Flying Start Update History

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.

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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?
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