Ames, IA November 29, 2008

Same here in Eastern PA, even though he isn't going this far. Icing seems to be north enough of his route all the way home, and winds look in his favor.

So,... for the next few hours FlightAware is now docked on my desktop toolbar :thumbsup:

So it seems he is VFR, but getting tracking from Flight Aware, as no Route is coming up or any tracking information being shown. Around here on the East coast, typically if we have FF from class C or D airports we don't show up,... but if we call up NY Center we will (like my return flight from NY with Bob a few weeks ago). So I suppose he contacted Chicago Center for FF and that's how he is on FlightAware?

Ok,.. Back up again for the home stretch to IPT,.. filed IFR this time. Looks like it should be a good trip home.
 
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Ted DuPuis said:
You know, if I knew what your airport identifier was, I might have done it! :)
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The Frappr POA map background isn't working anymore: http://www.frappr.com/pilotsofamerica

But it would be cool to get a "home-drome" table/chart going on that member map thread of POA members and their home-dromes and cell / home numbers if they are willing to host in bad weather / mechanical situations.

Would finally give me a good use for the "user-defined waypoints" feature in the GPS... "SteveSee-MS", "KentSchook-WI", "Missa-PA", "Felix-S.CA", etc.
 
TangoWhiskey said:
The Frappr POA map background isn't working anymore: http://www.frappr.com/pilotsofamerica

But it would be cool to get a "home-drome" table/chart going on that member map thread of POA members and their home-dromes and cell / home numbers if they are willing to host in bad weather / mechanical situations.

Would finally give me a good use for the "user-defined waypoints" feature in the GPS... "SteveSee-MS", "KentSchook-WI", "Missa-PA", "Felix-S.CA", etc.
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Stalker.
 
Man, I doubt so many people have ever been paying attention to me flying!

Weather today was much better. The Mooney is physically capable of making the trip non-stop to Williamsport, however the weather in Williamsport wasn't quite good enough for me to be confident I could get right in, and so I didn't want to be that close to my fuel reserves (why can't I get 40-60 kt tailwinds when I got 40-60 kt headwinds?). As such, I decided to stop in Indiana near Fort Wayne. Was OVC022 there, and I found a hole to pop through on descent. It was a bit skuddy, but not too bad. Knowing the layer was not thick at all (having just gone through it on the way down) and no reports of ice, I filed and popped through after getting fuel. Climbed up to 11,000.

Weather for the second half was great, and the weather conditions improved with time at Williamsport. Lots of big holes existed to pop down through. A greaser of a landing and I'm back home.

This is the longest straight line distance I've traveled so far in a GA aircraft, and it was a great learning experience as well as lots of fun. I borrowed Missa's 496 for the trip. While I've flown plenty of long trips without it before and would have been able to do this one without it, it was definitely a nice additional tool for situational awareness in terms of giving me more weather information on where I was and where I was going. Plus, you really get a lot of time to play with it when you're sitting up at cruising altitude.

Thanks again to Tony for hosting a great party. I thoroughly enjoyed myself, and it was good to get to meet some new people for the first time and see some friends I'd met before.
 
skyflyer8 said:
(snipped picture of the stuffed ape)

Felix -- know anything about this?

The story has made it all the way to the Chicago Tribune.
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I just happen to be in Appleton doing a project (well, actually, Grand Chute).

I know nothing, nothing!

I see nothing, nothing!
 
Greg Bockelman said:
How much does the aluminum leading edge flex? :rofl:

Otherwise, that isn't a half bad idea.

Wonder how it would work in practice.
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Ignoring Matt's fabric leading edges, there actually was an airplane with "flexed aluminum deice". I forget the model name but it was Russian and the deice consisted of a device that was powered by the discharge of a large bank of capacitors. I think it involved electromagnets behind the leading edges but they might have just run the current through the skin. In any case I read that each time they discharged it made a sound like a M-80 going off inside the cockpit. That may be why the concept didn't make it to every day use on passenger airliners.
 
AdamZ said:
Looks like you were doing 165- 180 GS thats not to shabby.
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It was about 158-165 kt GS in cruise, higher in descent. Since the Mooney trues out around 145, that wasn't enough to offset the 98-105 kt GS I was seeing for the first leg of my trip to Ames. You're right, though, not too shabby, but whenever I go on a long trip I find myself wanting that extra 50 kts. :)
 
TangoWhiskey said:
Regardless of what plane you fly, this is a constant in aviation.
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Even worse, you always tell yourself that you'll be happy once you get those additional 50 knots. I think I'd be happy with +50 at 265 KTAS, but once I'll get there, I probably won't be. Very frustrating...

-Felix
 
sba55 said:
Even worse, you always tell yourself that you'll be happy once you get those additional 50 knots. I think I'd be happy with +50 at 265 KTAS, but once I'll get there, I probably won't be. Very frustrating...

-Felix
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A long time ago I wasted some free time calculating how quickly I could get from here (Mpls) to various places I travel to or might want to travel with the only limitations being a maximum acceleration of 1g (no velocity limit). In simplest terms (ignoring skin friction heating, ATC, winds aloft, extra distance for altitude changes, and in the case of the moon shot, relative velocities, etc.) this is expressed in the simple formula:

Time (seconds)= SquareRoot(distance*189.875)

This works unless the distance traveled gets to around 2*10^13 nm where you run into nature's speed limit.

Some examples:

100 nm: 138 sec ( 2 min 18 sec)
500 nm: 308 sec ( 5 min 8 sec)
1000 nm: 436 sec ( 7 min 16 sec)
5000 nm: 974 sec (16 min 14 sec)
10000 nm:1378 sec (22 min 58 sec)
12450 nm:1538 sec (25 min 38 sec) 1/2 around earth

207700 nm: 1hr 44min 40sec earth to moon



Does anyone thing this would be fast enough?

Of course once such a vehicle is developed more speed could be had simply by increasing the acceleration.
 
lancefisher said:
A long time ago I wasted some free time calculating how quickly I could get from here (Mpls) to various places I travel to or might want to travel with the only limitations being a maximum acceleration of 1g (no velocity limit). In simplest terms (ignoring skin friction heating, ATC, winds aloft, extra distance for altitude changes, and in the case of the moon shot, relative velocities, etc.) this is expressed in the simple formula:

Time (seconds)= SquareRoot(distance*189.875)

This works unless the distance traveled gets to around 2*10^13 nm where you run into nature's speed limit.

Some examples:

100 nm: 138 sec ( 2 min 18 sec)
500 nm: 308 sec ( 5 min 8 sec)
1000 nm: 436 sec ( 7 min 16 sec)
5000 nm: 974 sec (16 min 14 sec)
10000 nm:1378 sec (22 min 58 sec)
12450 nm:1538 sec (25 min 38 sec) 1/2 around earth

207700 nm: 1hr 44min 40sec earth to moon



Does anyone thing this would be fast enough?

Of course once such a vehicle is developed more speed could be had simply by increasing the acceleration.
Click to expand...

Interesting.

What type of conveyor belt would you need to be able to take off from? ;)
 
lancefisher said:
A long time ago I wasted some free time calculating how quickly I could get from here (Mpls) to various places I travel to or might want to travel with the only limitations being a maximum acceleration of 1g (no velocity limit). ....
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Just dig a hole to where you want to go, and you got it. :D In that case though you have to start out above the ground or you won't come the other side before you go back. And you only get 1G if you go straight down. And it varies to -1G at the end.
 
thats fantastic lance, its good to have an upper limit to your goals.
 
Or the energy required.

totalenergy2.gif


The purple line is the old formula for kinetic energy, but the red line is the real (relativistic) energy required.

RMCN172RG said:
How does you formula account for deceleration?
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lancefisher said:
IIRC I originally worked that out while sitting through a boring presentation at work.
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I know where you're coming from. I'm doomed to have to attend 80 or more hours in classroom training. I wonder if they'll fire me if I mess with the time wasters on my iPhone.
 
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