Getting Better: Simulators for General Aviation
When it comes to technology, it’s funny how little general aviation has changed over the years. A pilot transported to the modern day from a half-century ago would recognize most of the airplanes flying today. He’d certainly recognize 21st century engines and props, because it’s the same stone-simple, air-cooled reciprocating hardware they had 80 years ago. The price, on the other hand, would probably give our time-traveling barnstormer a heart attack that not even modern medicine could fix. I can see him clutching his chest while proclaiming “In my day, gas was $0.15 a gallon!” Since I started flying, the most notable changes have occurred where computers are used. Avionics, tablets, internet-based data connectivity, traffic and...
Read MoreSpeed-to-Fly
Nobody really knows how often something like an powerplant failure in a GA single happens. If the pilot manages to land without any significant damage to the aircraft, nothing ends up in the NTSB accident database because, by definition (see 49 CFR 830.2), there was no accident. I’ve experienced a few of those in my career. One was a clogged fuel filter in a Pitts. Believe me, anything out of the norm in a Pitts really gets your attention. I love the airplane, but it sports a glide ratio akin to that of a brick. Only worse. Another memorable engine failure was caused by a broken cylinder in a Cutlass. The ensuing vibration and smoke convinced me to shut down the engine, and I glided the 10 or so miles to Corona with my commercial student and made a...
Read MoreGulfstream G650 Accident Report
It’s been a year and a half since the tragic crash of Gulfstream Aerospace Corp’s G650 test aircraft at Roswell claimed four lives. Ironically, the aircraft recently received its FAA type certificate at almost the exact same time that the National Transportation Safety Board issued their final report on the accident. I’ve been following the online NTSB docket for months — in fact, I’ve read the entire thing. It comprises thousands of pages of interviews, telemetry, analysis, company records, flight test cards, and transcripts. If you’ve got the time and are enough of an airplane nerd to stay awake while reading it, the accident docket provides a fascinating and detailed look into how a modern test flight program is conducted....
Read MoreAOPA Summit
Even with decades of experience and thousands of hours in the cockpit, the opportunity to try something new is never far away when you work in aviation. That’s one of the factors which keeps aviators coming back, the opportunity to learn and grow. So it was not surprising that I added another “first” to my logbook recently when given the opportunity to taxi an airplane through the streets of downtown Palm Springs as part of the annual “Parade of Planes” at the AOPA Summit convention. The Summit is an annual aviation expo put on by the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, the largest general aviation organization in the world. Despite AOPA’s large size — they claim more than 400,000 members — the size of the event...
Read MoreInsanely Great
Statistics show that as of today, there are about 71 million web sites running WordPress. Those sites publish 500,000 new posts per day and are viewed by more than 320 million people every month. Mind boggling, isn’t it? Kind of like the national debt or the number of stars in the cosmos, it’s difficult to even wrap your mind around a figure of that magnitude. I’ve been a WordPress user for — what, probably seven or eight years by now. Before WP, it was Movable Type. Remember that one? Yeah, it still out there. Let’s see, prior to Movable Type my site was developed and maintained using nothing more than Windows’ built-in Notepad program and an ancient version of Photoshop. That goes all the way back to the site’s genesis...
Read MoreSR22 Delivery Flight
The life of an aviator is indisputably rich in adventures, unique experiences, and, as Magee phrased it, “a hundred things you have not dreamed of”. Even in that life, however, there are a few days which stand above the rest. Who can forget their first solo, the successful checkride, or the name of their first passenger? As anyone who’s been there can attest, even the most diminutive among us stands ten feet tall at the end of those flights. Another big moment — one of the very sweetest in my experience — is the day you escape any niggling notions of common sense and purchase an aircraft of your very own. Today, that often means what a salesmen would refer to as a “pre-loved” aircraft. Pre-owned. You know, used. A select...
Read MoreWhen I Ruled the World
The topic of computers in my last post reminded me that this month marks the 30 year anniversary of the object which made me a bona fide rock star throughout the world. That’s right, the whole freakin’ world! (Um, it may be worth noting that at nine years of age, my “world” consisted of a three block radius around our house in Studio City.) The year was 1981. I was in fifth grade and an unfortunate part of the desegregation busing experiment of the early 80′s. If you’re not familiar with this, the idea was to force students who lived in good school districts to attend an abysmal institution in the worst part of south-central Los Angeles while the kids from that area were bused each and every day to my neighborhood to attend a...
Read MoreAdSense
From one house to another… a quick shout-out to my college roommate, Rich, on the relaunch of his sports commentary site, House of Sports Blab. I don’t know about the name, but the content is first rate. We spent the afternoon putting some fine touches on the WordPress template design, tweaking the style sheet, and so on. The main thing he wanted was a location for Google AdSense advertising. The spot we dedicated to it is directly below the tagline on the right-hand sidebar. Speaking of AdSense, for a long time I’ve frowned on such advertisements and vowed that I’d never put such junk on this site. I’ve got nothing against Google, but we’re bombarded with ads from the time the radio wakes us up in the morning until we go...
Read MoreShorten This, Pal
Grrrrrr. I really hate spammers. It’s not bad enough that they send me about 2,000 pieces of junk mail each and every day. No, they have to usurp my own web site for their nefarious purposes, too. From my ISP: We have received a rather large number of complaints of spam being sent in promotion of a URL under your account. Upon further investigation, it appears to be some sort of ‘URL shortening’ tool, used (in this case) to obfuscate the destination of the URL being promoted in the spam. I have disabled the script in question by moving it into your home directory. If you wish to continue using this tool, we must ask that changes be made to prevent 3rd parties from abusing it in this manner (this may mean modifications made to the script so...
Read MoreFoo Fighters Good; Sony Bad
Some of the most relaxing moments of the San Carlos dive trip were had during surface intervals on the boat. A ‘surface interval’ is a period of time spent on the surface in between dives. This time allows the body to naturally rid itself of excess nitrogen accumulated while breathing compressed air at depth. Without an appropriate surface interval, a diver runs the risk of having this nitrogen come out of solution in the blood and form bubbles which can cause pain, vomiting, paralysis, and even death. Anyway, our surface intervals were typically in the 60-90 minute range. We’d use the time to eat lunch, fish, and just relax. Well one day, David put the new Foo Fighters CD, In Your Honor, in the boat’s CD player. It’s a two disc set...
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