This week we celebrate our first podcast of our second year. Wrap your heads around that one!
Greg's been sick, so is coughing and spluttering his way through the whole podcast.
We explore the naming process for hi-tech equipment. Nerds...what can we say.
Simon's been doing more flying training. (a blog entry for that is below if you like major details.)
Crazy weather....we had snow in the San Francisco Bay Area. Huh?!?!?!
Lybia and crazy Middle Eastern antics. The US hidden weapon, shale oil, and the "Last man standing" philosophy. We refer to this video, which is very funny and we first posted about almost a year ago.
Consiracy explaining why no oil energy alternatives are successful and we briefly mention compressed air cars.
Why drinking water will be one of the major sources conflict and societal manipulation.
Drip irrigation folks! Ask the Israelis. They've got it to work.
We talk about the "Confessions of an economic hitman." Scary book.
Here's a fascinating interview with the author.
The Space Shuttle Discovery is on it's final flight before going on display in the Smithsonian.
Closing music is from the "Hidden Step" By Ozric Tentacles.
BMSMA
G&S.
Footnote.....thoughts on Commercial training.
Due to bad weather, my Commercial pilot training has been interrupted. This has given me time to think and reflect. If you're interested, here are my thoughts. If not, "nothing to see here, move along."
What is Commercial training? It's very similar to that of a private pilot, so has to be done in visual flight conditions. It's aircraft control trained to much tighter tolerances, with a few added maneuvers for good measure (like emergency descents) for when you're flying people or goods for money (be it towing banners, taking parachuters up, spraying crops, etc, etc...but not airline flying. That's a different license). I've already got my Instrument rating, so for the commercial training, it just requires one instrument approach, albeit with a twist (more on that later). Commercial training has to be done in what's known as a complex aircraft. That is an aircraft with 3 things: flaps, a variable pitch propeller and retractable landing gear. I already fly aircraft with flaps and variable pitch propellers, but the landing gear is a big deal to remember, either putting it up or down and has to be done in the right order/time. There are not many single engines complex aircraft available for training, so the school I found (after a lot of reading) does it in a light twin, the Piper PA44 Seminole. It's small, isn't overly fast, is stable and has all the requirements to meet the complex aircraft requirements. It is designed primarily as a training aircraft.
http://www.flightschoollist.com/aviation-articles/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Piper-PA44-Seminole.jpg
A pilot exam takes place in 3 parts: the written exam, the oral exam, and finally the flight exam.
I passed the commercial written exam with less study than was required for both my private and instrument, as it re asks lots of information previously studied. It really surprised me at how quickly I was ready to take this, and I knew this by taking prctice exams.
However, it got far more difficult after that. It felt like I was a brand new student, starting from scratch all over again. Why?
I've done all my training so far in a modern aircraft, fitted with a Garmin G1000 glass cockpit.
330 hours with that system gets you set into a particular manner of flying, and you visual scan become singrained...... and when you step back to old style 'steam gauges', it messes with your most basic of flying habits, making things far more complicated from the start because most of your now automatic habits no longer work and you have to think before doing basic actions. By comparison, this is what I'm dealing with in the Piper PA 44 Seminole.
Training for my instrument license took almost a year and despite being only for a few hours once or twice a week, it was very intense at times. I didn't want my commercial training to take so long, so looked for a different type of program. I chose one with Airline Transport Professionals as they're geared towards professional pilots (although my aim isn't to fly for the airlines).
The advantage of this style of training is that no time is wasted and you complete training much faster than doing it once or twice a week. Weather permitting, training is done every single day, and for many hours at a time (4-6 hours of flight time and 2 of ground instruction). This is a good thing. The difficult aspect of this, at least from my perspective, is something that I wasn't explained before. Most commercial students with ATP usually have 70 hours of cross country experience with the Piper PA44 aircraft before taking their commercial training in it. That's just part of their program, if you do all your training with them. Great idea, and I wish I'd been told that beforehand. By not having that experience, it makes the learning curve way steeper and more difficult as I started off with 70 hours less time in the aircraft than other students.
Learning 2 engines is also quite a task, as a lot of training revolves around if/when one engine fails, causing a whole host of problems (think lateral yaw). The one precision instrument approach done during the commercial training is done after the examiner fails an engine, making it all the more difficult.
So, in one fell swoop I had to deal with a new aircraft, 2 engines, old fashioned steam gauges and the commercial rating. Holy crap, it's been intense so far.
The good news is that my instructor, a wee 26 year old on his way to becoming an airline pilot (just got accepted with American Eagle), has a congenial nature and is very knowledgable. It's astounding how much he knows. I really enjoyed the cross country flying, as it involved going to San Luis Obispo, Bakersfield and lots of other places, often at night and on several occasions, in actual instrument conditions (clouds). Here's a short video of one of those flights.
The cross country flying was great and I knew I could manage/navigate the plane in those conditions. I really didn't like the single engine practice as too many things are still not automatic and I'm having to think about where particular instruments and controls are. It made for extremely stressful situations. 22 hours done, 8 to go but I feel as if I need another 20-30.
All in all, an incredible experience, but I wish I had more time.
