Middle Aged Man Flies Tailwheel, Laughter Ensues

[Liquid Charlie]

ANR headsets - I have been waiting for a good, in ear, light weight headset to appear. Bose is now trying but the design sucks and won't be successful for 2 reasons, head band and no option for custom ear buds. It's too bad the lightspeed discontinued theirs and didn't develop it into an ANR model. It was the ultimate light weight head set but the passive protection rated at 30 DB was not good enough for noisy prop aircraft.

[Chuck Ellsworth]

[quote][font=Verdana]You have no idea what unbelievable engineering and physics accomplishmentswere required to do deliver the above, even if Rockie thinks its stupid.[/font][/quote][font=Verdana]


We should ask him if using that stupid technology called GPS would have prevented Air Canada from almost having aviation's biggest disaster or was that crew just to disconnected from what they were supposed to be doing for it to have made any difference?



[/font]

[Colonel]

Flight planning has also completely changed.

When we learned to fly, you would walk into the FSS,
look at the wx charts, and talk to a person (really).

If there was no FSS on the field, you would pick up
this heavy plastic handle and dial a phone number
by rotating a dial which clicked (really) and get
your wx info solely by analog audio communication.

Now, we have powerful computers with incredible
displays and unlimited cheap bandwidth and up to
the moment digital wx information.  In your hand!

If you do nothing but animate the doppler radar
and check the dewpoint spread, you are light years
ahead of how we used to do it.

[img width=281 height=500][/img]

[Eric Janson]

Just downloaded a G1000 user guide.
I wish I had a fraction of the capability of this system in my large 4-engine aircraft. Our Navigation database size is measured in Mb - I think we may be running the Pentium processors in our Flight Management Computers - but maybe not.

Unfortunately in my world we can't use stuff that doesn't meet a reliability standard because it hasn't been used long enough to give this data.

[Slick Goodlin]

[quote author=DeflectionShot link=topic=8901.msg24385#msg24385 date=1534709384]
So boys after bloviating for years, I am finally learning how to fly a tail wheel airplane[/quote]
Good for you. I actually mean that, flying is one of those places where the real stand-outs are always looking to hone their skills.


[font=Verdana][/font][quote author=DeflectionShot link=topic=8901.msg24385#msg24385 date=1534709384][font=Verdana][/font][font=Verdana]Overall though it’s a lot of fun and if you’re bored of the 172 or Cherokee try it out.[/font][/quote]
Even someone who isn't bored of 172s and Cherokees should give it a shot.  While it's possible to already be awesome and learn absolutely nothing in the transition to tailwheel, most will be at least a little bit better at flying everything after they fly something new.

[Slick Goodlin]

[quote author=Eric Janson link=topic=8901.msg24490#msg24490 date=1535441186]
Just downloaded a G1000 user guide.
I wish I had a fraction of the capability of this system in my large 4-engine aircraft
[/quote]
Garmin's current lineup blows my mind with what it can do.  I know deep down that they will eventually make something better but I can't begin to imagine what that could even be.

[Liquid Charlie]

Garmin is like apple - you can't fuck with it. I like a system where you can learn the fine details and make it work even if the destination isn't in the data base. Universal was magic that way. You could build airports, runways and approaches (all under the premise of VFR  >:D ) now that was a system -- even on a VFR night having vertical profile to the ice on a lake in the arctic was magic. I had never used a Garmin system until about 4 years ago and while I don't have any 1000 experience anything prior to that was mickey mouse and not real user friendly, even the 750 was not great. Even current position is hidden in sub menus and to pull up either lat or long crossing coordinates fug get about it. I guess that's why garmin is only found in "small" aircraft so far.

[David MacRay]

I have a love/hate with my wife's [s]farming[/s] garmin nuvi she breaks out on vacations. Kind of like her, it can be terrific but mostly it seems to almost be intentionally trying to be annoying.

It's older so I don't know how much that factors in but it will try to take weird routes most of the time. Even in a strange place once I get a general idea of where I am and where we are trying to go I'll take a shorter route and trigger the "recalculating" song. It also rarely knows when a road is closed for construction.

Granted in an airplane you have the advantage that the only three things you have to go around are mountains, control zones, and restricted areas. That probably cuts out most of what is annoying to me.

I enjoy looking at a map and navigating. The only time that was not possible so far for me in an airplane was in Eastern Montana. The creeks were so small they were invisible from even our fairly low altitude. All the grass and shrubs looked the same and we missed whatever tiny building made it onto the chart in the nearly 200 miles of prairie. Once I got to the end of the line for the VOR I tried to keep going straight until we picked up the next one. It was the only time I actually used radio navigation instead of just practicing radial intercepts while knowing where I was. That was interesting but GPS would have been way better.

[Slick Goodlin]

[quote author=Liquid Charlie link=topic=8901.msg24508#msg24508 date=1535545666]
Garmin is like apple - you can't fuck with it.
[/quote]
I consider that a feature.  When there's forty low-time pilots and fifteen of them are tied for smartest person in the world, the ability to make crap up would just mean people are making crap up.  The 750 does plenty and it's at the very least 'Garmin user friendly' in that if you're good at one you're good at all of them.

[David MacRay]

Only 15? Sounds low.