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Let’s find out how well connected WordPress.com and FaceBook realy is…
Boeing Conducts Remote 787 Testing | INTERNATIONAL AVIATION NEWS
Ok this is really just a test of how well IE8, Windows Live Writer, WordPress.com, Facebook work together.
But the blog post is about something near and dear to my heart and to the Boeing enthusiast who is following the progress of the final development of the new 787.
Boeing Conducts Remote 787 Testing | INTERNATIONAL AVIATION NEWS
Itinerary for our trip to Denmark
Sunday July 4th – depart Seattle
Monday July 5th – Happy Birthday Judith – You landed in Denmark.
July 5th -> July 17 (saturday). Staying in Alleroed…
July, 17 -> Sat July 24: Camping out in Juelsminde.
July 24 -> August 13 (Friday). Staying in Alleroed…
Aug 13 -> Aug. 18, Mt Pellier – france.. because nothing says “cooked” like the south of france in August.
Augst 20. Depart Denmark for Seattle.
Hvem sagde mandehoerm?
Fangede lige den her paa JP’s live-side hvor de daekker aarets Le -Man loeb 🙂
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spn.dk – LIVE: Tom K.-konkurrent knækket – Motorsport
18.16: Kvinder kan skam sagtens køre bil. I hvert fald tre af dem! Schweizerne Natacha Gachnang, Cyndie Allemann og Rahel Frey har lagt sig lunt på fjerdepladsen i LMGT1-klassen. Otte biler deltager i klassen, og de tre schweiziske piger har bestemt vist sig konkurrencedygtige. Muntre mænd i presserummet (langt væk hjemme fra, hvor konen ikke kan høre dem) morer sig højlydt med, at løbets eneste bil med kvinde-besætning heldigvis heller ikke skal parallel-parkere under et Le Mans!
StyleCop is now open source
Flying to a fly-in
So Late last week Mike and I hooked up and planned to fly to Arlington together. We both had the idea that being two should hopefully help on the work load of keeping all the “bogeys” in check during the arrival as well as help follow the procedure. Btw thanks to John Calhoon posted the NOTAM links last week. Great help!
Well equipped with all the stuff printed out and studied, I met up with Mike Saturday morning at 8 (to me that is a bit early to qualify for “morning” – night seems appropriate to me). We had agreed that we wanted to get up there early (to beat the traffic so to speak) yet we did not want to arrive at the moment or shortly after they activated the special procedures, because as Mike put it, the controllers will be playing catch-up and getting everything/everyone in line for a while, so arriving at 9 was the plan. A it was – it was a good plan because we only saw one other airplane, and it was a no factor. most days around Puget Sound are way more busy than this.
We departed north from BFI, swung just east of Paine, and joined the arrival procedure at Lake Stevens. It wasn’t really that big of a deal to follow the procedure, they have just hammered out the details to a degree that it seemed more complex than it was. Anywho, we flew up proceeded up towards Green Valley Airport (WA25) and we managed to find it – before spotting the red balloons, once over the airport we got the call from the controller “Red and White Cessna, <..> rock your wings to acknowledge”. Mike dutifully complied (weeeeeeeeeee as my daughters would have said) and we continued to Arlington city (airport was landing to the south) and joined the pattern as prescribed. Actually compared to the lack of traffic until that point there was a surprising amount of activity, I wonder how everyone had arrived there if they weren’t following the same procedures as us. But no matter. Landing was uneventful (props to Mike who knows his airplane). Once on the ground we were directed by the busy little CAP guys to GA parking. I thought all in all the whole arrival, landing and taxiing was pretty slick. Good planning from the airshow folks
Arlington itself was… well Arlington I like the show, I like the exhibits. We even managed to score ourselves some wings credit listening to Bruce Williams speak about WAAS GPS approaches. One thing was different form the last 2 years where I have attended. There was a noticeable lack of exhibitors. In particular a lot of the FBO’s that are usually there weren’t. I didn’t see Northway, Galvin and I only spotted Regals supply stand. Apparently the crisis have kept them at home. There were a lot of LSA and kitplanes around though. Mike and I were particular taken in by the CTLS (I think that was what it was called – I cant believe I cannot rember the name). But it was pretty slick and seemed to be a notch above some of the competitors. I also drooled for 10 minutes in the Evektor Sportstar (IFR Equipped). Nice airplane. I am definitely spending some time at Harvey getting checked out in that…. It reminds mee too much of the plane I trained it in Denmark (Grob 115) and the glass canopy gives a GREAT view that I miss a bit when I fly the 172.
At 3 o clock the airshow kicked of.. It reminded me a bit of the last two years airshow.. But it’s cool, definitely worth seeing.
We wanted to get out of there as soon as possible after the airshow was done –not surprisingly so did everyone else who hadn’t pitched a tent already.
We had prepped a bit early by pulling the plane out of its parking spot and pointed in the right direction. So did quite a few around us, so once the ball started rolling, we all moved quickly. Poor mike was in a bit of a hurry to be the dutiful pilots and call up parking and get taxi clearance. I am sure with the number of planes moving and the amount of traffic on the frequency, many – more than half I guess – of the pilots didn’t request the clearance, they just followed along with the other lemmings 😉
But it was all good. Mike got the runup done on the go and we monitored ground when entering the taxiway as required. It all flowed smoothly, all in all a process that seem to work very well for those prepared to follow the stream. If you think you can stop to do your run up, you would be wrong and would have to top the whole line of airplanes following yours. Probably not a good way to do it. Anyway we taxied to the runway where the ground people had us line up in pairs, taxied onto the runway and awaited the signal to go. I didn’t count the seconds between ear plane taking off (from each side of the runway) but I think there was perhaps 30-45 seconds between. Quite cool and it definitely creates a “crowded environment” 🙂 on climb out the guy next to us (a mustang called “Spare parts” 🙂 ) slowly over took us, near enough that we could have logged time for formation flying. But he turned right and we turned left and it was all good.. and hellacool 🙂
The flight home was pretty uneventful. We climbed above Paine’s airspace (but gave them a courtesy-call). The plan was that I should have flow the landing, but as KBFI called out the wake turbulence warnings, Mike took over and did the rest. Slowed the bird down and tried to give the 737 as much separation as possible, but as mentioned we still hit the wake on short final. Something which would have been a nasty surplice if you weren’t expecting it, but Mike did a superb job. On the ground Mike thanked the controllers for the heads-up, and we trundled up to north east parking…
Flyvetur i bjergene i en Cessna 172 SP / G1000
Unfortunately I had to cancel on joining the (red: microsoft) fly-out saturday – I’m sorry to hear that it didn’t seem to pan out for most. Better luck next try. But I still managed to have a great day flying. I did have to cancel on the flyout, since I wanted to get into flying the G1000 without the instructor. I haven’t flown the G1000 since I took Northway’s G1000 class last year, and took the required dual flights then, so now it was time, but the trip to TMK in a G1000 was a little on the pricey side.
Instead I planned a shorter trip and along with me, I brought Mark Brad and his son Ty. I had a debt to be paid after last years fly-out to Shelton, where he footed the bill, and it its nice to have that extra set of eyes with you so one can look outside while the other looks inside at the mesmerizing array of gadgets.
I had been wanting to do a loop of the mountains (Arlington, Darrinton, Concrete) for a while (see picture)
We arrived at Paine around 11, and immediately spotted some low scud hanging around the west and north of Paine – pretty much the same stuff that kept everyone else on the ground longer than planned. But it burned off while we finalized the plans and got 1152Z preflighted, so it we were airborne before noon.
We immediately got a taste of what the TAWS can do for you, because it got busy calling all the traffic in the pattern. That is nice, but also more of a distraction in the pattern where you already know about the traffic. Immediately out of the pattern it did helps us spot someone coming from the direction of harvey so we could pass behind him.
Once things had quited down on the traffic front it was time to try out the auto pilot. 1152Z is equipped with a Bendix/King KAP 140, which apparently had earned its nickname Crap-140 supported by the fact that Cessna no loger ships the G1000 airplanes with it anymore speaks to its problem. But lo and behold, this one actually did everything we asked of it. No mater if we slaved it to the heding or to the nav mode, it did the job perfectly. We got it set up to intercept our cruise altitude (3500) and it did it smoothly – so smoothly, that I only noticed we had intercepted by the sound of the enginning revs going up (mental note, using an autopilot doesn’t absolve me from my duty of keping an eye on it).
Dialing back the power to the cruise setting we neared the #2 waypoint, where we turned into the canyon/valley. It is just so awsome flying with the peaks gliding by over you as leasurely make you way. Wwe had gooten very lucky with the weather, because everything has burned off so we had severely clear flyin, but we could see all the rising clouds standing tall not very far veyong our route (where the real mountains starts).
It was a spectacular sight, and the fact that the auto pilot off loaded me enough that I could spend more time enjoyig the view was very nice. I just had to fiddle with the heading know and the airplane went where Ih ad pointed it. Pretty awesome. Of course e both forgot a camera, so we cant share the sights, I aologize, but urge you to go your self.
Once we turned north I decided to climb a bit to gain more altitude for gliding in case of an engine out. The terrain around wpt 5 just before we reached Concrete did look to narrow in a bit more, and with the lack of dcent “outs” climbing seems the prudent thing to do. Of course that put me way high near concrete, so we used the altitude to over fly the field looking for the sock. We did call on the ctaf, but nobody was flying that day, so we reled on ye olde winsock for a landing directions. Never mind the fact that the G1000 already knew where the wind was blowing but I like windsocks to confirm it, and sure enough we had a 10 knots wind straight down runway 25. I would imagine that his is a place where turbolence thrives and a crosswind can become a difficult playmate, but got lucky and didn’t have any problems whatsoever.
Concrete Municipal is snuggled in between the mountains ,and for a lowlander like my self that of course affects me, so I guess I made my first lap in the pattern too close to the airport and of course I had to execute a go-around. No big deal but it does put you close to the granite than what your used to and it made for some very different sights. ANywho, in second attemtp we got down with no problems. The runway looked like they had just finished the re-paving. It was crisply black and the numbers so white it was almost blinding. Very nice. The “apron” is ….. small J It had one plane tieddown, and with ours, we filled it up the paved parking spots. There is till room so you could taxi to the grass, and I guess you could park there too, just do iit out of the way because the grass serves as taxi from the hangars.
Once down and secured we took a bit of a walk to a pizza place we had bing’ed. In fact according to Bing, Dex and other sources, this wa supposedly the only reastaurant in town. Not so, there were plenty of small places you can eat closed than the 1 mileswe walked to Annies Pizza. Maybe they ust stay open for the sumemr season and that is why they don’t show up in serches, but in fact there were several places you could eat. Some loooked a little disreputable, but others like the lodge looked quite ok – form the outside at least. Any who, Annies pizza was good – served the 100$ pizza craving well.
Back on the airport, in search of a bathroom I found the pilots lounge. I did recall something about Concrete having a fly-in, I looked around in the nice big pilot lounge (a house really) and found that it was in the third weekend of july. If memory servces me right, they even have a small museum of airplanes up there. We missed that, and I woul definetly try to get back up there at the fly in. Could be a really neat little place to go for that. We both wondered where the park the airplanes for that event, but they probably have that figured out J
We didn’t stay around for long, but got back In the air and headed back to Paine. Played around with the auto pilot and practiced altitude intercepts and played with G1000’s ability to tell us all the stuff you’d need to know (and plenty more). Time quickly passed and the auto pilot got us all the way back and only disengaged it when I was on downwind. Pretty darn cool I thought.
Anyway, all for the this Sunday. Hope yoou all had some memorable flights – I know I did.
Made n Denmark, owned by China
Sesame Street Explains the Madoff Scandal
Ja vi er jo nogen der undrer sig over hvad helvede der sker med vores pensions ordninger. saa er det da godt at vi har nogle kendte ansigter der vil hjaelpe os med at forstaa det hele
Icelandair til Koebenhavn
Saa ser det ud som om der er nogen der har indset at SAS har skudt sig selv i foden (igen). Jeg tror faktisk IcelandAir har fat i den lange ende. Ok, vi slipper ikke for et stop, men jeg kan nemt forestille mig at de kan lave den hurtigsteflyvning mellem Seattle og CPH…
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Bo Brogård Lund, Judith, Lara & Nisa Thomasberg 