finally a little more flying

Graduate school (and work) have kept me from flying much lately but I was able to get a little in today. I flew KJYO (Leesburg, Va) to KCJR (Culpeper, Va). I got in one ILS approach, three landings, a soft field takeoff (it has been ages since I did one) and couple of other things. The weather was perfect today. While at KCJR I was able to see a T-28, T-6, and then saw a Corsair and what I think was a Hellcat do a low fast pass down the runway. That airport has some neat airplanes in and around it. All in all a good day.

aviation technology and the human role in it

This report on a near accident on China Airlines Flight 006 in 1985 is a fascinating read in terms of the aviation details combined with aspects of human factors engineering. As pilots (and people in general) become relegated to monitoring roles when technology takes over many activities, the results can be unpredictable when the unexpected happens. The section labeled "2.2 Flightcrew" contains some very interesting observations along that line.
My recent flight to KCHO had an event that made me think of this. I had the autopilot fly the GPS Y RWY 21 approach (to start learning how to do it), as we reached the minimum (1,400 ft), I set it to fly the missed approach and it began the climb to 4,000 ft at 500 fpm. It seemed to pitch unusually high and airspeed started dropping way off. Everything worked fine but afterwards it made me wonder how long it would have taken me to decide to take over if we had been in danger of a stall.

instrument training flight (first GPS approach)

It's been a little over a month since my last flight (in a Citabria) and I had a little time yesterday so I decided to do another instrument training flight and get some XC time (cross country). We took a 172 with a KLN-94 GPS and KMD 550 MFD. We flew from KJYO (Leesburg, Va) and took the GPS Y 21 approach into KCHO (Charlottesville, Va). This was my first GPS approach and we had the autopilot fly it which was pretty neat. I'm used to flying VFR straight in to runway 21 but the GPS approach had us hold at the WITTO intersection and then angle in via the ECEUS and MUSOJ intersections so you actually come in at an angle to miss the little hill on the left before the runway. One thing that I'm beginning to realize is that if you are in actual instrument conditions (meaning you can't see very far), if you see the runway environment when you reach the minimum altitude you are going to be very close to the airport and you will probably have to drop your flaps right away, slow down and descend quickly to land. I can understand how stressful instrument flying can be.
From there we went up the CLADD intersection and took the ILS 32 approach into KOKV (Winchester).
After KOKV we headed back to KJYO and were done for the day.
I did notice one thing about flying using the autopilot. It's easy to stop paying attention and just mess with the GPS or just look around and forget simple things like throttle back when you reach your cruise altitude because the autopilot is doing most of that for you (I was trying the autopilot fixed rate of climb coupled with the altitude arm mode meaning it would climb at a particular rate and then level off automatically at a set altitude).
All in all it was another fun and learning filled day.
My totals so far are:

land	sel	xc	night
250	126.6	28.6	11.4

an affordable EFB

As usual, Aviation Mentor has an excellent posting on how to come up with an affordable EFB (Electronic Flight Bag).
You can see that posting at:
http://aviationmentor.blogspot.com/2009/06/poor-mans-efb.html

Paper management can be challenging in the cockpit so I'd like to give this a try to see if would help.

A little more tailwheel practice yesterday

The weather was perfect yesterday and I was able to get out and do a little more tailwheel practice. I did some steep turns, various stalls and slow flight and then a few landings at 2W5. I also took a few more pictures and put them on my flickr gallery.

UAVs and autonomous aircraft and USAF acquisition of the same

I'm listening to a 10-May-2009 60-Minutes podcast on the subject of UAVs (the remotely piloted Predator in this case). They said that next year, for the first time, the USAF will buy more unmanned than manned aircraft. This subject continually fascinates me in that the human is the real weakness in an aircraft (weight, physiological limits, endurance and so on). It's kind of funny in that UAVs are somewhat similar to outsourcing a job. In this case, the pilot's job in the aircraft is being outsourced to a pilot on the ground. Autonomous aircraft for surveillance (Global Hawk) are performing well. The potential for armed autonomous aircraft (UCAV for example) will be realized someday. I think that the end of the "fighter pilot" (sitting in the fighter anyway) is in sight. While that's the one job I would like to have had most in life I can see the likely future for it.

graduate school and a little less flying

I started graduate school (at UVA in Charlottesville Va) and will be heading down there for a number of all day classes at intervals for the next year (while I'm still working). I'm going to have to cut back on flying a little because of the time and study requirements but still plan to do at least one tailwheel flight a month for a while. I'm hoping to fly myself down there at least once in the next year to actually go somewhere with a purpose for a change.

I also had the chance to listen to a no-gyro approach recording at liveatc.net. A no-gyro approach is where an aircraft has lost it's gyroscopic instruments and therefore may have some difficulty making safe turns and controlling pitch. In this situation the pilot can ask ATC for a no-gyro approach and ATC will then direct the pilot when to start and stop turns. It's very interesting to listen to.