It’s one thing to look at static displays of airplanes, and it doesn’t suck to do this.  But there is no way to really feel the soul of an airplane, especially a beast from so long ago, unless you can feel the vibration of two or even four giant piston engines vibrating in your chest, see it lumber down the runway, and take off.  Even better, be in it.  The work that the CAF does in keeping this living history going is to be applauded.

As for this video, the Arizona Wing had this done to highlight their two prized birds; Sentimental Journey, a beautifully restored B-17 that has been the anchor of the wing for some time, and Maid in the Shade, a recently completed restoration of a B-25N “Mitchell”, the newest stable mate of the B-17.  It is beautifully done and shows off not only the airplanes but also the amazing Arizona desert terrain east of Phoenix.  The takeoff is from our local airport, Falcon Field (KFFZ), where the Arizona Wing has their home and their museum here in Mesa.  Also, if you’re interested, I did an interview with the chief pilot and the chief mechanic of Maid in the Shade recently for the Pilotcast, and we talk a bit about this near the end of episode 84, and even included some of that interview at the very end.  For the uninitiated, you can easily tell the difference between the two airplanes in this video because the B-17 has four engines, the B-25 has only two.  The only thing wrong with this video that I can see is that it isn’t long enough.

There’s not much else to say before you watch.  Except, perhaps, that if this doesn’t invoke some sort of emotion as you watch, then, I’m sorry, we just can’t be friends.  Enjoy.

Windows Phone 7

As of today, in just a few months, there are already over 9,000 apps in the Windows Phone Marketplace.  With my dev background, I’ve always known that I would write at least a few apps for the platform; even if to only give me some features I want.  As it turns out, I’ve started my first product for the phone.  In fact, I started on it about a month ago and a few minutes at a time, I’ve worked on it.  I don’t have a lot of time to dedicate to it with all of my other activities and responsibilities, but luckily the dev tools and dev platform for WP7 (Visual Studio and Silverlight, respectively) are incredibly efficient and easy to work with, yet incredibly flexible.  I spent some time while I was travelling for business last week working on it in the evenings, and I’m happy to say that I’m almost ready to submit the app to the marketplace.

What is it?  Well, as expected by those who know me, I’m sure, it’s an aviation tool.  An E6B Computer to be exact.  I’m tentatively calling it E6B Gizmo.  For those who are not aware of what an E6B is, it is a manual (think slide rule, but round) computer for Pilots that’s been in wide use since the early days of manned flight and is still going strong today.  In fact, virtually every student pilot purchases one of these at the start of her training.  It allows a pilot to quickly figure out conversions, time until arrival, fuel burn, fuel needed, even crab angle needed to overcome the wind to maintain a desired course, and much, much more.  It easily converts knots to miles per hour, helps a pilot figure out what the density altitude is, and dozens of other useful things.  It is often used in flight planning, but sometimes is very useful in the cockpit, too, at altitude.  There are a bunch of electronic versions of the E6B, but these are single use devices that historically were fairly expensive.  Today, E6B usage is probably at an all time low because of the wealth of good flight planning software on the market to allow computers to do all the heavy lifting.  Sometimes, though, it is vary handy to have either a manual E6B or an electronic one to quickly compute something important.  Sometimes this happens in the cockpit, but just as often, I think, it happens during planning or even during fantasy planning.  What is fantasy flight planning, you ask?  Pilots, myself included, are always thinking about a great trip they would like to take sometime.  When these things pop into our heads, we love to quickly figure out how long it might take in our airplane to get there.  We ask questions like, “How much fuel will I burn?”  And, “How much will a 15 knot tailwind help me?”  An manual E6B is generally a rather ungainly, metal circular slide rule, so it’s not something you want to carry around everywhere you go.  That’s where this WP7 app comes in.  You always have your smartphone, right?  So with E6B Gizmo, you’ll always have a handy, nice looking, and easy to use E6B with you as well.  This isn’t a new concept; virtually every smartphone platform out there has at least a few E6B apps.  Since WP7 is so new, at least as of a couple of weeks ago, there are no such apps available.  There will be.  Not just mine, but I’m sure there will be several to choose from.  It’s no bother, though, the more the merrier.  I’m not trying to make a bunch of money (that doesn’t really happen in aviation ), I’m just trying to dip my toe in the water with WP7…and this is a simple application to develop as my first commercial WP7 app.

Simple from the development aspect, yes, but some of the math involved is extremely complex (which is why these manual E6Bs are so useful…regular calculators will no do, unless you’re a math savant).  I’m sure I’m going to have a few math bugs to start off with, but I’ll keep updating it and taking user feedback until it’s the best in the marketplace when others do show up.  I’ve got several other ideas, as well, not only for the Windows Phone platform, but web, other smartphones, etc., that have nothing to do with a simple E6B, so I’ll have more apps eventually. 

As of today, the Application  Programming Interface (API) for Windows Phone is rather limited because the platform is new.  There are easy ways to do amazing things…don’t get me wrong.  It’s just that some things were left out, presumably because of ship timing.  For example, third party apps like mine can’t multitask.  With WP7 you can always go right back to an app you were running, but while you’re not in the app, it wasn’t actually running (more like suspended).  Also, there is no programmatic access to the built in digital compass yet for third parties.  Word on the street is that later this month we should get a glimpse into the next revision of the API which will be part of a major update to WP7 late this year, both from a user feature perspective as well as a developer perspective.  Hopefully as developers we’ll find out soon what additional API features we’ll have access to when that major update (coined “Mango”) hits the existing phones and presumably a new batch of phones as well.

Luckily, for my E6B Gizmo (and many, many other applications), none of these things are necessary.  So I’m all good.

Here are a couple of screenshots as it stands today.  The colors are the overall phone theme colors (chosen by the user for the whole phone) and not hard coded; I decided it would be cool to respect the color chosen.  Also, you’ll also notice that my working title was E6B Companion which I haven’t changed yet in the code.  The last shot is to show the light theme (again, if chosen by the user) and the Fuel Type “List Picker” dropped down.

I’ve got all the release functions working…at least they appear to be working; I have to do some more testing, especially the math.  I’ve just got that testing, some additional polish and error handling to take care of, and I’ll be ready to submit.  I’m hoping within a couple weeks it will be in the Marketplace.  I’ll keep everyone posted here because I’m assuming you care.  Wish me luck.

Here are a couple of pictures…the last one is our rig for the week, along with a map of where we’re at (hopefully temporarily).

I do official coverage of some of the show on my two aviation websites, StudentPilotCast.com and pilotcast.com, but I may chronicle some of the adventures here through pictures, video, and writing…but it all depends on how much time I have (which is usually not very much).  I may at least do some cross posting and get some of it here even if I post it on one of my show sites as well.

For some of the information and coverage that I’ve done at past Airventure, you can see some of it here.  I’m getting excited…as usual, it’s gonna be great!

The weather was sketchy here in the usually nice Phoenix area.  For a few days we had a weather system passing through that brought a lot of moisture and unstable air.  That meant humid mornings with lots of clouds and possible scattered thunderstorms in the afternoons.  I had been following the weather, and when I woke up that morning I took a look outside, and sure enough, there was what looked like a couple of layers of clouds, some as low as 1500 feet from the ground.  My weather briefing confirmed that, but it looked broken enough to get out, and the weather in Prescott was supposed to be better, so off to the airport we went.  My youngest son, Trey, accompanied me as well.

After the pre-flight, we were off.  My usual course of action to head north is to immediately open my flight plan on departure from Stellar Airpark in Chandler, AZ, and then quickly get over to Phoenix approach to request a northbound transition through the class Bravo airspace directly over Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.  I did this, and quickly got a left 360 for spacing before being cleared into the airspace.  The approach controller cleared me to transition over Sky Harbor (KPHX) at 5000 feet MSL.  As I was climbing and approaching the transition, it became obvious that I wouldn’t be able to maintain Visual Flight Rules (VFR) and climb to 5000 feet.  I contacted the controller and let him know that I was unable to comply with the request and maintain VFR.  I told him that I could maintain 4000, and maybe go higher later, and he accepted that, and cleared me on the transition at 4000 feet.  Later, I actually had to drop down to 3,500 ft to remain clear of clouds, and the controller was kind enough to coordinate my transition of Deer Valley’s (KDVT) class D airspace.

It turned out there were several layers of clouds that day, scattered at about 4000 feet, broken at about 6000 feet, and overcast at 8000 or so.  Visibility was also terrible under those layers, which is very unusual for Phoenix.  While flying the transition I probably only had about 8-10 miles of visibility.  In contrast to what I normally fly in, which is 10 times that, this seemed rather limiting.  My passenger actually asked me if I was concerned as we dodged clouds over Phoenix in poor visibility, and I thought for a second, and realized that I wasn’t really. We had many outs, and were on radar and in contact with Phoenix approach.  Even if we couldn’t get out of the valley due to low clouds, or a thunderstorm in our way, we could have landed at half a dozen airports that were either in sight or would be in a few minutes if we flew toward them, including even PHX right below us.  Also, I was still pretty confident that we would be able to climb out of the valley toward the better weather north of us.

It turned out I was right.  After crossing over Deer Valley we were able to continue climbing and the low clouds did disperse the farther north we went, and we were able to fly between an overcast layer above us and a scattered and dispersing layer below us.  While flying at our assigned altitude (I think it was 6,500 feet) heading north, we had a Southwest Airlines 737 fly directly over us as they headed into Phoenix (approach had warned the other pilot and me, and we had each other in sight, and the controller had us separated vertically).  After traffic was behind us and no factor, the controller gave us a higher altitude after cautioning of wake turbulence from the three-seven.  At this point we were good to go and continued on toward Prescott.  The ride was cool and smooth for a summer flight in Arizona and we were cruising at about 8500 feet.

As we approached Prescott, we heard on the center frequency that we were being followed on that another airplane was cancelling their VFR approach into Prescott because of weather.  We were about 15 minutes out, so that worried me a little…but from my vantage-point, it looked like I could easily duck under a layer that was hanging around the area, and get into Prescott.  We continued on, and cancelled flight following as we turned westbound at Prescott Valley so we could get ATIS and start talking to PRC tower.  Sure enough, visibility under the 8000 foot layer that we ducked under was pretty good, and rain showers washed the plane a bit as we approached the airport.  The wind was kicking up pretty good, over 20 kts, but almost directly aligned with a smaller cross runway (runway 12) that they have at Prescott, and that’s where I was headed, so the wind would not be a big factor.  There was a bit of gusting, but I would just come in with a little extra speed to compensate.  Even this smaller runway 12 was still 4400 feet long, so I wasn’t worried about that.

Besides asking for the tower to call my base for traffic I knew was on final, but couldn’t see, the approach and landing was pretty uneventful.  With the wind coming at me, normally it would have seemed like a slow approach, but KPRC is over 5000 feet in elevation, and with the heat of the summer, density altitude is routinely over 8000 feet, the approach seemed pretty normal (the thin air compensated for the headwind, making it seem sort of normal).  The same thing happened a couple of hours later on our departure; the headwind combined with the high density altitude cancelled each other out, and it felt like a normal takeoff in the valley.  Interesting.

After landing and parking near Legend Aviation where the event was taking place.  We were a bit late to meet up with Phoenix Pilot Group members, but we ate a nice lunch at the restaurant there, and then got to browse around some nice, new airplanes from Cessna, Mooney, Beech, Piper Diamond, and Cirrus.  Man, those are all nice airplanes.  Then, it was time to go.

The weather had actually improved a bit in the valley, but was still pretty low in Prescott.  It was easy to get out, though, and on the way back my passenger snapped a few photos, which I’m including here.  When we arrived back at Stellar, the air was hot (and humid by Arizona standards), but we had enjoyed the nice cool air in Prescott for a few hours, had a nice meal, and had seen some beautiful airplanes.  A good morning of flying for sure.

Prescott Valley, a town close to Prescott	Approaching KPHX from the north
A close-up of the KPHX Tower	Sky Harbor (KPHX) looking down the runways

I hope you enjoy SPC Video #4, Flying Over Hana.  Let me know what you think.

I’m including the video here, but for the original post on the podcast site, you can go here.

View in HTML5 (For iPad and iPhone, etc.)

Feel free to watch it here if you’re pressed for time, but if not, do yourself a favor and watch (or download) a higher quality version at Brian’s site.  Enjoy.

On the other hand, if you’ve just paid $5.00 to United/US Air/Delta/[Insert your dysfunctional airline here] for a $0.20 replica of a pair of headphones on your flight (along with $3.00 for a water and $7.00 for some crackers and cheese), you may be inclined to buy a pair of Sony Noise Cancelling Headphones from the vending machine (which they prefer to call a robotic storefront, but let’s be real) for $200.  This is worth it because you get a return of $100 over your next 20 flights by not having to buy the crappy earphones that they are selling every time, and the other $100 of value comes from not having to listen to any of the announcements from the cockpit or the flight attendants asking you if you want to buy a $3.00 water.  After all, these cancel noise, and that’s what you want.  Another thing…what do you think the chances are that they pre-charge the electronic devices that need batteries.  How disappointing to buy your new PSP for the 3 hour plane ride but you have no juice.  This just helps prove my theory above…it’s for the disembarking airline spit-outs, not those all fresh for their travel.  They expect your defenses are down AFTER the flight.

So, the next time you step off that plane all hot and bothered about just getting mugged by the airline, pull out the credit card (if you have any money left), and keep your eyes out for one of these Sony vending machines, and purchase your headphones/PSP/MP3 player/etc.  Trust me, you’ll feel better.  Or not.

Participating in this year's event was, in the order they were sitting, Uncontrolled Airspace, The Student Pilot Cast, The Finer Points, Airspeed, and the Pilotcast (along with CFI cast).  Remoted in via skype was Will and Dave of the Pilot's Flight Pod Log.  Notably missing this year were new pilot, Greg, from the Student Pilot Journal and student pilot Jerry from VA Student Pilot.  I'm probably forgetting others as well, so forgive me.

I also want to note that Airventure Today (the daily Airventure newspaper) did an article on the Podapalooza, so check that out if want to.

I really enjoyed participating this year, and felt honored to be on the stage with so many talented people.  It's a great community of people in aviation.  I had a great time in Oshkosh in general, and was able, with the help of my friend Kent from the Pilotcast, to experience two approaches into OSH.  That was incredible.  The show itself is overwhelmingly large and covers everything in aviation, from the smallest of the ultralights to the largest plane I’ve ever seen (the Boeing Dreamlifter), and everything in between.  I’m including a few pics from the event.

An AeroShell T6 lines up for takeoff at the daily airshow

The old tower is set to be torn down soon.

Duggy the DC-3.

And for the largest, here is the Boeing DreamLifter, which is used to carry parts of the new 787 DreamLiner halfway across the world.

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I realize there is a problem with the video when the prop is in the shot (I cover this in the video itself).  They’re getting better, though.  Stay tuned.

SPC Video #002-On My Own from Bill Williams on Vimeo.

I’m always very skeptical of “gasoline replacement” fads because, for the most part, they never seem to work.  Now, before you start screaming and carrying-on, take the tin-foil off of your head and join us in reality…it’s very unlikely that the government (and every government in the world) is covering up for the big bad oil companies as they murder, plunder alternative ideas, and kill off potential competition.  C’mon…you just can’t keep stuff like that a secret; too many prying eyes.  It just doesn’t make sense…so let’s not go there.

Now, being a skeptic (and I must add, a layman…as I am very far from an expert on fuel…just a concerned, but moderately eductated consumer), corn-based bio fuels has not excited me much for several reasons; trading dwindling agricultural land and water for gas production not being the least of them.  I have been waiting for something that just makes more sense…and is hopefully something a little more radical from a science perspective, but feasible from a market perspective.  If it turned out to be cleaner, cheaper to produce, and more renewable…all the better.  I also knew, from my economics training, that when gas prices got high enough (i.e. as global and local demand continued up and supply stayed the same or decreased a la rationing from OPEC, no more refinement capacity, and even possibly actual dwindling world supplies of crude) that it would become financially feasible to come up with alternatives.  Maybe we’ve finally reached that point.

As a budding airplane pilot (and avid auto driver…I’m American, after all ), I would love more this and other efforts to produce real (hopefully cheaper in the end) alternatives to dino fuel.  But its not just so I pay less for Aviation Gas at the airport or 91 Octane at the Chevron down the street…everything gets cheaper to produce and sell if fuel prices decrease.  That said, I don’t think fuel prices are too far out of whack from inflation (I’d have to check the latest numbers), but still, cheaper is better.

Sapphire’s efforts seem promising to me.  First, algae grows like mad…and in water, even waste water.  It also grows pretty much anywhere there is water and sunlight and CO2 (i.e. pretty much anywhere).  Their process appears to produce something that very much approximates gasoline so it should run in existing cars, trucks, boats, planes, etc.  It can be moved and sold using today’s infrastructure for gasoline.  The big questions are, for me:  will it work?  will it be cheap, when it’s all said and done?  Only time will tell on these.

With Sapphire’s press release and some other sources, including this article from the LA Times (which indicates goals of having this completed and on the market in three years), though, I’m feeling some of my skepticism get ever so slightly weaker.  Hopefully for more than just a moment.  For now, I’m rooting for my gas to turn green in a few years.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned this here yet, but I wanted to make anyone following this blog aware of one of my other endeavors.  I’m currently learning to fly (getting a private pilot license), and before starting, I decided to produce an podcast about that endeavor called the Student Pilot Cast.  It has been pretty fun producing this, although it can be a bit time consuming.  It’s also interesting to put all of my training out there for the world to see, the good and the bad.

I have several reasons for wanting to podcast my training

• I’ve been inspired and entertained by all of the aviation podcasts that I’ve been listening to, and wanted to add to this content by “giving back” some of what I have gained from all of these peoples hard work.  I felt like I could do that by podcasting myself (see reason ‘b’ below).  Some of these other podcasts that inspired me to do this include:
  • The Finer Points
  • Uncontrolled Airspace
  • The PilotCast
  • The Pilot Flight Pod Log and the related Student Pilot Flight Pod Log, both by Will Hawkins
  • Airspeed
  • And several others.
• As a budding pilot (and a long time wannabe ) I felt very strongly that it would be interesting to be involved in the chronicle of someone getting their private pilot license.  I know this because I would have loved this content (and did with Will Hawkins first podcast, and others), so that helped me understand that for those of us who have the flying bug badly, this content would be interesting.
• Making this content available might just help to inspire a few people to get involved in aviation, finally take the plunge themselves, or just improve the perception of general aviation for someone.  I know this sounds a bit self-absorbed, but trust me, it is more about the realization that the content out there helped me, so I realize that every little bit might help someone else…and if that’s true, assisting in the popularity or perception of General Aviation is good for those of us who realize how important it is.  I’m actually still amazed that anybody listens…but if I think about how voracious I am with aviation content, I shouldn’t be surprised.
• Keeping a good, rich, record of accomplishing this important thing to me will be something I personally will love having.  As I mentioned in episode 0, it is like keeping a media rich scrapbook and the body of content that I have when I’m finished will be priceless to me personally.  By having listeners wanting more episodes insures the external motivation necessary to help me to not slack off.  J
• It’s fun!  And since I’m a technologist professionally, and an amateur audio/video/photography enthusiast…why not combine some of these passions (including aviation) into something that benefits others…and we all win.  Believe it or not, I’m a social, but very private person…but I’m in awe of my colleagues and friends (like Tim Heuer , and many others…its very common in my industry) who continually put themselves out there in the public eye for the benefit of everyone.  I think the generation after me (I’m 36 years old) has grown up with technology based social networking, and are comfortable wearing their lives on their sleeves (see things like myspace, facebook, twitter, etc.), and so to keep with the times, I need to teach myself to be more open, and what better way than to learn to fly in front of the world?  I think there is a societal benefit to sharing experience (there are downsides, too, but that’s another topic), and I am having fun learning to participate in this on a more grandiose scale by leveraging technology.  I know this is a bit philosophical, but I hope I’m getting my thoughts across.

Anyway…if you are so inclined, please check out my podcast at www.studentpilotcast.com.  I’ve released now something like nine episodes, and its speeding up.  Let me know what you think.

You can hear the ATIS for Chandler (CHD) about halfway through the clip, if you are interested.  This is the first time Trent had ever been in a small plane before…let alone fly one.  Good job, Trent.

Trent is getting ready to take the controls (after the CFI, Brian, gets us into the air).

Here’s a shot while Trent is flying from the south of Chandler looking north. You can see I-17 running diagonally through the picture. The Cherokees are low wing aircraft, so the pesky wings seem to always get in the way.