying
Club in Boundary Bay, so a lot of the information on my
site must change. I have made some sections of the site
unavailable while I revise them.
17 August:
Someone found a second error in the communications
section of the PSTAR Study Guide, so I went back through
the whole section checking for any others, clarified a few
things and added a few AIP excerpts.
14 August:
Fixed the CAME search link on the Medical
page. Transport Canada moved it again.
9
August: Answered a density altitude vs. pressure altitude
question on my Good
Questions page.
6 August: I found a
series of old e-mails and online chat transcripts
corresponding to me
learning to fly. I sound so much like my own
students that I have put them online for you to laugh at me.
These are in the protected area, so you must ask me for
the password to get in. I will give out the password to
students, former students and other people whom I already have
potential blackmail material on.
I also put up a page
about one of my hobbies, the Klingon
Language.
29 July: I noticed that a lot of
people, probably Americans, were finding Robyn's Flying Start
by searching for "tomato flames." In fact,
it's the third most common search, right after "pstar"
and "robyn pstar." I took pity upon them and
added the American
version of the VFR equipment mnemonic.
3 July:
I broke all the PSTAR jokes out into separate pages so that
instead of reading them all at once, you find them one at a
time while reading the PSTAR
pages.
1 July: Started some silly
pages, like one on movies
for pilots. The others aren't up yet.
26
June: Can't keep my hands off the site. Mostly
fixed typos and spelling errors, added the copyright
statement to a few more pages.
25 June: I
did lots today. I improved the site flow through the learning
to fly section, and added more content to the flight
training process. I may eventually break this up
into more pages, as I add still more information. A friend is
working on her ATPL and has been asking me lots of questions;
I've added some of those answers to the FAQ.
I also updated the site map.
I added some flying stories
to the site. None of mine yet, just links to other
people's. And I finally got a link checking program to work,
so I have tracked down what I hope are most of the broken
links. If for some reason you like that sort of thing, you can
look at the output of
the program.
21 June: I compiled a few
statistics on female pilots.
People are always telling me that female pilots are
unusual, and I tell them about 5% of commercial pilots are
women. So here are the latest numbers.
6
June: I'm working on fixing all the links that were broken
when Transport Canada reorganized their site in late May.
This will take a while. If I were smart I wouldn't
have linked to them in so many places. (See, I'm getting
smarter, I didn't link to them here). I need to get one of
those programs that runs around and complains about broken
links.
30 May: The search
engine was reporting hits from its searches, but refusing
to display them. The indexing problem that caused this should
now be fixed. Please let me know if you get this error
again.
27 May: Updated the My
Students Only section of the website. Ask me for the
password, if you qualify.
26 May: Fixed broken links to the search
engine and the first
solo page, in the nav bar. Linked the FAQ
to the home page.
19 May: Added a web
statistics program to tell me about how my website is
used. I don't think it is catching everything though, as I get
e-mail from people who have gone through the whole PSTAR
section on days when there have been no hits on PSTAR
pages. And according to the stats program almost everyone who
finds my site already has the URL, whereas most of the e-mail
I get is from people who say they found it on Google.
11 May: Added a couple of tours to my Flightseeing
page. Added and updated links on the Student
Pilot Resources pages.
13 April: Changed my description of the CFS
from "fat green book" to "fat blue book."
Nav Canada has just changed all their publications from green,
to a steely blue colour, in order to be more corporate.
4 April: Updated the Environment Canada link to
Chilliwack weather on the Student
Pilot Resources page.
26 January: Corrected
an incorrectly marked answer choice for question
3.03 in the PSTAR Study Guide.
2002
29 December: Fixed typos and run-together words in
the PSTAR Study
Guide.
12 December: Created a custom 404
error page. Removed prices from the Flightseeing
page. Started a page for Chilliwack
students. This will eventually require a password, but it
doesn't yet, because all it contains is a to do list. Fixed
some backgrounds and broken links.
10 December:
Organized the Student
Pilot Resources page, moving the text that wasn't links to
Flight
Training Process and Preparing
for your First Solo. Wrote a page on getting an aviation
medical. Introduced
favicon.ico (you should see a little
green Cessna in the navigation bar right now, and in your
favourites list if you bookmark this site), and a robots.txt
file to tell the search engines what to ignore.
2
November: Updated some prices.
23 October: I
finished the Flightseeing
page. I was going to leave it half finished, but was inspired
to complete it by Google search for "under construction
icon" which yielded multiple hits from people who had
dedicated whole pages to their personal hatred for under
construction icons.
18 October: Everything is
new. I took a site that I started back in 2000 and completely
redid it. Today Robyn's
Improved PSTAR Study Guide is essentially complete. I will
still be cleaning up the typos and adding in a few more
links.
Robyn's Flying Start Home
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This page written 18 October 2002 by
Robyn Stewart. Last revision was on the date of the last
update at the top of the page. You think I'm going to
scroll down here every time I update the top? Copyright
2003-2010 Flying Start Initiatives
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