Sometimes, you just can't complain about how your life is going.

One of my Angel Flight patients from earlier this year sent me a link to an article about her in her local paper...
http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/news/local/13033547.htm

Tags: angelflight

Friday night I went out to the airport to give the twin a quick sponge bath and get her ready for my Angel Flight Saturday morning. When I opened the hangar doors, I went a bit too far out, and knocked one of them off it's track. Michael was not amused, and since we didn't know how to fix it, we left it open for the night.

Saturday morning was Angel Flight #7. We took her home to Texarkana, which is a quick 1.75 hour trip in the twin. It was mostly uneventful, although I finally filed IFR when the visibility got down to a few miles in haze. We dropped her off, and on the climbout, the door popped open. In the twin, that's a real pain - it adds a lot of drag, and really kills the climb rate. You can't get it closed in flight, either. So we turned around, landed at Texarkana again, closed the door, and took off. I even got to keep my IFR clearance. The controller was more worried then I was - he kept asking me if I wanted the fire trucks out when I landed. I kept telling him there was nothing wrong, I just wanted to close the door...

Anyway, we got home more or less on time - 4.1 total.

Saturday afternoon, Michael came over to watch "Open Water", which I'd found on the clearance table at Blockbuster. I approved of the ending. The rest of the movie was awful.

Today, I tried really hard to work on the airplane, but it was just too hot. Got the left wheel bearing and brake done, and sunk an anchor in the concrete near the tail to use as a tiedown, but didn't actually get an eyebolt for it, so it'll have to wait. Jim came out this afternoon and helped me fix Michael's hanger door, so I could finally close it.

And now I'm home and showered and enjoying the AC. It's going to be a fine afternoon for some gaming, I think.

Tags: airplane maintenance, angelflight, flying, movies, twin comanche
Current Mood: tired

I love those mornings when you have so many ideas for whatever you're working on that you can't wait to get to work. As much as the politics around here can be a bit difficult at times, I really do love my job.

However, it was scary that I used the term "leverage existing technology" earlier today.

In other randomness, my Angel Flight for Sunday got canceled - the patient got worse and had to be hospitalized where he was. I picked up another one for Saturday, going to Texarkana. So far, I've flown 6 and had 6 canceled. Only one was for weather, and it was freezing rain on the first leg (I had the second leg).

The Tripacer annual is going slowly but not badly. The compression was good, I have two tiny exhaust leaks that can likely be fixed with new gaskets (which I forgot to order this week). This weekend, I want to do the airframe - all the lubrication, replace all the missing fairing screws, do the wheel bearings, and empty/refill the brakes, since they have a weird mix of fluids since I replaced the diaphragm in LA. I'll order the parts and do the rest of the engine the following weekend.

August is the wrong time of the year for this.

Tags: airplane maintenance, angelflight, geeky
Current Mood: accomplished

This wasn't one of my more organized missions.

Before we left for the observatory, Michael had mentioned that he had an AngelFlight on Monday at 6, and he wanted the plane fueled in a specific way, and would I please make sure I was home in time?

Before I left Durant, I had a voice mail from him, telling me not to worry, just to fill the tanks.

When I got to Houston at 4:30, I had another voice mail from him - call him before I put gas in it.

So I did. He was home, sick, and the patient would be at the airport at 5, and if I really needed him to he could ride in the right seat, but he was too sick to fly. Would I take the patient home?

Well, I didn't see that there was much choice, so as tired as I was, I told Micheal to bring me the mission paperwork, then go home and to bed. I unloaded all the stuff from the weekend out of the plane, sent Mike home, fueled the airplane, tracked down a flight instructor to play copilot, got a quick weather briefing, tossed some water bottles in the back, and we were ready to head off to Wichita Falls, TX by the time the patient showed up. I'd just come from almost that same direction, and the weather was clear, and I knew what the winds were doing, so it was a pretty easy flight. I let the flight instructor fly most of it. He needed a good bit of help, and it's hard to give dual with a patient in the back, especially when I was tired. But I tried.

We got there in 2.2 hours, and I dropped off my patient. Since I'd been too busy to be very friendly in the plane, I made it a point to sit down and chat with her for 15 minutes or so, while she waited for her ride. The FBO had offered me the courtesy car, so my copilot and I did a quick McDonald's run, then headed back out. By then, it was nearly 9, and it was dark.

I hadn't thought about it when we left, so I wasn't really set up to fly at night. Most notably, I had no flashlight. We managed to preflight by the light of the full moon, and the plane does have a map light - I was just hoping the electrical system didn't decide to bite the dust, since lowering the gear manually in the dark would not have been fun. I have a flashlight on my Tripacer keyring, Michael has one on the twin keyring, but I had grabbed the spare set of twin keys out of the car without thinking about it. I'll have to get one of those LED ones to store permanently in the plane.

But we made it home with no issues, except that I still tend to come in too high to Weiser at night. I've got the airspeed problem figured out, but I'm still not getting the glideslope right in the dark. I'm fine if I have a VASI or a glideslope, and on a longer runway it doesn't matter, but at Weiser it gets iffy at night if I come in too high. I need to spend an hour doing landings to try to get it right.

It wasn't bad. Just not as good as I like.

4.5 hours of twin time, on top of the 3.8 to the observatory. This puts me over 100 hours total this year. Not bad for June.

I called Dallas this morning to get the mission changed into my name, since I couldn't file my report without it being in my name. I got this back:

Thanks again for helping out yesterday and filing your report so quickly. I told Mike you were a keeper.

Beth Stone
Director of Mission Coordination

I was amused.

Tags: angelflight, flying
Current Mood: accomplished

It's been a week for pictures for me, I guess. This batch was taken by my last AngelFlight patient.

( Matt, me, and my patient in front of the twin )
( Out the window over the coast )
( Breaking out on the approach )

Tags: angelflight, flying, photos

My patient from Thursday night had to get home on Saturday.

I had planned to leave Weiser at 10am. At 7:30, I called for a weather briefing.

The good weather I'd been promised wasn't going to happen. Houston was okay - 1500ish overcast, bad visibility below it, but not too bad. Gulfport (my destination) was the real problem: severe thunderstorms. 1-inch hail. Tornadoes. 50mph gusts. Until noon.

This is not my ideal flying weather, even in the twin.

In an executive decision, I called my Ground Angel and my patient, and rescheduled for 12:30-1pm. She had to be home by 5, but I thought I could still do that - with the tailwinds forecast, I could make Gulfport in 2 hours. And the briefer promised me it would be getting better.

I drove to the airport, and spent the next 4 hours watching the line of thunderstorms. It was moving south and east, but not as fast as I'd like, but it was moving. A second line formed behind it, but it was starting to break up by noon.

At noon, I stopped looking at the weather - most of the yellow and red was past Gulfport - and got the plane fueled and ready, got her loaded when she got there, and we headed out. I'd filed for 9000 to get a tailwind, hoping to be on top so I could avoid any more storms that popped up.

They sent us back down to Galveston then out east. The Strikefinder (lightning detector) was showing a dot here and there, but it was just leftover static from the earlier convection. ATC gave us great routings. The line west of New Orleans had broken up, and we went though with just a bit of bumpiness.

When I got to Gulfport, the weather there was 1100 broken, 1500 overcast, so they gave me the ILS approach. They had to turn me in tight to avoid the storms out in the gulf, so I had trouble getting settled on the localizer. I did get the glideslope nailed, though, and being a bit left of course wasn't a big deal when I broke out at 1000 ft.

The landing wasn't pretty, because the twin really doesn't have much rudder at low speed, and the crosswind was bad. The whole trip, including the ILS, was about 2:15.

After we taxied in and shut down, the patient's husband said it had been storming and pouring down rain half an hour before. I couldn't have planned it any better - I was proud of myself.

We grabbed some lunch, and the trip home was entirely uneventful. We had to go up to McComb MS to avoid another line that had formed behind us, but at 4000 ft (we wanted to avoid taking that tailwind as a headwind going home), we were between layers and avoided it easily. To top it off, I finally had a good landing back at Weiser.

It was a very good day.

Tags: angelflight, flying
Current Mood: good

Night circling NDB approaches are, like, teh suk.

( Long, rambling, Angel Flight story )

Tags: angelflight, flying

I grabbed 2 more AngelFlights this week - both for the same patient. I'm flying to Gulfport to pick her up on Thursday, and then flying her back on Saturday. Each trip will be good for 5-6 more hours.

Over the last year, I've not flown very much, and I've felt like flying even less. I was starting to worry about it...but in the last few months, I'm back to flying 25 hours a month.

Guess I just needed a break.

Tags: angelflight, flying
Current Mood: chipper

My Angel Flight Saturday was supposed to be an easy 3-hour jaunt to Louisiana. It turned into 4.5 hours, including 3 hours of IMC. I need a bigger plane - one that can climb above 4000 ft with 2 people, a full baggage compartment and full fuel.

Or I need to lose 100lbs.

Sunday, we took my KNS-80 and HSI out to Hobby to test it. After 3 hours of fiddling, Michael thinks he knows what needs to be done - it works okay on east and west, but the linearity is all off, so it won't ever center on North or South - the closest it will come to South is about 210.

Works great on the localizer, though.

I gamed a lot this weekend. I'm dragging this morning, but I don't know why - I was in bed by 10 and asleep by midnight, and I didn't get up until almost 10 this morning.

Currently reading: Arrow's Flight, Mercedes Lackey
Just finished: Undead and Unemployed, MaryJanice Davidson

Tags: airplane maintenance, angelflight, books, flying
Current Mood: working

My new TiVo is recording. Being able to set up season passes on the web rules.

The annoying phone cord across my living room is removed.

iTunes doesn't work like I thought it would - I want it to keep a folder and the iPod in sync, but it doesn't seem to be willing to watch any folder other then it's own. I haven't decided if I'm going to give in and do it their way, or try to make it do things my way.

Last night, Mike and I went to the Apple store. It really made me miss being a Mac person.

Current background thread, from the book I'm currently reading: "Children do not exist to fill the needs of their parents." Hm. I have a feeling that this way lies selfishness, and I'm not sure that's a path I want to take.

Got my next Angel Flight on Saturday, from EYQ to AEX.

Tags: angelflight, books, flying, geeky

I'm going to take over the local Angel Flight wing newsletter. In preparation for my meeting tonight, I decided to put together a prototype in FrontPage. I'd never used it before, and after a 3 hours of cursing at it, I ended up with this. It's ugly, it's raw html that's going to have to be tweaked every time I want to change the text, and in general is totally unmaintainable.

I'd planned to make the real implementation be an XML file that contained the data, and an XSL file that contained the transform. That way, I could just edit the articles in the xml file, rerun the transform, and have a new newsletter every month, with a minimum of hassle.

So, without ever having done this before, I spent 3 hours yesterday afternoon generating an XML file (view source to see) and an XSL file. When combined with /usr/bin/xslproc, I get an html file that looks like this.

It's clean, it's simple, it's infinitely maintainable....and it didn't take me any longer then it did to generate a much worse page in Front Page. MS Sucks.

(Ace, if you have a few mins, would you run the final one (http://www.tripacerdriver.com/AFHouston/Feb05/) through your collection of browsers? I tested it already in IE6, Firefox, and Firebird)

Tags: angelflight, geeky
Current Mood: pleased

Last night: Angel Flight to Menard, TX. Plus 8 stop-and-go landings at Austin, none of which were the same pattern, because the controller was trying to squeeze me in between his real traffic, so I did a few short approaches, a few "left traffic for right runway", at least one "You can do a stop-and-go if you get get it squeezed in between these two jets without scaring me"...3.9 hours, and I was totally exhausted when I got back to Weiser.

In other news, Andy Ihnatko's YellowText is now syndicated here. andy_i to put it on your friend's page.

I finally signed up as a pilot for Angel Flight. I've done a few missions here and there in the right seat, but I finally officially signed up and registered my airplane. It's awfully small and slow, so I doubt I'll get to do much flying, but...

Tags: angelflight, flying
Current Mood: tired