Power-off 180° Accuracy Approach and Landing

Between bad weather and a rather nasty case of the flu, today was the first day I've been able to go flying for a month and a half. I've decided to pursue my commercial rating, how quickly I am going to be able to move is still up in the air for a number of reasons, but looking at TPE 13462E Flight Test Guide - Commercial Pilot Licence - Aeroplane has given me a number of new skills, to develop and practice. Today I practiced some stalls, steep turns and something new to me the Power-off 180° Accuracy Approach and Landing.

This is a standard kind of approach for a Cessna 172, but my Cherokee 180 with the "Hershey" bar wing glides like, well like a brick. From 1000 feet above the runway, given that the speed on downwind is quite a bit higher than best gliding speed, it will fly for about 1.5 miles (2.5 km). Now I have done lots of practice forced approaches where a simulated engine failure requires the pilot to select a suitable field and conduct an approach that will result in a landing in that field. Usually once it is apparent that the field can be reached (or not of the pilot has done a bad job) the approach is abandoned and the plane climbs away. Some times small airports are quiet enough that one can continue the practice forced approach all the way to landing. Usually one starts a simulated engine failure from higher than 1000 feet, but not always. It is a somewhat different mind set to pick a point in the sky, close the throttle and glide without power to an accurate landing. It is good general pilot skills practice and I had a good time today doing it.

Four out of five of the accuracy approaches I was able to do were OK. The first one I was too far out and had to use power. The second, third and fifth I was a bit too close and had to forward slip to loose altitude. The forth was the best. I took the video camera to try to capture some of the action, but it was being cranky. If it isn't broken maybe I'll get some tomorrow.

Well attended meeting at Toronto City Centre Airport

Well attended meeting at Toronto City Centre Airport (CYTZ) highlights interest in the future of this gem and the need for a COPA Flight. Reason to be moderately optimistic. It seems we in GA have an ally in Porter FBO. I'm planning some visits to the GTA this summer so we will see what happens when the rubber meets the tarmac.

The Turkeys of Spring

We have been feeding birds in the back yard since we moved to our house in the country. A number of years ago wild turkeys were introduced into the area and have been doing very well. At this time of year when wild food supplies are getting scarce they (along with deer, raccoons etc) start to forage under our bird feeders for the cast off. Some enterprising individuals have actually tried to perch on the feeders. As you can see the males are starting their displays to attract the females. So far the females seem more interested in eating.

Further Adventures With the UX300

A comment from supper happy jen (who has lots to be happy about) that she is running XP, and Jan-Piet's blog for today (which directed me to something from the FAA so there is some aviation in here) that he won't upgrade if he can avoid it has prompted me to comment on my personal experience with Vista so far. First some background.

At work I use *nix based operating systems exclusively because I work in embeded development, application development, data trasportation and network security. At home I use Windows XP 99% of the time, mainly because, at home, I don't want to do development. Linux desktop applications are getting better, but in my opinion still lag behind XP in ease of use and integration, sad as that is to say. Having a penquin for a mascot doesn't seem to make much difference Jen.

I have hear/read some good and lots bad about Vista. The UX300 may not be the best platform to test drive Vista on, but it has a faster CPU, more memory and a larger disk drive than my laptop which runs XP Pro and Linux so I think it is. The first thing I notice is that Vista is slow, and the disk drive is awlays active. It is really cool to be able to walk around with a 1.33GHz computer in the palm of your hand, but chain Vista to its leg and it just gets frustrating. In each computer I've purchased in the last ten years it seems that all the increased computing performance goes to powering the user interface. Vista on the UX300 is this trend gone wild. I'm afraid that my next personal computer purchase is going to be a Mac.

There is also something different about the Vista NTFS file system from previous Windows implimentations. I don't know if this is causing my problems, but when I try to install openSUSE (which uses the same grub boot loader as Fedora, something happens to the Vista partition that prevents it from booting. However using a disk partition editor to set the Vista partition to active seems to solve the problem. I don't know why open source installations insist on playing with the partition table active flag when they don't use it, but this would certainly be a barrier to any non-technical user who was moving cautiously from the Microsoft Camp. Another reason to get a Mac?

Edit:
It seems that openSUSE is using the active partition flag. So to dual boot Vista and openSUSE one must configure grub to install on the Master Boot Record and set the Vista partition to active. This is what Fedora does.

Linux on the Sony VAIO UX300CN

A new toy, Sony Vaio UX300CN, came into my possession. It comes preloaded with Microsoft Windows Vista Buisiness Edition which is only to be expected but, out of the box, runs a bit slowish on this 1.33GHz Intel Core Solo CPU. It has 1GB of RAM, and 37GB hard disk space (about 7GB are dedicated to a recovery partition and 20GB are gobbled up by Vista). As you can see from my tag line, I'm not really a proprietary systems guy so my first question was 'can it run Linux?' The answer is yes and so far it is relatively straight forward.

Googling UX300 and Linux did not result in any help, but I did find Linux on the Sony VAIO UX180P which was encouraging. The first step is to make sure you create the recovery media. With a USB DVD R/RW drive this is also easily done by following the Vaio documentation.

The next step is to shrink the Vista partition to make room for linux. On other Windows pre-installed systems I would have used Power Quests Partition Magic, now available from Symantec as Norton Partition Magic. However this is not compatable with Vista, fortunately Vista disk management tools include the ability to resize partitions. I was able to pry a whopping 7.6GB loose, plenty for a Linux install.

I used Fedora Core 6 because that is what we use in the shop, but other distributions should work as well. To boot the installation media some minor changes to the BIOS configuration are needed. Shut down the Vaio. Slide the screen up to access the keyboard. Locate the Fn and F2 keys. Turn the unit on and when you see the Vaio logo press and hold the Fn key while pressing the F2 key. It should switch immediately into BIOS configuration.

Paging over to the BIOS Boot menu will show six items that should boot before the internal hard drive. So why can't we boot from a USB DVD by just plug-and-go? Look closely at the very tiny screen to see that all six items are marked with an asterisk. On the right side is a note which says: External drives are available when the External Drive Boot is set to Enabled. Page back to the Advanced menu to find External Drive Boot, set it to Enabled, save the settings and away we go. While there the Keyboard Backlight can be Disabled if desired.

Install linux to your taste. To be able to dual boot linux and Vista you will can install the grub boot loader on the hard drive boot sector and follow the instructions here: Dual boot Linux Vista. Actuall Fedora Core 6 does this quite well for you.

What works: Sound, wired networking, Bluetooth, USB, touch screen (some calibration issues), dual head display (at least on intitial install). Apparently wireless networking works, but I'm still looking for a site that has all the RPMs in sync to do it without compiling the driver.

What doesn't work (yet): Motion Eye, finger print scanner. zoom buttons.

I'm not finished yet so more later.

Good News from COPA and ADM

New development re: Landing Fee at Trudeau and Mirabel Airports

Update 28 February 2007

From the COPA non-membes page:
(click here for original story)

A meeting was held regarding the unreasonable high landing fees at Trudeau and Mirabel Airports with Aéroports de Montreal (ADM) President James Cherry and Vice-President Normand Boivin on Feb. 19. Representing our interests were COPA President Kevin Psutka, one of our Quebec Directors, Frank Hofmann, and Francois Vranna, a Director from the Aviateurs et pilotes de brousse du Québec.

In addition to the unreasonable rate of $46.68 plus taxes, we pointed out several problems to the ADM, including lack of any consultation with our sector and insufficient notice for virtually any pilot to be aware of the new landing fee.

In response to ADM’s claim that we have been getting a free ride, we brought to their attention that a fuel concession fee, which was established in lieu of landing fees for small aircraft by Transport Canada when they ran the airport, is still being collected and subsequent to the meeting it was confirmed that the proceeds of this fee are indeed going to ADM.

ADM has reconsidered their position and today announced that they are rescinding the landing fee while they review the amount, the methodology and the role of the fuel concession fee. As they develop a new plan they promise to consult with us.

A small team of tenants and users of the airport, including COPA representation, is meeting to develop options for discussion with the ADM. They will give proper notice (60 days) and have asked for our help to disseminate the revised fee information prior to introduction, which may occur by the middle of this year. For those who have already paid a fee, ADM is in the process of deciding what to do.

If you are planning to fly into Trudeau or Mirabel airports, you should check our Places to Fly listings for these airports www.copanational.org/PlacesToFly/index.php . Included there is the link to the ADM’s website where fees information can be verified.