It's So Unfair!!

Yes, I have a teenager in the house. My Oldest Daughter (a.k.a. Thing 1) entered full teenagerhood sometime during this last school year. Complete with zits, boyfriend and meltdowns.

OMG. As they seem to say with great regularity. The moods come and go with regularity, no doubt hormone influenced. But where did the cuddly little thing that I used to have go? The new T1 is never seen, except in the morning at breakfast. The rest of the time, she is 1) listening to her iPod, 2) emailing her friends, 3) texting her friends (but rarely talking to them), 4) watching TV shows on her laptop, (and sometimes on the TV). Sometimes all at the same time.

When she is seen, she is often growling at the world, and being mean to her younger sister, Thing 2. T2 is 11, but showing signs of early readiness for teenager hood, no doubt influenced by T1. At least T2 will do her homework without complaint. I don't think I can handle 2 teenager attitudes at the same time.... but it's coming anyway.

It's Not Fair!

My Commercial Practical Test

On February 2nd, 2010, I took and passed the practical FAA examination to add commercial flight privileges to my US pilot license. What this means really are three things:

1. I understand the FAA regulations and recommended procedures well enough to pass the written test with a score of 70% or better (I got a 90%),
2. I can fly well enough to satisfy an examiner that I am able to fly to commercial pilot standards, which are more rigorous than a private pilot needs to attain, and
3. I can therefore be legally employed or hired as a professional pilot.

Thanks to various problems with sickness (not mine), airplane problems (also not mine), and weather (I didn’t cause that either), I had already been forced to postpone this test 4 times. Because the FAA requires that I log 3 hours of training during the 60 days prior to the test, and I had been delayed 3 months, I was forced to do an extra three hours of dual training. Finally, on February 2nd, the weather forecast was for broken clouds at 3,000 feet AGL, which was good enough. Most of the flying test is done relatively low, below that altitude. I figured I could do an instrument climb above the clouds to complete the airwork, and an instrument descent if needed. As it turned out, the clouds all vanished except for some very high cirrus, and it was a beautiful day.

I chose to use 2 airplanes for the test. I own my own Beechcraft Sundowner, and had booked the flying club’s Piper Arrow as well. We could do part of the test in my own airplane, but all of the take offs and landings required in the test must be in a complex airplane, one with retractable undercarriage, and a constant speed propeller. I thought about using just the Arrow, but it was cheaper to use my own as much as possible, plus I felt more comfortable in it after 200+ hours, compared to just 13 hours in the Arrow.

I got to the airport at 1 pm, and arranged with the FBO to park both airplanes next to the terminal building. I got both aircraft out, pre-flighted them, and taxied to the terminal, where I parked them both and loaded three 2.5 gallon water jugs into the back of the Arrow. The Arrow is very nose heavy, and 7.5 gallons of water weighs just over 50 lbs, which I thought would help on the short field stuff, which requires a lot of pulling on the yoke.

Norm, the Examiner arrived just before 2pm. We first sat at the FBO computer, and he reviewed my online application, and my identification documents and logbooks. Then we went into a backroom, and spent about an hour going through the Oral exam. We covered my preparation for a VFR flight plan to Memphis TN, with a fuel and comfort stop in Hot Springs, Ark. Thank goodness for flight planning web sites – I had completed the flight plan using a standard Cessna template, identified waypoints and navigation aids from a VFR sectional, and calculated distance, wind correction and times in the table provided. I also printed out airport diagrams for McKinney (KTKI), Hot Springs (KHOT) and Memphis (KMEM).

I had worked out weight and balance for both aircraft, and based on the results, confirmed from the POH that the balance was acceptable and the weight was below the maximum gross. I had both calculations printed out using MS Excel, and plotted on a photocopy from the Pilot’s Operating Handbooks (POH). I also calculated for the Arrow the takeoff distance and rotation speed, and had the figures from the POH copied and printed.

Finally I had the airport terminal weather forecast (TAF – shows clouds, winds and temperature) and regional forecast and synopsis (METAR) printed, along with the areas of icing, and surface analysis (which shows fronts, lows and highs), and Notices to Airmen (Notams).

I highly recommend doing all of this ahead of time, and bringing it all to the oral. It avoids nervous fumbling, trying to do the calculations under the examiners gaze, and sets the expectation that you are thorough and prepared. I also had my E6B calculator, rulers, pens etc on the table, but we didn’t need them, nor did we refer to the FAR/AIM, but I had it on the table in full view, again to show thoroughness. Norm asked if I was an engineer, because I was so thorough (I was once, but now I work in marketing).

We then covered the rules related to being a commercial pilot, such as what documentation is needed, what rest periods, currency and so on, and what is needed for an airplane to be considered airworthy. We covered airplane systems, aero-medical factors, and basic aerodynamics.

Finally he said “That was a satisfactory Oral”, and let’s go flying. He gave me 10 minutes to get ready, then we got into the Sundowner.

I did a careful “by the book” engine start and taxi, then the run up and pre-takeoff checklist. I got to the passenger briefing, and Norm said “take that as complete”. We did a normal take off from runway 35, and climbed to the North East. At 3,500 ft, Norm asked to perform any 2 of the four performance maneuvers required, which surprised me. I expected that he would tell me which two. I chose (of course) to do my best two, a 55 degree banked steep turn through 360 degrees to the right, followed immediately by the same to the left. I gained some altitude in the first 180 degrees, but was losing it again before going into the opposite bank, lost too much in the second, but recovered and we hit our own slipstream with a solid “thump” on the roll out. I then leveled off, and set up for a chandelle to the right, followed by a slight dive to get back up to cruise speed, then one to the left. At that point, Norm pulled back the throttle and told me that the engine was out.

I trimmed for best glide (75 kts), while looking for a field. I switched tanks, turned on the electric fuel pump, checked all the instruments and pretended to restart. Then I pretended to make a distress call, while gliding towards my chosen field. At that point I noticed the power lines on the approach end, and told Norm I was switching to another field. We arrived over the field about 2,000 ft AGL, so I did the downwind leg as a series of S-turns (I didn’t think I had enough excess altitude to risk a full 360 turn), and extended the base leg, still staying high. I did a 180, and then turned in towards the field. Still high, so I put in full flaps and a sideslip to about 100 feet AGL, at which point Norm said to go around and climb to find a place to do the 8’s.

I climbed to 1,500 ft AGL on a heading of South, and started looking good turning points. 8’s on pylons involved finding 2 turning points, about ½ mile apart, and flying a figure 8 pattern around them, keeping the lateral axis (the wing) pointed directly at the point, and adjusting the radius only by climbing or descending. The first ones I found were water towers, but as we go closer I decided there were too many buildings around, and I selected a different water tower and a road intersection. I entered the 8’s at 1500 ft. Every time the point moved ahead of the wing in a turn, I pushed on the yoke, when it moved back, I pulled. We went around twice, before Norm said that was enough and to head back to the airport to switch airplanes.

I climbed to 1800 feet, checked ATIS on radio #2, and contacted the tower for permission to land, which we got right away. After landing, I cleaned up the airplane on the taxiway, and Norm commented that we hadn’t done any slow flight or stalls. I hadn’t practiced those in the Arrow, so I debated about telling him we would take off again, but decided to take a chance. The Arrow isn’t that hard to fly, only to land softly!

We switched into the Arrow, and I again careful followed the checklist, and again Norm said to take the passenger briefing as read. I had noticed during my instrument check ride with him that he gets to a point where he thinks you are good enough, and then he is willing to cut a little slack. I think he was at that point now.

We did a normal field take off, and climbed to 3500 ft. I didn’t accelerate to cruise – I went straight into slow flight at 60 kts. Norm asked me to turn to a heading of North, then a turn to East, without changing altitude or speed. It wasn’t hard – the Arrow flies in that domain very like the Sundowner. He then asked to show an approach to landing stall first straight ahead, and then in a 30 degree turn to the right. I lowered the wheels and flaps, and did the stalls with little drama. The Arrow has a very strong pre-stall shudder, the stalls quite benignly. We then did full power climb out stalls, straight ahead and then in a left turn. Again, easy. In fact it was easier than in my own airplane. I needed less rudder, and the wing drop was more gentle. Perhaps I was just more coordinated.

Now we headed back towards the airport, I lost height in a serried of S-turns. I picked up ATIS, and called the tower, and was told to enter a right downwind for runway 35, cleared for touch and go, number 4, follow the Cessna ahead. I told the tower the sun was right ahead and I couldn’t see the traffic, so he said he would call my base turn. In the meantime I ran the GUMPS checklist, and Norm asked me to do a short field approach, over a 50 foot tree right at the threshold.

The key in the Arrow is to get set up early, so I had full flaps and 70 kts on the ASI on the base leg, and turned onto the final approach leg a shade high. I scarcely had to touch anything – full flaps, full propeller speed and gear down, 16 inches of manifold pressure at 70 kts gives a nice 400 ft/min descent, right on the glide slope. I also knew that the VASI lights were set for 50 feet over the threshold (same as the ILS glideslope), so I kept 3 white and 1 red all the way down (1 degree high).

We landed perfectly, and Norm said not to slow up, but to do a soft field take off. I set the flaps to 25 degrees, and pulled back on the yoke to lighten the nose, and added full power. I let the nose come off at 57 kts, and we climbed to just above the runway. Accelerate to 70 kts, bring in the flaps, accelerate to 87 kts before climbing and raise the gear.

He then told me the next one was to be a soft field landing, which is almost the same as a short field landing, except that you keep a little power on and try to land as softly as you can. Following that, he told me to do a short field takeoff (again, very similar to the soft field takeoff, except that you don’t raise the nose until reaching flying speed), followed by a power off 180 degree precision landing.

McKinney was flying right traffic, which put me on the side away from the runway. I asked the tower if I could fly a left traffic pattern instead, for a power off close in approach. They agreed, so I turned left, and told Norm my touchdown point would be the 1000 ft touchdown zone (TDZE) markers, the biggest, fattest stripes on the runway. I was cleared to land, and opposite the stripes I pulled the power to idle. Instantly the gear up warning siren started. I trimmed for 79 kts as I turned towards the runway, making for the very south most end. Once I was sure I had the runway made, I lowered the gear, and 2 notches of flaps. I turned to align with the runway over the numbers at about 250 ft, and threw in the final notch of flaps, and a slideslip too. I straightened out and flared over the TDZE stripes, but with a little too much speed, and we floated.

Fortunately the test standard says the touchdown has to occur within 100 feet of the selected point, and I think I used 99 of them. Bu the wheels finally touched (very softly!), and Norm said to take off again, which surprised me. I thought we were done. But off we went again, and Norm told me to set up for a normal landing, but to go around again at 100 feet. I asked for and received permission for a low approach, and set up to land with full flaps, 17 inches and 80 kts. At slightly under 100 feet (again I was using the VASI lights as guidance, and was just short of the threshold), I added power, stopped the descent and took off 1 notch of flaps. Once I had a climb, I took off the second notch, and raised the gear. Finally once I had 87 kts in a climb, I brought in the last notch. In the climb, Norm stuck his hand over and said “Congratulations! You’re a Commercial Pilot!”

I set up for a right downwind, called the tower and asked to land, and said “I passed!” (I had already told the tower operator the day before that I would be doing my commercial test). He said “congratulations!” and cleared me to land. I repeated the clearance, and added “Better not screw up this landing!” It was a normal approach and landing, although my nerves were actually tighter than during the test!

The never ending road to comercial status

It's December. I STILL haven't got my commercial pilot license!

It was supposed to all happen quite quickly once I passed the written back in May. But travel schedules, the need to change instructors (twice), and to use a heavily booked club aircraft all caused delays until October.

I had everything done, all requirements met and the examiner booked for late October, when the club's Arrow, the only complex airplane (retractable wheels and constant speed propeller) available, suffered problems with it's undercarriage (would not retract). The club mechanic diagnosed the problem, and shipped the offending part off for repair.

By the time it came back, the aircraft's annual inspection was due, so it was out of service for 2 whole months. Now it's back, and I have the examiner booked for January 22, 2010. In the meantime, I have to get 3 hours more training because the FAA rules say that I have to have had 3 hours within the 60 days prior to the test.

Raaaghhhhh!!!

Give me Liberty or give me WiMAX

Here's a video I produced from a trip to Panama City:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJpdo_hArHI

From Time Magazine - Self correcting time loop?

Sometime on Nov. 3, the supercooled magnets in sector 81 of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), outside Geneva, began to dangerously overheat. Scientists rushed to diagnose the problem, since the particle accelerator has to maintain a temperature colder than deep space in order to work. The culprit? "A bit of baguette," says Mike Lamont of the control center of CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, which built and maintains the LHC. Apparently, a passing bird may have dropped the chunk of bread on an electrical substation above the accelerator, causing a power cut. The baguette was removed, power to the cryogenic system was restored and within a few days the magnets returned to their supercool temperatures.

While most scientists would write off the event as a freak accident, two esteemed physicists have formulated a theory that suggests an alternative explanation: perhaps a time-traveling bird was sent from the future to sabotage the experiment. Bech Nielsen of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen and Masao Ninomiya of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics in Kyoto, Japan, have published several papers over the past year arguing that the CERN experiment may be the latest in a series of physics research projects whose purposes are so unacceptable to the universe that they are doomed to fail, subverted by the future.

The LHC, a 17-mile underground ring designed to smash atoms together at high energies, was created in part to find proof of a hypothetical subatomic particle called the Higgs boson. According to current theory, the Higgs is responsible for imparting mass to all things in the universe. But ever since the British physicist Peter Higgs first postulated the existence of the particle in 1964, attempts to capture the particle have failed, and often for unexpected, seemingly inexplicable reasons.

In 1993, the multibillion-dollar United States Superconducting Supercollider, which was designed to search for the Higgs, was abruptly canceled by Congress. In 2000, scientists at a previous CERN accelerator, LEP, said they were on the verge of discovering the particle when, again, funding dried up. And now there's the LHC. Originally scheduled to start operating in 2006, it has been hit with a series of delays and setbacks, including a sudden explosion between two magnets nine days after the accelerator was first turned on, the arrest of one of its contributing physicists on suspicion of terrorist activity and, most recently, the aerial bread bombardment from a bird. (A CERN spokesman said power cuts such as the one caused by the errant baguette are common for a device that requires as much electricity as the nearby city of Geneva, and that physicists are confident they will begin circulating atoms by the end of the year).

In a series of audacious papers, Nielsen and Ninomiya have suggested that setbacks to the LHC occur because of "reverse chronological causation," which is to say, sabotage from the future. The papers suggest that the Higgs boson may be "abhorrent to nature" and the LHC's creation of the Higgs sometime in the future sends ripples backward through time to scupper its own creation. Each time scientists are on the verge of capturing the Higgs, the theory holds, the future intercedes. The theory as to why the universe rejects the creation of Higgs bosons is based on complex mathematics, but, Nielsen tells TIME, "you could explain it [simply] by saying that God, in inverted commas, or nature, hates the Higgs and tries to avoid them."

Many physicists say that Nielsen and Ninomiya's theory, while intellectually interesting, cannot be accurate because the event that the LHC is trying to recreate already happens in nature. Particle collisions of an energy equivalent to those planned in the LHC occur when high-energy cosmic rays collide with the earth's atmosphere. What's more, some scientists believe that the Tevatron accelerator at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (or Fermilab) near Chicago has already created Higgs bosons without incident; the Fermilab scientists are now refining data from their collisions to prove the Higgs' existence.

Nielsen counters that nature might allow a small number of Higgs to be produced by the Tevatron, but would prevent the production of the large number of particles the LHC is anticipated to produce. He also acknowledges that Higgs particles are probably produced in cosmic collisions, but says it's impossible to know whether nature has stopped a great deal of these collisions from happening. "It's possible that God avoids Higgs [particles] only when there are very many of them, but if there are a few, maybe He let's them go," he says.

Nielsen and Ninomiya's theory represents one side of an intellectual divide between particle physicists today. Contemporary physicists tend to fall into one of two camps: the theorists, who posit ideas about the origins and workings of the universe; and experimentalists, who design telescopes and particle accelerators to test these theories, or provide new data from which novel theories can emerge. Most experimentalists believe that the theorists, due to a lack of new data in recent years, have reached a roadblock - the Standard Model, which is the closest thing the theorists have to an evidence-backed "theory of everything," provides only an incomplete explanation of the universe. Until theorists get further data and evidence to move forward, the experimentalists believe, they end up simply making wild guesses - like those concerning time-traveling saboteurs - about how the universe works. "Nielsen and Ninomiya's theories are clearly crazy theories," says Dmitri Denisov, a physicist and Higgs-hunter at the DZero experiment at Fermilab. "In recent years theorists have been starving for experimental input and as a result, theories of second type are propagating widely. The majority of them have nothing to do with world we live in."

Nielsen concedes, "We have very little data, so theorists are going their own ways and making a lot of theories that may not be very plausible. We need guidance from experimentalists to make the theories more healthy."

"But," he adds, "in terms of our theory, we are submitting to a form of experiment. We are saying the LHC won't be allowed to produce a large number of Higgs. If it does, it would be very damaging to our theory."

Particle physics has a long history of zany theories that turned out to be true. Niels Bohr, the doyen of modern physicists, often told a story about a horseshoe he kept over his country home in Tisvilde, Denmark. When asked whether he really thought it would bring good luck, he replied, "Of course not, but I'm told it works even if you don't believe in it." In other words: if preposterous theories are mathematically sound and can be confirmed by observation, they are true, even if seemingly impossible to believe. To scientists in the early 20th century, for example, quantum mechanics may have seemed outrageous. "The concept that you could have a wave-particle duality - that an object could take on either wave-like properties or point-like properties, depending on how you observe it - takes a huge leap of imagination," says Roberto Roser, a scientist at Fermilab. "Sometimes outlandish papers turn out to be the laws of physics."

So what would Peter Higgs himself make of the intellectual controversy surrounding his eponymous particle? Speaking on behalf of his friend, Professor Richard Kenway, who holds Higgs' former position at the University of Edinburgh, says that the 78-year-old emeritus professor remains quietly confident that the LHC will discover the Higgs boson when it is eventually running at full strength. For his part, Kenway says the LHC's delays are to be expected given the size and intricacy of the $9 billion experiment. And he says if he ever needs further proof that the Higgs boson is not abhorrent to nature, he need only spend time with his friend and mentor. "If nature truly did not want us to discover the Higgs, a cosmic ray would have zapped the embryo that became Peter, preventing its development into a physicist," he says.

Curacao video

Anybody who wants to see one of the results of the visit I made to Curacao last June, should follow this link to youtube - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByGpAjoyZVM

enjoy!

A muse about super powers

This weekend, my family and I flew up to New England (Boston) for my niece's wedding, which was actually held in Hartford CT. Sally went up early with Thing 2, while Thing 1 and went later to allow her some additional days in the her new school.

My niece married a nice man whom she met at work, down in Greenville South Carolina. His brothers all seem nice too. But his family are Super Christians, who belong to some really strict Southern Baptist sect. His Dad is a minister, who I heard wrote a book about why drinking alcohol is sinful.

So at the wedding, my in-laws, who are fairly religious Christians themselves, had an outdoor reception in a tent, complete with a dance floor. The Super Christians showed up, and ensconced themselves at one end, and looked down their noses at my wife's Protestant (but not good enough) family and my brother in law's big Irish Catholic (ah no - Papists!!!) family.

But not for long. After waiting an hour, the super Christians super powers failed (super-cilious-ness?) and the wine and beer came out of hiding where I had stashed them in the garage (trust those Irish Catholics to find it!!!!), and dancing broke out when the bride and groom cinched their way across the floor.

The groom beckoned to his Mom to come and dance with him, but she turned her back. Soon they all left, making a large hole with no people, soon filled by the Irish, having a good time.

Not much good, those Super Powers, if all it takes to counter them is a little dancing.........