Where *does* the time go?

Hello, gentle reader. Sorry for being out of touch for a while - work and travel have been a little nutty and, well, I've been out flying whenever the weather's been good, and that's been a lot. A recent trip was to take my first non-pilot passenger, my mother, to The Blue Pig BBQ at the Ardmore, OK airport. We're up to 37 hours on the airplane and the smile-per-mile quotent is still high.

Be good this holiday, or if you can't be good, at least be safe.

Dogbert's Electronic Voting Machine

Scott Adams loves electronic voting. No, really:

Now don’t get me wrong – there’s a 100% chance that the voting machines will get hacked and all future elections will be rigged. But that doesn’t mean we’ll get a worse government. It probably means that the choice of the next American president will be taken out of the hands of deep-pocket, autofellating, corporate ****bags and put it into the hands of some teenager in Finland. How is that not an improvement?

My secret fantasy career

Air traffic controller. Yep. Kind of a high stress job, and yes, I'm already a stress case, but, well, it combines some of the things I love - aviation, communications, and helping get people from A to B.

After a fun day of flying, I stopped by the control tower at Addison, my home airport. It's a nice new tower, with plenty of room for three controllers (two on duty) and several visitors.

Of particular interest was the radar display. This is linked from the Dallas TRACON radar and shows the location of ADS (center), Dallas Love field (bottom), DFW (bottom left) and smaller airports. The rounded solid lines depict boundries of the DFW and Love Field "Class B" airspace.

Compare the radar picture to a chart, centered on ADS (thanks to SkyVector.com - google maps for aviation charts).

All in all, a very educational visit. Maybe I'll slip in an application.

Hookey

I should have been at work yesterday afternoon. I wasn't. As Peter says in Office Space "Well, Bob, I wouldn't say that I've been missing work..."

BBQ

You have the day off, an airplane at your disposal and you're hungry. What better to do than fly out to Hard Eight BBQ in Stehpenville, TX?

Hard 8 is ~ 1/4 mile from the airport (SEP, Stephenville - Clark Field) and they leave two golf carts for pilots to take over for lunch. Yes, there's that much traffic.

Brisket, jalapeno sasuage, pork chops (bet you can't finish just one), ribs .... it's all there, and it's all good. Worth the flight and maybe worth the drive, depending on how far and how hungry you are.

Severe clear sky, cool temps (65F at lunch time), very few bumps and, of course, a full and happy tummy. Doesn't get much better than that.

GhettoNet Grows Up

Well, our computing lab has finally grown into something we can call, well, a lab. We're now up to a total of 16 cores (8 dual core PCs) and 2TB of stroage. We have 6 more cores on order (Core Duo 2s) and will migrate the RAID to larger drives, increasing the storage to 4TB.

But it's still not enough. Is it ever enough?

Grounded

Hello everyone. Just a quick update.

Grounded today due to weather - rain and 1000 foot ceilings. So, I get to work on the airplane and processing photos. This means blog updates tomorrow!

Today's accomplushments include removing light rings on the engine instruments that were obstructing the color-coded ranges and getting the XM Weather link to the Garmin GPS working. It's truly amazing, displaying satellite uplinked radar, etc. to our little airplane.

New hazards to aviation

"I am tired of these [uninteligible] bees on this [uninteligible] plane!"

No, really!

Finally!

Yes, I haven't been posting lately - my bad. However, I've been busy. The main news is that I did finally pass my checkride (the "final exam" of flight school) this Tuesday.

In a way, this was ultra anti-climactic - I'd been training so hard for the previous 3 days that the oral test and flight with the examiner was easy compared to what I'd been doing. It was just a feeling of relief - I'm actually not a sucky pilot, I can do this, all this work has been for something/


So, yes, now I'm officially a pilot. Rocket science is next.

Oshkosh, 'b Gosh

The EAA AirVenture Fly-In and Airshow wrapped up last week. "What's that?" you say? It's the world's biggest fly-in airshow, held at Whitman Field in Oshkosh, WI. Because of that, everyone calls it just "Oshkosh".

My alter ego, Doug Reeves, posted his photos and recorded narrative about his first trip to OSH. It's a pretty good first-hand experience of the show.

Oshkosh really is amazing, if for no other reason than the diversity of the aircraft there. Where else will you see a F-16, P-51 and P-38 flying formation over hundreds of parked Cessnas and planes people built in their garages?

Since EAA is all about building your own airplane or restoring an old one, you find homebuilts at Oshkosh. TONS of them. And the #1 homebuilt by far is the Van's Aircraft "RV". RVs are simple, sturdy and fast. Currently, people are building the 2-seat side-by-side RV-7 and RV-9, the 2-seat tandem RV-9 and the new four-place RV-10. With over 4,600 of them completed, you often get a "sea of RVs" at OSH, like Doug's photo here.

So why buy one and not build? Well, two reasons. The first is time - I don't have much to fly as is, so what makes me think I have 600-800 hours of time just sitting around? The second is ability - I'm not sure that I want to fly something I've built. Maybe if I did some non-aviation metal projects first...

Maybe Jellybean and I will make it there next year as part of the Grand Tour I've been wanting to do....

The Places You'll Go, pt. 2

Greetings, gentle reader. It's been a while, but I've been busy.

The latest trips have been on vacation, flying, and work.

This is my brother and his 2-month Bernese Mountain Dog puppy on vacation. As you can tell, it has the usual puppy attributes - cuteness and a need to misbehave.

During my time off, I found some cute potential small houses. This one is very simple - about 160 sq. ft. inside.

I've also been flying N211LS around. Here, a recent stop at Midway Midloathian - Waxahachie regional.

And, to top it off, here is the smallest hotel room that I've ever stayed in. It is essentially the room is used to connect two normal rooms to make a suite. However, it was fairly comfy, and no strange mammals came through in the night, so it was Ok. The fact that they didn't charge me helped.

A Perfect Day of Flying

Sunday, June 18th was about as blissful of a day an aviator can have, and I was the lucky guy.

I went for a lesson in N211LS in the morning. Had to get up at 6:30 to make it to GPM by 8am, but it was worth it. We had thunderstorms roll through the night before, and the weather was light winds, scattered clouds at 3500 AGL, and some early overcast to keep the temperature and thermals down. We did some landings at Midway and then went back to GPM for some more landings. My instructor then suggested we take a break.

I knew the Big Day was here when she asked me to bring my logbook. She wrote out the endorsement and then, with a smile, asked "Well, are you ready?" Sure, I replied. "Ok, give me three stop-and-goes and come back."

Wow. This is it. The First Solo.

I felt ready, comfortable but not overly confident. I headed to the aircraft and started the preflight checklist, then the before engine start, engine start and before taxi checklists. I began to get nervous and actually started taxing before calling ground control - oops. At least I only made it 10 feet.

Called ground, taxied to and did the run-up, then off to the hold short line and called the tower.

"Grand Prarie Tower, November 2 1 1 lima sierra ready at three-five, closed traffic, student pilot."

"November 2-1-1 lima sierra, cleared for takeoff, runway 35, make right traffic, report bases"

"Cleared for takeoff, one lima sierra"

I gather my self up for about three seconds, release the brake, swing the airplane onto the centerline and hit the throttle. Lots of right rudder and - 40 knots already here comes 47 time to rotate and WHEEEEEE! For the first time in my life, I am flying an airplane by myself.

My instructor warned me that the airplane would perform better without her in it (although she weighs all of 110 lb) and man, did it ever. It LEPT off the ground and I was quickly at pattern altitude on the crosswind leg.

I perform the pre-landing checklist, maintain altitude, get the wind right, maintain that crab into the wind, ok here we are abeam the threshold, time for carb heat and reduce the throttle, look for 70 knots, start decending, looking for where to turn base

"One lima sierra, cleared to land, runway three-five" - the controller has anticipated my turning base and, knowing that I'm a student, is helping me out.

"Cleared to land, one lima sierra."

Ok, start turning to base, hold 70 knots, roll out level, not so much rudder, first notch of flaps, looks about right, maybe a little high, time to turn to final over the new condos (who the f*** builds condos under an airport approach path?), second notch of flaps, add power, I'm high, that's ok just make a good landing, even if it's long, lined up right, over the threshold, power to idle, flare and ...

My first landing. Not perfect, but good enough. I've landed long, so I exit the runway and tell the tower I'd like to taxi back and do more patterns. I manage to do one so-so landing and one really good one, taxi back to the FBO and park the airplane.

"How long were you gone" asks my instructor. 15 minutes? "30 minutes" she says. I have been so totally focused that I have lost track of time.

But goddamn, I flew it by myself.

So what could make the day better? How about a ride in a B-17?

The Liberty Foundation has restored a WWII-era B-17 "Flying Fortress" bomber. It was in town, so I invited my stepfather, who remembers them being built when he was a kid, for a ride. They restored the airplane beautifully and turn the country, giving 30 minute rides to subsidize the restoration. We did a flight from ADS north around Frisco and Lake Lewisville. The weather was great - clear, only a few clouds at about 8000 AGL, almost no wind.

I can't tell you how much fun this was. I was grinning like the kid in a candy store all during the flight and the rest of the day. How amazing it is to connect with a piece of history on such a perfect day.

If you get a chance to take a ride in this or the other flying B-17, do it. It'll make your entire day. But be warned - your face will hurt from grinning too much.