tips for instrument checkride

Brief approaches on the ground before takeoff.
Get weather from ATIS or ASOS before entering the approach.
If you "peg the needle" (fully deflect) on approach, you MUST abort.

-Jim G

Classroom activities in meteorology University of Illinois

song

What is is that we do when we're writing songs? Eight tones in a scale, comfortable chord patterns, moon-June-croon rhyming? Shouldn't all the combinations have been used up by now?

How is it that so many thousands (millions?) of songs have been written and shared, and yet each time a song is written it is an intensely personal, intensely public expression of a particular here-and-now. Each song dances the yin and yang of individual struggle for understanding, for notice, for meaning, for life.

Is it just happenstance that the majority of songs are love songs? No. Can't be. Biology, which humans rightly suppress for its violent tendencies, asserts its fundamental right to evaluation here. In a love song, "what is best" is crystalized through the lens of discernment of survival of the fittest. Isn't it this crystallization that forms the foundation of dreams & hopes--valued for its clarity, returned to in memory for guidance when vision becomes murky and tangled again?

Songs are always a link to the past. The distilled voices of humankind contribute to the form, shape, and content of a song. And, true to its most ancient function as a medium of storage and transmission of information, each song adds to the web of long-lasting communication in which all members of culture swim.

Future sense is present as well. By its public nature, by the innate understanding that it will be sung for an audience, even an audience of oneself, song invariably carries hope. There WILL be a future for which the message has meaning and importance. At least that. At the very least.

At most? How far can it go?

The ancient psalms celebrate civilization and the city interchangeably and indistinguishably from God. Twenty centuries of hymns document the transformation of a distant God who can be addressed only with hope and faithfulness to a proactive understanding that "we are God's hands" within the personal interactions that form and maintain community.

Strong as the symbol of the natural world remains, the promise of life's potential is hard-pressed to fit in nineteenth-century-style paintings of religious entities surrounded by clouds and rays of the sun. In century twenty-one, the elemental forces of energy that hold stars in their courses are being stolen from their work to snapshot bits of ourselves and all that we value and love. In an explosion of communication, older linear progressions of knowledge are being reformed by the breaking of finite bonds of material transmission--all to enable the ability to encapsulate these cherished bits of humanity-turned-digital.

Each photo and blog entry stores an evaluation by one person that THIS is important right now. Of all the directions I can point my camera, THIS one is the one that matters. Of all the issues I can comment on, THIS one is the one I choose. Of all the songs floating around the audio world, THESE are the ones that speak my message. From the state of my heart, this is my song.

Time is that human invention which enables memory and vision, but its power comes at the expense of trapping humanity in its linearity. To the practical mind, time is a fundamental limiting factor, but thank goodness humans are not always practical. To the poet, songwriter and scientist, time is not immutable. In fact, the, the linearity of time has been constantly challenged by exploration, by love, by religion and by hope. This challenge is sung as the promise of new life, of undying love, of resurrection and redemption. As the challenge grows, the promise grows.

And the medium for the promise has grown. Song, while retaining at its core the intimacy of the lullaby, has amplified its reach to the concert hall, to top-10 radio, to mass-produced CD's to vibrant internet musicfile-sharing.

As Flikr and MySpace evolve into a fluctuating primordial digital soup, can anyone predict the new life that will coalesce from the myriad time-linked, people-linked photos, observations, and reminiscences? Could there have been any advance prediction that the tiny sea-creatures of Earth's ancient seas would be carried forth (long after the seas had changed their composition and their inhabitants otherwise extinct) as the blood and lungs of a newborn infant?

Will the life-force of the future recognize the humanity of its roots? How can it not? Perhaps someday instead of elemental particles of neutron, proton and quark, the qualities of the world will be labeled "cherish," "melody," and "kinship."

It's a given. From a currently-unattainable but foreseeable position outside the infinity of time, Alpha and Omega share a point in space-time. Resurrection, just like love, just like community, just like hope, exists where it always has, in the singing of the song.

Boeing 777 being built

Ed Williams' BASIC programming for aviation

This link has aviation formulas and calculations in BASIC.

I found it when I was looking up information on pressure-pattern navigation.

KBRY, Bardstown, KY

I was on the phone with David Hall, who started reminiscing about the airfields in and around Bardstown, KY. Dave's dad ran KBRY in the 60s. He remembers his first flight, at age 3 or 4, and being in his daddy's lap.

Dr. Steely had a Navion. He had adventures: Taking off quickly, raising the landing gear immediately, not being in flight yet and skidding on down the runway. Came to the end of the runway, rolled up between some cars belly sidewards, left wingtip 6 inches from the ground. Also travelling at 200 mph across the tops of the buildings in town.

The area used to have a number of airports. The original Bardstown airport was about 500 ft off Dixie highway, on the Colesburg Rd.

There was a grass field on Boston Rd.

Short Combs had a strip on his farm.

After WWII, Donald (?) had 25 airplanes and a hundred students, doing flight instruction in PT13s and PT26s (offshoots of P51s).
In 1962 the current Bardstown airport, KBRY, was built, largely to the efforts of the Coca-Cola company. Green County parachuters were at a different grass strip near there (maybe). They used C180s and DeHaviland Beavers.

pilot's logbook

Holding Patterns:
1. Find intersection
2. Where am I? (put a dot on the map or chart)
3. Where will the pattern be?
4. Always turn the shortest distance to the outbound course.

The first turn to the intersection or nav-aid can be direct to the intersection (not necessarily follow the racetrack shape if it doesn't make sense to do so."


Listen to the radio calls, writing them is a distraction.

C (clearance)
R (route)
A (altitude)
F (frequency)
T (transponder)

Sunrise & Sunset times for any date

I just found this website that has sunrise and sunset times for any day. One hour before sunrise is "night," requiring that the pilot be have 3 takeoffs and landings to a full stop at night within the past 90 days in order to carry passengers that early in the morning. This could make a difference in planning departure times and/or needing to take night currency flights.

Four thousand American soldiers have died in Iraq. This is the true story of how one of them came home.

This article starts with my longtime business (funeral liturgy), looks like it is going to be about my new business (aviation), and then turns out to be a close, intimate portrayal of everyone's business if they/we are aware of who we are in this world and the far-reaching effects of our lifestyles.

Pilot's logbook

4/30 C-152 N69011 LOU LOU Out to Six-mile, low ceilings and haze, back to LOU, T&G. 6 lndgs, 1.0 hr. Frank

According to the weather forecast, it would have been a good day to go to Clark County and practice cross-wind landings, but I was afraid we wouldn't be able to get back, too much moisture in the air, so we headed back to Bowman for the touch & go's. Frank enjoyed going around and around. The procedures and the radio interactions were making sense to him, so that was fun. I enjoyed it.

Centigrade to Fahrenheit conversion. Simple. Really.

[note: I'm not satisfied with this, yet and will continue revising. There's something simpler that I'm missing, maybe just in the explanation. I'd LOVE!!!! to get feedback from somebody willing to sit down for 15 minutes and try this stuff out. You'll invest your time well, and maybe figure out what I'm missing.]

The almost-simple way to mentally convert Centigrade to Fahrenheit is to double the number, subtract 1/10, then add 32.
Ex. 5ºC = 5*2=10.
10 - 10/10 = 9.
9+32=41ºF.

Sometimes, though, if a conversion doesn't come quickly, the brain just stops and moves on to other pressing issues. This is the dreaded plotz. Rather than risk that, it's worth learning how to get a reasonable estimate quickly and then, if needed, an accurate conversion.

For quick and simple:
Double the number and add 30.

This gets us really close enough for most situations that aren't conducive to picking up a pencil. It only requires two steps.

To convert 5ºC to Fahrenheit:

5*2=10.
10+30 = 40ºF.

How accurate is it?

Anywhere between freezing (0ºC, 32ºF) and shirt-sleeves weather (28ºC, 68ºF) this rough result is within two degrees, being 2º low at freezing, 2º high at shirtsleeves, and absolutely correct in the middle (10ºC, 50ºF).

Getting away from 50ºF in either direction, the rough answer creeps more and more off. At 0ºF and at 100ºF, it's 5 degrees off.

So, if a closer figure is needed, two additional steps makes it accurate to the nearest whole degree.

Remember, 50ºF is the center.

If that rough result Fº is higher than 55ºF, it needs to be pulled back in one degree. If the rough result was more than as 65ºF then two degrees back. If it was more than 75, subtract three. If more than 85 subtract 4, etc.

To let the procedural part of the brain handle this (not the plotz-prone intellect), use fingers. Count the tens from 50 up to the rough estimate (but only count the last ten if the final digit is > 5). Pull the estimate back down by as many degrees as counted on your fingers.

23ºC= 23*2+30 gives a rough result of 73, which is more than 55, so it has to be pulled back down.

Starting at 50, count one. 60 is two fingers. 70 does not count, since 3 (in 73) is not more than 5 .
73ºF (rough estimate) -2(fingers) becomes 71ºF (accurate)

On the colder end of the scale, if the rough result is as less than 45, extra degrees have to be added to pull it back in toward the center. It's a finger count of the tens going down, starting with 40. Count the final ten ONLY if the final digit is < 5.

Example:

3ºC= 3*2+30 gives a result of 36, which is lower than 45.

Starting with 40, we finger-count one , but we do not count the 30, since the last digit of 36 is not <5.

36ºF (rought estimate) -2(fingers)= 34ºF (accurate)

(If there's trouble remembering whether the final digit needs to be greater or less than 5 to be counted, think if it as being closer or further away from the center (50ºF). For warm temperatures, count if it's >5, for cold, count if it's <5.)

With a little practice, this should be easy to do. Much easier than explaining it.

For about 5 minutes, practice getting a rough estimate. Take each number below, double it and add 30.
2ºC 1ºC 10ºC 4ºC 6ºC 13ºC 20ºC 5ºC 9ºC 11ºC 33ºC 3ºC 15ºC 25ºC 49ºC 35ºC 40ºC (start over if it's not been 5 minutes)

For 5 more minutes, practice converting a rough Fahrenheit estimate to an accurate conversion.
50ºF 66ºF 78ºF 96ºF 106ºF 92ºF 62ºF 104ºF 58ºF 70ºF 48ºF 52ºF 44ºF 30ºF 34ºF 38ºF 46ºF 78ºF 88ºF 66ºF 42ºF 102ºF

For 5 more minutes, do a rough estimate, then bring it in to accuracy.
2ºC 1ºC 10ºC 4ºC 6ºC 13ºC 20ºC 5ºC 9ºC 11ºC 33ºC 3ºC 15ºC 25ºC 49ºC 35ºC 40ºC 10ºC 11ºC 8ºC 20ºC 22ºC 11ºC 25ºC 30ºC 12ºC 5ºC 9ºC 2ºC 8ºC 1ºC 0ºC -2ºC

For optimum retention, do all this again later in the day.

After a little practice converting Cº to Fº will be easy, but to make sure it sticks in habit, practice twice a day for two more days, then at least once more later in the week. This can be practiced while driving by taking any numbers in sight.

Part of the strategy here is that in order to multitask as pilots are always expected to do, the intellect determines the need for some cognitive work, but can assign that work to other faculties,freeing the intellect until the result comes back for more evaluation. Cool, huh?

The spreadsheet version of this information is here.

Engine startup procedure for 16T, revisited

Ye gods. How can anybody remember this stuff? I’ll just…

remember my instructor,

full of it, full of it.

THROTTLE FULL, MIXTURE FULL

Adding fuel to the fire

FUEL PUMP ON

show’s he's master. What a git!

MASTER SWITCH ON

Once he gets a reaction,

WHEN FUEL GAUGE JUMPS

then he can turn it off,

TURN FUEL PUMP OFF

(but needling and prodding

are something he’s fond of.)

It’s just idle conversation.

MIXTURE IDLE

You could throttle him halfway,

THROTTLE 1/2"

but go ahead and turn on

TURN KEY

the ignition anyway.

As soon as the engine purrs,

WHEN ENGINE STARTS

then we’re rich, mixture rich.

MIXTURE FULL RICH

A thousand bucks would get us

ADJUST THROTTLE TO 1000 RPM

to the moon without a glitch.

But big money comes from oil,

CHECK OIL TEMPERATURE

from pressure on the green,

CHECK OIL PRESSURE

so the ending to this story

is yet to be seen.

The first section of this drivel is fondly reminiscent of the instructor who checked me out in 16T. He can be annoying. I think he considers it an art. The last section heads off into one of his favorite subjects--the fossil fuel issue.

Anyway, the ditty is more memorable than that list was, but for what it's worth, the procedure isn't daunting anymore.

I think what this procedure accomplishes is first to prime the engine, and then to start it from an engine-flooded configuration. When I asked whether this was cold-weather startup, he said it should be used all the time. Was he jerking my chain? Who knows?

He flies a mean plane.

Plotz Prevention for a fledgling pilot

plotz

v. An old Yiddish word, used here to describe what the brain does when part of it gets tangled up under stress and sits down on the job, refusing to function.

Every student pilot talks about being "overwhelmed" with the sensations and requirements of flying the plane. For me, the most persistent causes have to do with numbers, numbers, numbers, numbers. How much of flying airplanes has to do with numbers? An awful lot.

Two big stumbling blocks have been my inexperience with visualizing the 360 degrees of the compass as meaningful directions and the appalling difficulty I have doing mental arithmetic quickly and accurately enough under stress. Even though I recognized these inadequacies at the beginning of training, I didn't know any good-enough ways to get past them.

This week, while it's been too rainy and windy for flying, I worked out a set of paper-and-pencil exercises which seem to be making a difference, though it's too soon to know for sure. The idea is to take one of the exercises for fifteen minutes twice a day for three days, and then move on to another.

I'm posting my working list as Plotz Prevention and I'll keep working with it as long as it works for me.

(One other thing that HAS made a difference is lumosity.com which I can recommend whole-heartedly, even though it's not pilot-specific.)

The Cessna Citation that took Jake Green and Robert Hawkins to Texas.

Jake Green finally made it to an airplane again. I always pictured that he'd figure out a way to get his grandfather's old cropduster to work (maybe its instrumentation would have been too primitive to get fried by the EMP, like a lot of the planes we all fly).

The storyline this season went differently, as Jericho got a lot of attention from the Cheyenne government and got power and a lot of normalcy back. Still, I was glad it finally happened.

Exercises for new pilots

Here are some more rainy-day practice missions.

Weather and wind: Print off a page of metar/tafs for local airports. Go thru with a pencil. Convert all the times to local. Figure X-wind component for landings on 2 runways there, best and next-best. (Sketch wind and runway angles.) (Look up and translate any unknown weather codes.)(Check airport & other pertinent information, ie. very short runway, obstacles, bad approach.)

Compass turns: Roll two dice.
Die one mod 3 = first digit of heading, die 2 =second digit. Third digit = 0.
Roll again to get a new heading.
Just figure out the answer to one question. Do you turn L or R?
Do it again. And again.


Compass turns: Roll two dice. Die one mod 3 = first digit of heading, die 2 =second digit. Third digit = 0. Do as a simulator exercise to turn, time, figure rollout. Or do it on paper. (L or R? Number of degrees to turn? Number of seconds?)

Pilot's logbook

3/26 Check-in ride with T.

Beautiful day, perfect weather, surprisingly, since rain and TS had been forecast.

We should have sat down and talked first. T was with another student, so I went on to preflight. Also, I didn't bring my computer bag with all my books, flight plans, etc. so I wouldn't have had what we needed, anyway.

First time in 011 in several months. Only the third time in any plane in 6 or 7 weeks.

Preflight-I saw T flip a little toggle switch (one that I never use, guess what? it's radio.). Then when I tried to get myself on the headset, it didn't come in. It was the switch. Now I know that switch.

Taxi OK. Runup OK, just don't check the carb heat. Stay with the checklist.

Takeoff ok. Tower didn't specify right turn, and I took it anyway without verifying. It's what we usually do. Should've checked.

At some point we figured out that T thought we were recreating a cross-country, and I wasn't. I didn't even have an older one since I'd just reorganized my kneepad stuff to keep having junk that might fall out.

Clearing turns. I'm still not used to them.

We were doing slowflight exercises, and I couldn't get it right. I wasn't always sure what he was asking me to do. Usually I'm pretty much on the money with slowflight. I am NO GOOD at flying with somebody else in charge. I'm trying to figure out what they're getting at, and tuning in on the wrong things, I guess. Need to get a fool-proof pattern established (for all my planes) for each of the standard check-ride procedures.

Then T tried to save the day with an engine-out exercise right near Lee Bottom. I knew we should take the airport. I couldn't see where it actually started, and aimed for a point that turned out to be about 1/2 mile north, with trees between us and the threshold. I certainly didn't make any radio calls. T had the throttle. We went too low, I should have told him we needed to pull up.

Coming back, it was hard to see Bowman field. Then, when we finally got to 6-mile, the radio wasn't working right so I embarrassed myself by not being able to hear Tower (or anybody else) and not seeing Todd in 16T or a bird.

Landing was cross-wind, and I let the wind push us. T offered to fly with me one day to just do cross-wind landings, and it would be a good idea. Probably. When I first got my license, I had practicing cross-wind landings at the top of my list. It's still there. Why can't I null this out?

I didn't call in for touch-and-go, so we had to full stop. Off at Kilo, and there's that runway hold-short line that you have to not cross.

So, a good time was had by all.

Also. I still don't have a permanent copy of my license. FAA thinks I'm still a student. Peyton has more than one that are "lost." He says the FAA people can just print me another temporary, and they will. Still, it has to be mailed. I'm calling him again tonight.

Pilot's logbook

3/24 N16084 EKX-2I3-EKX Flight review for rental of C-150 2.3 Jim G.

Collect key, POH and clipboard.
Pre-flight the plane in the hangar, then go in for last weather check.
Hangar door: open partway, about 6 in. from the cable, pull out. Leave tow bar in the hangar beside the door or in the plane.
OK to turn on master switch and set radios and LORAN before engine start.
Ask for radio check before taxi. "Elizabethtown Unicom, Cessna 16084, radio check. Elizabethtown"
"Elizabethtown traffic, Cessna 16084 ready to taxi to 05. Elizabethtown."
Keep a close eye on heading indicator.
"Tower" between E-town and Rough River is a green silo-thingie near a tall red-and-white tower.
At Rough River it's best to use runway 2, since there are mountains at the approach to 20. If you must use 20, stay right of the white cliff.
Use short-field landing.

Coming in to E-town, there are two water towers near the airport.
There are two towers to the left. The leftmost of those is Vine Grove.
Pull up to gas pumps, leave the plane there, then check in and pay.

Want to do T&G's at E-town, then take Frank to Rough River.
Next time, TRANSLATE in writing the times on the TAF.
Want to go with Jim to Vine Grove.

Aviation education sponsors and opportunities

federal Credit Union
Matt Miller--A World inMotion: materials, program, training and partnership with volunteers from industry. STEM (science, technology, engineering & math). Balloon cars. Gliders.

NASA Smart Skies. ATC-related setup. Gr. 5-9. Fly By Math. Line Up With Math.
www.atcsim.nasa.gov Needs Internet access, demo is standalone.

Rol Murrow (Wolf Aviation Fund)
National Coalition for Aviation Education
www.avuationeducation.org
Index of Aviation Ed organizations

Judy Rice Careers in Education

FAA.gov/education

Girl Scout:
V Daugherty see contacts

San Diego desert blooms