Land and Hold Short

Last year I made a series of errors during a flight from RHV to Black Rock that resulted in a gear up landing on a dry lake bed in front of a few hundred people.

I will post a better write up of the air races later.  Sorry.

For those of you who don’t care to read the the rest of this review I will sum it up for you,

The Eflybook is a great idea, but falls short of expectations.

I honestly can not understand why ARINC decided to put their name behind this. It is a poorly written software package, based on a first generation hardware platform. The Iliad is a fantastic concept, and I love reading books on it. I consider it a must have for an avid reader that wants to have his/her collection of books available anywhere. However, the Eflybook carries a 2x premium over buying direct from IREX, and I just don’t see how the Eflybook software is worth it.

Hits:

• Stores all the plates, and certainly does it in far less space.
• Updates via the Internet (see misses)
• Open Source operating system on the device (Linux and BusyBox).
• Will open any PDF file, works great for trip packs from online flight planners. Honestly, I think is the most useful thing it has to offer. Buy the Iliad directly from IREX, and forget the Eflybook if you are already downloading from online planners.
• The IREX IDS service shows promise, and could be used for updates to the charts should MyAirplane.com choose to do this.

Misses:

• My first time using it, it crashed during an approach (under the hood, not IMC thankfully!)
• The box has wireless, but the updates need to be written onto a SD card from a computer.
• AFD “coming soon” for a year.
• Must use the Wacom stylus to enter airport identifier into the tablet. Easy on the ground, but not so easy to do in the clag.
• Enroute chart viewer is worthless, I can’t picture any time this would be usable, in the air, or on the ground.
• Screen is not quite large enough to view the as-is NACO plates, need an easy way to rescale, or possibly present the information differently.
• No update to reader software on the tablet for quite some time, with numerous complaints on the forums about promised features never delivered.
• No easy way to flip between STARS and Approaches.
• E-Paper is hard to read in the dark, could use a built in LED to illuminate it.
• The Iliad downloads firmware updates automatically, but updates to the Iliad firmware are delayed for Eflybook users.

Overall: I would not recommend buying the Eflybook until the Eflybook Reader application is improved, MyAirplane.Com delivers on the features it has been promised, and the application has more of its bugs worked out.

Links:

• Mobileread IREX Forum (Great Discussions on the HW and SW)
• IREX Technolgies (They make the hardware)

Today I assisted with tracking and recovery of a balloon launched by the BioLaunch program run by the Space Systems Developlment Laboratory (SSDL) at Stanford. I will sum it up in 1 word. FUN! The balloon had a pair of APRS beacons, and we had a receiver in the plane, as well as several of them on the ground.

We attempted to intercept the balloon on liftoff from a field in Galt, CA, but do to a communications problem, the balloon lifted off a few minutes before we got there, and was at 6000ft (we were at 4000ft). I was pretty confident in my ability to climb with the balloon for a short period of time, but there was just no way I was able to catch up with it. I did see the balloon for a short period of time, but Cylinder #5 was getting too hot while I was trying to climb at 80 kts. I did however get 1700fpm for a while, that was pretty neat. We returned to TCY in defeat, and waited for the package to start on its way down. The Stanford students were able to get a visual on the balloon using a telescope, so we watched it climb, while receiving the occasional APRS packet. The last packet received put the balloon at 68442 ft, and a few minutes later we saw the balloon pop on the telescope, and within minutes it was down to 42822 ft.

We launched and headed immediately for the predicted touch down spot, which was about 10 miles east of Byron. At one point we received a APRS packet that put the balloon 2000ft directly on top of us, but we did not have a visual on it (it had a bright orange and green 6ft parachute, but no luck). We started a search of the fields in the area south of the last received APRS packet at 2736ft, checking each field and flying in a circular pattern around them. About 30-40 minutes into the search, we spotted the parachute on the ground in a field and started guiding the ground vehicles to the field.

Stratofox Photos

Stanford Photos

Mission Accomplished, I can’t wait for B07D.

PIC: 2.0

IMG_0916

Date: 06/30/06Views: 654

Last summer I managed to gear up my 210 in the middle of the Black Rock Desert and the insurance company and I agreed to have the plane trucked to a well known repair shop to have the (minor) repairs done. Because the prop hit the ground during the “roll out” the engine needed to have a tear down inspection. This really didn’t make much sense since the engine was at TBO anyway, so I opted to buy a new engine instead. The insurance company was very reasonable, and paid me what they would be out on the inspection. They also paid for part of the hanging of the new engine, so I would only be responsible for any extra work that was required to hang this engine vs. my old engine. I also decided to overhaul a few parts under the cowl, as well as have a few ADs on the plane taken care of.

The estimate I received from this well known and reputable shop was about $13,752k. This included overhaul of the Turbo and all its components (waste gate, controllers, etc). The only thing not included on this estimate was the inspection of my exhaust system, this was a blank item and the mechanic was supposed to get back to me on what that was going to cost before proceeding.

Fast forward 4 months, and a dozen phone calls to the shop where they never mentioned any extra work or parts. The plane was flown back to RHV and left for me. Yay! Many hours of rejoice. Final bill, $23,839.60. Yikes!@#$%. Why the big difference? 5 Months later, and many phone calls, I still can not tell you. I have had many conversations with the owner of the shop, and every time, he can not tell me where all this extra money was spent. This does not include the work he performed on the plane, that was already paid for by the insurance company. He did not log any of this work in my logs, nor did he file the 337 with the FAA for that work. On top of that, when the FAA asked him about this, he lied point blank and said the paperwork was filed. The 4 months I flew the plane before I realized the paperwork was not in order is possibly illegal, however the FSDO does tell me that since the mechanic flew the plane for 5 hours, including delivering it to me, they would not take any action against me since I could reasonable assume everything was in order.

At this point I have paid him $7500 of the estimated $13752, and retrieved my log books from him with the help of the local police. The FSDO had my regular mechanic inspect the work on the plane and sign it off saying it was done in a airworthy fashion, so the plane is now legal to fly again after a 2 month down time.

We’ve been unable to agree on any sort of compromise. At this point I do have some damage history on the plane I am unable to document repairs of. More then likely, those undocumented repairs devalue the plane by over $20k. He has also told me he will not provide my log entries and 337 forms if I only pay him the estimated amount. I have tried getting the insurance company involved, and they did speak with him on my behalf but they did not have any luck with him. This is before I knew about the missing log entries.

These sorts of things make me appreciate the good honest mechanics out there. I have been using the same IA for about 8 years now (I even followed him to a new shop), and I have never received a surprise bill from him. It is really too bad he didn’t think he had the manpower to do a major repair like a gear up (I asked, he thought it would just take him too long to get done since he is already booked up months in advance as it is).

What should I do? Pay? How much?

Guster Livermore air show 043

Date: 04/27/07Views: 610

I met Doug at LVK today to have a burger and watch some Warbirds land. The planes were delayed, and Doug had to have his plane back to WVFC by 3pm, so we flew to PAO to drop his rental off, and then flew back to LVK. I needed the landing practice anyway, I’m a bit rusty after my 2 month hiatus from flying (more on that some other time!).

The Collings Foundation tours the country with some of its bombers, and this year they have a B-17, a B-24, and a B-25. On our way back to LVK we heard 2 of the planes (the B-17 and the B-25) check in with LVK tower. We were cleared to land on 25R right in front of them. Needless to say we had a large audience watching us land. Did I mention the winds? 11 knots gusting to 18 across the runway. I managed to get us on the ground without the rescue crew being called out and Doug jumped out of the plane on the taxiway to get some shots of the planes as they did a overhead approach. Pics posted soon!

PIC: 1.5hrs