My Aviation Medical

I called the FAA today to see about my medical.

For those of you not following along, all pilots need to be medically certified before they can fly airplanes. (There are different rules for gliders, balloons and ultralights). My special issuance medical expired around the end of August, and I sent in the paperwork (doctor’s report, blood tests, etc) to get a normal class III medical at that time. At that time, the Aircraft Owners and Pilot’s Association (AOPA) web site warned about huge backlogs (12-14 weeks) due to the war in Iraq.

I’ve been hoping to get my medical back soon, because I’ve got some travelling to do next month, and I’d like to do it by plane. I called them, and the people who work the phones there at Oklahoma City are extremely nice. They told me that the doctors who went to Iraq are all back now, and the backlog isn’t all that bad now. They’re supposed to be back to their normal 90 day maximum turn-around. The second person I talked to said not to worry, it should show up soon.

Man, I hope so. I haven’t logged an instrument approach in a while, and I need to knock the rust off.

Art in spammer subject lines

I was grepping my spam collection to see all the spam I’d gotten from the spammer who evidently has problems with his substitution script and leaves “%RND_UC_CHAR[2-8]” in the subject lines of all his spams. And I was struck by a curious poetic quality of the random words on the rest of the subject lines. Here’s what I have collected:

grep RND_UC_CHAR Mail/yes.spam
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], moment only because
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], anyone his passport
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], the master held
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], poured water into
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], of haze before
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], under a black
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], lengthening the shadows
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], each other only
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], felt cold under
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], he quite simply
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], he quite simply
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], dont know about
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], having got nowhere
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], is there beer?’
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], seeing someone come
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], face was half
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], that he would
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], apollonovichs young relation
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], but he gave
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], made one more
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], made one more
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], and yet each
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], a thunderclap right
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], the interpreter deftly
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], i’ve been sent
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], put his head
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], as luck would
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], ivan nikolaevichs apprehensions
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], the bell started
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], and here some
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], turning the barmans
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], good god!’ riukhin
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], good god!’ riukhin
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], he asked: yeshua
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], here it comes
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], at the same
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], and once more
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], woland is simply
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], balls always assemble
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], a finnish knife
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], possible to make
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], investigation was going
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], many hanging about
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], who is this
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], here styopa turned
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], the same tone
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], crowds of guests
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], brilliant numbers will
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], finally the century
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], and here’s something
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], he had looked
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], what had happened
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], wearing only black
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], beyond the housing
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], had already been
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], to the hairy
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], the investigation appeared
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], military chlamys with
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], anyone his passport
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], and the first
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], and the most
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], fifthstorey window three
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], glass; street sweepers

Not as good as “The Policeman’s Beard is Half Constructed”, but it’s getting there.

My next job?

Clear to Land, but Dodging East River Flotsam

(Note: NY Times link, requires free registration. Nothing to prevent you lying through you teeth when you register, though)

Flying seaplanes on New York’s East River. Maybe not the call of the wild, but probably not so likely to end up as wolf shit, either. Not that there’s anything wrong with ending up as wolf shit, as a matter of fact it used to be an ambition of mine.

More about the Starship

In re: Rants and Revelations: Sad end to a beautiful bird

This month’s Flying magazine has more about the Starship. They don’t mention anything about a limited airframe lifetime. They say that Raytheon/Beech just found it too expensive to keep supporting them. Since they still controlled 30 of the 52 of them, they just bought the rest of them back.

Some impressive stuff about the plane, all of which added up to the ridiculous weight and cost of it:

  • The canard had variable sweep because the flaps caused the center of gravity to move too much.
  • The flight instruments had 16 separate CRTs. It looks from the pictures that it had a separate CRT for every instrument, and then some. They didn’t have multi function displays like they do now.
  • The FAA didn’t entirely trust the void detection methods Beech invented, and made them really overdesign the airframe.

The aircraft never had a airworthiness directive, and nobody was ever injured in one. That’s pretty impressive, even for a plane that didn’t get much use.