Category: Flying

Another boring medical renewal

And that’s the way I like them. My post from last time (Rants and Revelations » It’s so nice to renew your medical…) has all the links that explain why a boring medical renewal is the best kind.

I’ve been kind of dreading this for two reasons:

  • The doctor I go to usually spends the entire time making really stupid jokes about Hillary Clinton
  • And at no pattern I can discern, sometimes the exam includes a prostate check and sometimes it doesn’t.

This time, no Clinton jokes, no prostate exam. I had a lot more trouble than before on some parts of the eye test, particularly the one with these diamond shapes that you have to tell which corner has the checkerboard. When it came to the left eye ones, I had to unfocus my eyes and refocus them before I could even see a checkerboard on #1. I got to #10 on the others, but only #6 on those ones.

But I’m legal for another two years. Woo hoo.

Jeppesen Responds

After receiving the email I mentioned in Rants and Revelations » Who’d have thunk it?, I responded with

I have renamed the part of the Wiki that uses the trademarked word
“NavData” to “DAFIFReplacment”. However, I am going to continue to use
the “/navdata/” part of the URL as that is a generic term and
untrademarkable and changing would break people’s bookmarks. You can
have a look at http://xcski.com/navdata/ if you wish.

I hope that meets your requirements.

Evidently their lawyers work nights, or they’ve outsourced it to India or something, because I got a response at 8:47pm:

Mr. Tomblin,

We appreciate your prompt action and reply to our notice.

While we cannot agree that the navdata term is generic, we understand the
bookmark issue and are satisfied with your action regarding this matter.

John Jaugilas
Jeppesen Intellectual Property
(303) 328-4178

Who’d have thunk it?

Well, it turns out that using the WikiWord “NavData” has upset Jeppesen Sanderson because they’ve got a product with that name, and they’ve sent me an email telling me to stop using the word or they’ll start legal action. I’m still using the word “navdata” because lots of people use it as a generic word meaning “navigation data”. So my Wiki url is still http://xcski.com/navdata/, but all deep links you might have are broken. Replace the word “NavData” with “DAFIFReplacement”.

First Annual Rochester Pilots Picnic

Hey, that was a big success. It was supposed to start at Noon, and I arrived at 12:15. There was nobody there yet, and I was walking over towards the river to have a look around, and seriously considering whether to declare the thing a big bust and head home, when up comes Brad Salai and Jim Hood with all the food. Hey, even if nobody else shows up, at least we can eat and drink. But over the next little while, people started showing up. By the time the charcoal was ready, we probably had 25 people there. It seems there were a bunch of people from Artisan Flying Club, 3 or 4 other people from Rochester Flying Club (RFC), and at least three former members of RFC.

Mostly we just sat around eating and drinking and talking about flying. What more does any group of pilots need to do? At around 3pm, a Red Bull truck pulled up and handed out cans of Red Bull energy drink. (They’d evidently contacted Brad Salai to ask if they could come.) Just for the record, the sugar free type of the drink doesn’t taste very good. I don’t think I was alone in that assessment – there were a lot of mostly full cans sitting around as we packed up at the end.

I’d say the event was a success, and I hope we decide to do the Second Annual Rochester Pilots Picnic. One comment I heard was that we should get the Rochester Pilots Association RPA back together. RPA sort of went on hiatus for many years because the guy running it lost interest in running it. But then Paul Pakusch decided we needed to get it back together, but when we started having meetings only 4 or 5 people showed up for each meeting, so he disbanded it. I think the Assocation assets were disposed according to the charter, which probably means it went to an aviation related charity. But maybe we went about it the wrong way – instead of having a bunch of boring business meetings, maybe we need to have picnics and other fun things, and then see if we have concerns that need a business meeting. After all, the Rochester area isn’t just Greater Rochester International Airport – there are a bunch of airports in the area, and a bunch of different groups of pilots who should all get together and talk flying.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

I went for a flight today. The main reason was just to try out my new HALO headphones. But the other reason was that it has been a beautiful weekend, only two of the planes have been booked for a few hours each, and I didn’t get my flight to Oshkosh. The maintenance coordinator for the Lance has been his usual uncommunicative self, so I had no idea if it was back from maintenance again. I booked an Archer instead. When I got to the airport, the Lance was there, but when I attempted to change my reservation the ScheduleMaster site was throwing ASP errors. Oh, what the hell, I can fly an Archer can’t I?

While I was waiting for the fuel truck, there was a guy taking delivery of his brand new Diamond Star DA-40. What a beautiful plane! Wouldn’t mind having one of those on the flight line.

I started the plane up, and found that I wasn’t getting any sound in my right ear with the new headset, so I switched over to my old familiar Dave Clark DC10-13.4s (with the Headsets Inc ANR kit). Take off was faster than I’m used to – these Archers are lighter than the Dakota and Lance that I’ve been doing all my flying in. I didn’t have any plan, so I just headed out due west. By the time I got to Batavia, I decided I needed to get the wind farm waypoint back in my GPS, so I headed down in the right general area until I spotted it. And after I got that waypoint, I decided I needed the railway trestle in Letchworth Canyon as a waypoint as well, so I headed down that way.

I was in smooth air with the plane trimmed for level flight, so I thought I’d give the HALOs another try. I put them in, and had the same problem with them as before. But this time I remembered that they have a Mono/Stereo switch. The guy demonstrating them at Oshkosh had a stereo intercomm, but the plane doesn’t. Switching it to Mono cleared that problem up immediately. At first they didn’t seem like they were blocking out the sound very well, but the foam expands pretty slowly and after a half a minute or so they were blocking as well as the Dave Clarks, if not better. It seems like they were blocking different frequencies though. The engine sounded different.

After I got to the trestle, I flew up the Letchworth Canyon. While I was going up, I decided to have some fun and tried turning to follow all the twists and turns of the river, like you see those “low and slow” guys doing in their Cubs and float planes. Of course I was at my usual 4,000 feet. But along the way I thought about my usual ground shyness. If I was going to fly the twists, I might as well try to fly a bit lower. Not down in the canyon of course, but at a nice legal 500 feet above any people or structures. So when I turned to head down, I was down at 2,000 feet, which is probably actually more like 1,000 AGL. Hey, small victories, right? The ground rises towards the trestle, and I crept up to 2,500 feet. It was fun.

When I was in the area, I thought I’d do some touch and goes at Perry-Warsaw. There was practically nothing on the CTAF except a bunch of guys with thick Pakistani accents talking from some place near Toronto I think. I don’t know if it was the narrow runway or what, but I found myself quite high on final both time – the first time I had to slip like hell to get down. And the second time was better, but I still landed pretty hard. I quickly switched the radio over to 121.5 to make sure I hadn’t turned on the emergency beacon (ELT), and was relieved to find it wasn’t quite that hard. That was bad. After that, I decided to come home.

I wasn’t high or anything, but I still have problems with speed control on final. I rounded out, but was a bit high, so I put the nose down a tad, but almost immediately lost all lift. I bounced twice. Oh, that was ugly. Once again I checked the ELT, and it wasn’t on. Phew.

As I was tying down, the DA-40 was coming in. It’s such a nice plane, and I think the fully castering nose wheel would be really handy for ground handling.

I still want to go out in the Lance to try the HALO. Maybe next week.