"The Warning Light Went On"

I make no secret of my support for our current president, and because of him and the team he has brought to Washington, I feel the middle class in our country is better positioned to prosper in the next eight years then at any time in the previous eight years.

As I watch Barack Obama come to power and begin the ridiculous task of steam cleaning D.C. to remove the stench, I am cautiously optimistic about what I see. Am I happy about a gigantic $3.6 trillion budget coming our way? No. Do I feel slighted about the way the housing bailout is leaving all of us good citizens who paid our mortgages behind? Absolutely. Am I glad the rich are getting their Bush tax cuts repealed? You betcha.

Just after President Obama's FY2010 budget (pdf) was released, AOPA and one of their best writers, Warren Morningstar, began scouring it for clues of good or bad news for GA. And what was found is disheartening, but not a disaster. From AOPA.org:

"President Barack Obama’s proposed budget is calling for aviation user charges starting in 2011. The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released the proposal Feb. 26, and although there is not much detail, the document makes it clear that the administration wants to replace some of the aviation excise taxes with direct user charges. “It is often said the devil is in the details, but even with only a few details, we are concerned,” said AOPA President Craig Fuller. “We have been working constructively with the Obama administration and Congress about moving forward with air traffic control modernization and airport development. However, the warning light went on with the budget briefing documents and the plan for imposing billions in user fees on the aviation community.”

Does this language in this budget mean we are to expect user fees? No, not necessarily, says Rep. James Oberstar (D-Minn.), the Chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. AOPA reports Oberstar – a "staunch opponent of user fees" – said this:

“I note that the budget appears to propose some type of aviation user fee. Aviation user fees have been proposed several times in the past by OMBs of various administrations, and have not been adopted by Congress.”

As a proud member of AOPA, I feel my back is covered on user fees with the new administration. Said AOPA President Fuller:

“We have already contacted White House officials to express our concern and to reiterate the negative effects that user fees would have on the general aviation industry. We look forward to an open dialogue with the president on the best way to finance the modernization of our air traffic control system and the FAA’s continued operations.”

An "open dialogue" with the White House? What a far out concept that is, or at least WAS for the past eight years. But this is a different White House, a different time,and a different President. I feel strongly that as more information about the harm user fees will do to the middle class is brought out into the light of day, Congress will defeat the idea before it becomes law.

We aviators again need to stay firmly behind AOPA, NBAA, EAA and the Alliance for Aviation Across America, because until this fight is over and we have funded FAA without user fees, there is work to be done. And I am confident that with an administration that has returned intelligence to the skill set needed to run this country, if we keep the pressure on and make our case based not on corporate greed but on logic, they will make the right call on this.

ACTION ALERT!

A frequent reader of my blog – National CFI of the Year Max Trescott – writes to ask that I pass along this immediate plea from him that we collectively get our voice heard TODAY in opposition to the TSA's proposed LASP program.

Visit Max's blog and follow the instructions here:

"In the last few days, more than 500 additional comments have been logged at regulations.gov, bringing the total to over 3,400. Comments are due to the TSA by midnight of February 27, 2008, so you’ll need to act soon. For details on the issue, read the earlier post TSA’s LASP: A Solution in Search of a Problem."

This is important, the deadline is looming large. Again, you have your orders, go here and follow Max's instructions.

Eclipse: A Sad Day for GA

Cut this any way you want, blame it on the suck economy, piss and moan if it makes you feel better. But with the reports coming out of Aero-News Network about one of the industry's most tenacious makers finally reaching the end of their line, GA has taken a huge step backwards:

ANN: "The following memo has just been sent out to affected employees and associates of Eclipse/EclipseJet/ETIRC, et al...It is reproduced unedited.

We are very sad to report unexpected news today. Despite the efforts of many people at EclipseJet Aviation and ETIRC to obtain necessary funding to close the purchase of the assets of Eclipse Aviation, the closing of the sale transaction has stalled and our company is out of time and money. Given the dire circumstances in today's global marketplace and the lack of additional debtor-in-possession funding, the senior secured creditors of the Company filed a motion today in US Bankruptcy Court in Delaware to convert the Chapter 11 case to a Chapter 7 liquidation."

As usual, ANN is all over this story, and you really need to go here and read the remainder of this reporting by their staff. Another site reporting the news is Aviationweek.com.

I don't think I will get much argument from anyone when I say that as aviators, we all were hoping for Eclipse to succeed. They were innovators, hanging ten off the nose of a shortboard riding the wave we call Very Light Jets. Without Eclipse pushing hard in their early days trying to deliver a sub-million dollar twin jet, would we have seen a Cirrus SJ-50 Vision, a D-Jet or a PA-47 Piperjet? My .02 cents:

The demise of Eclipse has been viewed by many as a certainty for years, but I held out hopes they could pull off a recovery. I feel for the owners of the jets they did manage to build, and have to wonder what will become of their bird's resale value when the entire company that built the jet is history. Where will you get parts? Is there even service available? And those poor position holders who's jets were reported to be still on the assembly floor when the factory was shuttered? You can be assured they are about as fried about this whole situation as anyone can be.

There is plenty of fallout from Eclipse going Chapter 7...starting with the 800 people who were "permanently laid off" as it was stated. Wordsmith that any way you want, but they were fired, canned, shown the door. They join millions of other Americans who now must fight a daily fight to stay out of the homeless shelter, seeking honest employment in a job market that is overflowing with talent. Then there are all the position holders who had lavished actual deposits on Eclipse, only to see their money vaporize as a sinking ship fought to keep from slipping below the surface of a very turbulent sea.

Yes, these are historic times in GA, and not for the right reasons. Will 'We the People' be able to turn this country around, and get people buying airplanes again? Will the ramps at our FBOs again fill up with bizjets looking to buy 1000s of gallons of Jet-A? These are questions that won't be answered in the first half of 2009 – and maybe not until 2010 – and we should not view the Eclipse liquidation as a sign things are worsening. The writing has been on their wall for a while now, this was inevitable.

Sad, but inevitable.

Sweet Sixteen and Firefox

I'm sort of a weather geek, and had I chosen to be a TV new weather guy, you can bet I'd use aviation weather sources on the Internet to pinpoint my accuracy. You KNOW that if the talking weather heads would just take a quick gander at a METAR once in a while, they wouldn't earn their nickname around my house as the weather "guessers".

As a pilot, I have spent many nights scouring the web for the best aviation wx sources I could locate. I have bookmarks on top of bookmarks, tabbed collections and archived spreadsheets full of URLs. But whilst you think Dano is just looking at all the pretty pictures, oh, no, there is plenty of yummy meat on these pages to keep any pilot happy:

While I will never come out and tell any pilot how to obtain a flight briefing, I will say this: Unless you are very, very good at online weather interpretation, get a phone briefing. But if you can acquire all that you need to know to make a safe flight, and you are going over a familiar route, and if you know that you are doing, then you can try crafting your own briefing, if you so dare. But please, please don't come crying to me when you bust a TFR and get grounded...if you don't know exactly where to look for current FAA TFRs, and if you don't know your FD from your FA, better call the briefer.

I currently fly these days with my own briefings on VFR trips when the wx is obvious, and on longer flights, I utilize a phone briefing. When it is clear and a million between Eugene and Fresno, I can determine winds aloft, destination wx at ETA and search the TFRs myself. But as I begin to fly in, over and through IMC, I had better know exactly where to find the freezing levels...or I might die. Bet the farm that if there are clouds and mountains involved, I'm going to be on the phone before Katy's Lycoming gets fired up.

Recently, I added one of Firefox's famous "add-ons" to my favorite browser, a sexy little thing called Tab Catalog. What it does is something I've been searching for:

When you group a number of bookmarks into one folder that resides on your irefox toolbar, you can open those URLs in new individual tabs with a small "open all in tabs" link at the bottom of that list. As the pages start loading, you can hit the pre-determined "hot key" (mine is Escape) in Tab Catalog to bring up one screen with all those pages loading in perfect little browser windows. Click any one of them and you get back to the full window for that site. Too. Cool.

So with a couple of clicks, I can bring up my 16 critical weather sites as a good briefing. As some slower ones load, I can go look at the text weather sites...surfing through them all quickly and efficiently. Here are my favorite 16 sites:

KEUG WX via Weather Underground
California, Oregon and Washington METARS
Pacific Northwest NEXRAD via DUATS graphics
Freezing Levels via Weather Underground, ADDS and AWC CIP
Forecast winds aloft via NWS
Graphical AIRMETS via NWS/AWC
GOES Infrared Satellite via NOAA
Oregon Forecast Discussion via NWS
Current TFR search via FAA
Current and Forecast Jet Steam via Weatherbank
KHIO weather via Weather Underground
San Francisco Area Forecast via NWS/AWC

So if you are bored with having one dull page loading at a time, and if you use Firefox, try Tab Catalog on for size. And as with everything Firefox, if you don't like it, the uninstall is quick and painless.

And before you think any of this is a replacement for a real briefing:

1-800-WX-BRIEF is also 1-800-992-7433 for the telephone keypad impaired. And if you have a really cool aviation weather web site, click the yellow feedback button at right to let me and my readers know about it!

LiveATC Gets It Right

Who among us pilots and wannabes hasn't at one time or another tried to bring up some sort of ATC radio traffic on the web, only to be disappointed with the process? If you are like me, you have wanted to do this for training purposes but also just for its entertainment value.

A little backstory on this post:

I have been intrigued with radio all of my life, ever since my father, Papa Louie, introduced me to the "Old Radio" in 1966 [read story here], which began my fascination with this interesting medium – one that magically transmitted sound through thin air. This old Zenith – which I still have and vow to restore one day – could pick up aviation bands, so by the time I began my primary pilot training in 1996, I had already learned a fair amount of the phraseology used by aviators.

To further learn how to talk with ATC, I bought a cheapie Radio Shack scanner, and left it on whenever I could to dial in my understanding of ATC communications. And over the years, I have tried many, many times to find a source on the Internet for quality ATC commumications, without any luck. That was, until recently:

Dave Pascoe is the Founder of LiveATC.net and said to World of Flying this week: "I started LiveATC.net some time in 2003 - it was a collision of my hobby (Amateur Radio), my professional background in communications and network/internet engineering, and my flying activities (Private Instrument Pilot). Through my IFR training I became very interested in Air Traffic Control procedures and communications. I had access to a receive site near Boston so decided to put some spare scanners there so that I could listen to Boston Logan Airport - I used streaming audio technology to broadcast the audio over the Internet. I told a few people about the site and over time it got a following."

While LiveATC.net started out small, it isn't that way any more. Again, here's Pascoe:

"After a while, volunteers started contacting me and offering to stream their local airports through LiveATC.net. So over time I have built a network to support all of this - through a combination of my own software development efforts, help from some volunteers, and the goodwill of the many folks who provide feeds. And here we are today - a growing network of almost 300 airport areas, very good grade of service for listeners, and support for a growing number of mobile devices, including of course all popular desktop operating systems."

As a Mac user like Pascoe, I find one aspect of LiveATC.net to be very good. On each available ATC frequency, there are several "Start" buttons for Windows Media Player and RealPlayer, but also for ITunes. See, when you live in a Mac world and when you want audio on your desktop, iTunes rules. It is the one application that every Mac user uses every day, and now I have about 30 streaming ATC feeds available any time I want to follow the heavies inbound to JFK, or see what is going on at PDX as I flight plan a trip in Katy up to the Portland, Ore. area. In fact, as I write this, PDX Approach is on, and as an added bonus, the current METAR shows right in the iTunes window, how cool is that?

If you have ever had any interest at all in monitoring online ATC transmissions, LiveATC.net is – in my humble opinion – the finest service of its kind on the web. Check it out here, and if you use it regularly, donations to keep it up and running can be made here.

Or You Can Just Fly Alaska

In these troubled financial times, even offering entertainment at your seat the way JetBlue does can't keep ticket sales up, especially when every company we know is shedding their workforce at a record pace. Yes, people are still traveling to Grandma's house or the absolutely essential business trip, but as Mr. Obvious tells us, when mom is laid off from her job at the factory and dad is worried about getting the axe too, buying tickets on any airline for a future trip is risky business.

What's an airline to do? They of course want to still sell etickets to the few Americans who somehow are still employed after eight years of cowboy governance. But even those workers are afraid to buy a ticket three weeks from departure in fear of losing that job and forfeiting the money they shelled out for the ticket.

Well, to relieve some of that worry, JetBlue thinks they have found a solution:

"JetBlue's new Promise Program will allows a traveler to receive a full refund if they lose their job between the time they purchase their tickets for a flight and are scheduled to depart. JetBlue Promise will be in effect through June 1, and of course doesn't apply to already-booked flights."

I've always wondered why all airline tickets are not fully refundable anyway. We often fly Alaska/Horizon solely because their "Full Flex" fares are sold exactly as all tickets should be...without the boatload of restrictions and legalese that comes with JetBlue's new program. The Alaska fares are – like the full refund tickets found at other carriers – more spendy, but offer:

– No advance purchase required
– No change fees
– They are fully refundable
– Have no minimum stay requirements

I flew Alaska down to pick up our Cherokee 235 with my CFI, both on "Full Flex" fares, so that when the "ferry" weekend arrived to fly Katy home from Los Angeles, if the weather was not going to allow IFR or if the plane somehow wasn't ready, we could simply cancel the trip and get a no hassle refund.

And while the JetBlue's new program is getting lots of press, it is not even close to easy to use:

"How the JetBlue Promise Program works -

– Download and print Eligibility Letter and Terms
– Complete all sections of the Eligibility Letter, sign and have it notarized
– Fax completed Eligibility Letter AND Terms to 801-365-2440, Attn: JetBlue
– Promise Program (minimum of 14 days prior to first date of travel)
– Upon fax notification JetBlue will cancel your reservation
– Original Eligibility Letter and Terms must also be sent via certified mail
– Allow 30 days for processing of refund"

So with one airline, you just call Suzy and tell her you want a refund, and without a squabble, you get 100% of your dough back on your card. But with another, let's see, you have to download a letter, get it NOTORIZED and then send that letter CERTIFIED MAIL! If it is approved, you might get your refund in a month.

Sometimes, it just slays me that some corporate types can't just make things easy. They have to come up with a scheme so convoluted, nobody will possibly want to jump through all those hoops. I guess that's what happens when the Marketing Department runs an idea up the flagpole only to see it sliced, diced, analyzed and trampled by Legal.

If they would just stop and take a look at a deal such as refundable fares from the passenger's point of view, they'd see the Alaska model makes perfect sense. But like so much of Corporate America's top managers, they cannot see things the same way the rank and file can, because regular Joe ticket buyer never is allowed to set foot in the Board Room.

And we wonder why some companies lose money.

Major Green Milestone for Boeing

As someone who takes pride in caring for this rock we all live upon, I was interested in National Geographic's Green Guide as they went about the chore of determining the "greenest" city in America. The Green Guide writers looked at a number of factors from various sources and the results are way cool:

"In recognition of the efforts of cities across the country to provide energy-efficient, least polluting and healthy living spaces, the Green Guide presents the environmental leaders, those cities whose green achievements set the standard for others.

The Top 25 Green Cities in the U.S.
1. Eugene, OR with a sustainable business incubator, renewable energy supplying 85% of city's power, and an extensive wetlands program."

I provide that as background only to demonstrate how seriously we Eugenians take the protection of our environment. Everywhere you look, someone is doing something to make our city more beautiful, more sustainable, and more livable. So with that in mind I am really, REALLY excited about this from our country's biggest airplane maker:

Boeing today announced that all of its major manufacturing facilities received the internationally recognized ISO 14001 environmental certification by the end of 2008, marking achievement of one of the company's most significant environmental goals. Certification is a global benchmark of an organization's commitment to understand and continually improve its environmental performance.

These Boeing sites certified during 2008 were commended for their environmental performance with more than 80 positive noteworthy efforts and no major nonconformances:

Alabama: Huntsville
Arizona: Mesa
Australia: Bankstown, Fishermans Bend
California: El Segundo, Long Beach, Seal Beach, Sylmar, Taft, Torrance
Canada: Winnipeg
Florida: Kennedy Space Center
Missouri: St. Louis, St. Charles
Pennsylvania: Philadelphia
Texas: San Antonio
Utah: Salt Lake City
Washington: Auburn, Frederickson, Renton and North Boeing Field, Integrated Defense Systems sites in Puget Sound

Facilities in Exmouth, Australia; Everett, Wash.; and Portland, Ore. had previously achieved ISO 14001 certification.

A really great story [pdf] in Boeing's Frontier Magazine is here.

Way back in my so-called "other life" when I worked at a major food manufacturing plant in California, that facility struggled for years to achieve ISO 9001 certification, and it all but killed off some of the management. So the massive achievement by Boeing to certify all of its major manufacturing facilities is quite notable. As they have set the benchmark for building quality airliners for generations, they have now also come to the environmental party in a big way.

I – no we – shall only hope this major achievement prompts many, many more giants of industry in this country to push on towards greening up their facilities. That will be one tiny fraction of what needs to be done to reverse our government's nasty habit of looking the other way when it comes to global warming and climate change. Yes, Boeing may be only one company, but they are a BIG company, and people notice what Boeing does.

There are lots of big factories who have also achieved ISO 14001 certification, but there needs to be more. Top management at old factories belching garbage into our air and sucking up way too much natural resources should consider this gauntlet to be thrown down. Come to this "green" party voluntarily, or risk being forced to do so at some point in the future...because Bushie doesn't have your back at EPA anymore. It's a brand new day, and there is a new word being bantered around Washington, one that was ostracised for the last eight years:

Science.

Gravity - Oh So Predictable

The concept of gravity is not all that hard to comprehend. It's what keeps us clinging to this rock we live upon, and prevents us from floating out into space:

According to this Wiki, "Modern physics describes gravitation using the general theory of relativity, in which gravitation is a consequence of the curvature of spacetime which governs the motion of inertial objects. The strength of the gravitational field is numerically equal to the acceleration of objects under its influence, and its value at the Earth's surface, denoted g, is approximately expressed as the standard average: g = 9.8 m/s2 = 32.2 ft/s2. This means that, ignoring air resistance, an object falling freely near the earth's surface increases its velocity with 9.8 m/s (32.2 ft/s or 22 mph) for each second of its descent."

Translated, this means that if you drop a bowling ball over your foot, you can expect severe pain in less then one second.

With this in mind, I am surely not the only reader of this blog who contemplated gravity when reading about the massive collision of two satellites this past week. The crash created gigantic debris fields that anyone could logically assume would eventually fall to Earth from 490 miles up where the crash occurred:

I read lots of blogs, aviation news and traditional news sites every day, and after starting to follow this story, my antennas were "up" looking for anyone talking about all this space junk falling from the sky. I pondered quietly to myself that it would be seriously bad to fly your Cessna through a bunch of this flaming crap as it headed towards a cornfield to carve some sort of bizarro crop circle. From that nasty thought, I pondered what would happen if this space garbage whacked a perfectly good airliner.

Now you'd think that with NASA, the DoD and of course FAA on the job, if this stuff was going to come back to Earth in a rage of fire and drama – through busy public airspace – that someone, anyone, would have issued some sort of NOTAM or warning. I saw nothing as of Friday...either this crap was still up there, or it already burned up on re-entry.

So tonight, I see a couple of stories on the web so crazy, I had to search all over to verify they were not just urban myths. First, this story published Friday [the 13th...hence my suspicions] is from a Canadian site:

"Space debris puts Alberta officials on high alert – Rural Alberta dodged impact with Russian space debris, according to the province's emergency officials. The North American Aerospace Defence Command was tracking the debris, estimated to be about the size of a school bus, after 10 a.m. local time on Friday. At first the debris was set to fall in Calgary, but officials later determined it would strike near Kneehill or Wheatland County, about 100 kilometers east of Calgary."

School bus sized space junk falling from the sky, you say? Well, you'd think that would certainly prompt a NOTAM. Oh wait...it did:

FDC 9/5902 FDC SPECIAL NOTICE .. EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. AIRCRAFT ARE ADVISED THAT A POTENTIAL HAZARD MAY OCCUR DUE TO REENTRY OF SATELLITE DEBRIS INTO THE EARTHS ATMOSPHERE. FURTHER NOTAMS WILL BE ISSUED IF MORE INFORMATION BECOMES AVAILABLE. IN THE INTEREST OF FLIGHT SAFETY, IT IS CRITICAL THAT ALL PILOTS/FLIGHT CREW MEMBERS REPORT ANY OBSERVED FALLING SPACE DEBRIS TO THE APPROPRIATE ATC FACILITY TO INCLUDE POSITION, ALTITUDE, TIME, AND DIRECTION OF DEBRIS OBSERVED. FAA HEADQUARTERS, AIR TRAFFIC SYSTEMS OPERATIONS SECURITY, 202-493-5107, IS THE FAA COORDINATION FACILITY. WIE UNTIL UFN. CREATED: 14 FEB 15:48 2009

I found this NOTAM on enough real flight planning sites to confirm it wasn't a hoax. And guess what, they were right...the sky really was falling. This is from a TV station in Central Texas:

"Fiery debris rains down over Central Texas – Law enforcement officers from Central Texas to New Mexico have been investigating a number reports of flaming, falling debris Sunday afternoon. Around 11 a.m. Sunday, News Channel 25 was flooded with calls from viewers who say they saw fiery streaks in the sky. Several people also reported their houses shook from the noise. An FAA spokesman said the shaking could be attributed to a possible sonic boom from the falling debris."

Man, you just never know what each new day will bring. Just when you think you have flying figured out, now we have to dodge flaming chunks of obliterated satellite the size of a 36-passenger Bluebird. I have a hunch that every agency charged with monitoring this falling junk knew full well it was coming our way soon after the crash. But they held off on releasing the news that thousands of fireballs from space were headed towards Mainstreet, USA, and finally released a NOTAM on Saturday when they knew this stuff was actually inbound.

Not a very good way to build public trust. What is coming our way next week "they" aren't telling about? Jeez, Louise, now I sound like some sort of conspiracy theory whackjob.

Oh, no...are those black helicopters I see hovering outside? Quick, get...foil...hat.

Satellite Crash: Is Your GPS System in Danger?

This week, a high-speed collision of a U.S. Iridium 33 communications satellite and defunct Russian military communications satellite Cosmos 2251 occurred 490 miles above Siberia. The crash created a debris field so large, it seems inevitable that someday, something up there will make contact. Space.com has the details:

"Scientists at NASA are keeping close tabs on two clouds of debris from Tuesday satellite collision to determine how much of a risk they pose to the agency's Earth-watching spacecraft and, possibly, the Hubble Space Telescope. The rare collision is unprecedented, marking the first time two intact satellites orbiting Earth have accidentally crashed into and obliterated one another, NASA officials said. The debris poses a greater risk to science satellites than to the International Space Station, which is currently home to two American astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut."

I'm sure not the only GPS-equipped aviator out there who thought about the GPS system when I read this story, and how a gigantic field of space junk caused by this collision might effect our ability to follow the magenta line to our $100 hamburgers. And if you think all is well just because the two "obliterated" satellites fragmented into really tiny pieces, think again. This is from Yahoo news:

"Before the latest incident, there were over 300,000 orbital objects measuring between 0.4 and four inches in diameter and "billions" of smaller pieces, according to a 2008 report by the Space Security Index, an international monitoring group. Traveling at speeds that can reach many thousands of miles per hour, the tiniest debris orbiting can damage or destroy a spacecraft. In June 1983, the windscreen of the US space shuttle Challenger had to be replaced after it was chipped by a fleck of paint measuring 0.01 of an inch that impacted at 2.5 miles per second."

So what would happen if all that crap impacts the satellites we use to navigate? The answer is that there's nothing to see here folks, move along (my .02 cents, from Wiki and other research):

The U.S. Global Positioning System (GPS) is the only fully functional GNSS in the world and uses a constellation of between 24 and 32 satellites in Medium Earth Orbit (MEO). MEO is a region of space where satellites fly at an approximate altitude of 12,552 miles above Earth. The two satellites that crashed NASCAR style were in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) at about 490 miles up, so the GPS constellation is well above the debris fields and therefore not in danger since gravity will continually pull the garbage back to Earth.

Again, not a rocket scientist here, but I can figure things out pretty well. If the super-strong, heat resistent windscreen of a space shuttle can be damaged necessitating replacement just from contact with a piece of space junk the size of a fleck of paint...imagine what a titanium screw from one of the two crashed satellites would do if it comes through the living room window of the International Space Station, which orbits about 270 miles BELOW the debris fields.

I have a funny feeling in my gut we haven't heard the last of this story. And the rumors out there on the Internets that this incident has prompted a world-wide outcry for a celestial "air traffic control" system is bunk, I am sure. But it would be fun to liquor up a couple of off-duty NATCA members and see how they'd go about keeping satellites, space junk, the ISS and whatever replaces the Space shuttle separated in space.

This is Indeed Change We Can Believe in

The aviators among us have been wringing our hands over the lack of interest demonstrated by the recently ousted Washington regime in completing the job of reauthorizing FAA funding. Well those same pilots and aircraft owners will be happy to know that, finally, seriously positive progress has taken place. AOPA's Warren D. Morningstar has the news via aopa.org:

"The chairmen of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and the aviation subcommittee introduced a new FAA funding bill Feb. 9. The Federal Aviation Administration Reauthorization Act of 2009 authorizes nearly $70 billion for the agency for four years without creating new aviation user fees."

Did you read that last sentence? No. User. Fees.

In an interview that was broadcast on Fox News, AOPA President Craig Fuller was quoted as saying:

“It would be very wise to put this program in place. It does come with some increased fuel charges to private aircraft, but that is far better than the user fee approach that was debated over the past few years. We’re hopeful that there is certainty of funding for general aviation over the years ahead.”

The bill has been introduced by Transportation Committee Chairman James Oberstar (D-Minn.) and aviation subcommittee Chairman Jerry Costello (D-Ill.), and when you read the details in this PDF of the full bill, it reads very similar to H.R.2881, the 2007 FAA funding bill supported by AOPA and everyone else with a brain. That is, everyone except Bush, his cronies and their airline buddies who were hoping to push a large part of the FAA funding off on GA via user fees. My .02 cents:

Apparently even the airline CEOs have grown tired of "stay the course" in Washington. Joining AOPA, NBAA, EAA, GAMA, and NATCA in this letter to key House members are previous GA adversaries such as the Air Carrier Association of America, Air Transport Association, National Air Carrier Association, National Air Transportation Association and the Regional Airline Association. I guess the brass of those organizations finally realized that the best way to get FAA funded is to join together with GA instead of continuing a cat fight that accomplished nothing. And without W at the helm to watch their backs and bottom lines, the carriers must have realized that Bushie's replacement was going to do what was right and logical, not just what was profitable for them.

An FAA Reauthorization without user fees is a major victory for GA. And while the bill has yet to be passed, as we all know, the cowboy has left the building. And Transportation Committee Chairman Oberstar says what we're all thinking:

“We have a new President and a new Congress, this time we’ll get the job done.”

In researching this post, I performed a "find/replace" on the term "user fees" on the 254-page Federal PDF of the bill and was elated to find "no matches" show as the result. None. Yes, aircraft registrations will go up, and yes, fuel taxes will see a minor spike. But ask anyone with a pilot's license that flies GA and they'll agree that a few small increases here and there are a million times better than the alternative.

Hire a 13-Year-Old as FAA IT Manager

It baffles me that little creeps keep hacking into huge Federal computer systems just to show they CAN, and I am speaking more as a citizen here and not as an IT expert. But when 95% of all email sent across the web is spam, and when any punk with no life and no future can get inside and steal gobs of credit and identity data with relative ease, brother, this system is dreadfully broken.

That said, what the HELL is wrong with the FAA's IT people that they let this happen (from AP):

"Hackers broke into the Federal Aviation Administration's computer system last week, accessing the names and Social Security numbers of 45,000 employees and retirees. The agency said in a statement Monday that two of the 48 files on the breached computer server contained personal information about employees and retires who were on the FAA's rolls as of the first week of February 2006. The server that was accessed was not connected to the operation of the air traffic control system and there is no indication those systems have been compromised, the statement said."

NATCA President Patrick Forrey – in a press release – is understandably livid:

"News of the security breach is bad enough. It’s a sickening feeling for FAA employees that we represent; employees who have suffered mightily under this rogue FAA management team for many years now. What’s worse is that this breach was preventable. The FAA was reckless and negligent in the creation of its electronic personnel file system and then showed a blatant disregard for its employees’ interests by refusing to listen to our concerns about the security of the electronic information or meet with NATCA to bargain over the impact and implementation of electronic security and files."

Forrey explains that the organization he leads tried to sound this alarm years ago:

“In 2005, we brought up the issue of data security during our controller contract negotiations with the FAA. We specifically proposed at the table a contract article that stated, ‘The agency shall protect all bargaining unit employees and their data from becoming victims of identity theft and criminal mischief.’ The FAA responded by saying that language was non-negotiable, believing that they didn’t have to entertain that proposal."

O.K., THIS TIME, the puke little hackers didn't get all the way into the ATC system that NATCA's controllers use to keep so many pressurized tubes full of souls from trading paint. Had the little bastards managed that, we can only imagine what disasters they could have caused. And what if these people were, oh, I don't know...evil doers? Even Mr. Obvious knows that screwing with the ATC system computers would be a far easier way to cause massive death and destruction than working around the complexities of hijacking airliners.

Will 2009 be the year when NATCA gets a labor contract that is fair, and people with the right skills replace Bush-appointed cronies at FAA? If the House Aviation Subcommittee's proposed legislation authorizing nearly $70 billion for the FAA for four years passes as it should, like so many nightmares of the last eight years, we can not only rearrange the deck chairs at FAA, we can actually right the ship.

IFR: Sweat the Small Stuff

Yesterday, I completed an IFR round-trip from Eugene to Hillsboro, Ore. There was nothing seriously remarkable about the trip, with one major exception: My back seat passenger:

My wife, life partner, soul mate and business partner, Julie Celeste, has been an aviator's dream throughout my 40+ hours of instrument training. When I needed to lock myself in a room and read about the 1-2-3 rule for the 17th time, no complaints. When I just HAD to go out to the hangar and spend some quality time with Katy just loping around the patch, she has never said no. She finally got a taste of the instrument world I've been living in lately when she rode with myself and CFI-I Jim for the trip to KHIO. Her comment on the phone to a friend after the trip was that there was never-ending work being done on the "flight deck" of the Katyliner, and that the "crew" was non-stop from the minute we launched through the 700 ovc layer at EUG to returning through that same layer to a textbook ILS landing a few hours later.

As with all my training trips these days, I felt that I did most things right, but a few nagging things wrong. Again, nothing that would have busted regs or got anyone killed, just sloppy stuff like missing a few initial radio calls. But when I discussed the flight later with her, I realized something that I have overlooked lately:

As VFR pilots, we are taught to learn primarily the basics of flying safely in the system. But as we build hours, many pilots get "rusty" with some of the small stuff that we are taught, an example being to "ID" a VOR to verify it is the one you want to use. Yes, that is taught in primary training, but think about it, so many VFR pilots these days use GPSs to fly direct, VORs are going the way of the dinosaur. Those that still use them really do not spend much time listening to Morse Code. But in a steam gauge plane like 27W in the IFR system, ID'ing the navaids is an important part of any flight.

As an outsider looking in from the back seat, Julie could see the work that goes into a safe IFR flight. She noticed that there was no time in which we the crew were just sitting there enjoying the view. One of these "small stuff" items she noticed was radio management:

With two King flip-flop NavComms, a VFR panel-mount GPS, two VORs and the S-tec 50 A/P, there is plenty of knobs to turn on the panel of our IFR ship. But when you think about many VFR flights to chase hamburgers, plenty of pilots we all know never go past tuning in the one frequency they are using NOW. In the IFR world, I am being taught to think ahead, and to have all four comm holes and all four NAV holes in the two Kings filled at all times. This is working well, and has taught me to think about what I need to be doing next the minute I change a frequency or flip a flop. And with my "vintage" Northstar M3 Approach GPS, I can also program in two airports, two VORs, two NDBs and two fixes, easily switching between them for additional situational awareness. Great tool, but it certainly ramps up the attention required to manage the avionics.

I am happy to report that at about 46 hours, I am progressing well towards a successful check ride and eventual IFR ticket. I am nailing most of these little "small stuff" items, staying on the airways, pegging the needles damned close to center on ILSs and LOCs, and staying straight and level in the clouds. But I have a client who is also a CFI-I and FAA examiner, and he confirmed last week that the average pilot needs "55 to 60" hours of instruction to really be ready for an IFR check ride. Based on my skills at this point in my training, I think he is right on.

Because in an IFR environment, in the soup, in the same system as the heavies fly in, there is really no room to miss things you shouldn't miss. In this case, it really is important to sweat the small stuff, and the big stuff – those basic aviator skills – need to be performed on instinct. In this IFR world, if you have to work that hard to stay on an airway, your mind is wandering away from that next radio call or that approach plate hanging on your yoke.

Of course, much of this goes out the window with a Garmin 430W or better IFR box. That, however, is far, far of in my future, and frankly I am glad to be learning behind a "old school" panel, so that when the Garmin arrives in due time, the transition will be a non-event.

Cool Under Pressure

Recordings of US Airways Flight 1549's precious few minutes in the air were released today by FAA. Any person listening to the comm chatter between the flight's Captain, Chesley B. Sullenberger, and New York Tracon Controller Patrick Harten can easily hear a professional pilot and ATC veteran doing their jobs.

But to the pilots who listen to these tapes – available from FAA here – they confirm what we already knew...that "Sully" and FO Jeffrey Skiles were highly-trained at emergency procedures, capable of making the right decisions when 150+ lives depended on their quick thinking and cool heads. On the tapes, you do not hear Sully screaming "we're all going to DIE" or even a faint hint in his voice that his flight was seconds away from a potentially fatal crash.

Let's take a look at what the tapes reveal. For this discussion "Cactus" is US Airways 1549 and "ATC" is Harten in the NY TRACON. All altitudes are MSL and times are UTC (this is not verbatim, it is only excerpted. For full transcripts, go the FAA site here):

At 20:25:51, Cactus tells ATC he's out of 700 for 5,000, and ATC clears him on up to 15,000. All is fine on climb out but at an estimated 3,000 feet, Cactus slams square into a large flock of Canadian Geese. At 20:27:36, a perfectly calm voice from Cactus says "ah, this is, uh, Cactus 1549, hit birds, we lost thrust in both engines - we're turning back to LaGuardia."

At this point, it is clear Cactus is a glider, and some of the busiest airspace in the world now has a serious emergency. There is some back and forth on the tape between ATC and LaGuardia tower as ATC works to clear the airspace back to the airport. At 20:28:05 – just 29 seconds after Sully's mayday – ATC asks if Cactus would like RWY 13 at LaGuardia. Assuming the bird strike happened around 3000 feet, and that Cactus could not climb much higher without power, it is these 29 seconds were Sully and Skiles determines that a turn back to LGA was impossible:

Knowing the glide capabilities of their A320 well, Cactus comes back on :06 later and calmly says "we're unable [to return to LaGuardia] and may end up in the Hudson." At 20:28:31, ATC is still trying to get space cleared for the return to the airport, and tells Cactus to make "left traffic for RWY 31." Another :50 seconds goes by as ATC and Teterboro tower discuss the possibility of Cactus making TEB. At 20:29:21, ATC clears Cactus for a landing on RWY 1 at TEB, but by this time, the crew of 1549 has made their decision to ditch.

After the "cleared to land" instruction for RWY 1 at TEB, an exchange takes place that has to be a controller's worst nightmare come true:

Cactus comes back to the landing clearance with "we can't do it", and ATC thinks Sully means he can't make RWY 1 at TEB, asking "okay, which runway would you like at Teterboro?" The cool in Sully's voice is chilling as he calmly says "we're gonna be in the Hudson." ATC asks Cactus to "say again" but in seconds, US Airways 1549 drops off the radar screen at NY TRACON. The rest is history.

I urge ALL pilots to go and download both the New York Tracon Audio (MP3, 18.77 MB) and New York Tracon Transcript (PDF, 309 KB)...and then carefully study what came down. This is a textbook example of staying cool in an emergency, and we can all learn a lot from Sully and Skiles.

The Results are in...

My regular blog readers have been helping me craft a better blog here at World of Flying. After a couple of weeks, just over 100 readers were gracious enough to spend a few minutes on Surveymonkey.com answering 10 questions I posed.

There were some surprises, and also some very good suggestions on how to keep improving on this blog. Here is an overview of each question, and a look at the answers:

– When asked how long my readers have been coming here, a massive 85% said WoF has been required reading for between six months and one year. And I consider it a compliment that a full 10% said they've been here from the beginning over 700 posts ago.

– The aviation experience of my readers is telling, and will help me aim better content at the masses. There are 59% of the readers who do not have a pilot's license yet, but want to get one someday or are already student pilots. Of licensed readers, 12% are ATP rated with a multi-engine rating, and one smart ass (I know who he is) said he was an astronaut. Uh. Huh.

– WoF is a required stop each day for 25% of the readers, with 45% coming my way once or twice a week. Anyone in the blogosphere will tell you that content is king, and I consider this a mega-compliment that I have so many returning visitors.

– As to my Bush bashing, left-leaning, tye-dye wearin' political stance, 45% of the reads strong agree, while 35% disagree occasionally or strong disagree. And, 20% were Sweden...you have had read the question to know what that's all about.

– When asked rather bluntly what the readers liked or disliked about my "Herb Caen meets Dave Berry" style of writing, 75% said this blog is a good mix of real news, information and crazy stuff that makes them laugh. Only 5% said I should be more serious, which tells me we all need to be poked in the ribs each day or we're going to go crazy these days.

– The AWOL comments section on my blog is a non-issue, with 55% fine without a way to comment. Only 35% said they leave comments on blogs, but only when a topic really fires them up.

– I am humbled that the #1 thing people want to see more of are personal flying stories from Av8rdan. That topic scored a cumulative score of 3.75 (out of 5), trailed slightly by "more interesting aviation websites" (3.70), "more posts about Katy" (3.60) and "more stories about flight training" (3.55).

– Again, humbled, that 74% say they send links they see here to friends and family. That has been the impetus to keep this blog growing. But 16% said they could not find a "share" button to do this...hint, it's the little envelope at the end of the post. I will work to make this more visible.

– Last, I asked my readers what their personal crystal ball said about the financial stability of the aviation sector in 2009. I am sad to report 50% think the economy is so far in the tank that we'll only see more declines in '09...but 40% think it'll rebound by about ten percent. And 5% said the sky is falling and we're all going to die. Oy. Vay.

So thank you to all that helped in this endeavor. I enjoy writing this blog more than anyone knows, and promise to digest the many suggestions left in the comments fields of the survey and continue to make WoF As good as it can be.