Don't put near hard disk

I just read a teardown article on the new iPad 2. Apple has integrated a bunch of magnets for its "smart cover", which made we wonder how this new version would fare in the cockpit.

The iPad has recently been certified as an EFB (for those non-pilots, this means it can replace the briefcase of printed charts you see airline pilots pulling around behind them in the airport). However, magnets are not a good thing in this environment. Already the iPad has a strong enough field to cause a compass to mis-read when it is within a foot of it; magnets could make this even worse (then again, maybe they are no worse than it is already. Someone want to loan me an iPad 2 so I can find out? :).

How private enterprise saves money

I was reading this article from AvWeb about the SpaceX launch and recovery of their "Dragon" capsule. Sometimes you can save a little money here and there by privitization, but sometimes you can save huge chunks (emphasis added):

It's worth noting that while nuclear-powered aircraft carriers have been dispatched to recover space capsules in the past, an inflatable boat with an outboard motor accomplished the task this time.

Motivation and Reality Checks

I read this article on aero-news about a "new" aircraft being developed. The concept is a "light attack" aircraft, which is basically an admission that our cold-war fighters and attack aircraft are massive overkill for the missions they are being used on. The other interesting thing is that the pilots are all on board for this idea, since most of them can clearly see that the alternative is having their job replaced by a drone.

The light attack concept is simple: instead of building a massive, jet-powered, state-of-the-art mach 3 fighter to drop bombs on camels, go use something that works a lot more like a WWII fighter. After all, they did a perfectly good job at ground attack then as long as there weren't other fighters to shoot them down, which matches fairly well with the conflicts we fight today.

And they're cheap. Prices for these should be close to parity with current drones, if not less expensive, and operating costs are low as well ($600/hr instead of $15,000/hr, per the article). I'm not sure how they managed to get the project going, but I wish them success before someone realizes they're not spending enough money and kills it.

Wheels Down

I touched down in San Jose on friday, after a four-hour flight from Escalante. The flight was uneventful except that I had a bunch of turbulence going from Escalante to Boulder City (where I stopped for fuel), and that I got clearance heading out of Las Vegas to cross over "Area 51" (the China Lake restricted area).

I did not see any flying saucers or black helicopters. Apparently they don't fly on the weekends.

Only 281 messages waiting for me in my inbox on my return.

Escalante

I touched down in Escalante this morning, after spending the night in Farmington, New Mexico. I stopped there because a) it was along my route of flight and b) I was tired. I got up early this morning and landed in Escalante around 10AM, in time to miss the afternoon thunderstorms.

Howard and I walked around town and saw some of the old buildings, as well as spending some time talking with his friend Paul, who is one of two or three pilots in town. We are supposed to meet up with Paul later over at his hanger and "talk plane" for a while.

I took some nice photos of Lake Powell on the way in, as well as some canyons that look like they are Grand Canyon scale (note to self: visit Grand Canyon). As I do not have a download cable handy, I will have to wait to return home in order to download these.

I also got an update on Howard's various properties here in Escalante and how various restoration/improvement efforts are going. The Bell house should be very impressive (if difficult to navigate) when it is finished.

Tomorrow we might go flying with Paul, if the weather cooperates, and there is a big potluck dinner tomorrow night. I will fly back home saturday or sunday morning depending on how the weather looks.

Lafayette

I made a short flight today, due to a line of thunderstorms working its way across Tennesee and northern Kentucky. A quick replanning in the cockpit gave me a new destination of Lafayette, Georgia.

I found a small town with a friendly FBO that tossed me the key to a creaky Ford Escort with an official Walker County seal on the side. I got me a genuine government vehicle for my ride.

I'm currently hiding out from the heat in the hotel room in the hopes it will be slightly less oppressive later when dinner time rolls around.

Tommorow's plan is to see how far I can get. Stopovers planned for Arkansas and north Texas, and if I feel good, I will push on to Utah. If not I will probably stop somewhere in north Texas.

More time in NC

We decided to spend another day in Raleigh, since we haven't come up with any attractions between here and Utah that we really want to see. Today's plan is to pick up some new charts to cover the trip back, hide from the heat (today's high: 99 degrees), plan our route, and continue sorting through and editing our backlog of photos.

And we still have a few book purchases from Strand's that we need to work through.

Arrived in North Carolina

We had a great time in New York, which is why I haven't posted anything for the last week. I will have a bigger write-up later, but for now we are OK, and got to North Carolina successfully. We had to work our way through some yucky weather and headwinds to get here, and we ended up making an impromptu fuel stop just short of Raleigh.

I actually felt guilty about the fuel stop, because we just picked an airport along our line of flight and figured they had fuel there and landed. When we got there the automated fuel station was out of service, and we had to call the airport manager out to fuel our plane (he left his cell phone number taped to the window -- gotta love small town airports). When he got to the airport, he only had one leg. He then proceeded to fuel the plane for me. Normally I fuel it myself, but didn't want to say anything... So I had my plane fuelled by a one-legged man.

Shana's air mattress is quite comfortable, and her two cats are very friendly, and Joahnna is torn between playing with them and trying to keep them away to keep her allergies under control.

Oh, and Pam texted us while we were on the train north from New York, saying that a small plane hit a tour helicopter over the Hudson river. So, just to let everyone know, it wasn't us.

Helicopter Tour

We flew from Vermont to the East Hampton airport on Long Island last sunday. There was a bit of low cloud cover but we landed without incident. The weather immediately struck us as it was hot and muggy.

We caught a taxi to the nearby train station and took a train from the Hamptons to New York, after which we checked in to our hotel and called up Pam to go out for dinner.

On monday we took the subway up to 86th street and took a quick tour of the Guggenheim, which was showing a Frank Lloyd Wright exhibit, and then walked through central park. We then caught another subway down to the Soho, where we did some shoe shopping (Joahnna's sandals were just about worn out, so she picked up some Birkenstocks), and found Strand Books, which is a great used book store -- three stories and "18 miles" of new and used books.

We got out of strand six books and about 30 pounds later and made our way back to the hotel, where we changed into our bathing suits and spent some time in the hotel pool and swim-up bar. The only problem with the swim-up bar concept is that if people are splashing in the pool it can get in to your drink.

Later that night we met up with Pam again for dinner, then went to watch "The Ugly Truth".

This morning we levered ourselves out of bed and caught a cab to the west island heliport, where we took a 15-minute helicopter tour. We flew by the Statue of Liberty, then looped around and crossed over the south end of Manhattan island. It was our first time in a helicopter and it is a very different feeling.

Right now Joahnna is taking a nap while I catch up on my blog and read some of my new purchases, and our plan for the day is to do some laundry (we only have 5-6 days of clothes, so we need to go find a washing machine every now and then) and then take a boat to see the Statue of Liberty this afternoon.

Vermont

We departed Oshkosh yesterday and flew to Vermont, after a brief stop in Ohio for fuel. The departure from Oshkosh was busy -- we formed a line of departing aircraft, and the tower cleared us on to the runway two at a time and had us line up in parallel. However, once away from the airport we settled in to a relatively uneventful flight. We spent about two hours flying from Oshkosh to our refuelling point just south of Cleveland, and then another three hours to get to Montpelier, Vermont.

At Vermont I flew my first "real" instrument approach -- meaning my first one without an instructor on board, and where actual clouds are limiting visibility instead of the training hood. I got us on the glide slope fine and we broke out of the clouds at about 4000' for a pretty moonlit landing.

Gregg and Lori had a very nice dinner ready-made for us, and we stayed the night at the nearby Morgan Inn. We woke up to a beautiful misty morning and drove back to Gregg and Lori's for a fresh French toast breakfast.

We spent today driving around the Randolph area and taking pictures, as well as meeting the neighbors and having a good time relaxing on the porch, reading, and catching up. Vermont is beautiful in the summer, but the prospect of 8-12 feet of snow in the winter and daily snow-blowing the driveway has chilled Joahnna on any idea of living here.

Tomorrow we have a short (one and a half hour) flight from here to the Long Island MacArthur airport, after which we have a couple hour train ride to get in to our hotel in Times Square.

Oshkosh Arrival

For a short (one and a half hour) flight, we had a pretty long day today.

We started out having more trouble with fouled spark plugs. This time #3 and #5 were failing. Aborted our takeoff and chased down a mechanic at Anoka, who cleaned out the plugs, only to find that that fixed those two, but a *different* plug starting having a problem. After that he suspected that the spark plug wires were getting worn out and we were getting a weak spark, which is why the plugs keep failing on the ground. He recommended we go around once in the pattern and test the mags in flight.

We preflighted again, took off and tested the mags at pattern altitude -- all plugs firing normally. So we continued on to Oshkosh.

There were a few rain clouds moving through, so we fired up the GPS with real-time weather info and steered our course through the red dots. Arrived at Oshkosh after an interesting tight left turn to put ourselves down. Had a tough time finding a place to stay but finally found the Hawthorne suites had a room available for one night at blackmail prices.

We wandered around the airshow checking out interesting planes and looking at some of the day's airshow activities. Most impressive was the full-power takeoff by one of the Thunderbirds' F-16s, but the Sky Crane dumping water in a simulated fire suppression and a formation arrival of about 20 T-6 Texans were also pretty cool.

Around 4PM the red dots that we had been avoiding on the way here finally got to Oshkosh, and it started raining, which gradually developed into a mild thunderstorm. We hauled ourselves back to the plane to unload our luggage, manhandled the luggage (we have one huge bag that has all of both of our clothes for a month) on the bus back to the bus terminal, lugged it on to a second bus bus which took us, er, close to our hotel, and then carried it over the intervening street and lawn to get to the hotel.

The hotel turns out to have the only restaurant within 2-3 miles, which turned out to be a pretty nice place. Joahnna had crab cakes and lobster bisque, while I had a stuffed chicken breast. Afterwards we put on our bathing suits and went down and relaxed in the jacuzzi for an hour or so. I decided the blackmail was worth it.

Tomorrow we are taking ourselves and our luggage to a nearby university that is renting out some of its dorm rooms. Tonight, we will both sleep well.

Anoka

We just touched down in Anoka, MN to visit my cousin Gina and her family. The ~3 hour flight from Rapid City was under IFR today, due to low cloud cover over most of Minnesota.

Yesterday we drove out to the Dakota Badlands, which are an eerie-looking landscape of multicolored clay originally formed from volcanic ash. Joahnna got a bunch of great photos, and afterwards we drove back in to town to find... Surprise! The nearest bookstore. Borders was just across the street from Chili's, where we grabbed dinner, and then retired to our hotel for an evening of reading and Facebook uploads.

Right now we are waiting in a brand-new FBO lobby at the Anoka airport, which is appointed like a 5-star hotel, and our plane is enjoying the unexpected luxury of living in a hangar for the next couple nights, since there were no tie-downs available.

More Brigham/Rapid City Photos

Test-driving our new oxygen system at 11,500 feet.

Mountains just east of Brigham on climb-out.

Over Utah

Our crew car in action.

Rapid City

We arrived at Rapid City this afternoon, after a relatively short 3-hour flight. We flew by Mount Rushmore on the way, but we weren't really close enough to get a good shot of it.

The fuel station was a little confusing at first, since the credit card slot was 50' away from the fuel pump.

The terrain between Utah and South Dakota is very impressive, for its expansive, rugged look, and for being almost completely empty. There were more than a few times where I had to zoom the GPS out to the "100 NM" scale in order to see any airports on the screen. At one point over Wyoming I tapped Joahnna on the shoulder and said "Look over there! A building!" It's not quite that sparse, but pretty close. Structures are few and far between, and frequently have a radio tower next to them indicating some sort of outpost.


Yesterday and today were both pretty bumpy rides, with the hot air creating lots of thermals and turbulence. At one point today (while we were trying to line up for our photo of Mt. Rushmore) we hit one bump so hard that both Joahnna and I hit our heads on the ceiling liner. That was good for a bit of surprise.

We had lunch at TGI Friday's and later tonight we are driving to Mt. Rushmore for their evening lighting ceremony, which is reputed to be good. Tomorrow we will either visit the Black Hills or the Dakota Badlands.

Brigham

Well, it wasn't where we planned on spending our first night, but such is the course of our great adventure.

Our takeoff was delayed by a couple hours when we found that one of the cylinders wasn't developing power. A quick check by the mechanic showed the plugs to be fouled, and since this was the second time this had happened, I figured they were all fairly dirty and in need of a good cleaning. I talked the mechanic into cleaning all of them and sure enough, most of them had a good coating of oil and would probably have become fouled soon.

We took off at around noon and flew nonstop from San Jose to Brigham. This was intended to be just a fuel-and-lunch stop, but by the time we got here it was 5:30 local time (we lost an hour going to mountain time).

There was no food at the airport in Brigham, but the shop we stopped at had a "crew car" -- this is a car that FBOs frequently have as a loaner car for pilots stopping for the night. Our crew car is an early 80's Buick Century, with oxidized blue paint and a thick coating of dust on the windshield. This is typical of the breed.

We took our crew car into town (pretty much one main street with all the shops on it), and had lunch at the Peach City Diner, a neat little drive-in. I had a strawberry milkshake made from home-made ice cream, and Joahnna had fish and chips. Apparently the fish and chips were good, despite be many miles from the ocean.

By the time we got back to the airport it was past 6pm and we were still looking at a three-hour flight to get to Rapid City, and I was rapidly fading, so we decided to stop here for the night. We found a brand-new Days Inn where we are currently enjoying the A.C. (hot day today) and reacquainting ourselves with the internet.

Time for a nap for the pilot. Will post photos as soon as we find proper connecting cables (naturally we left our current ones at home).

Air Guido

I got more flying in this last weekend than I did all winter.

For starters, for staying current with my instrument rating I need to fly six approaches every six months (and do a hold). I suspect this is the bane of most instrument pilots -- if you're not making your money from flying, you're unlikely to do more than one or two approaches in actual instrument conditions in an entire year, much less one a month.

So, practically speaking, every six months you need to go up with a safety pilot or instructor and practice some approaches, which is what I did on friday. I went with Manuel, who is building time for a commercial pilot job, and I flew two approaches on friday afternoon and one saturday evening. Together with the three I did a couple weeks ago I am now current.

In addition, I did some air taxi "work" this weekend. Zach has some relatives in Fresno that he wanted to visit, so saturday morning Joahnna and I flew him out to the Fresno-Yosemite airport and dropped him off at a maintenance shop there. It's a little odd flying into a commercial airport because they don't really know what to do with you -- they generally don't have a GA parking area, you have to stop at one of the businesses on the field. They charge a ramp fee for parking, but usually if you're just picking up or dropping off passengers the employees turn a blind eye.

On sunday I flew back to pick him up while Joahnna was working a trade show at Valley Fair. After completing the run-up we were cleared for takeoff on 29 left (the shorter of the two runways), and as we taxied into position I elbowed Zach and said "Check that out" -- as we were taking off, an Air Guard F/A-18 was taking off from the parallel runway.

Don't get to see that every day.

Windy Day Flying

Yesterday, I flew up to Lincoln to visit an old friend. We had set up the trip the day before, and the forecast for the time was a nice day with partial clouds. Sure enough, when I got up yesterday it was a bright sunny day with a few scattered clouds. Unfortunately there was also a minor matter of wind.

For flying, we rely greatly on current weather observations at airports, called METARs. When I took off, the weather reports looked like this:

KRHV 141747Z 29015G25KT 10SM SCT040 12/02 A2995
KLHM 141910Z 29020G24KT 10SM SCT070 BKN080 OVC090 13/M03 A2981

For those unfamiliar with decoding these little gems, KRHV was the airport I was flying from and KLHM my destination. The second part is the date and time of the observation, and the third part is the wind. For this one it means that my winds taking off were from a 290 heading, and observed as 15 knots with gusts of up to 25 knots. The runway heading at RHV is 310, so this was about 20 degrees off runway heading.

Takeoff went fairly smoothly, I pulled the plane up into the air once the wheels felt light and immediately turned into the wind. Once off the ground we climbed FAST. We dodged a couple clouds at 4000' on our way up to cruise altitude (that would be the SCT040), and then settled in for a short, bumpy flight to the Lincoln airport.

The winds at Lincoln look pretty similar to RHV -- from 290, 20 knots with gusts to 24. However, the Lincoln runway heading is 330, which makes these winds a full 40 degrees off runway heading. For a 20 knot wind, that gives an effective crosswind of 13 knots.

On my first approach to the airport I did not set up well for the landing. I neglected to take the crosswind into account when turning from base to final, and so instead of turning out lined up with the runway, I did a big skidding turn that blew me past the runway and then to fight my way back into alignment. The approach stayed ugly all the way down to the runway, at which point I scratched the landing and went around to try again.

The second approach went much better. I turned earlier towards the runway, got myself lined up much better, and then transitioned into a good crosswind landing (right rudder, left bank) prior to touchdown. I also think the winds were lighter on the second approach.

Had a good lunch and chat with my friend, then headed back to the airport. For the return trip, I was looking at:

KLHM 142230Z AUTO 03016KT 10SM BKN100 13/M01 A2980

While the winds were lower, they were now perpendicular to the runway instead of at an angle, which didn't make my life any easier (effective crosswind 14 knots). I had to wait for a helicopter and a water bomber that were using the bad winds as good training to make a hole, then again made an uneventful takeoff.

The weather when I finally got back to Reid-Hillview was:

KRHV 142247Z 28017G25KT 10SM SCT040 15/01 A2993

Life hasn't gotten any better back here. I get myself lined up correctly the first time this time, end up touching down near the runway threshold and I am off the runway by taxiway Bravo without even braking hard (Alpha is at the beginning of the runway).

I have mixed feelings about this flight. On one hand, it was good training for dealing with high-wind conditions, and all my (completed) takeoffs and landings went well. On the other hand, I'm not sure if I should have been up in the air in the first place. The takeoff and landing at LHM were both close to the maximum crosswind for my plane (16 knots, I believe). My motivation to fly was about equal parts get-there-itis (I had cancelled on my friend twice before due to weather) and a desire to push the envelope out some on weather I was comfortable flying in.

The End of the Fighter Era

A well-written argument by Lewis Page at The Register on why so many people hate the F-35. It's not that it's a great fighter, it's that it's good enough to put a lot of the competition out of business, and that it's good at doing the unglamorous things that modern militaries actually do -- mainly beating up the forces of small nations equipped with second-rate surplus Russian designs, rather than going head-to-head with large numbers of state-of-the-art aircraft.

But to be honest, to an outsider it looks as though this sector could really stand to shrink quite a lot. The militaries of the West, it appears, continue to plough far too much of their straitened funds into exotic combat jets designed for unlikely wars, and not nearly enough into bread-and-butter infantry, surveillance platforms, helicopters, transport planes and so on.

The F-35 has some of the industry worried not because it's a waste of money, but exactly the opposite -- they fear that it could become the Model T Ford of combat aircraft (available in any color you like, as long as it's grey) and wipe out the competing manufacturers.

I still believe even the F-35 is far more expensive than what we need today. A second production run of A-10s would do a lot more good for today's military actions than any new fighter on the market.

Around the Bend

Joahnna and I flew up to Bend, Oregon over the weekend to visit her Aunt Vicki and Uncle Jim. The weather was exceptionally nice for this time of year -- clear skies and calm winds all the way up and back.



We flew up saturday morning, arriving at 2PM after a three-hour flight. They gave us a tour of the area, including a nice upscale mall in Bend, and a quick drive out to Mount Batchelor. On sunday we drove out to a nearby ranch, owned by a friend of Jim's, who breeds Clydesdales for competition. They are apparently very friendly and docile horses, which is good to remind yourself of when you're next to one, because they are huge.


After visiting the horses, we had a quick lunch at the local brew-pub. I didn't get to sample the brew, naturally, but Joahnna had a sampler, and afterwards we launched off into the wild orange yonder. We took off at around 3pm but the sun was already beginning to set behind the clouds.


On the way hope we took a slight detour and flew over Crater Lake, which was quite pretty. We got some nice reflections off the water and I flew a few s-turns so Joahnna could get some good photos.

After that we watched the sun set as we neared Redding, and wrapped up another hour of flight for a nighttime touchdown.

Postcard Shot

Joahnna and I flew to Santa Barbara on tuesday to celebrate my grandfather's 93rd birthday. We had some low clouds coming out of San Jose, and Joahnna shot the photo above as we were flying south in the morning.