It's not like shaver didn't warn me or anything. It's just that I can't resist sometimes.

Last Sunday I had my first instrument flight that included actually flying in a real live airplane. There was an airmet for turbulence and I have to say the aviation weather service didn't disappoint. It was pretty bumpy and poor shona would have been terrified if she had come along for the ride.

We flew the VOR RWY 23 approach into bedford and I did quite well on that one, all things considered. I was having problems maintaining a constant altitude, some of which was due to the turbulence but had more to do with my apparently inability to use the trim wheel on that particular day. From there, I was vectored around via ATC and got set up for the ILS RWY 29 approach also into bedford. That also went relatively well, except that I had trouble following the glide path down for similar trim reasons. At about 400 feet above the ground (200 feet lower than the MDA) my instructor had me remove the hood and I was right on target. It was quite nice to be able to see that. I'm just looking forward to the day when we can do that in real clouds. However, given the current weather, that's going to be quice some time from now. From there, a nice landing and we were done for the day.

Major stumbling points included: occasional fixation and ommision. Managing the workload while maintaining a scan (changing to the approach plate from VOR 23 to ILS 29 took about 30 seconds, which is an eternity.) Thinking about my descent rate on the ILS approach and translating that into what was happening on the glide slope and how it should have told me something about my actual ground speed. Failed to use my 5 Ts a lot of places.

Positive points: I handled the 40 knot winds that were basically off my wing on the VOR approach quite well. Managed to stay basically on target most of the way down. Tracked each of the altitude changes as required as well as keeping awareness of my MDA and where I was in relation to it. Also managed to keep ahead of the plane in the sense that I remembered to tune in the right radio frequencies ahead of time.

Did I mention it was cold that day? I mean, really cold. I took my glove off during the preflight and it was almost numb in about 15 seconds. But I managed to get some flying in, and that was good.

Everyone should stop and take the time to read this article, even the non-geeks.

An excellent little article on framing. I tend to think about these things in most conversations I have and especially when I'm dealing with anything coming out of the media. Many times it's not the answer that's important, it's the question. People who take polls have known this for years, and can change the results based on the language that is used when taking the poll. People generally don't know when you've changed the context of a conversation but there are people out there who are completely immune to the entire practice. For example:

<blizzard> %ifarch i386
<blizzard> CC=gcc296 CXX=g++296
<blizzard> %endif
<blizzard> BUILD_OFFICIAL=1 MOZILLA_OFFICIAL=1 \
<blizzard> this is me crying
<boc> WARNING: PARENTAL DISCRETION IS ADVISED

Does this look familar to anyone else?

I had another instrument lesson on Saturday. It went OK, but not great. My scan kept breaking down in the simulator so the one approach I did was messy, at best. In an embarrassing moment I discovered that the simulator does, in fact, have a stall warning. And it's loud. If you get behind the power curve in this particular machine you need to really step up the power to counter the stability issues. I know that now, and no one died discovering that knowledge.

I also had to work on my VOR tracking. It's like everything I learned dribbled out of my brain and onto the sidewalk. What's up with that?

This is kind of neat probably because it crosses my two geek streams.

I have to admit, I haven't been impressed with the look of a car in quite some time but the new Mustang makes my heart jump a bit. I think they did a really good job with echoing the style of the old mustang while adding a nice modern touch. 300 horsepower under the hood doesn't hurt, either.

This image needs a new title. Discuss.