Sometimes I should just leave well enough alone

I went to register my AvMap EKP-IV GPS. While doing so, I noticed that the firmware I have is a couple of version numbers older than the current downloadable one. Upgrading is supposed to be a simple matter of popping out the CF card, putting it into the computer, and copying over the two files you download, and then putting the CF card back in the GPS. Well, I did that, but then the GPS started saying “Device not found”. So I copied back the original files, which I’d copied onto my laptop as suggested in the documentation. And I got the same damn message. So now I’m basically boned.

The instructions were all about “Hilight the two files and drag them”, but I used “cp -R”. I wonder if there is a permissions problem? I knew I should have made a tar file instead of just a copy.

Back from Oshkosh

I’d gotten an STMP (or whatever it’s called) reservation for an IFR departure at 1715Z. But by 1400Z, there just wasn’t that much left to do around the campsite, and I didn’t want to buy another day’s ticket. So I went down to the gate house, got my camping refund (they make you pay for the whole week in advance, then give you a refund when you leave), got a weather briefing, and took a shower, then got ready to depart VFR to see if I could pick up flight following from Muskegon Approach.
Continue reading “Back from Oshkosh”

Well, that sucks

This morning I was sitting there enjoying my breakfast and the early morning quiet when a woman who was parked a few planes down (so she arrived the same time as me) came over to chew me out for nearly hitting her when I turned final on Saturday. I told her that while I don’t remember it exactly, I’m pretty sure my base had been called by the tower, so I really don’t know how that could have happened. Although in retrospect, I could have been focusing too hard on the Mooney I was told to follow, and not enough on looking around.

Now I’m all nervous about just how bad a job I did arriving here, and I’m even more sure that I shouldn’t do the VFR arrival without a second pair of eyes on board.

BTW: Wifi sucks here. It sometimes works at the shower stalls, but it cuts in and out when it does, and the wifi here at the bus shelter is more reliable but there isn’t any power here.

Found some wifi

Yesterday I found some power but no wifi. Today I found wifi but no power. So I was able to finally get the log file that my boss emailed me yesterday. I had been trying to find a way to read it on my cell phone, but for some stupid reason every “text reader” I managed to find for the Palm either required you to convert the text file to something else on your PC, or the program itself was only available as a zip file, and I have no way of unzipping files on the Palm. Why can’t they just make the bare .PRC file available?

Once I got the log file, it only took me a minute to find the fix, so I’ve emailed me off. Yesterday I started writing a long narrative of my Oshkosh so far, and I was going to put it all up when I got home, but now I have wifi I guess I could cut and paste that into blog posts.