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.