Ted Rankine loves to fly.  Although his professional career was in broadcast television and media, flying has been the constant passion in his life. Licenced in August 1972, he purchased his first airplane, an Aeronca 7AC the very next month. Nine months later, with 70 hours total time, ted flew his ‘no electrics’ Aeronca nordo from Toronto to Vancouver and back using whatever paper charts he could accumulate along the way. He then repeated that adventure in 1979 leading 27 nordo airplanes with his open cockpit Tiger Moth in the ‘Almost Great Canadian Air Dash’ and then in 1980 expanded the ‘dash’ to fly from Vancouver to Charlottetown.  BTW this was 10 years before cell phones became a ‘real thing’ and 25 years before ForeFlight.

Ted shaped some of his professional career to include his passion and in the mid 90s launched a TV series, SkyHigh which aired on the Sports Network, created and broadcast flight safety segments on the Weather Network / Meteo Media and created the safety web site, SmartPilot.ca.

In 2000, he became an UL instructor and purchased Toronto Aerosport, later turning it over to his Cfi Billy Bryan.  Now in ‘pretend retirement’ Ted serves as President of UPAC, on both the Sea Plane and ultralight working groups with Transport Canada and is in the process of creating a new UL flight school and club, PlaneFun.  The goal is to provide more economical and accessible training and UL aircraft rentals.

Ted flys out of CBB2 and FA38, a central Florida airpark during the winter months. He currently owns a Savage Cub AULA, aerobatic (experimental) Atlantis, Citabria on floats and a quad cart PPG, along with a bunch of aircraft being built / rebuilt including an Aeronca Sedan, a Kitfox and Smith Cub.