Texas Flyer 2010-05-29

I am on Southwest 461, Houston Hobby to LAX. Later I will board EVA Air BR015 to Taipei, and later again on to Hong Kong.

I completed my Seminole Multi-Engine Review Checkout last Monday at Anson Air, Sugarland (KSGR).

Over the week I gained some very useful IFR experience. The Seminole N2094C is equipped with a KLN 89B. A quite capable GPS system. The countdown display to the next point makes it very easy to work out when to descend to reach crossing altitudes. I backed up the routes with my GPS296 for situational awareness and a sanity check, and any appropriate VORs. I received some instruction on using the KLN 89B for approaches. I'd used the KLN 89B before but only for the en-route flight phase.

• Tuesday.
  • VFR (with flight following) to Fort Worth Spinks solo.
  • IFR back to Sugarland via the Fort Worth SID to CLL and the Blubell arrival and a visual solo.
  • Night Review with an Instructor.
    • Night departure from Sugarland.
    • 2 x Landings and departures at Wharton (KARM).
    • Landing and Departure at Houston Hobby (KHOU).
    • 2 x Landings and departures at Sugarland.
• Wednesday (with my Sister as pax.).
  • IFR from Sugarland to Brenham (11R), RNAV rwy 16 to the FAF where I cancelled IFR. We flew around Lake Summerville then landed at Brenham for Lunch in the 50's themed restaurant. Good food, well worth a visit.
  • IFR from Brenham to Georgetown (KGTU), Visual approach.
  • IFR from Georgetown to Sugarland. A very interesting visual approach: held at 3,000 by Approach until 2.5 NM final on runway 17 due to the Citation ahead of me orbiting ahead and a departure below us at 2,000 ft. The circuit was busy so to save more disruption to the pattern I continued with a straight in. No problem! The Seminole descends well with the Gear down and throttled back at full fine. I needed to land long in any case to avoid the wake of the Citation that preceded me. I picked up the power again on short final to stabilize at a normal descent rate before landing after the touchdown point of the Citation.

• Thursday (with my Sister as pax.).

  • IFR from Sugarland to Valley International, (KHRL). I flew the ILS 17R to get down through the scattered cloud with a visual break to 17L.
  • IFR from Valley International to Laredo, (KLRD) with a visual approach.
  • IFR from Laredo to Sugarland. ATC gave me a totally different but shorter route from filed which was good experience for me. I'd filed via SAT but went via CRP.

• Friday, I took the day off.

Flying High Again 2010-05-21

I'm on Southwest 368, San Diego to Houston, Hobby. It is 17:45 (California Time), and out of the window on my Left I can see Gillespie Field, KSEE; my base for the last week. A few hours earlier I was on approach to Gillespie Runway 27R PIC in a Cessna Citation II returning from Prescott, Arizona, KPRC. I went there for Steak and Eggs. A bargain at about USD 4,000. I have just redefined the USD 100 hamburger! Type rating courses and check rides major on flying the aircraft when things fail and maneuvers. After finishing my Type Rating Course I decided to get some experience flying the Citation on a normal flight. It was worth every cent.

I completed my Cessna Citation I/II FAR 141 Type Rating course at Jet Aeronautical yesterday, 20 May 2010. This was the missing objective that I had mentioned in a earlier post.

I received excellent instruction at Jet Aeronautical. I recommended Jet Aeronautical unconditionally. I'd had some TSA trouble in April on my last trip to the US (outside of my control; an apparent change in TSA requirements rendered my fingerprints invalid requiring re-fingerprinting and delaying my Flight Training). Steve at Jet Aeronautical went out of his way to re-schedule my Flight Training allowing me to complete the course as soon as I was able to return: thanks Steve. Jet Aeronautical offer a well paced course and I'll say it again: excellent classroom and practical instruction.

Over the weekend I'll try and relax. On Monday I have a Piper Seminole Checkout at Anson Air. Tuesday to Friday I hope to rent a Seminole to build multi-engine hours.

I have a C-500 Type Rating!

Pastime Paradise 2010-05-06

I tested xdmshutdown with Debian 5.0.4 today and it works as expected. I have updated the xdmshutdown page to show an example /etc/X11/xdm/Xstartup file. My minimal Debian install now includes Tk/TCL after an apt-get -u install tk.

Who Needs Information - May 2010

With a few days spare and bored with killing Greeks and Macedonians in RTW Gold I have been experimenting more with programs that organize information. Thailand is more or less shut, my Philippine validations lapsed, so nowhere to fly.

Zim is one program that I've spent some time getting used to. It lacks some features (automatic index of child pages for each parent) that I'd like but overall it is a useful personal wiki. I'm using the Macports version: reasonably stable. The HTML export works well. I'm mainly using Zim to support my aviation studies (tooling up for my trip to USA).

I have installed a minimal Debian 5 in VMWare. I did the normal install from a debian-504-i386-netinst.iso but then didn't add any groups of programs so that I started with the base system. This means that it only has the programs that I want. So far:

• xorg
• xdm
• fluxbox
• nedit
• diction
• links
• links2 (first time using this, and I like it)
• zim
• rpncalc
• dc
• ruby
• kernel headers
• make
• gcc 4.1
• psmisc
• plus of course what these depend on.

I installed VMWare Tools so that I could work with a reasonable resolution. Tools compiled and ran without any errors so I have a screen that almost fills my Macbook Pro screen.

I'll need to root around to find some of my old scripts to get it all as I want. I might even try getting xdmshutdown working again. I have another working Linux on my old desktop drive so I might get that up and running again as well.

I have a running BeOS 5, and a Haiku to play with in VMWare so I'll not be bored. But I plan to leave that fun until after I return from the USA.

Going To California - Mid April 2010

So it has been a while since I posted, but as usual, I have been busy. I'll try and catch up.

I went to California, USA for a few weeks in April and May. I had two aviation goals: I achieved one and half. I'll document the half later but the one I'll do now.

I completed modules 1 and 2 of Rich Stowell's Emergency Maneuver Training (EMT) course with CP Aviation in Santa Paula earning myself a Wings credit in the process. I was feeling a bit sick the for the first two days but after getting most of the Spins out of the way I started feeling better. EMT is worth every cent done any time and this course is very well constructed and paced. I received excellent instruction.

We stayed at the Santa Paula Inn, which I'm very happy to recommend. The food at the Mupu Grill around the corner on Main Street was always good, again I recommend it if you are in the area.

Incredibly Lex Rooker was staying at the Santa Paula Inn as well so now I know Lex. He was very generous and gave me some of his excellent Pemmican and dried meat. I was inspired enough to dry some meat myself when I got back to Hong Kong. I'm not as good a butcher as Lex so my Jerky is more flayed than cut but it tastes good and handy for taking as a meal to work.

We spent the rest of the time based in La Mesa. I'm going back to California later this month to finish up my second goal.