One of the joys of having the privilege of having a pilot licence is the opportunity to go for, what is knows an a "$100 Hamburger". The "$100 Hamburger" historically referred to the cost of renting a plane and flying to another airport for a bite to eat. Perhaps this aviation slang will have an inflation adjusted version.
For this $100 Hamburger, we took 2 Evektor SportStar Advanced Ultralights (C-IMJK and C-IIRH) with 2 students and 2 instructors to get some cross-country practice and ATC practice. Little did we know, this would be the last cross-country trip we would take before the first 2020 COVID-19 shutdown in Ontario
The flight was from Burlington (CZBA), to Collingwood (CNY3). Our plan was to get some ATC practice and request flight following from Toronto Terminal. C-IIRH managed to get flight following however, C-IMJK was denied as the controller seemed too busy for us.
I was in C-IMJK and we eventually managed to get flight following from Toronto Center further north once we were out of terminal airspace. The flight was pleasant and fairly uneventful, except when Toronto center warned us of on-coming traffic in the opposite direction. Initially we expected the traffic to be higher but it turned out they were at the same altitude and we were able to warn ATC who subsequently and fortunately warned C-IIRH, our fellow companions. This is captured at about the 10:30 mark in the video shown.
After a nice breakfast at the airport restaurant, we headed back to Burlington and a very pleasant day of flying! Our school intends to do many more breakfast-training trips if and when the COVID-19 pandemic subsides! Having real-life fun trips mixed into the flight training makes the process much more fun!
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