Keyboard and Rudder: A blog on the Art of Flying

Wednesday, June 14, 2017

Three short but incredible videos

A while back, I posted a bunch of pictures with the title "The air flowing like water". Last week, a storm chaser posted this amazing time-lapse video that demonstrates that principle in motion. Since it's at sunset, you also get to see some vibrant color along the way. It's just over a minute long and is definitely worth watching:

The next one is a little less artistic, but also shows a lot in under a minute:

The final one may be some of the most incredible 25 seconds of video on all of YouTube:

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The author is an airline pilot, flight instructor, and adjunct college professor teaching aviation ground schools. He holds an ATP certificate with ERJ-145 and DHC-8 type ratings, as well as CFI, CFII, MEI, AGI, and IGI certificates, and is a Master-level participant in the FAA's WINGS program and a former FAASafety Team representative. He is on Facebook as Larry the Flying Guy, has a Larry the Flying Guy YouTube channel, and is on Twitter as @Lairspeed.

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Wednesday, June 7, 2017

Bye bye Bose, Hello again David

After having bought the wife a car for Valentine's Day, she repaid me by getting me a replacement headset for my birthday. My Bose X was nearing ten years old and after almost 4,000 hours of use was succumbing to the beatings of near-daily use. I'm sad to see it go, as it's seen me through almost every stage of my aviation growth, all the way from private pilot through airline captain. Nonetheless, like an old car that has fond memories associated with it but is getting too old to maintain reasonably, it is time to move on.

Since headset technology has advanced quite a bit in the decade since I got the Bose X, it was getting obsolete. It didn't have Bluetooth, as in 2007 Bluetooth was still an extra $350 option. However, what really made it obsolete for my use was the primitiveness of its active noise reduction. While good for its day, and while it did a great job canceling the lower-frequency noise during my days on the Dash-8 (and as an instructor in piston planes before that), it was totally useless at quieting the white noise in the jet cockpit. Not long after transitioning to the ERJ-145, I stopped even bothering to turn on the ANR (active noise reduction), since it didn't do anything.

I was happy with Bose as a company, but the last straw with the Bose X was when it got a loose wire going into the headset which would cause the microphone to crackle and/or cut out intermittently. Their products aren't the cheapest, but their customer service is outstanding, and they support the old models of their products for years after other companies would. Unfortunately, the cost to fix this loose wire would have been over $300, which is a pretty sizable chunk of what a brand new headset would cost.

I decided to take that money and put it toward a headset that wouldn't need something else fixed in a year or two due to its age. My short list came down to the Bose A20, the Lightspeed Zulu 3, the Clarity Aloft, a combination of a UFlyMike and an ANR headset of some kind, and the David Clark DC PRO-X.

Bose A20

The Bose A20 was on the list just because of my familiarity with their predecessor. However, this model itself is getting a little long in the tooth (it came out 6 years ago), and they are more expensive than everyone else. Sometimes Bose is more expensive because they are simply better—the Bose Companion 3 is by far the best 2.1 computer speaker I've ever had (it's much better than the high-end Klipsch 5.1 system it replaced), but they're 2-3x more expensive than most 2.1 systems. That said, sometimes Bose is like Apple in that they're more expensive just because of the name. I get the feeling that the A20 falls in the latter category.

Lightspeed Zulu 3

I've tried Lightspeeds on occasion before, and something about them just doesn't seem to fit on my ear quite correctly. Plus I'm trying to get away from the big "earmuff" style of headset. When you fly 5-8 hours a day, even the most comfortable headset gets tiring. I was looking to go with something lighter.

Clarity Aloft

For lightness reasons, I looked at Clarity Aloft's in-ear headsets. It would be hard to get lighter than an earpiece instead of an entire headset!

I've talked to a few pilots who use Clarity Aloft and they have good things to say about them. Nonetheless, I was still a bit skeptical about wearing an in-ear for several hours a day. I know that after a couple of hours at the gym, I'm ready to pull out my earbuds, and these aren't cheap plastic ones but SoundMAGIC E50S earbuds with extra-comfy eartips similar to the Comply eartips of the Clarity Alofts.

I didn't try them out, so I could be wrong, but reviews from professional pilots tended to say that while they are very comfortable, their noise reduction isn't very good and the sound quality is unimpressive. This ruled them out for me for two reasons.

First, while I don't fly pistons much at all (I don't have anything against them, but after 4-6 days in a cockpit, the last thing I want to do on a day off is to go to another airport), I still do occasionally give a flight review or ride along as a safety pilot. That means I still need something with good all-around noise reduction.

Second, one of the things I'd like to be able to do with any new headset is to also use it on deadheads or commute flights to listen to music while canceling out noise inside the cabin. This means that at least decent sound quality is a must.

UFlyMike + ANR headset

This is the closest I came to sold on anything but what I ended up getting. The combination of separate mic that can be used with a "normal", non-aviation headset was appealing, since I could choose which model of headset I liked best. Unfortunately, the price of the UFlyMike (around $300) combined with the price of a high-quality ANR headset (another $300) approaches or exceeds a dedicated aviation headset.

This in itself wasn't a deal-breaker, though. I'm willing to spend money on a quality tool that I use every day at work. And the "every day at work" thing was the problem. The people I've talked to who use this combination mentioned that while the microphone is tough enough, the headset itself needs replaced every year or two. Normal headsets aren't designed to constantly travel and be used for up to 9 hours a day. This means this route could end up being both more expensive and more annoying, because one of the things I hate is having to spend time fixing or replacing things, especially if the headset were to break on day 1 of a 5-day trip.

David Clark DC PRO-X

This one finally met all of my needs and at a nice price point as well. The thing that made me look at them when they first came out was the small size of the earpiece. Instead of being the size of big earmuffs, these were the size of a mini-donut. That means that instead of trapping the heat all around my ears, the back of my ears could breathe.

It's a unique size and shape, and one that definitely appealed to me. One of the nice things about the size is that I could use them in the cabin on flights to cancel noise and listen to music (or more likely to catch up on podcasts) without looking like a complete doofus.

Their price is nice. They're just over half as much as the Bose ($695 vs. $1095), but not because they're cheaply made. My first-ever headset was the very popular David Clark H10-13.4, which is built like a tank (and unfortunately is about as comfortable). David Clark's support is excellent, and you can send them in and have them rebuilt for a very reasonable cost, so I trust the company's confidence in their product.

Bluetooth was a must in a new headset. Not so much for the music but because now that I'm a captain, I need to use the phone occasionally to call Dispatch if there is a problem with the plane or we get a reroute, etc. It's much more convenient to stay plugged in while on the phone because then I can also listen to the communications radios at the same time and still be in the loop.

What sold me on the PRO-X was the reviews. Many of the Amazon reviews are by long-haul airline pilots: 777, 757, 767 pilots that wear them hour after hour and still like them. That was the biggest requirement for me, as I need something that will still be comfortable after 5-8 hours a day.

So after not having bought a David Clark in 11 years, I went with them again because of their great combination of price, comfort, durability, and features. I was lucky enough to get them the day before I left for a 4-day trip. I'm writing this after having used them for only a few days, and so far my reaction is one big WOW! They are an enormous upgrade over the old Bose X—and I liked my Bose!

Once I've had a chance to use them for a month, I'll write a more detailed review. Until then, I'll see you next Wednesday!

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Wednesday, April 19, 2017

A regulation nobody studies

I'm busy the next two weeks getting emergency after emergency thrown at me as I do my Captain upgrade simulator sessions, so here's a little bit of humor that's been going around the web. I don't know where it originated (it's not mine), but if you've ever found yourself bewildered while studying the FAR/AIM for a written examination, you might get a smile out of this:

FAA Regulation / Part 0, Section 000 (a) 1 (c)

Section I: No pilot or pilots, or person or persons acting on the direction or suggestion or supervision of a pilot or pilot may try, or attempt to try or make, or make attempt to try to comprehend or understand any or all, in whole or in part of the herein mentioned, Aviation Regulations, except as authorized by the administrator or an agent appointed by, or inspected by, the Administrator.

Section II: If a pilot, or group of associate pilots becomes aware of, or realized, or detects, or discovers, or finds that he or she, or they, are or have been beginning to understand the Aviation Regulations, they must immediately, within three (3) days notify, in writing, the Administrator.

Section III: Upon receipt of the above-mentioned notice of impending comprehension, the Administrator shall immediately rewrite the Aviation Regulations in such a manner as to eliminate any further comprehension hazards.

Section IV: The Administrator may, at his or her discretion, require the offending pilot or pilots to attend remedial instruction in Aviation Regulations until such time that the pilot is too confused to be capable of understanding anything.

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Wednesday, April 12, 2017

Don't give yourself far to fall

In the near future, I'm going to be negotiating a part of our union's contract with our airline. To prepare, I've been studying negotiations. I began with a book that comes highly recommended from someone else: Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if your life depended on it by Chris Voss and Tahl Raz.

Even if you're not going to be negotiating something, this is still an outstanding read. It is one of the best how-to books I've ever seen on anything, and even if you're not interested in negotiation, reading the stories in each chapter alone is worth it. Voss was the FBI's leading expert in international kidnapping negotiations, so lives quite literally depended on his negotiation skills, and he tells several of his war stories along the way.

One of the things he says in the book has application in almost everything in life: "When the pressure is on, you don't rise to the occasion—you fall to your highest level of preparation."

As it happens, I am also on my way to my upgrade simulator training, the last step in becoming a captain. This "falling to the level of your preparation" philosophy is the core of why we do so much sim training (both initial and recurrent training). When the ship hits the sand, you can't just try to make it up as you go and rise to the occasion with some miraculous piloting skills. You develop those skills ahead of time in preparation, in the hopes you'll never need them.

We do all sorts of preparation, from normal approaches to missed approaches to fires and engine failures at V₁, the worst possible time for an engine to fail. By the time we're done, we do so many of them that the horrible is the routine, and in the event that something bad does happen in real life, the reaction to it will be automatic. In other words, "falling to the highest level of preparation" means there's not much of a fall after all.

You can do the same thing in your own flying. When was the last time you tried to recite the bold items in your POH from memory? When was the last time you flew a go-around? If the big fan in front stops cooling you off, you need to automatically think, "Fuel, air, and spark" and be automatically setting yourself up for best glide speed (which you do have memorized, right?). You don't want to fall to a level of preparation that has you fall out of the sky just because somebody started taxiing onto the runway when you were about to land and you botched a go-around.

As the old saying goes, the more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war. Spend a few minutes reviewing your emergency or abnormal procedures, mentally fly a go-around (visualize the "power up, pitch up, clean up, and speak up" sequence), or refresh yourself on your aircraft's important speeds and numbers today.

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Wednesday, February 15, 2017

An aviation dogfight on the back of the car

Since I have the best wife ever, I bought her a new car for Valentine's Day.

This meant we had to get new license plates. The old car was in my name, and I had Airborne plates on it:

Photo from Ohio BMV.

We put the new car in her name, so that wouldn't be an option now, since you need a DD-214 to get paratrooper plates. We decided to get the "Leader in Flight" plates with the Space Shuttle and the Wright Flyer on them. They're an extra $25, but $15 of that goes to support the National Aviation Heritage Area.

Photo from Ohio BMV.

Notice that both of those plates (and all recent Ohio license plates, too) have "Birthplace of Aviation" prominently written just below the "Ohio". The plate I got even takes that one step further and proclaims Ohio "The Leader in Flight". But what about this plate:

Photo from NC DOT.

It says "First in Flight", but it's not an Ohio plate: it's from North Carolina. Technically, they're both correct: Ohio is where the Wright Brothers dreamed of, researched, designed, and planned the world's first airplane, while North Carolina was where they brought those dreams to fruition that historic December day in 1903, and where one of the most famous photographs ever was taken:

Photo from the US National Archives.

The first flight took place in North Carolina, but December 17, 1903 would be the only day the Wrights would fly there. After three more flights that day, the first plane was flipped over by the same winds that drew the Wrights to Kitty Hawk in the first place. It was damaged beyond easy repair, and the brothers returned to Dayton satisfied.

Having demonstrated that the concept was indeed possible, all further development for the next several years was done in their bicycle shop in Dayton, with the flying done at nearby Huffman Prairie. They would not be in Kitty Hawk again for almost 8 years, and that was to only test improvements to their designs that they had made in Dayton. The data they acquired there would be used for improvements once they again returned to Ohio, and that's where the first airplane manufacturing plant would be built.

This friendly rivalry resurfaced when the United States Mint created their 50-state series of quarters. North Carolina used the famous photo above and "First Flight" for the back of their quarter. Ohio one-upped them by using an image of a later-model Wright Flyer taken at Huffman Prairie plus an astronaut along with the words "Birthplace of Aviation Pioneers".

So who wins the dogfight? Ohio gets the kill because while North Carolina is where we learned it was possible to fly, Dayton is where flight was born.

See you next Wednesday!

Wednesday, February 8, 2017

Turn the page: The downside of being an airline pilot

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a short post that sums up one of the best things about my job. This week, I'll share what the worst thing about my job is.

It's actually so simple I can describe it in pictures. The worst thing about being an airline pilot is this:

That's the sad look my dog has the night I've left for a trip and it's bedtime and my side of the bed is empty. But there's more:

Our Australian Shepherd, Orion, went from that tiny puppy who was smaller than our cat to a 55-pound ball of energy. Each of those pictures (except the first, which was from the ad the puppy rescue had that brought him to us) was taken by my wife because I wasn't there to see him.

As he was going from the little Frisbee show-off who would catch it and trip over it while bringing it back because it was wider than he was to the solid dog in the third picture, I missed out on a lot of his growing up. As he was going from the runt in the first picture to the dog in the last picture who is so big he would be hard to hold up like the puppy rescue did, I was in a hotel room somewhere. Maybe Maine, maybe Missouri, maybe Florida or North Carolina... I don't know where.

What I do know is that being in a hotel room more often than your home is hard at times. It is wearying living out of a suitcase so many days a month, carrying your whole life with you, city after city. I've said that you're not a real airline pilot until you've woken up in your own bed in the middle of the night and tried to remember what city you're in.

More than once, I've had the chorus to Bob Seger's "Turn the Page" in my head. He does a great, poetic job describing what having a job on the road is like.

Say, here I am, on a road again
There I am, up on the stage
Here I go, playing the star again
There I go, turn the page

That said, I still wouldn't want to do anything else, just as I doubt Bob Seger would want to be anything else but a rock star. This is just a small glimpse into a downside of a job that has a huge upside.

Besides, being an airline pilot lets me afford nice things like new cars. Next week, I get one and examine a dogfight on the license plate. See you next Wednesday!

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Wednesday, February 1, 2017

Embrace the Suck, Squeeze, Bang, and Blast

One of the things that any basic pilot ground school covers is how engines create power. Jet engines and piston engines have the same four stages:

Intake
Compression
Combustion (also commonly called "Power")
Exhaust

It's easier to remember them the following way (although you do need to know the "proper" names above for the written exam)

Suck
Squeeze
Bang
Blast (or "Blow")

How jets and pistons create these stages is much different. Jets use an almost seamless process, where one stage flows in a line from one to the other. Pistons do them in separate stages, one for each stroke of the piston. This is why 4-stroke engines are called that: one stage of the 4 cycles occurs during each stroke.

Since most people learn to fly in piston airplanes like Cessnas and Pipers, almost all of the time spent on the engine power cycle is spent in ground school on the piston cycle. Unfortunately, it often comes down to rote memorization, since it's hard to see inside an engine to watch what is actually going on.

That all changed recently, however. Thanks to the wonders of high-def, super-slow-mo cameras and YouTube, there are videos that show this process as it happens. Two very good ones were in my email this week.

The first one is by one of YouTube's better channels, Smarter Every Day. They have close to 5 million subscribers for a reason. In the following video, he visits a couple of people who have created a see-through piston engine, gives a review of the basics of an internal combustion engine, and films it in action. If you want to skip the setup, just go to about 4 minutes in:

The second one is by Warped Perception, a channel that films things in unusual ways. It uses the same sort of video equipment and engine, but focuses more on trying different types of fuel to see how it looks different inside the combustion chamber:

These exact principles govern the Lycoming or Continental engine under the hood of your training aircraft. Even if you already understand the power cycle, they're still amazing videos to watch.

See you next Wednesday!

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