Vectors To Final

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!

Surveillance approach

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Miller) — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 00:43:00 +0000

This morning I got up early to take a short flight over to KGMU for the Southeast Aviation show. The flight didn't start too well when I couldn't get Charlotte Clearance to respond on the radio. I tried multiple times, on each radio, and got a good radio check from the local UNICOM. After waiting until the hour changed over to 8 AM (thinking maybe someone on break might be back then) I gave up and called flight service on the phone. They were able to get me a clearance after about 8-9 minutes.

Most days I would have taken off without clearance and gotten it airborne. But today had clouds around 500' so I couldn't do that maneuver.

Once I got through the clouds Approach was their usual helpful selves and had me pointed to Greenville in no time. The Greer Approach controller asked if I would do a Surveillance approach into GMU so he could practice it. I said sure, but that I had never done one before. He explained it to me, and it was what I remembered - essentially ATC talks you down along the approach. The idea is that you have minimal-to-no navigation gear working in the airplane due to some electrical problem.

As you get close to the airport they give you heading changes like "You are right of centerline, correcting slowly, turn 2 degrees left". They also instruct you not to respond to all of those commands to keep the air clear for near real-time corrections.

It worked out well with me being just a touch off center when 2 miles out. I let him know I had the airport in sight and he handed me off to tower.

The show was great and I got to meet plenty of local aviators. I also got to shoot the ILS approach back into Rock Hill a few hours later which was great practice.

Here's a shot I took when starting the GMU approach:

Flying in Canada

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Miller) — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 23:11:00 +0000

For some ForeFlight work I spent a bit of time in Canada recently. We had the privilege to get some flying in, in a gorgeous C182 with a G1000. This was a tour of the capital area, complete with an overflight of downtown before landing (not something we'll ever do over the U.S. capital).

We even caught a few glimpses of a concert below, with an impressive light show, and a video presentation that was shone on the Parliament central building.

The flight was at sunset, and was one of those perfect flights - light winds, cool temps, perfect sky. I haven't had a flight like that since I used to live in Williamsburg and flew with my buddy John.

It was a pretty interesting experience. The primary differences that popped out to me were:

Instead of talking to the traffic in the area of the airport (CYND, Gatineau) we talked to "radio" (FSS) and told them our intentions. They gave us a heads up on other traffic and advisories on when to enter the runway. My understanding is that they have no real authority, but you tend operate as if they do.
There were french speaking pilots in the pattern, so Radio was translating back-and-forth to keep everyone on the same page. That would drive me nuts. :)
They have a TFR over the Parliament buildings, but it is something like 1000' high.

Simulator time, IPC, BFR

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Miller) — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 20:03:00 +0000

I just returned from a trip to KRYY where SimTrain has a full-motion Cirrus SR22 simulator. The goal for my visit was to review emergency procedures, like dealing with engine outs or electrical problems, while being able to actually experience them in a realistic, yet safe, fashion.

Since the emergency procedures involved a good bit of instrument and basic fundamentals, we decided to combine it with an IPC, Instrument Proficiency Check, and a BFR, Biannual Flight Review. The former makes sure you are a competent pilot for flying in clouds, the latter is required every two years to keep your license "valid".

I started the day yesterday with a 1.4hr flight to KRYY. I got a bit of instrument time in the first part of the flight, as the fog had only lifted 600 feet or so. By the halfway point the fog was clearing, but the haze kept the visibility down to 5 miles or so.

I was given a straight-in approach to RYY which made for a convenient landing. I taxied over to the south side for Preferred Jet for parking and to meet my instructor.

He gave me a lift for the half-mile or so drive to the simulator location. We started with ground school work in a class room, reviewing systems, emergency procedures, and what we'd do in the simulator. It didn't take long to realize that my orignal plan of doing some flying in the airplane after the sim time before heading home just wasn't going to pan out. There was too much to go over, and the clouds were building outside, making for what looked like it would be a bumpy afternoon flight. So we found a hotel over lunch and I updated the FBO that I'd stay overnight.

The afternoon was filled with hour-long sessions in the sim, followed by debriefs and reviews in the classroom. After an hour or so in the motion-enabled sim, I was ready for a break. I didn't feel any ill effects through normal flight, but when we pulled the CAPs parachute or practiced dealing with microbursts, my eyes weren't getting the same input as the rest of me, causing minor discomfort.

By the end of the day I had performed about 17 approaches, each with some different sort of system failure involved. One failure was a complete electrical failure, which would be a rare thing to happen in real life. That failure leaves you with nothing but your portable devices, the airspeed and altimeter, and the whiskey compass. Getting down through the clouds was tricky but mostly involved being as smooth as possible and letting the stability of the airplane keep you upright.

That night I was exhausted and slept pretty well. We woke up bright and early the next morning and did a flight to complete the BFR. Then I scooted on home before the storms in the area had much of a chance to build up.

I left feeling like I really got a great deal of experience from the sim. It's not a cheap thing to do, especially if you have to fly to get to the location, but it's really something every pilot should try to experience sometime - especially IFR pilots. I learned loads of stuff I could have never learned any other way.

Recent flights

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Miller) — Mon, 30 May 2011 23:02:00 +0000

Our plane was down for annual for a few weeks, but it was cleared for flight again recently so I made good use of it.

We had some ForeFlight folks in town, so one pair of trips was to act as a shuttle to KGSP and back, about a 30 minute trip.

The first day brought fairly crummy weather. Calm winds and good temperatures, but plenty of rain and low clouds. GSP was clear so that side of the trip was easy, and even though it had been a few months since I worked with a Tower I felt quite at home with it.

Coming back to Rock Hill was a bit more interesting though. As we approached there were red radar returns right over the airport. We had to shoot the GPS 2 instead of the ILS as the ILS was down for maintenance. That meant we could only descend to 500' AGL instead of 200' AGL. ATC had us slow down for an aircraft in front of us. I happily did so as that gave the stronger rain time to move away from the airfield.

Luckily the clouds at the airport were barely above 500' AGL so we were able to see the runway and land safely. Our backup plan was to simply orbit a bit south of the field until conditions improved (or divert to a one of few different pre-planned locations), but that ended up not being required.

It was a great feeling to make use of my IFR rating like that. I think my instructor Charles, from KJGG, would have liked it. Coincidentally, years ago Charles gave me my first ride in a glass-panel SR22 and let me fly the entire flight (a memory that has stuck with me).

We made a flight to OH in the middle of the week. That was a trip up to Sporty's where we were exhibiting and giving a talk about the ForeFlight Mobile application. We had a great time and the weather was basically perfect. The A/C came in handy as the temperatures are finally starting to get pretty warm around here. I think the A/C was on continuously except when landing/taking off and when in cruise flight at 9000' or 10,000'.

The second flight to GSP was easy by comparison as the weather was great. I was asked to provide max forward airspeed while getting setup to land at KGSP (as there was a jet behind me) but I managed to give them 185 kts or so while still getting slowed down enough on final for a good short landing and early turn off of the runway. I dropped off my passenger and spun the airplane around for the return flight.

I'm at about 540 total hours now and starting to feel pretty comfortable in the SR22. It's just been the perfect airplane for the "missions" I tend to fly. Summer time is when I like to review the airplane systems by re-reading the POH and various bits of Cirrus training material I've acquired over the years. I'd also like to step it up a bit this year by getting some simulator training on emergencies - hopefully I can fit that into my schedule at some point. I think it will require a long weekend.

Sun N Fun 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Miller) — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 11:31:00 +0000

I flew down to Sun N Fun at Lakeland, FL this week to help man the ForeFlight booth and take in the sights.

The trip down there was easier than I expected. I briefed the VFR arrival procedures numerous times, but when I finally got there it was light IFR. That meant they were just bringing us in on the GPS 9 approach which made things very simple.

The line crew gave me a good parking spot on 4 inches of soil over an old runway and, after a good walk across the airport, I was soon helping out in the booth.

With the threat of high winds Thursday we went out to the airplane again to see what we could do to further secure it. Turns out there was a PilotMall retail shop on field and they had "the Claw". A set cost ~$85 so we got one and headed out to the airplane. We hitched a ride from some friends that had a golf cart so that saved us from some of the hike. After installing the claw (leaving my other tie downs in place as well) we went back to work in the booth.

A few hours later, the claw was put to the test. We were in Hangar E when a tornado came through the area. There is some debate as to whether the tornado was actually on the airport, but the noise of the weather was intense.

The security guards closed up the hangar doors and people were getting really nervous. The sound of the storm was such that you could barely talk, and some folks were yelling at the other end of the hangar. I had thought they were watching a tornado go through, but after hearing more I now think they were concerned about one of the hangar doors blowing in.

We lost power for the remainder of the day, but since we had a sort-of-working internet connection on our Verizon iPads we were showing folks the latest radar returns.

We ended up closing the show a few hours early that day. Most vendors had left once it was obvious that the power wouldn't come back on soon, and most of the attendees had left when the rains let up enough. So around 3pm we left the booth and headed out to the airplane.

From the reports I'd heard in the booth, I was convinced that every airplane at the show had been destroyed. Thankfully that turned out to be a gross over-estimate.

We found the airplane to be in really good shape. In fact, it had only moved a small amount trying to weathervane into the wind. The Claw did its job well - it's now the only portable tie downs for me.

You can see by the cones the direction of the storm in this area. We did see a few airplanes that were flipped and a few others that had slid into a new parking spot, but the destruction was much less than initially reported, thankfully. We checked the plane closely to look for "shrapnel" damage or any other issues, but somehow our bird was unscathed.

Yesterday I went to the Colombia FBO to pay for the fuel I had called in. Apparently I was supposed to either give them credit card info over the phone or have waited at the airplane for them to arrive. Since I didn't know that, they didn't fuel me up.

However, they took great care of me and had the plane topped off before I even got over to it. They gave me a van ride 90% of the way to the plane and then I walked the last bit of taxiway since they weren't sure the van was allowed in that area.

I did a thorough preflight and blasted off to return home. Except for encountering some good turbulence in the descent and in the traffic pattern the flight was perfect. I had to file my IFR flight plan as if I was leaving from X61 instead of KLAL. Once I got near X61 Orlando Approach let me get a clearance and finish up the flight IFR.

Trip to KJZI

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Miller) — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 22:38:00 +0000

After my autopilot testing Friday I flew down to KJZI in Charleston, SC. I had a few business meetings to attend but also got the chance to take up a new friend in the Cirrus.

We introduced him to general aviation in style with a lazy tour of the coast. He grew up (and still lives) in the area so he knew all the sights. My business partner sat back seat and filmed the landing for me.

New autopilot - DFC90

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Miller) — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 23:20:00 +0000

We recently installed a new autopilot in the Cirrus. This one, a DFC90, is a drop-in replacement for the STEC 55X we used to have and adds a few great features:

Much more precise as it uses the digital sensors in the airplane instead of fewer, analog-only sensors as before
It can climb at a constant airspeed, which is great for maximizing climb rate without risking the airplane getting too slow
It will automatically correct a too-slow or too-fast condition when the autopilot is running
It has a "straight and level" button that can be pressed anytime you need a quick way to get the airplane into a good attitude/state.

SkyTech in Rock Hill did a great job with the install and everything worked well except we still have a bit of an overshooting of heading when turning right. It's better than it was with the old autopilot, but we are working with Avidyne to sort it out.

We also think the turn coordinator may be going bad, so we plan to get that checked. Additionally the MFD locks up occasionally for a few seconds at a time. We have been told that upgrading to the new software, v8.1 should fix that up.

I made a video of my test flight today just before I flew down to KJZI.

Redline Sidewinder

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Miller) — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 15:40:00 +0000

I went out to the airport today hoping to get some flying in, but with a heavy fog settled in and not going anywhere fast, I decided to just test out a battery powered tug, the Redline Sidewinder.

I've always had a hard time pushing the airplane back into the shadeport, especially after a long tiring flight. The plane weighs nearly 3,000 lbs so even though the slope into the parking spot is only 1-2 degrees, it's quite a tough bird to push.

Add in slipping feet, no great place to push against, bad angles for applying force, and a squirrelly castering nose wheel (doesn't like to go backwards) and it's a great recipe to hurt my back.

Thankfully the Redline did a great job with the task.

It's designed to have minimal weight, yet still be strong. It is powered by a heavy duty drill that drives gears and chains to apply rolling force to the nose wheel, moving the airplane at a nice slow pace.

Hooking it up to the airplane is not much harder than hooking up the basic towbar. It's obviously much heavy that the towbar, but still a manageable weight.

Each side has a pin that is retracted while you line up the U bar to the connectors on the nose wheel. It fit snuggly without scraping anything on the plane. Once the pins are lined up you release them and they spring into the nose wheel connectors. The weight of the sidewinder, plus a touch of downforce from the operator, holds the drive wheel to the nose wheel rubber.

When moving the airplane forward I found that I had to apply a fair amount of downforce to keep the chain from lightly touching the inner edge of the nosewheel. That hits on the only thing I'd change about the sidewinder, I wish there were a guard to prevent that issue. However, it was easy to avoid any rubbing by pushing down when operating the drill.

I should rarely use the sidewinder to move the airplane forward though, as we are able to crank up in the shadeport and pull right out under engine power.

What I really need the powered tug for is pushing the airplane backwards into the shadeport. And on that task the Sidewinder worked perfectly. It even greatly reduced the squirrely-ness of the nosewheel, maybe because of the extra weight compared to the normal towbar. There was no issue with the chain hitting as the torque in that direction forces the chain away from the fairing on the nose.

I had to stoop down fairly far to operate the tug as the bar doesn't come up real high (to keep the device compact), but never once had to provide any pushing power. I just needed to steer and watch out for obstacles. It's about 100 times better than the manual method I've been using so far.

Here's a short video of me removing the sidewinder from the airplane after pushing it back. It folds up quickly into a medium sized carrying bag.

Longest flight yet gets me over 500 hours

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Miller) — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 15:15:00 +0000

This weekend I made my longest airplane trip to date - from KUZA in SC out to KCFD in TX - about 850 miles. The trip was for our quarterly ForeFlight strategy meeting, where the company gets together to plan out the next 3 months of work.

Leaving KUZA I took off and picked up my IFR clearance in the air. Sometimes, like this time, the Charlotte controller knows what I wanted before I can even ask. After I called in with my tail number he just automatically gave me a transponder code and told me to standby for the clearance. Very nice, makes you feel almost welcomed. :)

I made a fuel stop at KMEI in Meridian, MS. It's a great little towered airport with plenty of young navy pilots stopping in for a break from various practice missions in the area. My stop was a short one - I got the tanks topped off, grabbed a free hot dog and drink, filed my next leg on the iPad via ForeFlight Mobile, and went out to the airplane to blast off again.

The next leg was also uneventful, and after a couple of hours I landed at KCFD. I spent most of the time in the air listening to the radio or the iPhone, talking with controllers, and religiously monitoring the flight plan, fuel situation, and engine health.

I was met by my co-workers at KCFD (GREAT airport) and we started a fun and productive long weekend to hash out company plans.

Friday included some flying in the local area. I got to take up one of our developers while my co-founder got in a quick flight with our CFI support lead. We landed at sunset, coded a bit out on the ramp in the dark, and saw two of our staff off as they departed in a C152 for the night flight home.

The flight home Monday was nice as well. I picked up only a little tailwind for the first leg to KJFX in AL. Found some good turbulence around that airport once I was under 4000' but the airport was easy to get in and out of. It was self-serve fuel, and was easy to work with, even with a 15-20 knot very cold wind trying to freeze me while I worked the pump.

I was cranking up again within 15 minutes of shutting down, and soon I was talking to ATC again on my final, shorter leg home. Had a nice 20 kt tailwind for this leg. There were lots of reports of turbulence in the area near home, and ATC asked me for a few reports on the ride (all smooth at 9000), but the flight was easy and straightforward.

I had gorgeous weather for both flights, and managed to hit 510 total hours of flight time after the trek.

Anniversary date over the mountains

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Miller) — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 14:55:00 +0000

K and I had our 11th anniversary this weekend so we celebrated with a flight over the Appalachian mountains. The goal was the see the Fall colors and just have some fun.

For this flight I tried out a new iPad knee strap - the MyClip Thigh. It worked really well - I used the iPad in both landscape and portrait orientations and the clip worked perfectly. I like how minimalist it is - doesn't get in your way at all and is easy to transport to the plane and home again. It is designed for an iPad without a case, so it won't work with the Apple case, but would likely work with less-bulky cases and certainly with a simple screen protector setup (as in my case).

Here's the MyClip helping us use ForeFlight Mobile to navigate to Mountain Air airport:

On the way to the mountains I tried something I have never done before: an in-flight magneto check. I learned details about this from an article by Mike Busch - a source of great knowledge when it comes to piston aircraft.

We leveled off at our cruise altitude of 8,500' and leaned the mixture back to around 45 degrees leak of peak. Then you let the EGTs (Exhaust Gas Temps) stabilize. Then you run on just one mag for a 25-30 seconds to see how the EGTs do. You are looking to see them all rise up (though they may rise in different amounts) and re-stabilize after 20 seconds or so. You are also looking to see if the engine runs OK on one mag in flight.

For our test both mags did just fine, though the left mag alone caused a couple of small, random backfires. All the EGTs reacted as expected and the engine was reasonably smooth when running on just one of either of the mag systems.

Here's a view of the colors we were hunting:

These are some of the many tree farms we saw, no doubt getting ready for Christmas:

And these are the slopes of Sugar Mountain, snow-less at the moment:

Meeting Scott Dennstaedt

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Miller) — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 14:45:00 +0000

Today I met up with another local aviation, Scott Dennstaedt, for lunch.

Not only is he an accomplished CFI, he's an aviation weather expert. His company, AvWx Workshops provides all sorts of education on aviation weather topics.

It was obvious just a few minutes into our conversation that's he's a bright, experienced guy that also has the ability to teach clearly - quite a combo. I plan to get his help on flights in the future when I need an expert's knowledge for better preflight planning.

Weather has always felt like a grey area in the flight training I've received, so working with Scott will no doubt help me become a better, and safer, pilot.

Flight to Williamsburg

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Miller) — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 18:23:00 +0000

We took a long weekend to visit my co-workers and our friends up in Williamsburg. My flying buddy John not only loaned us a vehicle for the weekend, but also room & board!

We fought a slight headwind heading up to VA, but like the typical October weather in the south east the skies were gorgeous and clear. We brought along our younger son Grady for this trip, equipped with orange ear plugs for noise reduction.

For my ears I tried out a brand new Lightspeed Zulu headset. At first I thought it was going to be uncomfortable after the 1.7 hours of flying, but it turned out not to be. They are not as easy on the head as the Bose X's are, but they reduce the noise levels a good bit better. The bluetooth audio input was also handy when the XM radio stopped working on the return flight (my airplane partner had to give XM a series of frustrating phone calls to get that sorted out).

The only other hit I have against the Zulu's is that they are wider than the Bose (which is part of why they are quieter). That was only a problem when I wanted the sunshield to my left to block the morning sun on the return flight. It was pretty much impossible with the Zulus because they kept tapping the shield and buzzing from the vibration. Granted, the smaller Bose have similar issues just not quite as bad.

Grady did terrific on the flight. Here's a shot at cruise when Mommy let him sit up front for a spell:

We landed at KJGG with a decently gusty wind, so I brought us in with an extra bit of airspeed. We parked near John's hangar and had to enlist the help of Bill from the FBO to find longer ropes for the tie downs (the wing tie downs are the Cirrus are fairly close to the fuselage).

We had a great time in Williamsburg. It was great to see our friends again and to visit some of our old haunts from our previous 7 years living there. All too soon it was time to go home again, but we were getting homesick to see Evan again so we weren't upset to leave.

Here's Grady helping Mommy and Daddy with the preflight for the return trip:

The flight back was very straight forward. Perfect flying weather and the CLT controller even let me cut the corner on his airspace to save a minute or two.

$200 hamburger run

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Miller) — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 19:42:00 +0000

Today my Dad and I took a mid-day flight to grab lunch at 57 Alpha, the cafe at Rutherford Co airport, KFQD.

We made a detour on the way there to overfly KCEU, Clemson, SC. We both went to school there so it was nice to take a quick peek.

After landing at KFQD we found the place fairly deserted, no doubt due to some cloudiness in the area. We enjoyed a nice lunch at the cafe: I had a chicken burrito with banana pudding (their specialty - very good) and my dad had a hamburger. After that we just walked around the airport a bit to enjoy the scenery. It's in the foothills of the mountains, so the skyline was nice to look at.

For the crank up to leave FQD, I was a little worried the engine might be tough to start. It had been turned off for about 45 minutes, and I wasn't sure if priming the engine a bit would be bad or good. Normally if I've shut down for just 15-30 minutes I don't prime, so that's what I did this time. It actually started quite quickly with no priming at all, so that worked nicely!

During the flight I tested a new electronic CO detector I bought, the CO Experts Model 2010. It was quite back-ordered, so took a while to get to me. It's very sensitive and worked well for the flight. Only went off once, for just a moment, right before we did the take off from FQD. I think it must have just detected a minute about of CO from the engine. Other than that time, it was reading zero ppm for the flight.

I've been told to never use one of these as they have been shown to give false readings (not change color in the presence of CO) and expire quickly, so I decided that the CO Experts one was the way to go, especially since I take my young boys on trips in the airplane.