Jul 10, 2021
I actually did a flight on July 7th, but It was only one lap around the pattern. It was 95°F here, and I knew I wouldn't be in the right mind to continue my flight as I got to the traffic pattern after take off, so I just called crosswind, and headed back to land, a whopping 0.3 hour flight time! So that's what just one melting traffic pattern loop looks like!
Anyway! My father was excited to fly with me, we took N2114F up. We intended to go from KTTA-SDZ-KRCZ, but it was still hot, so we decided to just do SDZ and back.
We take off, and do one lap around the pattern - I want this to be my standard when I bring new people up, it gives them a way out to say "GET ME OFF PLEASE". After that one pattern lap we headed towards SDZ. It was a really smooth flight, we flew at 4500 feet to the VOR, then tried to get to 7500 feet on the way back (We had time, I wanted to climb) but it was just SO HOT that we ended up just staying at 5500feet, the climb was taking forever!
When we were 10mi from the airport, it started getting super busy (BBQ day at the airport!), so we decided to waste some time in the practice area and I did a steep turn for him to waste more time. After that the traffic died down so we headed back to KTTA. I did a touch and go, a regular landing, and then being that there was no other traffic, practiced an emergency engine out procedure (what I failed on my checkride) and that went smoothly.
So nothing super special about this trip, besides it was my first time flying my father.
Jun 14, 2021
Today was my first flight with my wife, Lauren. She is my first real passenger ("technically your DPE is, blah blah"). I didn't know what to expect, I knew she had been up in planes before - she's gone skydiving, something I will probably never do. I'd rather be the person to fly the "JUMPERS AWAY OVER X" than be a jumper. I don't want to make this entire blog about Lauren, although we all know I could. So I will try to keep it 50% airplane talk!
We scheduled a 12pm flight, with an estimate of me probably taking off at 12:30 (took off at 12:40 for pattern and 12:49 to KDAN), Cross country from KTTA to KDAN and back to KTTA. I wanted to fly at 4500'msl there, and 5500'msl back, following the East is Odd +500 and West is Even +500, because it was a 358°ish flight there and a 178°ish back (that's from airport center to airport center, but I did some cloud avoidance, a few times (like, the whole time) so I was pretty off course, but ForeFlight will get me there. I brought my Stratux because I remembered that N8116J didn't like bluetooth and ADSB so my iPad wouldn't connect to the plane. I also bought a new GPYes unit that I wanted to try out, and it worked great, no more magnetic GPS sticking to random magnetic things, everything is self contained in my Stratux!
Wind was good for RWY21, so I had to taxi via Taxiway Alfa to get there, still not a fan of how Wings of Carolina has us do a runup off the taxiway, something I need to get used to at a busier airport than KEEN. Well, we took off and I did a loop of the pattern - I wanted to gauge Lauren's stomach, and my flying abilities to make sure she was okay to fly. The Pressure Density was 2,800'-2,900, which for a 255'msl runway, oooof. After the second takeoff we flew out to the traffic pattern then departed to the north! We climbed up to 3000, the cloud layer was about 3800 so I chose to stay under it, vs fly over the top and chance not having an opening. It was pretty bumpy - there's a convective SIGMET over like the whole east coast - so I knew it was going to be a little bumpy. Lauren was taking pictures the whole time (she took 47! I'll share some) and got some fun ones of me. In my pictures I look like I'm super concentration face, but she got a couple of me smiling.
Nearing KDAN I realized that the CTAF was Actually a CTAF (Common Traffic Advisory Frequency) and that KDAN had a tiny little tower. I called 15 to the south (because I heard a lot of traffic) and the nice person on the frequency came in and said something like 16J there's two planes on the taxiway, one in the pattern and one just departing, which now I understand why people come on our Unicom back at KEEN and keep saying "KEEN Unicom please advise". Well we got closer I said I was flying over midfield to make a tear drop into the downwind. I did as such, flew over at 2500', did the tear drop, down to 1500' and landed. We then taxied to the FBO and shut down [my outside camera picked THREE seconds after I shut down to die, perfect timing]. The nice ramp assistant gave us a ride to the FBO in the golf cart so we could pee.
Gatorade passed through our system completely we headed out to the plane. We got some weird looks from the people chilling in the FBO (Enterprise people, and like a grandfather? idk) for wearing masks. Yes we're both vaccinated, but I sure as hell don't know if the random people I run into are, gotta keep you safe!
We took a few pictures, and then went and started up the plane. When I was doing my run up, I didn't have the mixture full rich, was still leaned for ground ops, so when I did the mag drop I heard a backfire, was like OH SHIT and realized I was leaned. Put in full mixture, and did the mag drops again, ~150rpm loss and we were good to go. Lesson learned here is even if there are shortcuts for when the engine is hot, and you just land for 10 minutes, probably good to go through the full checklist even just skimming it.
We took down taxiway Alfa again and got to RWY02. Side note, KEEN has 02-20 and 14-32, this airport KDAN has 02-20 and 13-31 so when I came upon it, I was like "holycrap I feel like I'm home". Anyway - when we got to the end of the taxiway there were two entrances only like 100ft apart to the runway, it was weird. We had to wait like 10 minutes to take off, because there were 4 planes doing touch and goes and they were perfectly spaced to give me like NO time to take off. I know how long of a runway I need to be safe, but with a 2900' Density Altitude, I know I needed a longer ground roll, so finding time to slip in to where I knew I could take off was annoying. Finally one of the guys on downwind said "Plane waiting at 02, I'm extending my downwind a little bit to give you some time to take off, so I rolled out, thanked him and took off to the north a bit. I extended my upwind and gave the pattern a large buffer, then took off to the south.
Lauren seemed to be getting tired by like 75% of the trip back so maybe next time I'll take the plane for four hours, and then we can take a full hour between legs, instead of 15 minutes. I did three hours, because I planned for a longer break between - we even bought zucchini bread I made last night! - but I threw in that extra pattern lap before we left the airport, so that added like 15 minutes, and I couldn't find the flight book so that took some extra time.
When we were on the way back to Raleigh Exec, we saw another plane like 500' below us so I flew above them and circled past them then tried to come in behind them but I have no idea where they went when I flew over them, my ADSB decided to not pick them up, so I did a larger right turn so I knew I'd avoid them. It was weird and I'll have to check FlightRadar24 playback to see - but it's not up now for some reason. After that steep turn I entered the downwind and landed. We landed with 2 minutes to spare, but it took a few minutes to shut down, and tie down. Glad someone wasn't right after us (if someone was I would not have gone as far of course). Covered the plane, paid the $260 for 2.3 hours of flying, put the book away and headed home.
The return trip took about exactly the same length. We left KTTA at 12:49, landed at KDAN at 1:36 (49min). Then with waiting for takeoff, we left KDAN at 2:07 and landed at 2:57(50min). On the flight back, it was a bit bumpier, the clouds were still scattered at about 3800 but some were darker than others so I flew around them. I wonder if when I finally fly IFR if I'll fly a lot straighter, instead of just "oops avoid that cloud!" that remains to be seen.
Jun 07, 2021
I can finally rent planes through Wings of Carolina! Flew today and the CFI passed me.
I was a bit nervous about the North Carolina weather so I text the instructor to see if we could leave an hour early for the controlled airspace portion of the checkout. He said let's shoot for 3:30, we took off at 4 because he gave me a bit of ground instruction on the systems in N8116J. (Also we couldn't figure out the radio, so had to push a few buttons to get comms working. It seems when 16J was in the shop, they had undone all the COM1 COM2 selection buttons, which caught us off guard.)
We took off, then flew south to Fayetteville (KFAY), Luke showed me the auto pilot, how to climb, descend, turn to a heading, so we enabled that on the flight to KFAY. 20 miles north, called approach, I fumbled my radio A LOT. I definitely need more controlled airspace practice. ATC Talks FAST. It's hard to fly the plane and copy things down, I think I need to start using a pen and paper, not Foreflight for ATC remarks, it'll be much easier. I put a FieldNotes book in my flight bag the other day, time to use it! After a few more fumbles (I copied back the altimeter, not the altitude, talk about stress!) I was cleared to land. Squawked 0210 and landed on runway 22 almost straight in, I took a right handed base, it was weird! There were no commercial flights so they were at a lull of traffic which is why I just got the RWY22 CLEAR TO LAND. Unfortunately (or Fortunately..) LIVE ATC and KFAY approach are down so I have no recording of my fumbles. Would have been nice to hear them again so I could learn.
We landed, taxied back to runway 22, and then said we were taking off VFR. Squawked 0212 now and departed, stayed runway heading until they said turn right heading 320 staying at or below 2500. Then a bit later they said fly flight plan heading I turned 355 and then we finally got out of their airspace. There's two airports there, KFAY and Simmons Army Airfield (KFBG), so their airspace looks like a cell dividing, two round circles and of course we bisected it the long way.
Out of their airspace Luke said "I have the controls", then banked hard 60 degrees right, and pointed down. He said "If you're ever VFR and inadvertently hit IMC weather, and get into an unusual attitude, hit this button [LVL] and presto, the wings will level." which of course they did. Auto pilot is still wild to me, I never flew with it in N43337, so it's going to take a lot to get used to, but I'm sure I'll start loving it.
We then called 10mi on the 45 for RWY22, did a touch and go, (I came in a little higher than I wanted I still need to learn the sight pictures for this airport, but oof it's FLAT still.) took off did the pattern once more and did a full stop.
On this flight, I learned the GPS a little bit more, the touch screen menu will make selecting comms so much easier, glad they have these consistently in all their planes. I also learned AutoPilot, I need to find a flight sim model with this auto pilot (I did get a Logitech/Saitek Multi Panel with AutoPilot on it this weekend, so good timing!) that I can learn how the IAS, ALT, VS, HDG buttons work better. HDG and ALT I get, those just hold heading and alt, but airspeed and vertical speed climbs are still magical!
Luke then signed me off, so I'm clear to rent any of the PA-28-161 that they have at Wings of Carolina. I told him I want to learn how to fly the Mooney M20J soon, I'm excited to get my complex endorsement.
May 27, 2021
I was able to sneak in a cooler morning flight in N8080A. I took my motorcycle to the airport, but forgot my yoke mount so I was iPad-less. We had to wait for a long while to get fuel because the services truck was filling the HU-16 that had arrived a few days beforehand. There was also a C-27 taking off, super cute, Feels like a baby C-130!
We went up, took a few minutes to do another 45° bank turn. I did that a little better, less shaky. Then he had me practice some emergency descents. I didn't do as well at those as I should. I need faster ADM skills. That will come with time, one of my big weaknesses is emergency things, so it's one thing I'm excited to start practicing.
After the emergency procedures, he had me practice rudder control. Putting in enough rudder while turning to hold on target before the turn and rolling out while pointing at a target - but rolling out. I'm much better at rolling out than rolling in, so I'm excited to have a new procedure to practice. One of the things I like a lot about this CFI giving me the checkout to borrow planes, is that he's young. He doesn't have these really old ways of thinking about things and I appreciate that.
After the higher altitude stuff, he wanted to see some short-field landings. The first time in the pattern we had to extend our downwind A LOT, there were three people on long finals, so our downwind was funky and long. I'm still getting used to this plane and the runway so by the time we were about to touch down, the other plane in front of us was still on the runway (albeit turning onto taxiway A3 a mile down the runway) so he said go around, as technically the other plane was still on the runway and things could go wrong even with that far separation.
Did a go around and the next two short fields were okay. We got off at Taxiway A2 I think, and then took taxiway A back to the ramp. When we got to the intersection with A and A1 there was another plane getting ready to cross the threshold, but it was a Cessna 172… high wing! They didn't notice that there was a taildragger apparently norad coming on a 45° final, not straight in and almost rolled into the runway. Luckily the CFI I was with shouted STOP on the CTAF and they stopped, seconds before an incursion! EEEEK!
Wrapped up, and planned our third checkout ride, it'll be down to KFAY, a controlled field. Should be on June 2nd and then I'll be cleared to rent the planes and feel like a full member of the Wings of Carolina!
Unfortunately no GPX file, but I have a screenshot.
May 26, 2021
On April 26th, I took my first flight as a Private Pilot. I was flying with a CFI for a checkout to rent planes from the Wings of Carolina club, so the flight was nothing really to talk much about. It was really hot, and my first flight in almost 5 months, so I was definitely rusty.
Mostly using this flight as a stepping stone to try out the GPX viewer§. I flew a PA28-161 - Warrior II - N8080A for One hour. Flew from KTTA, up north west a bit, did a few steep turns, then back to KTTA.
§ - Not ported over, no JS on this blog.
Jan 28, 2015
When I worked at Propel Marketing, we used to outsource static websites to a third party vendor, and then host them on our server. It was our job as developers to pull down the finished website zip file from the vendor, check it to make sure they used the proper domain name, (they didn't a lot of the time,) and make sure it actually looks nice. If these few criteria were met, we could launch the site.
Part of this process was SCPing the directory to our sites server. The sites server was where we had Apache running with every custom static site as a vhost. We would put the website in /var/www/vhosts/domain.name.here/ and then create the proper files in sites-available and sites-enabled (more on this in another entry). After that the next step was to run a checkconfig and restart Apache.
Here's where it all went wrong one day. If I can recall correctly, my boss was on vacation so he had me doing a bit of extra work and launching a few more sites than I usually do. Not only that, but we also had a deadline of the end of the month which was either the next day, or the day after. I figure I'll just setup all mine for two days, and then have some extra time the next day for other things to work on. So I started launching my sites. After each one, I would add the domain it was supposed to be at into my /etc/hosts file and make sure it worked.
I was probably half way done with my sites, and suddenly I ran into one that didn't work. I checked another one to see if maybe it was just my network being stupid and not liking my hosts file, but no, that wasn't the problem. Suddenly, EVERY SITE stopped working on this server. Panicking, I delete the symlink in sites-enabled and restart Apache. Everything works again. I then proceed to put that site aside, maybe something in the php files breaks the server, who knows, but I have other sites I can launch.
I setup the next site and the same thing happens again, no sites work. Okay, now it's time to freak out and call our sysadmin. He didn't answer his phone, so I call my boss JB. I tell him the problem and he says he will reach out to the sysadmin and see what the problem is, all the while I'm telling JB "It's not broken broken, it just doesn't work, it's not my fault" etc etc. A couple hours later, our sysadmin emails us back and says he was able to fix the problem.
It turns out, there's a hard limit to the number of files your system can have open per user, and this was set to 1000 for the www-data user. The site I launched was coincidentally the 500th site on that server, each of them having an access.log and an error.log. These two files apparently constantly open on each site for apache to log to. He was able to change www-data's ulimit to a lot higher, (I don't recall now what it was) and that gave a lot more leeway in how many sites the sites server could host.
Jan 13, 2015
When I worked at Propel Marketing, my dev team used to have presentations on things they loved. I love the Python debugger. It's very useful and I believe a proper understanding of how to use a debugger, will make you a better programmer. Here is a presentation on the debugger I made for my team. https://prezi.com/cdc4uyn4ghih/python-debugger/
Jan 09, 2015
I had a friend complain that he had to keep adding his ssh key to his ssh-agent every time he rebooted. I have a really easy bit of shell code you can put into your .bashrc or your .zshrc file:
SSHKEYFILE=/path/to/your/ssh/key/file
ssh-add -l | grep -q $SSHKEYFILE
RC=$?
if [ $RC -eq 1 ]
then
ssh-add -t 86400 $SSHKEYFILE
echo "Added key internal to keychain."
fi
This will check every time your bash or zsh rc file is sourced for your key in the currently added keys, and if it's not, it will add it.
This has the benefit of not requiring you to put in your password every time you connect to a remote machine if you password your ssh keys (which you should).
Oct 01, 2014
Recently I decided I wanted to learn Java again. I last programmed in Java when I was in College and that was the main language they taught in. I wouldn't say I was a great Java developer, although I completed every Java course well enough to get an A or better.
I want to relearn Java because for the past four years I have primarily focused on Python. While it is a great language, I feel I need a change from what I'm focusing on now with primarily web based programming.
I decided to refresh myself with Java and read a "Java for Python developers" guide, which was a great refresher. After that I sat around wondering what to program, inspiration wasn't coming quickly. I settled on a SSH Configuration Manager, which is something I've wanted for a while now.
This Configuration Manager will read in your ~/.ssh/config files, and show you what hosts you have in a GUI interface. The great part of it will be that you can also create new ssh configurations, without having to remember every little detail. There will be a lot of help tooltips, and pre-fills as well. I have a pretty basic idea of what I want it to look like. Ideally a list on the far left with +/- buttons to add a new Host, and to the right of that will be another hierarchy list of all the key groups you can change, with the most common (that I or people I talk to) being in a "General" or "Common" list. To the right of that will be the actual keys and values you change. I think I would like to be able to "favorite" keys that you use frequently. This way when you create a new host entry, you can quickly fill out your usual configurations be it only adding an IdentityFile and User. Another feature I thought of would be copying/templating, for example being able to create a new "work based server" configuration by just copying one you already have.
Some of the options will be a bit tricky, a couple of them are along the lines of allowing "yes", "no", "ask", or an integer, and I haven't figured out exactly how I want to manage that yet.
Currently I have a model that only has getters/setters and toString support, there's a lot of them so it's already a 1050 line file last I checked. Next time I work on this project I want to start with data validation and learning how to write tests in Java. I think learning good BDD or TDD habits while learning a "new" language would definitely benefit me.
Jun 21, 2014
A lot of times when I stop at someone's computer and help them in the terminal, I use a Readline command and people say "How the heck did you do that?"
Let me first backup and explain what Readline is. From the GNU Readline Documentation - "The GNU Readline library provides a set of functions for use by applications that allow users to edit command lines as they are typed in." By default, Readline is set up in Emacs mode, no you don't have to have an extra four fingers to use Readline, most of the commands are simple.
Here are a couple of the commands I use daily:
Movement
- To move to the beginning of a line, you press C-a
- To move to the end of a line you press C-e
Killing and Yanking
- To cut the rest of the line from where your cursor is, to the end, you press C-k
- To delete one word you press C-w
- To paste either of the two previous back you can press C-y
Miscellaneous
- To clear the screen and get to a fresh start, you can press C-l
- To end your session you can send a C-d (This will send an end of file character)
- To search for a command you typed recently, press C-r and start typing, it will search backwards. C-r again will search for an earlier match.
- The inverse of C-r is C-s, they function the same.
- To open your $EDITOR to edit the current shell command you wish to write, press C-x C-e
Finally, don't forget about C-c. While not specifically Readline, it's very useful because it sends the SIGINT signal to the program, which if just on the command line, will not execute the line you have type, and give you a new line with nothing on it. A nice clean start.
To find out a lot more, read the documentation at the Readline Commands Docs I even learned some things while writing this up, apparently pressing C-x $ will list off all the possible usernames. Good to know, and good to always keep learning.