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.

a little more tailwheel flying today

I got in a little tailwheel flying today. The weather was excellent and it went well. The Citabria is just totally fun (but I wish I had a little more leg room).

A tailwheel endorsement!

Doug has "received the required training of FAR 61.31 (i) in a 7KCAB and is proficient in the operation of a tailwheel airplane". Admittedly, I still have a few more lessons to really consider myself even close to that but it's a start and having the endorsement is neat.

my little logbook

I've been entering my logbook into a MySQL database and writing a little php to query and update it. That's working reasonably well now so here are my current totals:

land	sel	xc	night
233	120.2	26.4	11.4

The columns are: landings, single engine (land) hours, cross country (hours) night (hours).

For my tailwheel work, here are my totals:

index	date	from	to	ident	hr_sel
1	2009-02-28	KVKX	K2W5	N53758	1.6
2	2009-03-08	KVKX	K2W5	N53758	1.4
3	2009-03-14	KVKX	KVKX	N53758	0.4
4	2009-03-21	KVKX	KXSA	N53758	1.8
5	2009-04-18	KVKX	MD14	N53758	1.7
					6.9

Another Citabria lesson

I just finished another lesson in a Citabria for my tailwheel endorsement. This time it was 6 landings on two small grass strips in the area. The shortest one was 1,600 feet and there were trees just short of the runway that you had to clear and then put it down pretty quickly. I had one go-around (which was good for practice) because I was a bit too fast. I also got a couple of slips in to lose altitude on final. My first landing was ok but the second was much better. I think that the reason for the improvement is I started aiming for a road just before the strip rather than looking at the strip. The weather could not have been better today. All in all it was too much fun to describe adequately.

Another weather cancel, this time winds

I had to cancel a tailwheel lesson again today because of winds:

KADW 041755Z AUTO 31018G27KT 10SM CLR 17/M03 A2972 RMK AO2 PK WND 32032/1730 SLP067 T01711027 10171 20091 50000

The winds from that are:

from the NW (310 degrees) at 21 MPH (18 knots; 9.4 m/s) gusting to 31 MPH (27 knots; 14.0 m/s)

If I tried it I suspect I'd flutter around kind of like a plastic bag in the wind. Maybe someday and maybe in a much heavier plane.

instrument conditions and a Gaithersburg, MD chute deployment

My previous blog post had to do with weather conditions and an elective flight that might have been. I recently read about an accident (no loss of life though) at the Gaithersburg, MD airport where a low time pilot deployed the parachute on his Cirrus. When I first read the report I remember thinking that he took a big risk flying in those conditions. Aviation Mentor (always an informative source) posted a writeup on his thoughts on that situation at:

http://aviationmentor.blogspot.com/2009/03/chute-first.html

If I had had any doubt I would definitely have not flown. One of my instructors once told me "it's better to be on the ground wishing you were in the air than to be in the air wishing you were on the ground".

if i had that instrument rating

If I had that instrument rating I could fly my wife from Leesburg, Va (KJYO) today to her meeting in Doylestown, Pa (KDYL, current ceiling 300 feet) tomorrow. Someday I will be able to do that. The difference? More than 3 hours driving or 1 hour and 6 minutes by "Air Doug".

xc in a Citabria

I need to accumulate some xc (cross country, meaning flying to an airport at least 50 miles from your start point) time so I decided to combine a tailwheel lesson with a little xc yesterday. We flew from KVKX (Potomac Friendly airport, Maryland) to KXSA (Tappannock Essex, Virginia). This flight was a little more challenging for me because I was flying by pilotage (flying to visual references and timing each leg instead of using GPS and/or VOR navigation). If you're not familiar with the area (I wasn't) it can be a little more challenging to pick landmarks that you can definitely identify. I used the wrong bend in a river on the way out and was a pretty good ways right of course for a while. I'm also still not used to flying by compass rather than a heading indicator. I've gotten lazy with a HI in that you can see the entire compass and not have to do any mental math to determine course angles. With a plain old whiskey compass all you see is the number in front and it lazes around some at times too. The flight went ok (I could have done a number of things better) and was very entertaining. I also got the opportunity to get a picture of the plane after I got back when another student took it out. This plane (and the tailwheel endorsement in general) is a lot of fun and I definitely recommend anyone interested to give it a try.

a really short tailwheel lesson due to weather

I had a lesson last weekend in the Citabria (for a tailwheel endorsement) that was cut short because of weather so I thought that I'd post something about an excellent podcast that I picked up from itunes. It is by Stephen Force and the podcast is called "airspeed". I picked up 2 episodes on his tailwheel training and the Citabria. His website is called airspeedonline. I found the podcast on itunes but I don't see a link to it from his website. His descriptions are exactly what I've experienced so far so I recommend listening if you're interested in the subject. The dates of the particular episodes are: 22-Jan-2009 and 7-Sep-2008.

And now some pictures

I've enjoyed my Citabria flights so much that I needed to take some pictures so here you go.

tailwheel landings lesson today

I'm working on a tailwheel endorsement and I had another Citabria lesson today. It focused on 3 point (all 3 wheels) and wheel (just the 2 main gear) landings at 2W5. There was a little cross wind just above the tree line so I also got the opportunity to see how well that big rudder (for me anyway) works. I did reasonably well (nobody cried that I know of) and enjoyed it immensely. My instructor also likes to take students to various airports in the area so I'm looking forward to the upcoming lessons.

Another 7KCAB lesson tomorrow

I've got another 7KCAB lesson tomorrow and am working W&B and performance calculations to get ready for it. It's pretty cool to be in the "Normal and Acrobatic Category" in the flight envelope.

Citabria = Wow!

I started my tailwheel endorsement training today in a Citabria at KVKX (Potomac airfield, Maryland) and 2W5 and had a bunch of firsts for me. They included:

• tailwheel takeoffs and landings
• really steep turns (60 degree or more)
• loops, that was something else
  
• spins, that was even more something else
• grass field landings
• flying a non-six pack (instrument layout) airplane
  

The Citabria is, unfortunately, very tight for my legs (knees almost in my ears I think) so I would probably not want to fly a lot in it but I think that plane can do pretty much anything.

tailwheels and you learn something every day

Here's a tidbit that I didn't know until today:
"The name Citabria is simply Airbatic spelled backwards." (I picked that up from http://ke3gg.net/whatis.htm).

The reason that I bring that up is that I'm looking to get a tailwheel endorsement so I'm going to get a lesson this weekend.

fascinating video on tailplane icing

i stumbled on a fascinating video on tailplane icing at:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2238323060735779946&hl=en

from what i've heard about the recent accident it sounds like a potential culprit. one of the many interesting points is that flying on autopilot would reduce that chance that the pilot would "feel" any change in control due to accumulation of ice on the tailplane (horizontal stabilizer).
it's worth it to watch the entire video. at 15:45 minutes in, there's an actual tail stall during a test flight causing a pitch down that is clear evidence of a very dangerous situation for an unprepared pilot. this happened to a tail that had only a portion modified to simulate icing. i can't imaging how bad it would have been had the entire surface been iced.

logbook finally in a database

I finally got around to making a little MySQL database and putting my 17 pages of logbook into it (and finding some addition errors). It's interesting to do things like query for number of flights for each day of the week, hours per month/year and so on (kind of like using a spreadsheet to do all sorts of what if exercises rather than actually doing any work).
At least it's useful and gives me a few more practical database exercises to work on.

winds aloft (and wind shear)

I was hoping to fly today on across country down to KXSA (Tappahannock in the Richmond area) but the winds are probably a bit too high.
This is what the winds aloft look like now:

DATA BASED ON 010600Z  
VALID 011200Z   FOR USE 0800-1500Z. TEMPS NEG ABV 24000

FT  3000    6000    9000   12000   18000   24000  30000  34000  39000

EMI 2752 2748+02 2757-03 2746-08 2847-23 2855-35 276948 277057 266663

This says that EMI (Westminster) weather winds are aloft are from 270 at 52 knots at 3,000 feet and from 270 at 48 knots at 6,000. That's a big high for our little bug smashers.
The current weather at Dulles (KIAD) shows:

KIAD 011133Z 0112/0218 19008KT P6SM SKC WS020/26040KT

That says that winds at the surface are from 190 at 8 knots (not bad at all). However, it also says that there's a wind shear alert of winds from 260 at 40 knots at 2,000 feet.
I've never actually seen a wind shear alert so it caught my eye right away. Looks like it's a flight sim day for me today.

how's this for an office...

how would you like this be to your office:

http://copterchick.blogspot.com/2009/01/i-havent-seen-rainbow-like-this-one-in.html

a couple of flights and a question

Last week we flew to Farmville, Va (KFVX) and back. That flight went ok but I wasn't happy with how I flew back into KJYO (note to self, again, don't do another midfield crosswind for the 17 downwind).

Yesterday, I went to an IFR refresher (I'm still working on my instrument rating) at KJYO which was great. I heard something in it that I had never noticed. How many of you have ever noticed the barber pole on the altimeter? How many of you what it is for (I hadn't and didn't).

Today we flew to Hanover, Va (KOFP) which went well. As usual, there was at least one interesting experience. Coming back (KOFP-CSN-JASEN-LUCKE-KJYO) at CSN ATC told us that they had an unidentified target low and close on the same heading. I was the pilot-not-flying and spent the next minute or two looking behind us. I finally got a glimpse of a low wing single engine directly behind and below us and maybe close enough for me to see the pilot. They continued doing this for a while but eventually they began to descend and turned toward the ridge. They got to the ridge and then paralleled it very close at an altitude below the top heading north while we kept a close eye on them.
A bit short of the LUCKE gate we headed east and turned to the 45 for the 17 downwind at the first quarry. All-in-all it was a good day. KOFP is just north of Richmond and is a great stop to make in the area.

flight to KPTB and, as usual, new lessons learned

A couple of us flew from KJYO to KPTB (Petersburg, Va Dinwiddie airport) yesterday. You can see a graphic of the router (saved from my Garmin, Forerunner305 gps watch) here. The first aircraft we had reserved preflighted perfectly and looked good. We were about to taxi from the runup area to the holdshort on runway 35 and noticed that the right fuel tank gauge had dropped to zero. We tried several things (cycle master, shutdown/start) and could not get to it change. It was showing the level fine during preflight so we had no idea what had happened to it. Working fuel gauges are required equipment so we had to taxi it back and then were lucky enough to have had another 172S available so we took that one instead. The flight was uneventful with the route we took being KJYO-JASEN-CSN-FAK-KPTB. The KCJR (Culpeper, Va airport) area was busy and we saw 4 or 5 planes around us while transiting over it. We had a PCAS MRX with us and it was helpful in letting us know that other aircraft were in the vicinity. ATC let us know most of the time when we needed to keep an eye out (we were VFR so it was up to us to watch anyway). The pattern in KPTB was a little busy but we were on the 150 radial from the FAK VOR so that put us almost on a 45 degree entry into the downwind for runway 5 at KPTB which made it a bit easier.
The return flight was a little bumpy at points but not bad. The next thing that happened was ATC cleared us to turn to KJYO (below class bravo airspace at KIAD) before we got to the JASEN intersection. This is generally a good thing because it's a little quicker getting home but it does mean that the view is different than we usually get from JASEN so we actually couldn't see KJYO until 7 or 8 miles out. Something like that has happened once or twice in the past and it does teach you to be familiar with getting to your destination regardless of the direction you might end up getting there.
We each got about 1.5 hours of xc (cross country) time. 50 xc hours are required before you can take the practical test for your instrument rating so we each have around 28 hours to go (and way more instrument training).