A couple of weeks ago, Fox 7 News went out to Fault Line Flyers (the soaring club where I used to fly in Texas) and filmed a bunch of footage for a special news segment. Thanks to dopplertx, we've got a video of the segment online and it looks great! You can download it (using BitTorrent) using the link:

http://hewgill.com/torrent/flf_on_fox7.mpg.torrent

I had trouble playing it initially but it plays fine with VLC (http://www.videolan.org/vlc/). If you don't have BitTorrent, you'll need to download a client from http://www.bittorrent.com/

Enjoy!

Tomorrow is the annual Pumpkin Drop at the glider field! A pilot and a bombadier go up in a two-seat glider. The bombadier sits in the back with a pumpkin, and tosses it out the window at the right moment to hit the target on the runway. (Yes, this is legal.) Then the pilot circles back around for a spot landing contest.

I managed to miss this event last year. Apparently it's a ton of fun. I picked up a couple of pumpkins at the store today. Who's in? I'll fly, you drop.

This year has been an especially disappointing year for soaring. Between uncooperative weather, my summer vacation to Spain, occasional lack of instructor, a tow plane accident (bent propeller), and other little details, I have been able to do very little flying. My original plan was to get my private pilot license this spring, but I wasn't able to fly at all until may. I had pretty much decided to wait until next year to get my license.

Two weeks ago I flew with Rich and he said that if I wanted, he would sign me off for my checkride. Getting my license wasn't really on my mind at the time, but his saying that that sort of kicked me back into gear and I decided to go for it. Two other students (Scott and Roy) had already taken their written exams and scheduled their checkride with an FAA examiner. So, as soon as I got home that day I hit the books and studied for my written exam (which is 60 multiple choice questions). I took the exam on the 15th and passed.

That same day I called the FAA examiner to schedule the oral and practical portions of the exam. She was already coming out to the glider field for the two other students, so I just scheduled myself in for the same day.

I did my oral exam three days ago on friday evening, which went well. Since officially the oral portion is part of the checkride, there was no indication of pass or fail for that portion.

On friday night, a line of thunderstorms came through and dumped about two inches of rain on the glider field. This wasn't good, because rain makes the field too soft and muddy. Soaring was cancelled on saturday due to low cloud cover (I had hoped to get another practice flight or two in there). The weather forecast was marginally better for sunday, but it was still questionable.

Scott did his checkride first, and passed successfully. While he was doing his followup paperwork, it started to rain! The visibility was dropping too. Roy was next, he decided to go ahead and do his preflight inspection while it was still raining, hoping that it would clear up. Since it was still raining a bit when he was done, I did my preflight inspection immediately after his. Finally the rain let up a bit so it was only barely drizzling, and Roy made the call to go. We looked at the weather radar and it didn't look very promising for another flight. By this time I had resigned to postponing my checkride until another day. Roy disappeared into haze not long after taking off.

Surprisingly, and contrary to the weather radar indications, the low clouds cleared up a bit more and the conditions improved. Roy completed his flights, and I was up next! My flights went very well, except I was a bit too high on landing and exceeded the spot landing target by about 10 feet. On my second flight I was much better though. I was pleased to find that I wasn't nervous at all about having an examiner in the back seat; flying the plane is much more important than worrying about somebody looking over your shoulder.

All three of us were successful and now have a Private Pilot license with a Glider rating. In practical terms, this means that I can fly whenever I want without needing instructor signoff, and I can carry passengers (or a passenger, since gliders with more than two seats are rare).

That was the good news. The bad news is that I got a speeding ticket on the way home, for 41 in a 30 zone. Oops. Fortunately I can just take a driver safety course to dismiss that.

The elements are conspiring against me.

Yesterday the weather was bright and sunny at my house in the morning, so I headed up to the glider field to try to get some flying in. On the way, I got sprinkled with a little bit of rain. I was on my way anyway, so I kept going. There were a bunch of people up there, perhaps 15 or so, but nobody was flying. We sat around and watched the weather, and decided that it wasn't going to get any better so we abandoned flying that day. Of course, once I returned home it was bright and sunny again.

Today the weather looked marginal again, with low ceilings and lots of cloud cover. When I arrived at the field, operations were just starting with one glider and the tow plane out of the hangar. I was the third student in line for the club glider. A new student was first, he did three quick flights (there was little if any lift). Then two more private pilots took off (and ended up staying aloft for a couple of hours).

When the second student went to take off, the climb rate of the tow plane was very shallow and not anywhere near what it should have been. The tow pilot knew something was wrong, and took the glider back to the other end of the field so he could detach and land. The tow plane landed, and taxied back to its hangar. The tow pilot ran up the engine, but it didn't seem that anything was wrong with the engine. Once he shut it down it was clear, though - there had been a prop strike (where the propeller hits something, such as the ground) and both ends of the propeller were bent forward! We aren't sure exactly where or when it happened, but that definitely put that plane out of commission for a while.

The other tow plane, a Cessna, had some sort of battery problem so it was inoperable today. Unfortunately, I hadn't flown yet so I was out of luck! Although the weather started out marginally, it certainly seemed to be getting better as the day progressed. So I missed what could have been a good flying day.

I just noticed that I need a "flying" LJ icon.

On saturday, after four full months of not being able to do any flying at all (and not for lack of trying), I finally got some stick time! Not very much, but it was a lot of fun.

On saturday morning, Rich (one of the instructors) did a ground school session where he reviewed airspace and chart materials. I was actually the only student pilot who showed up for that, the rest (about 8 others) were already licensed pilots who needed to do a BFR (Biennial Flight Review). The BFR consists of at least one hour of ground instruction plus either one hour of flying, or three flights, with an instructor.

I was not optomistic about the weather, but I brought my logbook with me just in case the weather cleared up. It turned out to be a great day, and several pilots did their required three takeoff/landings with Rich to satisfy their BFR. Gonzo thought that since it was reasonably windy, it would be a good day to do auto tows, so he and I got the tow car ready.

The club tow car is an old (80s) Buick that was donated by a club member a few years ago. In its time, it was probably a pretty nice car. But for the last few years it has served duty as glider tow car, which means it sits outside in the open hangar with the windows down, has various holes punched in it for the tow rope release mechanism, and generally gets the crap beaten out of it running up and down the grass runway.

For those who are unfamiliar with auto tow, the general concept is similar to flying a kite, where you are the kite. The plane is connected to the car with a 2000 foot rope, and the car gets up to about 30 MPH. Combined with a 20+ knot wind, the plane can easily climb to over 1000 feet like a kite. When the car reaches the far end of the runway, both ends of the rope are released and the rope drops to the ground. The car then drives back to pick up the glider end of the rope and pulls it back to the launch area, laying out the rope in position for the next launch.

I was the first one to do auto tows that day, and they are fun! You climb much more steeply than aero tow. We did three launches and then let others have a chance. Gonzo did his three BFR launches on auto tow. We were running the tow car back and forth as fast as possible to get all the flights done. I even got to drive the tow car for a couple of launches.

With a grass airstrip, the grass and flowers grow really well especially with the extra rain we've been getting this year. Particularly in the far ends of the runway, the grass and flowers are easily thigh-high. We managed to overheat the tow car because the radiator got almost completely blocked by grass cuttings! Even after we brushed the grass shards away, we eventually blew a radiator hose so that was pretty much it for the day.

I finally left the field at about 6:30pm after a great day. Hopefully this weekend marked the real start of the soaring season this year. Now, I must get back to studying the material I need for my pilots exam...

Well that was by any measure, a completely successful trip!

bovineone and cowquat and I left bright and early last wednesday for Denver. Perhaps it should have been a bit earlier, because we sort of forgot about early morning traffic and showed up to the airport a bit late, but walked right onto the plane just before the final boarding call.

After arriving in Denver, we met up with Dave Avery (daa from distributed.net) who works at the United Airlines training facility in Denver. He graciously took a few hours out of his day to show us around the facility, which mostly consists of a lot of simulators. Dave knows everything about these systems, as he is one of the technicians who keeps them running, and some of them are old (expected service lifetime is 30 years - we even saw one system with a paper tape boot loader!).

For those of you who may not be familiar with the concept, an airplane simulator is an exact replica of an airplane cockpit, right down to the identical switches, instruments, displays, and controls. The "external" view out the window shows a very realistic computer generated display of what a pilot would see outside a real airplane. The whole thing, with room for about five or six people, is mounted on huge hydraulic legs that move the simulator in a way that approximates the motion pilots would feel in a real plane. To even compare these devices with something like Microsoft Flight Simulator would be sacrilege.

Most of the simulators were in use by real pilots for real training, but there was one (a Boeing 777) that was reserved for engineering department use. Which means we got to play with it! (See Jeff's pictures.) I won't bore you with the details, but I got to do taxi, takeoff, landing, stalls, aileron rolls, engine fire simulation, and all kinds of fun stuff. When Dave simulated a fire in the left engine while I was messing around at 9000 feet over Los Angeles, I managed to get the plane on the ground but veered way off the runway because the left gear failed to deploy and the nose gear collapsed on landing.

Flying the simulator was easily the most fun I've had in a long time. Thanks Dave!

The remaining days (thursday through saturday), all we did was ski. Ok, that's understating it a bit, let me try again: For the next three days we had a great time skiing in fantastic conditions at Copper Mountain.

Going into the trip, I had myself convinced that the cards were stacked against me with respect to being able to actually ski. I was just recovering from a nasty cold that had me stuffed up and headachey for a week; the base of the mountain is over 9000 feet altitude with the peak at about 12000 feet (for comparison, when flying an airplane, supplemental oxygen is required at altitudes over 12500 feet for more than 30 minutes); and I am somewhat out of shape in the endurance department. However, luck smiled on me and my cold cleared up; the altitude didn't bother me (probably spending a day in Denver helped); and I guess I'm in better shape than I thought.

We had great conditions each day. On thursday it was snowing on and off all day, on friday we had about 4 inches of new snow in the morning, on saturday it was much windier at the top but nothing that more clothes couldn't handle. The snow was very dry and powdery, much lighter than the wetter snow I'm used to on the west coast.

For those three days, we didn't do much else. Like my mom says, "eat, sleep, and ski". That pretty much sums it up.

decibel45 has been bugging me for months to go skydiving. I hadn't made any plans to go, but yesterday morning after going out to play in the snow I realized that it would be great weather for skydiving. The sun was out, there was some snow left on the ground, and I didn't have anything else planned for the day.

I left at about 11:30 and by that time the snow was almost all gone. The snow lasted less than 12 hours from first fall to last melt! I picked up snaxxx on the way and we headed down to Skydive San Marcos. I got paired up with Erik who would be my tandem master, so he would be securely strapped to my back for the entire jump.

I had never jumped out of a plane before, and the closest thing I had to compare it to was a bungee jump about ten years ago. I remember feeling apprehensive about stepping off the platform for the bungee jump, and I figured I would have similar feelings when jumping out of the plane. However, I was completely relaxed and felt no hesitation at all on my way out. This surprised me.

On the way out of the plane we tumbled once so I caught a glimpse of the plane quickly getting smaller above us. That's about the only way you can tell that you are in fact falling, as soon as you settle into a belly-down freefall position it feels like you're just hanging there, a mile above the clouds. Except for the wind of course, which was cold up there (the weather report said it was −8°C at 12000 feet, not considering wind chill).

There was still some cloud cover, so we ended up falling through a thin cloud. The coolest part about that was seeing the reflection of the sun. The sun was behind me on my right, so in front of me on my left was the reflection of the sun in the cloud. This looked like a bright spot surrounded by a halo, caused by a similar mechanism to that of a rainbow (internal reflections from water droplets or ice crystals). There were no visible colors like a rainbow though, it all blended together for a white reflection.

Less than a minute after leaving the plane Erik pulled the chute, which was a lot less violent than I had imagined. He had me grab the control lines for the chute and do some turns, and one steep turn that essentially amounted to a spiral dive. I was looking around trying to estimate how high we were, and before I knew it we were approaching the landing site. We had a very smooth landing right on target.

Was it worth it? Absolutely. Would I jump again? Probably; I'd like to try a solo jump sometime. But to get to that point is fairly costly, I can take six or seven glider flights for the price of one tandem jump.

Friday night was movie night at paradox0220's place. Thanks to paradox for the movie (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas), which was surreal and entertaining, and the pizza (Austin's Pizza), which I thought was pretty good. Also thanks to texaspatsfan for the beer and Niru for the dessert. It was fun, we should do that more often.

I haven't flown for six weeks and I was really hoping to at least be able to get some stick time this weekend. The forecast looked reasonable but not great, certainly not real soaring weather but I was optimistic.

Saturday, being the first saturday of the month, was demo day so I wouldn't be able to fly anyway. The weather was bright and sunny but I was a slacker and stayed inside most of the day. I was slow getting started, and ended up dropping by the office that afternoon to see what cowquat was up to (and to catch up on stuff I didn't get done earlier in the week). Later a bunch of us had a great sushi dinner at Ichiban (it was only my second time to try sushi, I had some salmon and salmon roe).

Sunday I got up early enough to go flying, made lunch, checked the recorded field report (marginal conditions, should be okay I thought), headed up to the field, and nobody was there. Usually when soaring is cancelled the field report is updated to say so, but not today. So I continued on for a nice drive through the hill country, taking 210 to 963 to Burnet, then 281 through Marble Falls, then 71 to 620 to Mansfield Dam where I ate my lunch. I hadn't brought my GPS (I had left it in the other car), so I couldn't look for any geocaches on the way, and found later that I had driven right by several.

I came back home and warmed up with some hot chocolate by the fireplace.

Determined to log some more geocaches, I picked three close to my house and set out to find them. They were all pretty easy (Round Rock Robber's Grave, Bigger Than Life Cache, and The Round Rock). I learned that in the bed of Brushy Creek, there are hundred-year-old ruts carved into the stone by passing wagons! (The picture links to a couple of photos.)

While wandering around the Brushy Creek bed, I stopped to talk to a nice Mexican-American woman named Yolanda. She was there with her daughter and granddaughter collecting bamboo that would be used in a traditional dance. The bamboo is cut into sections about three feet long, then bound together in groups of about five in such a way that when it is thrown by a dancer who holds on to one end, the contraption extends to its full length. It would also have ribbons tied along its length. She said she hadn't made any of these props for 15 years, but came back to the same place as she found the bamboo last time.

We talked for a while about how much the city has grown, and how Austin has crept northward to almost merge with Round Rock. She said when she was growing up in Round Rock, there was never a thought that Austin would reach all the way up here. She also remarked about how the water in Brushy Creek used to be clear, so that you could easily see the bottom, but now it is muddy and has foamy bubbles indicating some kind of pollution. Such is the price of progress, I guess.

I just logged my three geocache finds and nearly doubled the number of caches I've found. Even though I found my first cache over two years ago, I'm still new at this!

So I've accumulated a bunch of books that I'll need to study for my Private Pilot - Glider exam, which I'll probably take sometime in the spring. I have:

- Private Pilot Test Prep 2004
- Airplane Flying Handbook
- Pilot's Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge
- FAR/AIM 2003 (Federal Aviation Regulations / Airman Information Manual)
- Aviation Weather
- Accident Prevention Manual for Glider Pilots

The Private Pilot process involves three kinds of testing. The first is the written exam, which is all multiple choice. The Test Prep book contains all the possible questions (and answers). There is an incredible amount of material in there.

The second part of the process is the oral exam with an FAA examiner. The examiner will get a copy of your written test report with a list of questions you missed, just to ensure that you get quizzed on any area where you might be weak.

The final part is the practical test, where you carry the FAA examiner as a passenger, and they will ask you to perform various maneuvers to ensure that you are proficient in flying the airplane.

Once you take the written exam, your score is good for two years without having to take it again. So there's no harm in taking it early other than forgetting the material when it comes time for the oral exam (normally the oral and practical are done on the same day). I'll probably do the written in a few months and then the rest of it when the weather gets better.

I know what I'm going to be studying over the break!

dbaker and I went flying on saturday, to Dallas/Fort Worth airport in a Cessna 172 for Steak 'n Shake. Trips like this are much more about getting there than the destination, but since we don't have any Steak 'n Shake locations in Austin yet, it's got at least something to do with the destination.

Wheels up at about 14:05, arrived DFW at about 15:35. A quick $35 (!) taxicab round trip to SnS satisfied the hunger problem. On the way back we took off at about 17:35 and arrived at AUS at 19:05. Made pretty good time both ways at 90 minutes each.

So in the interests of improving my photography, I tried to get a good picture of the sunset at DFW with some foreground interest. Here is the sunset with our plane in the foreground (click on the image for a larger view):



My gallery has several more pictures, including maps of our route.

Friday was stickcow's birthday party, which started at 9pm. Before that, ivo, goulo, Yvette, and I went for dinner at the Brick Oven. I ordered the Pasta Rustica, which is grilled chicken, bowtie pasta, and artichokes in a sun-dried tomato sauce. It was pretty good, but I like the dish better with spicy Italian sausage instead of chicken. Anyway, I was eating something white, which wasn't chicken and wasn't an artichoke, and I realized that it was an entire clove of garlic. Now, I like garlic and all, but there were probably 15-20 cloves of the stuff in this one pasta dish! After eating the first one I'd already decided that I was going to smell like garlic for a while so I finished them all off. It's now about 48 hours later and I don't think I'm exuding garlic anymore, but I can't be sure.

On Saturday I went to a group meet of NSX owners in Austin. There were 14 NSXes there! It was a great turnout, lovely weather, and lots of fun driving around the twisty roads on the edge of Lake Travis.

Saturday evening decibel45 grilled some delicious steaks and snaxxx fixed up a bunch of yummy vegetables to complete a great meal. Thanks guys!

Today I was planning to go flying gliders, the initial weather report indicated that it would get sunny but colder and windy in the afternoon. I picked out some warm clothes suitable for sitting outside for a few hours, and headed out. I kept checking back to see whether flying was on or not, and finally around noon when I was already on my way it was cancelled. Oh well. I haven't flown since my first solo flight three weeks ago, all due to the weather. If I could have, I would have!

Speaking of weather, it's forecast to freeze tonight. I've been waiting months for some decent cold weather. All I can say is I'm glad I don't live in someplace like Florida. A few years ago I was in Florida the week before Thanksgiving, and it was 80+ degrees with 80% humidity. Ugh, that was awful!

I flew solo today!

So yesterday I went with snaxxx up to the field for demo day. It looked like it was going to be a good day, but her flight with Gonzo was fairly short because they couldn't find any lift. It was a beautiful day though, and I hoped it would be similar on Sunday.

On the way back we drove Lime Creek Road southward, and I saw Ojas, who I'd driven the same road with the weekend before, driving his silver NSX the other way. Even though I wasn't driving my NSX we recognized each other.

This morning the weather looked socked in and overcast, but the weather radar showed that it was fairly isolated. The glider field wasn't getting rain but there were scattered showers all around. So I optimistically headed out.

I stopped by the bank on my way there, and drove through Georgetown to get to the field. Just north of Georgetown it started raining hard. I turned onto 195 north and the rain tapered off a bit.

I was doing about 70 and came up behind a group of cars in front of me, and noticed that the last one was a state trooper. Oops, slow down a bit so it doesn't look like I'm coming up too fast. They were doing maybe 55-60 when the speed limit was 65. Eventally the police car pulls off to the right and gets behind me. That's exactly what happened I got my very first ticket. I'm just expecting the cop to turn his lights on for some reason or other. A few miles go by, me watching in my rear view mirror, but an SUV going the other way was going too fast. The cop turned around and turned his lights on. Whew.

Anyway, I arrived at the field and Bill (the instructor for the day) reviewed the rope break procedures again with Barry and I. (Barry started flying gliders about a week before I did.) Barry took the first rope break practice flight, then I did mine. Barry wanted to do one more instructor flight before solo, so I went solo first.

I got all strapped in and realized I was a bit nervous. The routine is just a pattern tow for first solo, which means you get towed up 1000 feet, release, turn around, and do a normal landing (into the wind, the same direction you take off). During the takeoff roll the glider got airborne sooner than normal, because I didn't have any dead weight in the back seat weighing me down. About 100 feet into the air it started raining! Rain isn't really a problem when you're flying, but it was the first time I'd ever flown in rain. So I released at 1000 feet, flew the pattern, and executed a nice short landing (which is easier with a nice 15 knot headwind). What a great feeling!

Barry then did his instruction flight, then his solo flight. He too did a nice short landing, also in the rain.

The tow plane was low on gas, and the main fuel tank on the ground turned out to be empty, so nobody else flew today. There were a couple of other people out who were planning to, but they got their entertainment by watching us newbies fly solo flights.

Now that I'm a solo student, I can fly without an instructor, but I still have to get an instructor to endorse my logbook each day I want to fly (club rules). But I won't have to wait in line for instructor time, so I should be able to get more flying in.

Today was a great day. They say you remember your first solo flight forever. :)

Saturday was demo day at the glider club (first saturday of the month). There is no instruction on demo days, so I went just to hang out and help out. And brought a bunch of friends (decibel45, dopplertx, moonwick, ivo_janssen, and BSE). It was a full day, there were three gliders and two tow planes in use all day for demo flights.

Anyway, the first coincidence was that we saw openmynd at Parmer and 1431 on his bike en route to Colorado and points beyond. For some reason I didn't have the presence of mind to get a picture, and didn't notice which way he went after we stopped for gas.

I went flying on sunday and got a short but very good lesson in. It was a bit late in the day when I got to go up, so we didn't find any lift, but the tow and landing both felt really good. The coincidence was that Peter (the instructor yesterday who I hadn't met before) is also Canadian.

Two pilots took the Grob up yesterday (the plane on the ground in dopplertx's great picture) and landed it smoothly a ways down the field. They towed it back with a truck, and when they went to release the tow rope the retractable landing gear collapsed. We had to lift the plane and get a dolly under the nose to roll it back into its hanger. Although the plane is sleek, it's pretty heavy at 800 pounds. Apparently it will take major repairs to fix the landing gear. Not really a coincidence, but fortuitous that the gear did not collapse on landing or on the next takeoff. The Grob did many demo flights the day before.

Coincidentally, it's monday, I'm back at work, and I'm writing on lj. Time to start making myself useful.

Yesterday was an excellent day for flying. I got two flights of nearly one hour each back to back. We practiced a lot of the basics like thermaling, turns, and airspeed changes. I did most of the first landing and all of the second by myself. :) I do have to work on the tow though. It's stressful and takes a lot of concentration to stay in the right place behind the tow plane.

I now have 3.7 hours in five flights. Flying is a great way to spend a hot summer weekend, because it's nice and cool at 6000 feet under the clouds!

I see my journal has been legitimized by a reference from nugget. Must post about ... something ...

As long as I can remember, I've always in the back of my mind wanted to be a pilot. Or at least to fly airplanes. Up until now I haven't really been willing to undergo a commitment to make that happen. But last weekend decibel45, dopplertx, tj, and I all went for a glider demo ride at Fault Line Flyers (see my pictures). That was the first time I'd actually been at the controls of an aircraft, and it was everything I had hoped for. I'm hooked. Joining the club saturday. Yay flying.

On another note, I have been passively resisting the whole "blog" movement for a while now. I already have a web site, why do I need another forum to post things? I think I figured it out though. My web site is for permanent content. I've often thought of random things that I might like to tell people about, but aren't really suitable for permanent content. So I end up not posting them. Of course, that's where livejournal comes in. I'm usually not very talkative so we'll see how it goes.

On a technical note, I'm trying an lj client called LogJam to post this comment. Hope it works.