Aviation

I knew that Garmin made simulator modules for their products, but I had to
search to find it. The FAQ “expert assistant” search returned the answer “yes” to
the question of whether there was a simulator available, but didn’t actually return
a link.

It’s easy to install though and the 150% view makes it nicely usable on the

laptop. I selected the C/V volume knob to turn it on, and it started up fine,

running through the same integrity checks as the real unit. I verified that all the

flags were as they should be and then noticed a MSG light, so pressed the key to

find the message. “Main processor error.” I’ve no idea where that came from. Who

would simulate a hardware flaw? It only came up the once and never again, so as

long as the real units don’t do it, it should be good.

It’s well-designed as a simulator. The screen consists of a photographic

representation of the physical knobs of the unit with superimposed arrows so you

know where to click in order to turn the ones that need to be turned. For the aircraft interface they depict only an HSI and generic simplified autopilot controls. Really simple: NAV HDG ALT, an altitude

increase/decrease rocker switch that instantly puts the airplane at the altitude

you select, plus a SPEED slider that instantly puts the airplane at any speed from

0 to 600 knots. This takes aircraft performance and configuration completely out of

the equation, you just set the speed you would have for the phase of flight, and it

acts as both a pause key and a fast forward. The only non-intuitive part is using the

OBS and heading bug knobs on the HSI. You need to click on the appropriate knob

then hold and drag straight horizontally, maybe all the way across the screen for a large

change. It’s easy to do once you figure it out, though.

My first surprise was that the menu screens don’t wrap all the way around. That

is, if you’re exploring the suboptions of the NAV menu by turning the inside right

knob, when you get to the seventh screen you can’t go back to the first one by

turning the knob one more click. You have to go all the way back through the way

you came. Weird.

I set up a flight plan from Saskatoon to Prince Albert, because aside from

having a NSFW name (don’t google for images) PA has at least one of every sort of

approach. I dial the speed up to around mach one so that by the time I’ve followed

the instructions for selecting a full procedure ILS runway 08 approach and admired

all the pretty menus, I’m almost there. I slow down to a more realistic speed for

my aircraft, activate the approach and start the descent. It counts down to the

beacon, and I set the heading bug to the outbound intercept, but nothing happened.

It starts counting up how far away from the beacon it is. I activated the approach

again and it started turning right toward the airport, not left on the outbound PT.

I let it, to see what it would do, and it turned all the way around. Ack, the logic

must have told it to fly to the beacon and then outbound and with the beacon behind

and just a hair to the right, that made it do the right 270.

It tracks outbound and I fly the procedure turn then toggle the CDI to VLOC

while inbound on the reversal. I notice that the glideslope is flagged off and

recheck the frequency. Everything looks okay, but no glideslope indication appears

and the distance counts down to the FAF, then counts up again as the map depicts

reaching the runway and overflying it. Back to the manual.

This time I program in a sample flight plan from the manual, it’s

KFDK-KLYH. I finally figure out what I’ve been doing wrong: I have to make sure

that the OBS key is not selected. The OBS option suppresses automated sequencing of

waypoints. Silly me, I thought it enabled the OBS.

The example in the manual tells me to select VOR 03 but the simulator database

only has VOR04: the manual is from 2009 but the simulator database only goes up to

2006 and the approach has changed. I choose the VOR 04 — and the transition as

told. It’s loaded but not activated. How do I tell if it’s activated by looking at

the GPS display? What happens if I activate it twice by accident? I’m not sure. The

waypoints sequence and I try the simulated ILS approach, but the glideslope doesn’t

work for this, either. I guess its just not simulated.

I set my location back to PA and try to do a VOR/DME arc. It’s a 14 DME arc that

runs from XEXEX to XETUL (the latter is in line with the approach). I’m starting at the YPA VOR,

not the way you’d do a real one, but I want to see how this works. I can see how to

go direct XEXEX, but I aim manually for the arc, west of XEXEX, trying to set the

obs to a radial perpendicular to the arc where I will intercept it, as I would

without the GPS, but it doesn’t work that way. I have to set it along the arc and

it does the conversion itself. Even when I set the CDI to VLOC I can’t use it the

familiar way. The main nav screen doesn’t tell me my DME from the VOR. I’d prefer

that this do a better job or enhancing rather than completely replacing old habits.

It directs me to turn left onto the approach before reaching the fly-by waypoint at

XETUL. I turned as directed and then had to correct back to the right in order to

get on the radial by PUVER. That was no good. I don’t trust it so I’m doing things

myself and we’re fighting and making a mess. Try again, this time from the

south.

I go way out so there’s lots of room and select vectors so I won’t be

asked to go to XIBEV. I fly direct BETIM. It’s irritating that it doesn’t tell me

the ONE piece of information I want setting up for a DME arc: my DME! I’m 16 nm

from BETIM, which is 3.5 nm from YPA and it’s a 14 DME arc, so I have a few miles.

If BETIM to YPA were a straigt line I’d be expecting to intercept at 10.5, from

BETIM but they are not, so it should be before then. Yet, crap! I’m 9.1 from YPA and

there’s no arc intercept depicted and no turn instruction. I guess “vectors” was

vectors to the final approach for the VOR/DME 08 and not for the arc. Try

again.

What you have to do, is what I did before, set up for the DME arc, choosing one

of the endpoints XEXEX as the initial fix, then go into the flight plan where you see

the sequenced waypoints XEXEX, dme arc, XETUL, PUVER, BETIM all one below the

other. Activate the cursor, scroll down to dme arc, and select direct to.

This is going to work. I pull up the NRST screen that shows me the GPS distance

from the VOR and it’s showing 15.0 as I follow the directions through the arc. If

I’m on the arc, the GPS distance should actually be less than the DME because DME

includes slant range, and the depiction on the NAV map shows the same: I’m tracking

outside the arc. It’s good enough, I suppose but not really clear guidance for

flying the arc.

And then it’s straight down the approach to the missed. I always have to go

missed in this simulator, because there’s no way to see the runway. The missed

instructions are straight ahead to 3100 then left to YPA VOR. I climb

instantaneously with the little rocker switch, check to make sure the CDI is in GPS

and not VLOC mode (I’m going to do that as part of every missed approach so that I

don’t forget on the occasions that it’s an ILS approach) and then cancel the SUSP

by hitting the OBS button. The simulator turns left as the missed approach

instructions specify, but that was chance, because I’ve since seen it turn right,

so remember it is not flying the missed, just going to the holding point. It is entirely up to the pilot to fly the missed as published.

When I did this on the sample approach from the manual, approaching the holding

point it gave directions to fly the TEARDROP hold entry. I didn’t actually fly the

hold there, just repositioned and went back to Canada.

Canadian plates don’t usually depict a published hold after the MAP, you just know that you can hold there, on the inbound track, and ATC can direct you to hold anywhere. Back in simulated Canada (don’t you wish the real GPS had a transporter function?) I intend to enter and

fly the hold manually, because after the missed I’m right on top of it, and too

close to scramble into menus. Left turns, my outbound course just right of my

current track to the VOR, makes it a parallel entry. I watch a messy station

passage on the map view and I make the first right, using the CDI button to pop the

unit into VLOC mode, verifying that the YPA frequency is the active one, but the

flag doesn’t flip. Map view shows I’m clearly past the VOR. Weird. I start the

timer anyway and fly a minute outbound. Right turn inbound, flying an intercept

heading on the VOR, but map view shows me cross the selected radial with no change

to the CDI. Obviously VLOC mode doesn’t do what I thought it did. I’ll take a

vacuuming break and read up on this later.

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The GNS430 is installed and IFR certified, so it is approved to work

with the autopilot. I program in what it’s supposed to do, and then it

will give the autopilot directions on how to proceed. My job then is to

monitor that it is giving the right instructions and that the autopilot is

carrying them out. It’s like you could give your car’s cruise control

instructions from your dashboard GPS on where the speed limit changed and

where your exit was, and it would automatically exit and slow down.

The IFR procedures are all stored on a data card, and yes the cards

must be physically replaced every 28 days, which I just know is

going to be a pain and a half someday soon when I need to escape IFR from

somewhere where overnight delivery service takes three months. I hope it

won’t lock up and refuse to work at all just because the card has expired. [Update: Paul says the updates can be downloaded over the Internet.]

Canadian procedures only change every 56 days, unless by NOTAM.

Question: if a NOTAM has temporarily amended a procedure can I modify

it in the device? I’m guessing no. I’d have to hand fly it.

To load a procedure into the flight plan, I must first have a flight

plan (or it will settle for an active “direct-to” command to an airport).

I press PROC and it pops up a menu of types of procedures. I use the large

right knob to Select Approach (or Select Arrival?, Select

Departure? as appropriate). Enter selects, and it presents a

choice of procedures depending on the destination airport in the flight

plan or direct-to. Assuming you’re selecting an approach, it drills down

to allow you to specify the initial approach fix (IAF) or that you will be

receiving vectors to final. Once you have selected the procedure with the

enter key you can choose to load or activate it. Typically you would load

it but not activate it until cleared for it, but it looks like you can

activate it any time without restrictions. To do that after loading, you

press PROC and then choose Activate Approach.

About 30 nm from the runway the GPS switches to terminal mode, i.e. 1.0

nm CDI scaling each side. It’s a gradual transition, so if you were

sitting there one dot off centre on the 5 nm scaling it doesn’t suddenly

whip over to full scale deflection. If you want, you can press FPL and

right knob scroll through the list of waypoints to review the approach

procedures. Seeing as the autopilot is flying, you could do that the way

you look at nav radios as you give the approach briefing.

Approaching the IAF it displays your next desired track (DTK) as the

outbound from the nav aid. It’s up to you to make sure the OBS is set

correctly and to decide which procedure turn to fly. It doesn’t direct you

left or right but just depicts your position relative to the inbound

track. About a minute after passing the final approach fix (FAF), the nav

aid you’ll fly toward on the way back in towards the runway, it directs

Start procedure turn, but again it’s up to you to choose and fly

the reversal. This could be done presumably by hand flying or by directing

the autopilot with the heading bug. Question: Is it always about a

residential areas where you have to fly a longer outbound leg? Halfway

through the reversal, the GPS sets your desired track to the inbound and

leaves you to intercept it. I’m not entirely clear on how I should be

using the heading bug here. The GPS-autopilot interface is quite

mysterious, given that they are technologies invented close to fifty years apart in time.

The unit does not accept a barometric pressure setting, and does not display altitude on any of the screens I’ve looked at in the manual so far, so it would appear that the GPS provides directional guidance only, and that the pilot is responsible for instructing the autopilot in step down altitudes and rates of descent on a non-precision approach. (There is a mode to reach a target altitude at a specified location, but presumably that is GPS altitude and is intended for VFR use). The GPS directs the autopilot to hold a heading and the pilot directs the autopilot to descend to an altitude, while the pilot uses the throttles to instruct the engine regarding power input. It’s like CRM between a human and two machines: you have to be very clear who is responsible for what.

On a precision approach, the GPS is not approved to maintain either lateral or vertical guidance: you must switch to the VHF navigation signal from the ground-based ILS. The CDI can be set to automatically switch from indicating deviation from the GPS track to the localizer track, so long as you are tracking within 1.2 nm of the localizer, starting 2.0 to 15 nm back from the FAF. If it isn’t set to switch automatically, or if you have a less than 2 nm gate, you can activate it manually by pressing the CDI button. In either case, the correct ILS frequency must be set in the VLOC radio, for the switch to occur. The unit will put the ILS frequency up on standby for you, but you have to toggle it from standby to active yourself.

While you are on an approach, the missed approach point (MAP) is the current waypoint. As you reach the MAP, “SUSP” appears above the OBS key and the pilot is expected to either land or conduct the missed approach. To land I guess you just land: the autopilot is still on and presumably the last heading instruction the GPS issued to the autopilot is still valid, so the airplane continues to the runway and the pilot can disable the autopilot and land at whatever point they prefer. To initiate a missed approach, hit the OBS key (and switch the CDI back to GPS from VLOC if it was an ILS approach) then the unit should give directions into the hold. It is not entirely clear from the documentation whether it will take you step by step through an elaborate missed, but at any rate if the missed called for an immediate hundred degree turn away from the mountain, I would be doing that before messing with the GPS for guidance. It looks like the GPS is a fair weather helper that is not willing to help you with the highest workload portion of the flight. It will tell you the correct entry procedure for a hold, but I’m thinking that unless it is a published hold that the database knows about, it would be quicker to work out the entry myself than to input the hold instructions.

Question: does the approach I fly have to be the LAST WPT, such that I can’t pre-include the alternate as part of the flight plan? It appears that that is the case.

It looks like the easiest things to forget are: taking care of the vertical profile; activating the approach; and ensuring the correct CDI source for the phase of flight. Anyone who has any IFR experience with autopilot-linked Garmins is very much encouraged to give me pointers here. I am, for example, stymied as to how I define a hold that is not depicted on the plate as part of an approach, if say there’s someone ahead of me on the approach and I just need to hold at the NDB and wait for them, or if ATC suddenly assigns a hold while they sort themselves out.

Tomorrow’s post (not skipping a day this time) will be me trying it all out in the Garmin-supplied simulator.

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I’m training on a new GPS NAVCOM next week. (That is a GPS receiver that

has an integrated communications radio and simulates traditional

navigation instruments). This one talks to the radio navigation

instruments and can combine their knowledge with its. The GPS can drive my

HSI CDI so that I’m looking at the traditional instruments, but navigating

by GPS information. This is good, because the traditional instruments have

a better display and are right in front of me, so more comfortable to use.

The system is complicated, but fortunately it’s a Garmin, and I’ve used a

lot of Garmin GPS receivers, so the logic isn’t completely foreign; I’m

working my way through the first online manual now.

Equipment like this has a lot of context sensitive keys. For example if

you push the middle of the bottom right knob, you activate or deactivate

the GPS cursor. If the cursor is deactivated, turning that knob changes

screens, but if the cursor is active, turning that knob moves the cursor

from field to field. But not to all fields. There’s a separate cursor for

changing VHS standby frequencies¹, and two separate frequency

swapping buttons. I like that, as I have been caught out on units that had

one cursor, messing up my standby frequency just before I needed it,

because I was hunting for the approach page. The section of the screen

that acts as what would be labelled NAV on the analog radios is

designated VLOC here. That represents VOR plus

LOCalizer², i.e. this radio is used to tune VOR or ILS

frequencies. They needed a more specific term than NAV, because the whole

thing is for navigation.

The 29 possible display pages are in logical groups, so you first use

the bottom right knob, cursor deactivated, to select a group, i.e. NAV,

WPT, AUX or NRST, then you turn the inside right knob to select an

individual page within that group. I need to familiarize myself with which

information is available on which pages. Setup is under AUX. Airport

information is under WPT. If I get lost³, I can press and hold

the CLR key to get back to the default NAV page.

Hmm, on page 17 it says that to stop navigating a flight plan I select

Delete Flight Plan. Single use flight plans? That seems a little

drastic. That option is usually Stop Navigation. It isn’t until page seventy-five in the full Pilot’s Guide that it confirms “Deleting a flight plan does not delete the waypoints contained in the flight plan from the database or user waypoint memory.” You’re really just deleting it from RAM and it’s still stored, ready to be selected again.

Some of the pages can be accessed without going through the menu system. The approaches and all their associated pages are accessed with one touch, the PROC

key. This is good. All those other pages are just pretty information

screens. The approaches are going to actually tell me–or the

autopilot⁴–where to go. The unit will tell me if I select an

approach that has not been approved as standalone GPS. For such approaches

I have to navigate primarily by the traditional nav aids, and monitor the

GPS only for situational awareness. If traditional nav aids are available,

I’ll be monitoring them anyway, but it’s a matter of what is driving my

CDI⁵. I press the CDI button to select that, or “An ‘Auto ILS

CDI’ setting provides automatic switching to ‘VLOC’ once established

inbound on the final course segment of an approach.” Nice, but dangerous,

in the way that autothrottles are: more than one pilot accustomed to the

airplane doing things for him has forgotten to do them himself when the

occasion called for it. I’ll have to make verifying that that AUTO CDI

switch occurred a part of my routine.

Ever memorized something because you were told to, without being given

enough context to use it or even understand it? I hate doing that, but I

did so years ago in order to know the answers to questions I was told

woudl be on the exam. I guess they were. I had to know the CDI scaling for

different phases of flight. I don’t remember them now, so I don’t know if

they are the same as on this 430, but the numbers here are:

I think those are full scale deflection each side. I’ll have to confirm that with the next manual. I’ll make the procedures for flying an approach on this unit a
post unto itself, for another day, because despite all the bells and

whistles, that’s what I’m really here to learn.

Notes

Anyone know if there is an html tag that will automatically number footnotes, and superscript the index, like in LaTeX? Ideally it would provide internal page links to the footnote and back to the text, too.

1. If you press and hold the com swapping button for about two seconds,

you get the emergency frequency of 121.5. I wonder how long it takes

before the unit malfunctions and you risk getting 121.5 any time you swap

frequencies. It’s very common for older radios to double-flip when you try

to swap them, leaving you talking to the same controller who just told you

to switch frequencies. Embarrassing, but having that happen on 121.5 would

be more so.

2. This makes VLOC a deeply recursive acronym, as VLOC is short of

VOR/LOCalizer, and VOR is short for VHF Omnidirectional Range, and VHF is

short for Very High Frequency, but no one ever thinks about what VOR

stands for as they are saying it. It’s usually pronounced Vee-Oh-Are, but

there are a few people who say “vore.” I suspect they are all students of

the same eccentric flight instructor.

3. Lost in the menu screens, not lost flying the plane, nor can I get

Lost the TV series on the little screen. It is in colour,

though.

4. I’ll believe that the autopilot works in this plane when I

experience it myself.

5. The CDI is the little needle that tells me which way I need to

correct to be on course.

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When you get in my airplane, part of your safety briefing includes me telling you where in aircraft the Emergency Locator Transmitter is installed. (It’s in the vertical stabilizer, marked on the outside with a sticker, and can be reached by tearing off a panel. You don’t need tools to get it off if you’re willing to destroy it in the process, and if you need it it’s an emergency, so you should be). You shouldn’t need to physically reach it anyway, as it’s supposed to start transmitting automatically in the case of a crash, advising the world of the need for rescue and the location of the accident. ELTs are required by law to be in almost all aircraft operating in Canada. (There are a few exceptions for things like balloons, skydiving operators, and delays in repairs). The problem is, the law no longer requires the ELT to transmit on the most useful frequency. It’s not that the law changed, it’s that the useful frequency changed and the law didn’t. Satellite monitoring of 121.5 was turned off over a year ago, leaving only the new 406 MHz frequency.

Below is an informative Transport Canada video on the advantages of the 406 MHz units, made somewhat entertaining by its “historical” character. Watch for the old-style green CFS in the tower. I love that the “typical Canadian pilot” is a while male in a Skyhawk. About right, really. The point of the video is to encourage Canadians to embrace the new 406 MHz ELT technology, because they are monitored by satellite and send information on the registered owner of the ELT. Without satellite monitoring, the old ELTs that transmit only on 121.5 MHz are useful only for informing people monitoring that frequency that there may be an airplane crashed in their approximate vicinity. Or maybe just a faulty microwave oven.

If that isn’t accessible (probably my bad html), but you can play a wmv file, click the check mark in the two-line table on this page.

The unchanged law wasn’t an oversight. It was supposed to change years ago, calling for the minimum legal ELTs to transmit on 406. There were handbills and videos and stickers and probably mousepads and t-shirts too, all promoting the new standard. But there affordable general aviation ELTs didn’t exist. Canadian advocacy groups said, “Hey, wait, these exceed 20% of the cost of some of our members’ airplanes!” Transport Canada funded a 2008 study into reducing the cost of 406 MHz ELTs. Aviation supplies are expensive enough to start with, but usually Canadians can rely on getting the best possible prices as a result of the competitive American market. There are so many GA pilots in the US, that anything they want to buy is available from multiple competing suppliers and innovation plus economies of scale bring the price down. But in this case Canada was mandating equipment that was not required by and was not particularly useful to most US pilots. Alaska is like most of Canada, but flying in the rest of the US being out of radar contact while enroute is so rare that the controllers point it out to you with some concern. Not only were the Americans not going to sell us cheap ELTs, but they were opposed to the regulation.

This US pilot group discussion typifies their concerns, back when Feb 2009 was the deadline. US pilots have three understandable objections.

• They don’t want to buy 406 MHz ELTs just to legally cross the border, but the regulation effectively imposes a three thousand dollar per aircraft fee for operating in Canada.
• The discussion demonstrates a national difference in philosophy with “If I waive Search and Rescue service, I shouldn’t have to pay for an ELT.” I think this is likely the same difference that makes people on opposite sides of the border feel differently about government-funded healthcare. Canadian SAR looks for everyone who is known to be missing, no matter how poorly prepared they are, so we don’t consider it out of line to require a level of preparation that will save all taxpayers a lot of money on UNSAR. And of course Americans can’t be expected to care about Canadian taxes.
• The pilots believe that having flown in the US, which is itself huge and has some areas of low population density, that they understand the barrenness of Canada. The latter has less than a tenth of the average population density of the former, and the population we do have is more asymmetrically distributed.

Government kept pushing the effective date of the new regulation forward into the future. A requirement to carry a 406 MHz ELT is still not in the current rules. They haven’t forgotten about it, but it’s dropped off the front page. The only FAQ question about ELTs on the TC site is about the angle you can put the antenna on, on a helicopter. It’s still pending.

Meanwhile there’s nothing to prevent Canadians from replacing the old ELTs with modern units that broadcast on 121.5 and 406 MHz. Relying on the 121.5 broadcast means hoping that someone hears it and can home in on it by reports of where the signal is audible at what strength.

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I saw this and had to share – this is an MU-2 doing a max performance takeoff, departing Port-de-Paix in Haiti. It rotates in about 500 feet. Watch it in HD for the full awesomeness of hi-def pedestrians walking along the runway.

We took this plane in and out of 3000′ ice-covered gravel strips in the north. The MU-2 is a magical, if unforgiving airplane.

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I replaced my venerable Blackberry with an iphone, and this is me testing out the capabilities on it. The picture quality is pretty good, and the video is decent, but I think I’ll stick with my little hd cam for cockpit vids.

Absolutely beautiful country here…

Guess the iconic Canadian landmark!

It came with this plaque bolted onto it. One does not mess with the Atlantic Ocean…

We were only in Halifax for a short time, but we drove all about and saw lots of things – Canadian Navy submarines in their pens in Halifax harbour, tall ships in port, and the bottom of a few pint glasses at the local pubs. It was nice weather, but hella windy.

We saw this on the way there…only the last 5 seconds of this video is cool.

Philosophy was never my strong point, but a man’s mind starts to wander and wonder while waiting for passengers to show up for a midnight departure…of course we made it safe home – that’s what Red Bull is for!

I’m pressed for time so I’ll cut this short – I have lots of blog ideas percolating and I hope to get the chance to write one down tomorrow, maybe after we meet with our company accountant to discuss how we did in fiscal 2009. Wish me luck!

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When you put cargo in an airplane, it needs to be tied down. Not so much so it doesn’t fall over and break, but so that it doesn’t move around and kill you, either by falling on you or by shifting the centre of gravity such that the airplane becomes unflyable. And kill you. Securing the load in an airplane is important.

When the load is people, the tiedowns are called seatbelts. Often the tiedowns are seatbelts when the load is not people, too, because seatbelts are easy to fasten, easy to adjust and certified for holding objects upwards of 200lbs in place. Humans don’t usually have 90 degree edges on them, and objects don’t usually have waists, so using seatbelts is discouraged for non-human objects. If your load consists entirely of non-human objects, then the seats and attached seatbelts can be removed from the equation (and airplane) entirely and dumped in the back of the hangar before the cargo is loaded and secured to tie-down rings.

A removable cargo tie-down ring consists of a square of metal with a ring attached to the top. It’s about the size of a stack of seven saltine crackers, with a ritz cracker balanced edgewise on top. There’s a channel in the bottom of the metal square so that it can slide onto the same rail that an aircraft seat attaches to, and a thumbscrew on the side to secure it in position once it has been slid to the desired location. Each tie-down ring, of course, costs over 0, about ten times more than a piece of metal with a ring and a thumbscrew on it ought to.

The law of tie-down rings is that there are never enough. One reason that there are never enough stems from the fact that there are often not enough, so captains learn to hoard them in their flight bags, exacerbating the shortage, and thus the hoarding. But even if you have a whole flight bag full of tie-down rings, you still can’t secure your cargo properly because you can’t put them in the right places.

You can only put the removable ones where there are seat rails. In other places you have to rely on the ones the manufacturer provided. You’re lucky if there are any tie-down rings installed in the cargo compartment. I have worked with people who have resorted to the “pack it so tightly it can’t shift” method. I suppose if you have literally packed the aircraft floor to ceiling with similar density cargo, and there is protection to prevent them from entering the cockpit, and you have forward emergency exits, you’re covered, but just packing things in the rear cargo tightly enough that they are hard to remove won’t cut it. Normal vibration or abnormal deceleration could still bring them down on top of you.

You have to plan the packing so you get the tie-down straps hooked into the tie-down rings before you bury them in cargo, and then just tighten everything down. The ratcheting cargo straps are nice, but I hate it when they get all jammed up in the reel.

Once I worked at a place that had truly awesome cargo nets that secured into custom recessed ports all around the inside of the cargo space. They still had mismatched parts on the empennage from repairs following a years-ago towing accident, but the customers were safe from their cargo and the pilots could work efficiently. Rare that a company gets that priority right.

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I started this post when I ran into this quotation.

“I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.”
— Bruce Lee

Commenter Frank Van Haste added this one.

“…there’s them that’s flown a thousand hours, and there’s them that’s flown the same hour a thousand times.”

It’s two different points. The first is that you have to focus, perfect one thing, gain complete mastery over your muscles, mind and reflexes. Continue consistent practice until you get it right. It refers to practice, training, which is what I’m doing when I hack at my flight simulator game.

The second is about breadth of experience. Different conditions, different aircraft, different crews, different places, different mindset, always adding what you learned last time to the new experience. And there’s something I’ve found in aviation, that every thousand hours or so, something happens. Inadvertent IMC, engine failure, smoke monster^*, icing, or something you thought you had mastered long ago that suddenly rears its head and becomes an issue again.

I don’t think I’ve practiced ten thousand approaches yet, either different or the same, but I keep practicing.

*My affectionate thanks to everyone who has been with me long enough to know I’m not talking about Lost.

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I probably blogged about this the first time I installed iTunes, but it makes me laugh every single time I see it.

THE APPLE SOFTWARE IS NOT INTENDED FOR USE IN THE OPERATION OF NUCLEAR FACILITIES, AIRCRAFT NAVIGATION OR COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS, AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL SYSTEMS, LIFE SUPPORT MACHINES OR OTHER EQUIPMENT IN WHICH THE FAILURE OF THE APPLE SOFTWARE COULD LEAD TO DEATH, PERSONAL INJURY, OR SEVERE PHYSICAL OR ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE.

Is there some way you can use Abba tunes to calculate an air position? Is there a way to stay on glideslope using country western lyrics? Is there some method of cross-connecting my iPod to the autopilot that will steer me clear of the Danger Zone? Should I turn off the iPod before making a course correction? I was given a POH to study once and the very first page of the manual, before the title page and the table of contents, the very first page warned me in all capital letters that I was never to put the propellers into reverse while in the air. The position and strictness of the warning told me immediately that (a) this has already had disasterous consequences, (b) quite a lot of people did it, so it must be pretty cool.

I’m clearly missing some vital function of the iPod shuffle, considering that I merely use it to listen to music during quiet moments. I hope it’s okay with Apple that I sometimes listen to my music while navigating?

Also, message to iTunes: contrary to what you think, it’s not all about you. You can stop putting up a “what should I do about this?” box every time I insert a CD ROM or add a peripheral. Your purpose on my computer is to manage songs on my iPod. You are not the operating system.

And I think it’s lame that the iPod Touch has a whole app for managing YouTube videos, but all it does is bookmark them and play them back. What’s the point if I can’t save them to watch when I don’t have an Internet connection? The Kindle is pretty cool, but I’m disturbed by the whole shift in the way published content is meted out to the consumer. Whole cultures have survived attempts at extermination because they preserved and hid their literature, in tangible printed form. Centralized control over access and content of publications is too 1984 for me. I don’t want a corporation to decide for me that something is no longer worth reading or listening to; I don’t want a seriously compromised server to wipe out a decade of literature; and I don’t want governments to have a means of determining who is reading what. Whether or not they are using it for navigational purposes.

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