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second try: looking better

Wednesday, September 17th, 2008

This Saturday, a mere 25 minutes after sunrise I will be meeting with CFI Logan at Windy City Flyers for my first lesson in a Cessna 172. They have a fairly large fleet of planes on hand, and CFI Forrest was kind enough to offer a very early morning option for me since we had to cancel last week due to the massive storms in the area from hurricane Ike.

Casually I’ve been looking over checklists for the 172. Wow, there is a lot. I’ve also watched pretty much every video on YouTube that shows how to start the engine on a 172. Naturally, there are a million ways to skin a cat, but the generalities are emerging. I’m pretty sure every plane has it’s own nuances, and I’m looking forward to learning what some of them may be in the coming months.

KPWK (Chicago Executive) is about 25 miles northwest of my house. In traffic that can take upwards of an hour, but early in the morning should be a breeze. At least I hope so. I’d rather not wake up at 4:30am. How am I ever going to sleep Friday night? I’m already excited enough…

Tags: 172, intro, KPWK, windy city flyers
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covering my tracks, AMOD AGL3080

Tuesday, September 16th, 2008

I’m a gadget geek. I’ll admit it. And lately I’ve been doing some photography and enjoying the geotagging features of many of the photo sharing services. But one of the things I didn’t have was a way to automatically track where I was while shooting. But now I do. I purchased an AMOD AGL3080 and have started playing around with it.

But it’s not just for photography. Over at the blog 42 And Flying, Greg, also a student pilot, has used it to create some awesome views of where he has been flying. He uses a combination of the AGL3080, Google Earth, and GPS Visualizer to create the KMZ files Google Earth translates into his photos. Checkout a comment on Jayson’s blog for more details on the process Greg uses.

I haven’t flown with the AGL3080 yet, but I have used it to create a rough picture of my morning commute. I’ve been playing with a combination of GPSBabel, which translates the GPS sentences in the AGL3080’s logfiles into KML, which Google Maps will read as an overlay.

The AGL3080 couldn’t be easier to use. Pop in 3AAA batteries, power it on, set it near a window to get it’s satellite locks, and it begins logging. You can specify a few different logging options (1 sec, 5 sec, 10 sec) by a combination of button presses on the unit. But overall it’s a no-brainer to get the unit logging. Retrieving the logfiles is easy, as the unit mounts like a flash drive on Mac or XP. Just drag ‘n drop.

There is some included software to match up your photos with your logfiles, which is basically all done with the timestamp on the photo and the timestamp in the logfile. When the software matches the two, it’ll update the EXIF tag on the photograph with the lat/long data.

So, with any luck, I’ll be flying on Saturday and may just have some fun graphics as a result…

Tags: AGL3080, GPS
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where have KPWK’s METARs gone?

Monday, September 15th, 2008

I’m a weather hawk. I constantly watch it in my area. Lately I’ve been focusing on the airport METARs as a way to both learn to read them and try and get a feel for what the differences may be across the airports in the areas during similar weather conditions.

But something funky is going on with KWPK’s station.

For the last couple days, even before our recent heavy-storm weekend, it seems like there aren’t any METARs being reported for KPWK. I use a weather widget on my Mac that pulls the METARs from NOAA’s aviation weather service, but it’s been giving me blank readings for KPWK. Even a direct link to NOAA’s METAR page for KPWK returns an error.

http://adds.aviationweather.gov/metars/index.php?submit=1&station_ids=KPWK

I wonder if something happened to the reporting station…

Tags: KPWK, metar, weather
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the rain = no kpwk

Saturday, September 13th, 2008

The rain has cancelled my intro at Chicago Executive with Windy City Flyers. Maybe next week will look better.

Tags: KPWK
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pilot shortage eminent

Tuesday, September 9th, 2008

I frequently check the news stories on the Aero-News Network because they are written from an aviation perspective. One of the more interesting stories I just read was about a pilot shortage that is fairly eminent.

Here I am at the very beginning of this flying journey, and already I’m hearing news that pilots are going to be in great demand soon. Honestly, it doesn’t sway me one way or another, and I couldn’t say if I’ll ever make a career out of flying. Right now it’s just manifesting itself as a hobby.

An interesting takeaway from the video clip of Kit Darby’s speech was a brief comment on freight carriers vs. passenger airlines. The freighters simply pass along the incurred expenses of labor/fuel/equipment to the customers. They are doing fine, and in fact posting profitable returns these past few quarters. The passenger airlines are struggling.

I’m a little puzzled what the business model behind the passenger airlines is. No doubt there are a million variables in the equation, but it would seem that something needs to change soon. As Kit points out, the average plane is in service 8 hours and change per day. In the future, to remain competitive, that number will have to significantly increase.

Translation, something like 80 thousand new pilots will be needed by 2025.

Note to self: Do as much personal air travel as possible before 2025. I’m not sure there will be 80 thousand pilots by then…

Tags: airlines, frieghters, pilots
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got a spare 747 lying around?

Friday, September 5th, 2008

Why not make it into a hotel? That’s what Jumbo Hostel has done. Check out the coverage and article on Wired.

Tags: 747
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another intro booked

Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008

I’ll be heading to Windy City Flyers on the morning of the 13th for an intro flight with them. I’m keeping my mind open to other spots. I know they have a training facility opening at Schaumburg Regional airport, and I’m interested to know when that will be open.

Tags: intro, KPWK, windy city flyers
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the future is E-ink

Friday, August 29th, 2008

Personally I’ve been thinking about E-ink quite a bit as I’m preparing to start training regularly. With the amount of charts and plates you could need on hand when flying, a small cockpit is not the place you want to unfold giant maps or sift through stacks of paper. E-ink readers, while still fairly young in tech, are at what I consider to be THE future of printed media. I don’t own one myself, but more and more I’m seeing trends that I like.

Looks like someone else likes the trend too.

If the Sony Readers and Amazon Kindles of the world start doing their thing in color (they are all still B&W), I envision a whole generation of pilots whipping out a book shaped gizmo, flicking it on, and having access to thousands of maps, airport diagrams, approach plates, checklists, and more. But wait, Fujitsu is saying they’ll release a color E-ink reader in the fall…

There would be no need to unfold anything, and with the multi-touch gesture technology found on devices like the iPhone, you could have a dizzying array of scalable mapping, plotting, highlighting, and tracking systems at your fingertips.

I wonder if Garmin will get on the E-ink bandwagon with some sort of GPS enabled ebook…

Tags: charts, e-ink, kindle, navigation, reader
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in the favor of mother nature

Tuesday, August 19th, 2008

Mother nature likes me. Here’s Midway’s METAR just a few hours before I head over:

KMDW: 651Z 35005KT 10SM FEW041 SCT060 28/18 A3010

Winds out of the North at 5kts, visibility 10 miles, a few clouds at 4,100 and scattered at 6,000. Just South of us in Lansing, IL the sky is clear and the winds are reporting calm.

KIGQ: 645Z AUTO 00000KT 10SM CLR 27/19 A3010

Here’s hoping it stays the same.

Tags: KMDW, metar, weather
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an ounce of prevention

Monday, August 18th, 2008

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure

I’m not the kind of guy who regularly gets motion sick. It has happened in the past, but I have a pretty cast iron stomach. Honestly though, I’m taking no chances. I hopped over to ebay and scored a ReliefBand just in case my stomach decides to go a little wonky during my flight tomorrow.

The ReliefBand comes, as shown above, with a tube of conductivity gel and a booklet explaining how to use it. Basically you grease the inside of your wrist up, then turn it on and lay the two electrodes over the tendons in your wrist. I set it at level 3 and could feel the buzz in my wrist and palm. It cycles on and off in 4 second pulses and isn’t unpleasant at all. Even on the highest setting, I’m certain I’d forget about the sensation pretty quickly.

I’m hoping I don’t need to use it tomorrow. But if I do, at least I’ll have it along for the ride.

Tags: motion sick, reliefband
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flying in chicago