Archive for February, 2008

Been on a book buying binge

Published February 27, 2008 Flight Lessons , Flight Simulators , Pilot Gear 1 Comment
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PM3 - Instrument Flying

At the recomendation of my instructor I purchased the IFR text I will use for my training;  The Pilot’s Manual 3 - Instrument Flying published by ASA, although I bought it from Amazon.com.   It was delivered to my office today and I’ve thumbed through it a bit, and so far it looks good.  It’s a hefty 600+ page hardcover text book with lots of digrams, examples, charts, visual aids and plenty of text.   The one thing it has impressed upon me is just how much there is to learn for your instrument ticket.  I don’t mind, and I’m looking forward to diving right in. 

In addition to ”Instrument Flying”, over the past week or two I’ve also purchased a current FAR/AIM 2008, a Guide to the Flight Review (BFR), and two books geared towards using MS Flight Simulator as a training/practice tool; Teaching Confidence in the Clouds by Tom Gilmore, and Microsoft Flight Simulator as a Training Aid: A Guide for Pilots, Instructors and Virtual Aviators by Bruce Williams. 

MS Flight Sim as a Training AidSince I’ve had it the longest of all my recent purchases, I’m almost finished reading Bruce Williams’ MS Flight Sim as a Training Aid, and I have to say this book is very cool.  It contains a wealth of information regarding the ins and outs of using MS Flight Sim (2004 or FSX) to augment your flight training by using it as a procedural trainer, or as a tool to help you stay fresh.  It takes a very pragmatic approach to MSFS, identifying specific areas where it can be valuable to us as pilots and others where it is weak.  One of the biggest pluses this book offers is an accopanying CD-ROM that contains a wealth of information such as FAA reprints and VFR/IFR practice flights which can be loaded into MSFS.  Bruce also has a great web site which augments much of the information in the book.   IMHO, this book was a good buy.

As I get through Tom’s Book, Teaching Confidence in the Clouds, I’ll post similar feedback here on the blog. 

5 months and 3 days to go…

Published February 25, 2008 Homebuilding 0 Comments
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…until AirVenture 2008!

AirVentureI booked my flights to AirVenture today, so it’s offically official, I am going again this year.  I had intended to fly into and out of Appleton, WI and last week I found a great fare of $354.  I should have booked it then because when I went to the book the flights today, that $354 had become $580.  Yikes!  Instead, I’ll be flying into Bloomington, IL again this year where I’ll crash at my friend Chad’s place before we drive up to the big show the next day.

Let the countdown begin!

A lesson of sorts

Published February 24, 2008 Flight Lessons 2 Comments

The weather is nasty, so I didn’t get to go flying this morning, but my instructor and I did do a little bit of ground work.   Actually, it wasn’t really ground work, it was the flight schools written test of the material required for the ground portion of the BFR.   I had to look up many of the answers in the FAR/AIM, e.g., VFR visibilty requirements and cloud clearances for the different classes of airspace, but I got through it in short order.  It was a good refresher of many of the requlatory items I need to know for the BFR, so it was time well spent.  He (my instructor) is off next weekend, so I’ll have to wait two more weeks to go flying (sigh)… oh well.

Not gonna happen

Published February 23, 2008 Flight Lessons 0 Comments

It’s 10:45am and the flight school just called; today’s flight has been scrubbed.  The weather looks OK right now, with plenty of visibility, light winds and a high overcast, but the guy at the front desk said he was looking at the radar and the heavy stuff is about to move in.  I have another flight scheduled for tomorrow morning at 8am, so hopefully the bad stuff will blow though by then, but by the looks of things I doubt it will.

This blows… No really, it does

Published February 22, 2008 Flight Lessons 1 Comment

Unfortunately, the weather forecast doesn’t look good for tomorrow.  Just take a look at the current TAF for KOAK…

KOAK 222352Z 230024 24010KT P6SM VCSH SCT030 BKN045
       FM0300 26008KT P6SM BKN030
       FM0600 19007KT P6SM SCT030
       FM0900 VRB06KT P6SM SCT050
       FM1200 16008KT P6SM SCT040 BKN080
       FM1800 16014G22KT P6SM -RA SCT040 BKN080
       FM2100 16024G34KT 5SM RA BKN015 OVC020

Did you notice of the wind predictions?  The ceiling estimates?  24 gusting to 34 knots with a 2000′ overcast is not good, not good at all.  The local TV stations are telling us to get ready for high winds, flooding in low areas, and landslides along the coast.  This doesn’t bode well for flying tomorrow, or anything else for that matter.  Oh well, we need the water.

Oshkosh: The Spirit of Aviation

Published February 21, 2008 Homebuilding , Videos 0 Comments
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Check out this fantastic video from our friends at the EAA. If it doesn’t make you want to go to Oshkosh (Airventure), then nothing will. I just talked to my buddy Chad yesterday and it looks like we are on for another year of camping in Camp Scholler… I can’t wait! By the way, if you click the banner at the bottom, you can purchase your tickets now at a small discount.

Flying FSX

Published February 21, 2008 Flight Simulators 2 Comments
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After many years away from flight simulation software, I recently purchased Microsoft’s Flight Simulator X (FSX) and I have to say I’ve been pleasantly surprised. In my opinion, the graphics and the flight models are surprising accurate for a simulator, especially when you consider it’s meant to be run on a home PC. I’ve read stories about FSX taxing fairly powerful computers, and perhaps that’s why I’ve stayed away, but since I purchased a new computer last year I figured I had the computing power to make it work. As it turns out, it works pretty darn good. I am still tweaking all the settings to come up with the best compromise between image quality and performance, but here is an example of what I’ve been able to get so far.

Flying the Maule at Sunrise

For the record, my computer has the following hardware.

  • CPU: Intel E6600 2.4Ghz Core 2 Duo (dual core)
  • Graphics Card : Nvidia 7900GS with 256MB RAM
  • RAM: 4GB SDRAM*
  • OS: Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit
  • HDD:  320GB

* While I have 4GB of RAM installed, Windows Vista 32-bit recognizes it as only 3GB. I won’t go into why here, but you can read the official Microsoft explanation or perhaps a more down to earth explanation on Chris Pirillo’s site.

Getting back in the game

Published February 19, 2008 Flight Lessons , General Stuff 2 Comments

In 2005, I sold a Citabria I had owned for a few years in order to fund my RV-7 project.  At the time I thought the RV would take me about five years to complete, and I simply accepted the fact that my flying was going to take a lower priority while I was busy building.  Instead of the 5-10 hours a month I had been flying, I thought it would drop to about 1-3 hours, which seemed reasonable to me at the time.

Now, almost 3 years later, I have come to realize that my assumptions were incorrect.  My flying has diminished to basically nothing, as in zero, nada, zilch, and during the past 3 years I have only flown about 5 hours total, most of which hat has been as a lowly passenger. I would be OK with this if the RV project was moving towards completion at a good rate, but it isn’t coming along as quickly as I had hoped. A new house, new addition to the family, my job, and just life in general have all conspired to prevented me from making the progress I thought I would. Before you jump to conclusions let’s just get one thing straight, I am not complaining, I am simply offering an explanation. Truth be told, my initial estimations of the time and money I could devote to construction may have been a bit too generous, but then again they were accurate at the time. 

Continue reading ‘Getting back in the game’

In the beginning…

Published February 18, 2008 General Stuff 0 Comments

…God said let there be a blog, and there was.

 Here I go again, on another digital adventure. You may already be familiar with my other web site, http://www.rv7factory.com/, where I rant on and on about the construction of my RV-7 kitplane. It is a blog of sorts, but it’s primarily intended to serve as my construction log, and for the most part I stay on topic, the topic of builing an RV-7 that is.

So what the heck is this site (blog) going to be about? To tell you the truth, I am not quite sure yet. I’ve recently been thinking about getting back into flight training and I thought it might be fun to document my flying as I went along, but I started thinking about all the other aviation related topics I would like to write about. With that said, this blog will be primarily about my experiences as a pilot, but might drift off a bit to talk about other topics and issues related to aviation. I’ve got a list of topics that I am working on, and I will just have to see where this all takes me, so stay tuned!



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