Vectors To Final

Weather Experience

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Miller) — Mon, 20 May 2013 21:03:00 +0000

I've gained some nice experience with in-flight weather recently, starting with my trip up to Sporty's for their annual fly-in. The weather on the way up there was pretty easy to handle, but on the way back I needed to do a bit of deviating from the planned course. I took extra care during the preflight checks, and had some places to divert in mind if the thunderstorms ballooned up, but it ended up working out quite well, as the weather slowly dissipated during my flight.

Similarly, today I did a local round trip to get some good testing in ForeFlight Mobile and the latest from Stratus (a weather data receiver). In both cases ATC was a huge help, proactively making suggestions on good routes and checking in on folks that were near precip activity. It's so nice to have them on the other end of the radio while you're working on a game plan.

Oh, and when you use a GCO on the ground (Ground Communication Outlet) it is 4 slow clicks on the mic to call ATC, 6 to call Flight Service. Flight Service is way slower at getting IFR clearances for you, as the system is not geared toward that.

A little diversion

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Miller) — Thu, 09 May 2013 00:17:00 +0000

I just returned from a one night trip to AR and had a minor bit of excitement on the way out there.

My plan was simple - the weather was nice and the trip distance was easily within my margin for a single/direct flight with no fuel stop (especially since I managed to get a 2-3 kt tailwind). However, an hour or so into the flight one of the engine sensors (one that measures the turbine inlet temperature) started behaving a bit "off". It was showing a value bouncing between 1600 degrees F up to 1750. At times it would bounce up to 1800+ at which point the avionics system would *bong* to alert me to the problem.

I monitored the other readouts and all looked good, but I lowered the power to see if that helped. It didn't make a difference, and the readout would instantly correct itself from time to time, yet kept bouncing around. Feeling confident it was just a readout issue, I decided to press on and simply monitor the issues closely.

However, it got to the point where it would continuously *bong* at me, and it's not something you can just ignore (which is a good thing). I decided I couldn't fly another 2 hours with this going on, so started planning out how I'd fix it.

I had brought along the latest issue of the Cirrus Owners and Pilots Association magazine, and it dawned on me that it would have a list of Cirrus Certified repair shops around the country. I was over Tennessee so I found two options fairly close to my route.

I told ATC I wanted to amend my destination to KMQY. They said "sure, what's the purpose?" and I let them know I had a bad readout that was causing alarms, and so needed to be addressed. They quickly set me up for the ILS approach (it was cloudy around there at the time) and I was on the ground in maybe 10-15m.

Leaving MQY

With some extraordinary help from the folks at Corporate Flight Management, I was able to get airborne again in 3hrs. They immediately got to work on the problem for me, and found a frayed wire leading to that sensor. Once they fixed that up and ran the engine to test it, I was all set to go. Can't say enough good things about how they treated me.

I was able to make it to my destination only slightly late, and the readout was fixed up and working reliably again.

I came back home this morning and had a perfect flight. I took off, leveled off a 9,000' and did little more than swap fuel tanks, monitor the engine, and watch out for ice on the wings (found some wet clouds out there) for 3.5 hours. Well, that and take in the sights while looking around for other airplanes.

Another great flight, and some extra experience building to boot.

Returning home at 9,000'

Night flight

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Miller) — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 21:01:00 +0000

I went up for a bit tonight to try about the G1000/Perspective system in the dark for the first time.

I do very little (essentially zero) night flying, but when I have done it in the past I've really enjoyed it. There's next to no one else flying, the air is smooth, and the sights are unique - at least when you're near a city, in the country there's very little to see.

I took off just as it was getting pretty dark, careful to keep the power below 102% or so. I made it a short flight, basically looped around the city and then shot a GPS approach back into the airport. I found the airplane to be even better for night flying than the G2 Cirrus I used to fly regularly. That's for a few reasons:

Landing lights - the lighting is a bit better, though maybe not quite as much as I would have expected, with the wing tip recognition lights. Every bit helps though.
EVS - the IR/Visible camera system was mostly helpful on the ground to search for deer or other obstructions. I turned it on the screen when landing expecting I'd glance at it, but managed to forget to use it then. In flight the camera view wasn't much use as it's fairly low resolution.
Screen backlighting - I found the backlighting levels to be pretty easy to manage. They are controlled by the closest knob on the bolster, so making adjustments was simple. There is a lag in turning the knob and having the brightness change, but that was easy to get used to. The main benefit is that these screens don't have a pulsing/flashing effect in your peripheral vision like the Avidyne screens do (at least for me) on the G2 Cirrus. I'd guess these screens have a higher refresh rate.
General lighting in the cockpit is good, with a strong red lamp that illuminates the center console/throttle area
The "ice lights" which light up the wings when you need to search for ice worked well on the wings. Seemed I have no real chance of seeing ice on the tail using that, but that would be hard during the day as well.

I had a great time on the flight, and practiced my hot-start technique by shutting down at the fuel pumps to fill up after landing. She started right up using the normal technique sans priming. The only problem with these night flights, in the summer anyway, is that I am jazzed up and wide awake until at least midnight. With kids waking me up at 6:30 or so, I end up being a little short on sleep. Well worth it though.

Ground Power Unit

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Miller) — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 14:47:00 +0000

I recently bought a small GPU from Sporty's so I could do database updates and avionics exploration on the ground without concern over draining the batteries in the SR22.

I went with this one rated for 35 Amps max. So far I haven't seen the plane draw more than 10 amps, so 35 looks to be plenty. It seems well built and was easy to use.

Here's how I use it:

Hook up wires on GPU and power it up
Remove GPU cover on airplane (quarter turn screw)
Plug GPU into airplane
Turn on Batt 1 switch
Verify that GPU indicates reasonable amperage draw (7-10 amps in this case)
Turn on Avionics switch if required

Then when its time to turn everything off, reverse the order.

Even more instruction

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Miller) — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 11:08:00 +0000

Spent an hour flying with John Collins yesterday. He's a writer, aviation avionics/ADS-B expert, instructor, and my hangar neighbor.

We focused on making better use of vertical navigation while shooting GPS approaches, using the autopilot's VNV function. Also spent time testing out Stratus 2 with the latest ForeFlight Mobile update. Great way to spend a Saturday afternoon!

Training and Sun n Fun

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Miller) — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 21:23:00 +0000

I recently started flying a newer Cirrus (with the Garmin Perspective/G1000 system) and needed to work on my transition training.

I already had some time behind the TAT turbo-normalized engine in the new plane, so the main focus was learning the new avionics. I'm lucky to live near an expert Cirrus instructor (Mark Wages of North Star Aero) so scheduled a day to fly around with him, shoot approaches, do some basic airwork, and learn the various failure modes of the new setup.

It was the perfect time to get fully IFR current and get a flight review knocked out at the same time. It also let me feel much more at home in the airplane, as I have so much time in the Avidyne system that the Garmin one required a reset of my muscle memory ("oh yeah, the heading bug knob is over there now").

I picked up the plane from GMU on Friday and flew it straight home. Then Saturday morning I took off to meet Mark. We started with a ground review of systems and procedures. I asked him to help me do the TKS preflight for the first time, so I'd have a good baseline of the sights and sounds when I do that solo from now on - it's a once-a-month check, or before flying into known icing conditions.

We took off from Concord, did slow flight, a few stalls, etc. and then started shooting approaches with different simulated failures. The airplane has dual AHRS (attitude and heading reference system) and ADC (air data computer, for airspeed, altitude, etc.) sensors so a total failure of those is very rare, but we could still simulator it by pulling circuit breakers.

The failed ADCs was a tough one to deal with, at least when in the clouds. You can still use the autopilot in pitch hold mode and command an angle of pitch, but it takes a fair bit of continuous adjustment to keep the altitude you want to hold. Easy to get "behind" the airplane when talking with ATC and trying to brief and fly an approach.

We flew to KGMU for a late lunch (and the place was busy) then gassed up a bit and shot another 3 approaches before returning to Concord to end the lesson. I gained up a huge amount of knowledge on how to fly the plane and the avionics, and had lots of fun doing it. I can't recommend Mark highly enough. He's got some great videos to check out too.

Using all that experience the next morning I blasted off for Sun n Fun down in Lakeland, FL. I cruised at 180kts (burning about 16.5 gph) and a small tailwind even gave me a little boost past that. I flew into Plant City where they had a nice parking spot and a car ready for me.

I've found the TAT turbo G3 Cirrus to be a pretty impressive upgrade from the G2 I used to fly. Some of the checklists are shorter, which is nice. For example, I don't generally touch the fuel pump switch, I leave the landing lights on full time, and I barely need to work with the mixture as I fly the turbo in the climb at the full rich setting and leaning for cruise is a simple pull back until the fuel flow matches the pre-calculated bug bug on the read out.

Then there's the enhanced safety: 2 AHRSs, 2 ADCs, 2 essentially full-power alternators, 2 displays capable of showing all the primary instruments, the ability to deal with more icing situations (which I plan to avoid in the first place), heated "stall" detector, hypoxia monitoring, additional alerts to the pilot for system issues, a better autopilot setup, and more.

The only drawback is the max weight. Since the new airplane is heavier due to the additional equipment and since it can carry an extra 11 gallons of fuel vs the G2, you can't fill the tanks and expect to take more than one passenger somewhere. So I am getting back into the habit of keeping the tanks at "the tabs" (60 gallons of fuel) unless I need to take a trip. You also have to watch the manifold pressure at take off to keep it at 31in/hg - if you just push it all the way to max power you will put a bit too much load on the engine (that's because the oil is still warming up, and it's involved in the turbo control).

On the flight home yesterday I again cruised at ~180 and had an even better tailwind. I had an average groundspeed of about 200kts.

Here's a photo merge of the PFD and MFD on the way home:

Austin trip

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Miller) — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 01:14:00 +0000

Most of my recent flights haven't been much to write home about. Primarily flight testing ForeFlight stuff during local trips, but I did take a long trip out to Austin. That's the furthest I have flown west, and it took roughly 6 hours to get out there (with a fuel stop midway).

I got to spend some time with fellow ForeFlight coders at the Redbird SkyPort. It's a gorgeous place for airplane geeks to hang out.

We got some flight testing in while we were all together. Here's a shot of that in a lovely Mooney.

Here's a shot of us coding the next version of ForeFlight Mobile in the SkyPort. After a while, we got pretty good at not being distracted by the Ovation in the hangar.

I also got to fly a couple of "real" approaches (i.e. there were lots of clouds around) which was a ton of fun. Such a feeling of accomplishment when you punch out of the clouds and ease in for a landing in WX that few others fly in.

Last week I went up for a quick hop around the Charlotte airspace. There's lots of civilization to check out while flight testing along that route. Here's a shot of some towers I was keen to avoid while I stayed low enough to not bother the airliners coming into town. They're tough to see in this still shot, but were easy to keep tabs on when in flight.

Pictures from this week

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Miller) — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 21:59:00 +0000

This week a few ForeFlight developers were in town for some coding and flying. Here's a few shots from it. Great week!

Waiting on the MFD data to update

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Miller) — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 17:50:00 +0000

Slow Teleportation

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Miller) — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 12:45:00 +0000

I made good use of my pilot's license today.

I woke up at five and got myself ready to go. Drove 10m to the airport and preflighted the airplane. Took off before dawn and picked up my IFR clearance airborne while looking at the glowing Charlotte skyline.

From there it was a 2 hour flight to Gaithersburg (which was the closest airport the government will let me fly into for my Washington D.C. destination). Got my rental car and drove the hour or so into town. Attended the meeting and then drove in a bit of traffic back to Gaithersburg.

At 5:45 PM I was cranked up with my IFR clearance in hand and taxied out to the runway. 2.5 hours later I was landing at home and putting the airplane back to bed after having watched the sun set over thin clouds in North Carolina.

It was a 15hr day, but had me traveling 750 miles to get somewhere far away and back in time to eat dinner at home. Amazing. Hard work, but amazing!

This was my first time flying into the SFRA (restricted airspace around DC). You have to be extra careful doing that, as one false move has an F-15 escorting you to land somewhere you really don't want to be forced to go. But for IFR flying, it was basically a non-event. The big thing when IFR is to NOT start squawking 1200 on the transponder at any time. ATC helped me remember that as they released me to land, so that was super helpful, but there was no way I was going to screw that up.

Same issue when leaving, you have to get your unique squawk before you take off, and get in contact with ATC in a timely manner.

IT worked quite well, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a bit on edge through the time I was in the SFRA. I've read too many stories about pilots temporarily losing their license and/or getting fined for screw-ups there.

Critical Decision Making Seminar

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Miller) — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 17:46:00 +0000

I'll be hosting a CDM at KUZA on Dec 1 for anyone interested in flying in and taking part in a scenario-based discussion of aviation.

It will use Cirrus aircraft for examples, but applies to all GA pilots. Check this out for details. Please register here, as we have limited room available. Hope to see you there!

Oshkosh 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Miller) — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 20:52:00 +0000

I just returned from Oshkosh AirVenture in the Cirrus yesterday. Had a great time working the booth for ForeFlight and meeting hundreds of folks. I had the privilege of giving 4 talks throughout the week about using the iPad for flying and was hopefully able to share a few new tips in the process.

My wife and I flew up on Saturday (2 days before the show) to give us time to wait out any WX that may have cropped up. Last year we ended up making a few short stops trying to get around the back side of a storm.

This year there was a storm just west of KFLD, our final destination, but it was moving so slowly that even though it took 5 hours to get up there we easily made it into the airport. Here's what we saw using Stratus and ForeFlight Mobile 4.6 as we were under Chicago ATC control on our way north.

As usual, Fond Du Lac was low-key when we arrived. That's something I can truly appreciate with how much other stuff is involved with exhibiting at a show as big as AirVenture.

Highlights of the trip included a short helicopter ride in a friend's R-44. We stayed around 300' AGL and I even got to take the controls for a brief bit. It was incredible - the view was intoxicating - and probably dangerous to my pocket book someday, as it really really made me want to get one. :)

Saturday night we came back to the airport for the night air show. We went to the flight line and watched the AeroShell team (who I got to fly with last year) do their thing as the sun set. Then came a few more acts that made terrific use of pyrotechnics while performing loops and rolls over the runway. After that was a very high quality fireworks show set to music, which makes anything better. At the end a jet car came by blasting out jet fuel so forcefully that I felt like I might get pushed back by it. It then sped down the runway to ignite a huge wall of fire some 500' long in the middle of the runway. You could feel the heat from thousands of feet away.

My flight home was about as good as it gets. I had the iPhone sending excellent music into my Zulu 2 headset, ATC on the radio helping me out, a 11,000' perch to watch the world go by, and a slight tailwind that let me get all the way home in one hop.

To top it off my 2 and 5 year old boys gave me the best greeting I've ever received when I walked in the door at home. I had to pinch myself. :)

It is now safe to turn off your cockpit

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Miller) — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 12:49:00 +0000

This isn't what I want to see on my cockpit avionics. Apparently I removed the USB stick too quickly while it was rebooting. The underlying Windows operating system revealed itself with a dialog saying "It is now safe to turn off your computer" and a button that said "Restart". Not being able to actually click anything, I had to make due with a circuit breaker reset.

Back from Annual Inspection

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Miller) — Thu, 24 May 2012 21:21:00 +0000

Well, the airplane is back from annual, and it was a big one! We had 2 cylinders repaired due to low compression, an expensive fuse swapped out, a landing gear issue repaired and numerous other small things. I flew it back from GMU a few days ago and she seemed happy to be in the air again.

After 6 weeks of no pilot time, it felt slightly weird to be in command again, but I sure liked it. I plan to get out and take her up for a few local flights soon to gain more confidence in the engine repairs and knock more rust off my skills.

In 2 months I have to go back to get two explosive parachute line cutters swapped out, and then later we'll be back to get a new anti-ice-fluid pump installed. Nothing involving aircraft is cheap.

Annual Drop-Off

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Miller) — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 17:58:00 +0000

I took the plane over to GMU for our annual inspection today. On the way over I went through a couple of engine test procedures that Savvy MX, our maintenance advisors, want recorded every once in a while.

The first is a GAMI Lean test. This one has you start with the mixture around 100 degrees rich of peak (ROP) EGT (exhaust gas temperature) and slowly, over 3-4 minutes, leaning the mixture until the engine gets rough. Then you slowly reverse the process and richen back to 100 ROP. Once the plot of this is viewed online, you can see how different the fuel flows were when each of the 6 cylinders peaked and went lean, etc.

This helps find and debug problems with fuel nozzles or the induction system. For instance, if one cylinder's fuel injector is injecting slightly less fuel than it should be, that cylinder will go "peak" sooner than the rest. For smooth operation when running lean of peak (which offers best economy and range) you want the cylinders to experience peak EGT at roughly the same fuel flow. If not, one cylinder could be too lean to fire properly while yet another is still at peak pressure and being worked too hard.

The second test I ran was a lean-of-peak magneto check. This has you leaning the mixture until the engine starts to get a touch rough and then running it with only one magneto on. Each magneto is firing a single spark plug in each cylinder. Normally you are running two magnetos, each firing a spark in each cylinder. This gives a better burn of the fuel and some redundancy.

In my test, running on only the left magneto for 60s showed only slightly rough operation and 2 backfires. On the right only I saw similar slight roughness and no backfires, but some slight power fluctuations up and down. Savvy is going to take a look at the data to see if there is an issue worth investigating.

Graph during the two tests - from cirrusreports.com

2012 Cirrus G3 Perspective

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Miller) — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 20:29:00 +0000

Today I had a treat - a flight in a new Cirrus SR22. This was my first time flying with quite a few new features.

The Perspective system

This is Cirrus' take on the Garmin G1000 glass panel system. It includes a keyboard to reduce the amount of knob turning required when making, larger screens than the older Avidyne panels, and the excellent Garmin digital autopilot. In general, I was very impressed with the system. It provide a tremendous amount of automation and information gathering ability - way more then my older Avidyne. You do need to know how to navigate around using "the Garmin way" which is not always clear, but once you know how to use it it seems extremely powerful.

The G3 airframe

I hadn't flown the newer airframe until today. Introduced in 2007 it included quite a few changes. More fuel capacity, more vents for the pilot/co-pilot, a higher stance, the removal of the aileron/rudder interconnect (and increased wing tip/dihedral) and new exterior lights. In fact, my airplane was one of the last few G2s made. I did feeling that taxiing was easier without the interconnect, and the rudder pedals were super-smooth (but that's almost certainly due to the airplane's young age). It flew basically the same as what I'm used to in the G2. As an aside, this airplane has a particularly cool paint scheme, complete with a flat-black spinner on the front.

FIKI system

FIKI stands for flight into known icing. While my airplane has a "weeping wing" system that puts anti-ice fluid on the surfaces to clear frozen stuff away, this airplane has a much beefier version of the system, one that the FAA has said is legal to fly into icing conditions. In my opinion, it's too risky to intentionally take a small single engine airplane into known icing (icing is very dangerous) but having the extra piece of mind that the system offers would be valuable. The more basic weeping wing system is probably all I'd want though.

IR Camera

We only used this for a few minutes, but the airplane has a infrared camera mounted under the wing that you can view on the large middle display of the Perspective system. It won't really look through clouds, so its main purpose is for night operations. If you fly at night a lot I think it would be incredibly valuable. I don't, and actually I need to go out and get night current again sometime soon. :)

Bose A20 headset

I have been flying with the older Bose headsets, as well as the two generations of Zulu headsets. I didn't really notice a difference with the A20s during the flight, but the new airplane was quieter than I'm used to anyway, being in really good balance with low-time engine. For me the Zulu 2 is still my go-to headset.

ESP system

This system is engaged when the autopilot is off. It detects "extreme" attitudes, say rolling 60 degrees to the side or pitching the nose high, and auto-corrects them. We tested it by trimming the airplane to roll left on its own and letting go of the stick. Once the airplane rolled much past the 45 degree bank angle the system kicked in a rolled us close to level. It kept doing it when the airplane rolled back into the bank again. I believe it issued audio alerts too. That system seems like a great backup to help safety. It can be disabled in flight, but when it's running it's like having your instructor there watching for you to do something stupid.

Synthetic Vision

Synthetic vision provides a computer generated view of the terrain and water features in your flight path. This is shown on the main screen behind the standard instrumentation. If you get close to a mountain, or tower, or other airplane they are highlighted on the view to help you avoid them. Really impressive and Garmin's implementation was smooth and pretty to look at. Would be extra handy when flying through the clouds or on a dark night. With that comes a very handy new instrument - the flight path marker. It is a small circle that shows where the airplane is heading in the vertical and horizontal dimensions. Want to fly right to the approach side of the runway? Put the flight path marker on it. :)

Summary

All in all, the airplane offers a lot of handy features above what I am currently flying, and that is saying a lot - my current setup gives a tremendous amount of info and automation. I came away pretty impressed with how far the avionics tech has come in the last 5 years - truly amazing.

Microsoft Flight

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Miller) — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 12:06:00 +0000

I downloaded the recently released game from Microsoft called Flight. Not to be confused with the old Flight Simulator series they shut down after some 10 years of development and, I believe, sold off a few years ago (that may have not been an exclusive sale though).

Flight has been in development for a while now and is a reboot/re-imagining of the series. Unfortunately, they decide that being more game-like, instead of simulation-based, was required. Now the focus is on "missions" - like flying through rings that are way too close to boats or buildings or flying a passenger on a sight-seeing tour (at least that one is fairly realistic).

They've also decided that the game should be free, at first, but that you should have to have a account with their XBox focused "Microsoft Live" and have to buy "points" that you then exchange for add-ons like small bits of new scenery or a new aircraft. You get two slow aircraft out of the free download, each add-on one (there's only two at the moment) cost from $6-$10.

Getting nickel'd and dime'd is a big turn off for me, unfortunately. So is buying "points" like I'm getting tokens at Chuck E Cheese. Points feel like the entire idea is to scam you: no refunds so you always have surplus points that aren't enough to buy anything and the opportunity for a fluctuating "exchange" rate so that points can loose value overtime. Massive turn-off.

The game graphics are pretty enough, but no big leap over MS Flight Sim X, which is years old now.

One of the great things about MS Flight Sim was the third-party eco-system: various companies were built around providing add-ons for the old system, from detailed aircraft models to air-traffic systems, and new scenery.

I looked into a few of those companies to see if they had announcements for Flight, but one had moved on to more training-based applications (selling hardware and professional flight software) and another has apparently gone dormant as their site looks like it's stuck in 2002. I can't blame them, they would have had to either re-make themselves or move on to other jobs when MS abandoned them by killing Flight Sim.

Having now down-played the simulation aspect of a flight simulator feels like a bad move to me. Flight Sim already had the ability to be played like a "game", as far as having missions, etc. It feels like MS decided that Flight Sim wasn't making enough money and that the solution was to kill it, re-create it, and then not include the main feature of it - simulation. Not sure that was smart, but maybe they were more concerned about using Live to sell Points and felt they couldn't shoe-horn Live into the old application.

Who knows though - the seeds of a good simulator are in Flight, maybe they'll let those bloom again someday.

FL flying

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Miller) — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 13:49:00 +0000

I just got back from a whirlwind tour of FL in the Cirrus. Airplane did great and it was a nice challenge doing a lot of IFR flying in busy, unfamiliar airspace. It was helpful that I feel so at home in the airplane, as that gave me more mental cycles for briefing approaches and talking with controllers - the mic switch got a nice workout.

Flying home was quite relaxing once I got out of central FL. Much less busy up north. The winds were really rocking at home (14 gusting to 26) so my approach to land was exciting. I turned base for runway 20 and could feel a massive sinking feeling. I started putting on hefty amounts of power just as the terrain alerting system said "sink rate - sink rate".

I wasn't looking at the instruments at the time, just looking out the window. But after researching when those alerts are triggered, I must have had a ~1500 ft/min descent going at the time. That was one serious tailwind. But I quickly flew out of it and wrestled the airplane to the runway.

That would have been a VERY difficult landing in a plane with a lighter wing loading, like a C172.

First flight!

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Miller) — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 13:18:00 +0000

I had the privilege of giving a "first flight" to my niece Addison yesterday. I picked up her and her Dad from Atlanta and brought them back to Rock Hill to visit for a few days.

The weather was perfect and KLZU was a nice airport to fly into. She seemed to really enjoy it, and did a great job using the headset - quite impressive for a 3 year old! She brought along some "pixie dust" she said was needed for the airplane to fly. Before we boarded she put a little on the wing and kept the rest in a pouch hanging from her neck. It must have really worked because the airplane seemed quite happy to fly!

This was also my first flight with the Zulu 2 headset. I liked it enough that it will be definitely be replacing my Bose headset from now on.

Flight to KCDK

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Miller) — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 01:05:00 +0000

Made a flight to pick up my wife down in FL today. She managed to catch my landing on the short strip at Cedar Key:

Test Flight

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Miller) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 19:12:00 +0000

With the airplane out of the shop I took it out for a test flight. She was performing strong and did well, so that's good news. I also experimented with my NFlightCam on this flight.

I managed to not mount it rigidly enough, so there's more shake than there should be. I also forgot the adapter cables to patch into the intercom, so that will have to wait for next time (when I have a large memory card too).

Here's the takeoff from today:

Stumble Pop Update

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Miller) — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 20:01:00 +0000

They found the engine ran really rough on just the right magneto and that EGT#1 went blank. They took it apart a bit to test the leads and the plugs but found no issues. Put it back together again and it ran great.

So the thinking is that taking it apart knocked a bit of lead or other contaminent out that was causing the issue.

We also found that we have fine wire spark plugs and plan to replace them with Tempest massives, due to this. The Platinum Aviation blog has some great spark plug info here too.

Stumble, Pop

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Miller) — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 12:22:00 +0000

I flew the plane on the 11th and halfway through the flight we started getting what I assume were backfires, about 1/sec. They were very minor "stumbles" with a pop sound. This was after flying LOP at that same altitude for about 10m.

Occasionally there would be a slight stumble with no pop sound. Power settings changes and changing to a richer mixture did not seem to help. After getting around 2000' AGL no more issues occurred for the rest of the flight to landing. Tested the fuel tanks for water again after landing, found no issues.

Flew it again on the 23rd and had no troubles until nearly leveling off at 4,500'. The mag check on the ground showed no issues but as I hit 4,400' I felt the first stumble and as I leveled off and started to go LOP the backfires started up pretty abundantly.

I didn't actually make it all the way to LOP before it started and so I decided to try ROP. Left it there momentarily as I started to turn back to KUZA to land. I swapped fuel tanks, tried the boost pump, and went full rich - none helped. Changing throttle settings didn't seem to help either, so I kept it throttled back. I did not try alt-air or an in-flight mag check (too nervous to do the latter). Again, once getting to 2,000' AGL (full rich) the engine was back to normal.

We have enlisted the help of Savvy MX with managing the airplane and they suspect a bad mag or plug(s). We hope to find out in the next day or two.

Cirrus Model

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Miller) — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 21:41:00 +0000

I ordered a wooden SR22 model a few months ago, and received it this week.

I'm quite happy with it - seems nicely proportioned and pretty sturdy (as long as I can keep it away from the little ones). I plan to get a wall mount for it since I don't have a good bit of available desk space.

A touch of ice

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Miller) — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 02:38:00 +0000

This morning I got up early and went out to the airport to crank up for a flight to KCFD, about 800nm away.

I ended up taking off right at sunrise, but didn't get to see much of it. I entered the clouds at about 500' and started talking to Charlotte approach. Before long they had me climbing up to my requested altitude of 10,000'. Around 6,000' I noticed the temperature falling off pretty quickly to get near freezing so I turned on the pitot heat and started watching for ice. Still in the clouds once leveling out at 10,000' I started to see a bit of ice just forming on the wings. I immediately turned on the TKS anti-ice fluid and it started working with a few minutes. I reported the conditions to ATC and, after leaning out the engine for cruise, was paying careful attention to the ice.

After a bit the TKS had cleared most of the slight icing that had accumulated and it appeared that before long I would be out of the clouds, so I stayed put. However, within 5 minutes or so I was back into a bit of light rain that had moved in a touch faster than expected. I re-activated the TKS and requested to go down to 8,000', with the expectation that I'd drop down to 6,000 if it wasn't warm enough at 8,000'.

ATC filed a PIREP or two for me as I reported conditions in the area. At 8,000' ice accretion with TKS off was noticeably slower than it had been at 10,000' but I wasn't going to mess around, I asked for 6,000'. Down at 6 the temps were warm enough that the clouds and rain were passing off the wing instead of sticking to it. Around that time I was also coming out of the rainy area and entering much clearer air. I brought up ForeFlight Mobile and decided to take a look at the PIREPs being fed by the Mobile Link and XM receiver. I was happy to see "my" PIREP show up on the map!