Today was a bit different, however. Kaylee has made it to Austria, and to Vienna. She did a gondola ride on the Venetian. She got to see artisan glass blown. She got to see the beautiful Swiss Alps. I am jealous of these things in case you are wondering. So glad she has the opportunity though!
Meanwhile, our day was a little more average. Steve stayed home and worked with a handyman to replace our sink counter tops and fixtures in both bathrooms. The color was different than what we thought, but you can't take your bathtub and toilet in with you when you go shopping, and online colors aren't helpful, so...but they look good. They're clean, shiny, bright and new, getting rid of the cracked, old sinks. Nice!
Our weather today is kind of wild. We've lost some shingles off our roof. The winds were over 52 knot gusts (what is that, 60 mph or so?) . There was rain, sleet, snow, hail, and total sunshine whipping past in 5 minute increments, having trouble making up its mind. But at all times, there was serious wind. Tree branches blown into the road, debris caught in fences...it is a bit of a mess out there. No good reason to be in the air today!
I went with Nathan down to the Indianapolis Executive Airport to go to a seminar that was being held there regarding on-board radar. It was a free seminar, and it was hosted by Erik Eliel, the president of "Radar Training International". It was sponsored by Montgomery Aviation, who, frankly, did a bang-up nice job of it. They paid for him, for the materials, for breakfast pastries and a Panera lunch spread (plus drinks), and hosted, all free to us to attend. First class set up in their hangar, and just very well done.
Erik was the student of Archie Trammell, the "father" of figuring out this onboard radar stuff, and it's obvious he has it down. The seminar started at 8:30 a.m. down there, and was supposed to conclude at 2:30 p.m. I was wondering what they were going to cover for that long. Instead, we weren't done until 4 p.m., and we only took a 30 minute lunch break instead of the hour. Talk about a lot of info. And sitting. :) Some of it was stuff we already knew, as we figured it would be. But some of it was definitely good information to have. By the end I was starting to get overloaded with math. None of it was hard math, but remembering what to use and when, what the specific rule of thumb was and what it went to...that will require some more reading/refreshing. But I learned one thing I'd been doing wrong, and a couple of things to really help interpret what I'm looking at on the radar. I've been doing my best to stay in VMC conditions as much as possible around storms so I could use my eyeballs, my NEXRAD, and my onboard radar all three. That works well. However, at night or when you are stuck in IMC, the things we learned today are really important to help keep you safe. He used a lot of examples of airline accidents that happened due to weather and likely improper use of their onboard radar. Also, he noted, that at his airline they don't have NEXRAD. They have to call up a dispatcher and ask them what they see on XM weather. We little guys have more and better info than most of (if not all of) the airliners. Which I knew, but still. It was a long day, but a good one, and at least three things I can think of off-hand make attending well worth my while, particularly as summer and storm season starts swinging into gear. One thing in particular that I hadn't really known struck home a bit as he described an accident that took out an airliner, when the pilots thought they were going the right way to find the fastest way out to a clear area, when they actually went to the worst of it. It looked like a thin line with a clear area. He said "Would you have made a different decision than they did?" The answer was...probably not, no, not if I couldn't see it out the window.
He also made it clear that the majority of airline pilots don't know how to use the onboard radar properly either, it's not part of the training to any real degree, and that just following the guy in front of you because he made it through is a terrible idea, and that you may get lucky...until you don't. He had an accident to back that up, too. Planes that got lucky going through an area, and then two minutes later a plane went down following in their path when the luck ran out.
Good info on stratus rain vs convective rain. On how to determine how much clearance you have from the tops. (More math). All sorts of good info. I need to digest it for awhile, then go back over the DVD and book which he handed out for free to the participants (also paid for by our competition, thanks!!) We also got a certificate (which will sit around until I toss it) and it counts towards FAA "Wings" program points. I don't track those really, but it doesn't hurt. More information and knowledge is never a bad thing.
One thing he said, that we know but is good to put out there, was about complacency. It went something along the lines of how each time we get by with a weather decision without any negative consequences, it reinforces complacency, and how eventually the threat of weather loses its edge...until it turns and bites you, hard. Anyone who has flown for any length off time knows THAT is true. That's why we watch the young punks with 100 hours (to 1000 hours) dodging stuff and scud running, who don't know what they're doing, getting by with it, and hoping they just don't kill themselves, rather just scare themselves, so they can learn before they DO kill themselves.
Anyway, like I said, busy day, good day, enjoyed the seminar, need to go back over it some more. I brought the dvd and book home for Steve, and Nathan brought one home for his brother, and it was a worthwhile and productive way for a couple of pilots to spend a Saturday.
Oh, and at the end of it, they had a drawing, and I won an online course by Archie Frammell, that is supposedly everything he knows about onboard radar. Everything there is to know about it at this point. It's a fairly expensive thing, so that's handy. I can use it or give it to someone else (but not sell it). I'd like to be able to have a few of us do it at the same time. Maybe on a big computer out at the hangar or something. We'll see. Nice prize to win, though.
Now, back to what you actually care about: Pictures of Kaylee and where she is. ;)
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