On a Jet Airplane

SightSpeed Adds Videoconferencing To
Mac, Linux

Campho Advance: Game Boy
Videoconferencing

Although it was announced in September of last year, this "Campho Advance" module, as in 'Camera Phone,' for the Game Boy Advance is finally ready to hit the streets of Japan. It's not much more than a hack, with an 0.11-megapixel camera and only 5 frames per second sent over the phone line, but it will allow expensive, if fun videoconferencing using a regular old GameBoy (SP or plain Advance -- the image flips depending on how you put the cartridge in). Sadly, there's not much chance this $175 will grace our shores, but really, for the price, would you want it to?
Read - GBA Video Phone [TechJapan]

Airplane Parachutes

Giant parachutes help small planes in distress float down to safety: I saw a bit on The Discovery Channel about these once. They started on ultralights, and I watched home video of a guy popping his plane's chute after a massive structural failure caused both wings to collapse. Very impressive.

There's a good picture with this article that will help you understand the basic concept.

The company's most advanced parachute now can accommodate nearly 4,000 pounds. While small planes can weigh up to 2,000 pounds and cruise at about 175 mph, regional jets weigh 80,000 pounds and fly at more than 500 mph.

That's why Ballistic Recovery Systems is working with NASA — which gave it $670,000 for research — to design a new generation of emergency parachutes that would work on small jets and could be steered by pilots as they drift to the ground.

Polycom expands videoconferencing
product line

Cisco touts new desktop
videoconferencing technology

Tandberg Acquires Tech for IP
Videoconferencing Across Firewalls

Warflying LA -- in-flight trans-plane
videoconferencing!

I went warflying over Los Angeles yesterday with a group of other Wi-Fi nuts and a representative from CNN. We had two planes flying in formation with Netstumbler, Kismet, and Airmagnet running. Plus we performed a video conference during the flight. We think this is the first time anyone has done a plane-to-plane videoconference! And it worked great!

...We flew from Brackett Field in La Verne (a.k.a. Pomona Airport) towards Pacific Palisades. Then we crossed over LAX into Rancho Palos Verdes and Long Beach. Then headed back to Backett. We picked up over 4000 access points while flying at varying altitudes.

Suspicious things I've done on an
airplane

For reference, I am about 5'8", dark black hair and untrimmed beard length about three to four inches. I weigh about 160lbs and have brown skin. I am of Indian descent but am frequently mistaken for Arab. I often wear religious headdress when traveling (a white cotton cap with gold trim).

Here's some of the things I have done on an airplane, and why:

- Speaking a foreign language in hushed tones with other similar males

My language is a variant of Gujarati, with many Arabic vocabulary words. I consider it rude to talk loudly on a plane, since people are sleeping, and prefer to talkin my language with my friends or family if we are discussing personal things because in my experience, people eavesdrop in close quarters.

Airplane versus Minivan

As I plan and pack up for Alaska I have had a couple of offers from guys who wanted to come with me from Boston to Anchorage (we leave Wednesday).  It turns out that the Cirrus SR20 is not that practical for long trips unless you are either very thin or totally friendless.Full fuel is necessary for some of the long legs in the remote regions of Alaska, Yukon, and the Northwest Territories where airports are widely separated and airports that sell fuel are uncommon--mostly you only get fuel at airports that are accessible by road or ship.  With full fuel my old Diamond Star would carry 570 pounds.  The Cirrus has a longer range but the penalty is that it only holds 520 pounds fully fueled and its performance at gross weight is marginal on warm days or at high elevations.  You need a lot of runway and to make sure that you don't need to outclimb any terrain.

The airplane isn't any fun without Alex in the back seat.  Alex needs his Science Diet Nature's Best, which isn't widely available, plus some other accessories.  Dog+food is about 100 lbs. total.  The plane needs a towbar, canopy cover, and tie-down ropes at 20 lbs.  For navigation one needs paper charts and approach plates for a total of at least 20 lbs.  Survival equipment is required by statute (until 2000 or so the kit was required include a gun and ammunition) and a full tent, mattress pad, and sleeping bag is really a good idea for forced landings as well as impromptu camping when hotels are full or not dog-friendly.  That's about 35 lbs. together.  You want some electronics in the airplane, such as headsets, EPIRB (the emergency locator transmitter that Cirrus includes in the airframe is an ancient 121.5 MHz design, which is not very effective for getting rescued), and maybe a little Iridium phone.  That's maybe 10 lbs. put together.  If I want to take a camera and some clothing and my 195 lb. carcass it looks as though I will have only about 100 lbs. left over for a human passenger.  If I want to take a little folding bike that comes down to 70 lbs. spare capacity.

How does a minivan compare?  A 2005 Toyota Sienna has a "curb weight" of 4120 lbs., 2000 lbs. more than the Cirrus.  Its gross vehicle weight is 5690 for a "payload" of 1570 (the curb weight includes full fuel).

Jerky Pictures and Sound Are History.
Videoconferencing Is All Grown Up

Jerky Pictures and Sound Are History.
Videoconferencing Is All Grown Up.

Seeing the family over the Internet
Videoconferencing attracts growing
number of users

Better Videoconferencing Requires Less
Computer Network Jitter, New Software
Tools

Fair Summary of Airplane, Airport Wi-Fi

Man Found Dead in Wheel Well of Airplane

A short trip in a small airplane

Friday, March 26:  BED to GAI plus some training.  Stop at TEB for lunch with Lynn and Olivia.  Stay in Bethesda with parents.

Sunday:  GAI to Oklahoma City (KPWA has the cheap gas)

Monday, March 29: to http://www.cowboyhalloffame.or g/ at 0900 to see the Bierstadt paintings, in the afternoon to KABQ, stay with Susie Atlas

Tuesday, March 30: to Sedona (KSEZ), 5000' high with a 5000' runway, rent car, maybe we can see the Roden Crater?  Andy says that Jerome, AZ is an interesting town.

Thursday, April 1: to Los Angeles (KSMO), visit new Frank Gehry concert hall, see Harry Gittes

Friday, April 2: can tour the concert hall 9-3 either today or Saturday, all performances sold out but call (323) 850-2000 to check last-minute tix.

Saturday, April 3, 8 pm:  scored tickets on Craigslist (thanks to the kind folks commenting for this idea) for Shostakovich concert at LA Phil.

Sunday, April 4:  to Catalina Island and then at sunset to KMYF in San Diego, dinner with Christopher

Monday, April 5: tour of www.salk.edu (Louis Kahn building, call in advance to reserve, set for 12:00), dinner with Gittes family

Tuesday, April 6:  to Marfa, Texas (http://www.chinati.org gives tours Wednesday-Sunday); stay http://www.hotelpaisano.com/

Wednesday, April 7: tour of Chinati, fly to Huntsville, TX

Thursday, April 8: talk at SHSU.edu, fly to Ft. Worth, TX (KFTW)

Friday, April 9: visit Tadao Ando Modern Art Museum and Japanese Garden, fly to KCHA?

Saturday, April 10: fly to GAI

Sunday, April 11: fly to BED

Open questions for readers:

1. what's a good place between GAI and KPWA to stop for fuel and maybe an airplane museum or something else interesting and close to the airport?
2. where to stay in Sedona, AZ and also a good hotel in Ft. Worth close to the art museum and botanical garden?
3. is it practical to fly to Catalina Island for the day and do anything?

Airplane grounded by praying
pentecostals

One preacher told fellow passengers as the Continental Airlines plane taxied down the runway, "Your last breath on earth is the first one in heaven as long as you are born again and have Jesus in your heart," according to FBI spokesman Paul Moskal. Passengers on the Wednesday flight to Newark, New Jersey told a flight attendant, who alerted the plane's captain, officials said. The captain turned the plane around. "They were sincere in their beliefs and were not malicious," Moskal said by telephone from Buffalo. "In the context of 9/11 it may not have been the best way to promote their religion."

Airplane Workers Used Toilets As Seats
(AP)

Helicopter versus airplane noise

Helicopters that are descending with a fair amount of power produce an annoying sound called "blade slap".  Beginners are cautioned to avoid this condition because it leads to people on the ground complaining to the FAA about "those damned helicopters."  (One can avoid blade slap by lower the collective to descend more positively rather than drifting slightly down.)  A big turbine-powered helicopter flew over Harvard Square the other day, slapping away.  I was with a friend, call her "K", who hasn't spent much time in the work force.  I asked her whether she found the sound annoying.

"Helicopter noise doesn't bother me," K responded.  "I assume that it is a traffic helicopter or some sort of medical emergency.  What I really hate is airplane noise."

Why?

"Whenever I hear a big commercial jet overhead I think about companies sending their employees out for ridiculous meetings with each other where they will show vacuous PowerPoint presentations and have meaningless conversations."

Paper airplane that flaps its wings

Review of my new airplane, the Cirrus
SR20

Thanksgiving Travel by Light Airplane

Alex and I set off from Boston Tuesday on a trip via light aircraft to northern New Jersey, Washington, DC, Norfolk, VA, and Gettysburg, PA.  I try to avoid flying in the clouds and I try to avoid flying in the dark.  But there was a cloud deck over New Jersey at about 2500' above the ground and the weather for Wednesday was forecast to be much worse.  So it was going to be a flight through at least some clouds.  If I had been alone I would have left around noon but a friend wanted a ride for the first leg of the trip and couldn't leave work immediately.  So we didn't take off from Hanscom Air Force Base (Bedford, MA) until after 3 pm.  Knowing that there would be clouds in New Jersey and not wanting to deal with the complex air space around New York City, I filed an instrument flight rules (IFR) plan.  Knowing that it would be dark when we arrived I decided to go to Teterboro airport where they have a precision instrument landing system (ILS) rather than cheaper simpler Essex County Airport where they have smaller runways and no ILS (Essex County is where JFK, Jr. kept his Piper Saratoga; Teterboro is closer to Manhattan but horrifically expensive for fuel and other services).  From the weather forecasts that I'd seen it sounded as though 6000' would put me above the lowest deck of clouds and below the higher decks.  That was indeed true until around Hartford, CT.  Then we were headed straight for the top of a cloud.  The dog in the back didn't budge from his sleeping position but I could feel some tension from the right seat.  "Why aren't we climbing to get above that cloud?" my passenger asked.

An instrument clearance means that Air Traffic Control (ATC) has cleared a block of airspace in front of you of any other airplanes that are also flying under IFR.  The pilot is still responsible for looking for visual flight rules (VFR) airplanes when out of the clouds but it is ATC's job to keep everyone inside the clouds separated from each other.  The system only works if pilots don't deviate from their clearance, which includes an assigned altitude.  This I explained just as we went into the cloud top.  In addition to obscuring one's view of the horizon clouds have a nasty habit of containing turbulent air.  The airplane rocked a bit.

The real problem with flying in clouds in the New England winter is airframe icing.  Whenever the temperature in a cloud is below 0 C there is a risk of ice accumulation.  The temperature, on average, drops 2 degrees C for every 1000' rise in altitude.  So at 6000' it was about 12 degrees colder than on the ground or -2 C.  A simple airplane such as my Diamond Star DA40 does not have heated wings, a heated propeller, rubber boots along the wings that can crack ice, or a system for spreading antifreeze out onto the wings.  It does have "pitot heat" to make sure that the instruments for measuring airframe and altitude don't have their air intakes frozen shut.  I had turned this on just before entering the clouds but it is only helpful for maintaining airplane control while getting out of the ice.  My rule for instrument flying in the winter is that I won't go unless it is above freezing at 3000' above the ground.  Because there are no mountains or other obstacles over the coastal sprawl of the East Coast it is always possible to descend to 3000' without fear of hitting something.

After 15 minutes in the clouds small amounts of ice began to accumulate on the "wing walk" grippy surface next to the cockpit.  Airliners and the one small airplane on the radio (New York Approach) were complaining about ice accumulation and asking for lower altitudes.  The helpful controller said that people a few miles ahead were reporting ice and asked me if I wanted lower.  I was cleared first to 5000' where the temperature was 0 and the ice accumulation stopped but the built-up ice did not come off.  At 4000' the temperature was +2 and the ice quickly disappeared.  We were still inside the clouds at 4:30 pm when the sun was supposed to set so we noticed only a rapid darkening of our surroundings.

Teterboro airport tends to be busy and a day with low clouds when everyone is coming in IFR slows things down considerably.  In theory ATC should have parked us in a holding pattern somewhere.  I would have been responsible for driving around in fairly precise ovals, 1 minute long on the flat side, at some precise point in space.  In practice the New York controllers are so good and they have complete RADAR coverage so to be nice they just gave me vectors that took me northwest of Teterboro until it was my turn to come back in.  With vectors they just say "fly heading 270" and you point the airplane west at the present altitude.  After about a 10-minute vector delay we were turned back in towards Teterboro and cleared down to 3000'.  We didn't break out of the clouds completely until we were at 2000' and heading in towards Runway 19 at Teterboro.  It can be a challenge to locate a runway amidst the clutter of parking lot and street lights in an urban area but the Teterboro runway is 7000' long and has a fancy centerline lighting system.  In any case it isn't necessary to visually identify the runway until several hundred feet above the ground.  An ILS is flown by tracking two radio beams emanating from just in front of the runway.  The localizer beam gives left/right guidance and the glideslope beam gives up/down guidance.  Deviation from the center of these beams is displayed on a little round dial on the airplane dashboard.  Not wanting to trust my perceptions in the dark, I flew the gauges while running the pre-landing checklist.

Once on the ground we taxied off the runway as fast as possible because there was a huge Gulfstream business jet right behind us, moving at more than 2X the speed of the little Diamond Star.  Both of us taxied into Jet Aviation, one of the airport gas stations at Teterboro.  Their parking lot this Tuesday before Thanksgiving was crammed with business jets and turbine-powered helicopters.  There were probably $2-3 billion worth of airplanes on their ramp and in their hangars.  The Jet Aviation staff took our bags from the plane through the palatial terminal into a waiting Hertz rental car, a little over 2 hours after we'd taken off from Bedford and about 3 hours after we'd left Cambridge.

Next stop is Washington, DC.  We have a big family dinner there at 4 pm on Thanksgiving Day but the weather forecast calls for clouds, rain, strong headwinds, turbulence, gusty surface winds, etc.

Airplane 3G mobile phone test successful

Do we all drive like idiots? (airplane
insurance cost)

Just got my bill for next year's airplane insurance.  This is a vehicle valued at $200,000 and a typical minor accident, e.g., striking the propeller on an obstacle or the runway when landing badly, costs about $30,000 to repair.  You can't pause or pull over when flying an airplane.  A few clouds in the sky and you can find yourself disoriented and plunging toward the water like JFK, Jr.  Now that I've got 550 hours of experience in this type of plane and 750 hours of total time AVEMCO has cut my rates to... $1737 with a $1000 deductible and $1 million of liability coverage.

If I were to get a new minivan here in Cambridge, despite my lack of claims and tickets I expect that it would cost about the same to insure, with much lower liability limits.  The minivan costs just over $30,000 with every conceivable option.  A minor accident costs $1000 to fix.  Many people are able to operate an automobile safely despite never having had any formal training.

Conclusion:  To come to a situation where these vehicles are equally costly to insure, we must really be driving like idiots.

[Update:  Okay, I answered my own question by driving to Mt. Wachusett today for some skiing.  Rolling along the familiar ground in a quiet comfortable minivan, belted in and protected by airbags as well, it never crossed my mind that we were moving at a potentially lethal velocity and that death could be just around the corner.  Whereas in the airplane I'm always scared and therefore cautious.]

American versus Canadian airplane
factories

Picking up an airplane in Duluth, Minnesota is a bit different from my last experience picking one up in London, Ontario.  The Canadian factory didn't have a "Guns are banned from these premises" sign out front.  Another difference is that the Cirrus factory has an F-16 parked right next to it, belonging to George W. Bush's beloved Air National Guard.  This F-16 is apparently in need of some maintenance because it has been sitting out for the entire winter.  Only our government can afford to leave a $30 million airplane outside exposed to the harsh northern elements!

One thing that is more or less the same is the miserable weather.  For the morning flight today the weather was 100' overcast and 1/4 mile visibility.  I went to the Duluth Aquarium instead and then to the Richard I. Bong museum in Superior, Wisconsin.  Bong was a Wisconsin farm boy who went on to become the U.S.'s most successful P-38 fighter pilot in the Pacific War, downing more than 40 Japanese planes.  The museum staff, having noticed my coupon from Cirrus, hauled out an old movie on "how to fly your new P-38" from Lockheed circa 1942.  The product was described in the video as a "real fighting man's airplane" and a "man's airplane".  Close-to-the-ground maneuvers were described as "not likely to be a habit-forming."  The plane worked well for Bong, who survived all of his combat missions.  Sadly he was killed while test-flying a jet-powered fighter in 1945.  Major Bong was 24 years old.

How to build a paper airplane that flaps
its wings

homepage.mac.com/keithgreenstein/Flapper/PhotoAlbum41.htmltrack this site | 5 links

NASA Builds Worlds Largest Paper
Airplane

NASA Builds Worlds Largest Paper
Airplane 04/01/2005 07:45 PM

"No-one realized that terrorists could
use an airplane as a weapon, except for
Tom Clancy and NORAD"

"No-one realized that terrorists could
use an airplane as a weapon, except for
Tom Clancy and NORAD" 04/16/2004 09:02 PM

Flatpack furniture crossed with airplane
model kits

Flatpack furniture crossed with airplane
model kits 06/18/2004 09:26 AM
These punch-and-stick chairs ("3 chairs are routed out of one sheet of 8x4 15mm Birch faced ply-wood or MDF. 126 flat pack units will fit on a standard euro pallet. The excess wood is its own packaging. Easily assembled in minutes by the end user. Chairfix was inspired by Airfix model kits and is easily assembled by the consumer useing a mallet") are amazing -- so much smarter than traditional hex-key-and-swearing flatpack furniture. Link (via Gizmodo)

"airplane wings that change shape like a
bird and have scales like a fish"

"airplane wings that change shape like a
bird and have scales like a fish" 04/27/2004 08:57 AM

New airplane hailed as "the fourth great
breakthrough in aeronautical science"

New airplane hailed as "the fourth great
breakthrough in aeronautical science" 09/06/2004 09:30 PM
Mark Frauenfelder: Julian sez: [Fanwing is a] new type of heavier than air craft that can fly slowly and carry heavy loads. It seems pretty cool and might actually work. Link

Busted MP3 player wrapped around soda
can causes airplane bomb scare

Busted MP3 player wrapped around soda
can causes airplane bomb scare 05/21/2004 08:36 PM
Wireless guru Mike Outmesguine says:

A bomb scare occured on an America West passenger plane in Phoenix Arizona this week. Fox 11 News covered the story with people on the ground and a chopper in the air. The Fox11AZ website has 3 videos (about 8 minutes total) online... Re-live the tension! What caused the bomb scare? "An MP3 player wrapped around a soda can." So, next time you de-plane a plane, don't forgot to take your Coke and iPod with you. Check those seat pockets!

Link
Grok Description matches for Videoconferencing on the airplane (kottke.org)
GrokA matches for Videoconferencing on the airplane (kottke.org)

Videoconferencing on the airplane (kottke.org)