what did you do today? (2008-2015) (closed)

[bbbamI]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ronstar It was an extremely great ride - probably something I'll never get a chance to do again. I'm glad I didn't have to pick up the tab. My niece's husband is the co-pilot in training to be the captain. He had a chance to get me on board since it was just the two of us with the trainer pilot. I sat in the jump seat between the 2 pilots with my headset on with a full view of all controls and out the windshield. I think we burned more fuel than they usually do because we were doing a lot of training maneuvers -landings, takeoffs, 180 degree curves, engine stalls. It took us 90 minutes of practice moves to get to the destination airport and only 9 minutes to get home

Engine stalls?!!

Thanks for the details regarding the flight. Even with the engine stalls, that is one event I would LOVE to experience!

[nphx]

Not so glamorous, skirted volcano ash and acrued 9939 frequent flier miles in coach. That shower feels great.

[W2R]

Quote:

Originally Posted by nphx Not so glamorous, skirted volcano ash and acrued 9939 frequent flier miles in coach. That shower feels great.

I'll bet!! Once you get some sleep and get over jet lag, you should feel 100% better.

[Ronstar]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bbbamI Engine stalls?!! Thanks for the details regarding the flight. Even with the engine stalls, that is one event I would LOVE to experience!

That training pilot really put my niece's husband through the paces. He was sweating. Sometimes buzzers would go off if we were banking too steep and the plane shuddered when we lowered the landing gear at 10,000 feet to further slow down the plane(I guess that helped to stall the engines).

[W2R]

This morning was pretty lazy. I slept in, read the forum and read on my Kindle while doing laundry and dishes, then had lunch at a Chinese restaurant with Frank. We went over to his house, and I resumed reading this forum and a few others and reading on my Kindle, while he worked on some repairs in his attic. I also got the task of handing him tools so that he didn't have to climb down every time he needed something.

Finally he finished the repairs, cleaned up, and we went out to dinner at our favorite Creole/Italian restaurant. I think that was the ultimate test and proved that my digestive system has returned to normal. After dinner he drove around the city and told me some amazing stories of his wild youth here.

[bbbamI]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ronstar That training pilot really put my niece's husband through the paces. He was sweating. Sometimes buzzers would go off if we were banking too steep and the plane shuddered when we lowered the landing gear at 10,000 feet to further slow down the plane(I guess that helped to stall the engines).

I started to sweat just reading the post....

Quote:

Originally Posted by nphx Not so glamorous, skirted volcano ash and acrued 9939 frequent flier miles in coach. That shower feels great.

Wow...I'm glad you're ok.

Heh...the most glamorous thing I've done this week is scratching the butt of a pug...well, she thought it was glamorous.

[Twinkle Toes]

Made strawberry jam this morning, then went shopping for ingredients to make healthy smoothies and protein bars. Gonna try to trim a pound or two so I can get into my swimsuit. Hmmm...wonder if that strawberry jam would taste good on a "healthy" protein bar?

[Nords]

We learned about sewage infrastructure today!

Two guys in orange vests knocked on our door this afternoon asking permission to go into our yard and look for a photovoltaic sewage manhole cover. My reflex response was "Yeah, right, brah." Turns out they had their map wrong-way-around and it was on the street at the end of our driveway. The manhole cover is actually a lightweight phenolic resin with a photovoltaic panel embedded in the top. The PV panel is only 3"x10", black, and filthy, but it gets enough sunshine to charge the batteries in the box bolted to the bottom of the cover. We've been driving our cars over it for three years as we go in & out of the driveway.

The yellow box contains a radio transmitter attached to a float switch (on the end of a 30' cable) which is about the size of a baseball. The float switch hangs about 10 feet below in the sewage tunnel. If sewage level rises high enough to trip the float switch, the radio sends an alarm to a contractor in California who notifies our local sewage-monitoring command center. 150 installations all over the island, in business since 2007, $2M contract.

I learned all this because they spent over 20 minutes getting their boss (in California) to respond to their holding the float switch upside-down to make the radio transmit the alarm. The "alarm" part worked fine and sent its signal to California, but their boss wasn't able to send a separate text message back through to their cell phones to let them know it was working. Luckily the sewage-alarm network doesn't depend on AT&T.

The irony of this is that we live next to an automated sewage-pumping booster station, so even if the manhole overflowed then the sewage would just run downhill from the street into the sewage station. We decided that this was a backup to the booster station's alarm system if its pumps failed and it began to back up the entire neighborhood.

Our civil-engineer-wannabe kid was really getting into it. With skills like that she'll never go hungry...

[Koolau]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ronstar It was an extremely great ride - probably something I'll never get a chance to do again. I'm glad I didn't have to pick up the tab. My niece's husband is the co-pilot in training to be the captain. He had a chance to get me on board since it was just the two of us with the trainer pilot. I sat in the jump seat between the 2 pilots with my headset on with a full view of all controls and out the windshield. I think we burned more fuel than they usually do because we were doing a lot of training maneuvers -landings, takeoffs, 180 degree curves, engine stalls. It took us 90 minutes of practice moves to get to the destination airport and only 9 minutes to get home

I wouldn't presume to tell you what you experienced since I wasn't there. However, I've never heard of intentionally "stalling" an engine during practice. I'm sure they practice shutting down one engine on a twin engine aircraft from time to time. It's an important thing to learn - otherwise, a twin engine aircraft is simply an aircraft with twice the potential to crash due to engine trouble. (Statistically, multi-engine general-aviation aircraft ARE more prone to crashing due to engine problems than are single engine aircraft! Go figure!)

"Compressor stalls" (at least in some jet aircraft engines) can be quite dangerous. I can't imagine that they would allow you on a flight where that was done intentionally - but again, I wasn't there. Never been in the G-4 though I've flown IN a G-2 - amazing aircraft. My guess is that the stalls you experienced were simply "aircraft" stalls - see Stall (flight) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - which simply means the plane was slowed or otherwise put into an attitude which caused the aircraft to stop flying and essentially start falling out of the sky. The engines are still running, but there's no longer enough lift to keep the aircraft flying. Since this can happen accidently, pilots are trained to recover from a stall. I'm still amazed that an instructor would allow you to accompany anyone doing such maneuvers during training. The liability would be incredible although the chance of calamity is actually quite small since the instructor is along (and I'm sure the trainee has done hundreds of stalls during training to get to this point to be flying a G-4). Still, I'm guessing the owner of the plane (and especially the insurance carrier) didn't know you were going along.

Hope this wasn't TMI. As a self-grounded (LBYM reasons) private pilot, I do envy you. Sounds like a fun 90 minutes. I'm sure you know how lucky you are. The G-4 probably costs close to $2500/hour to operate. That's more than it cost to originally get my private ticket. Thanks for the great story!

[REWahoo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nords We learned about sewage infrastructure today!

I can't help wondering if this is in some way related to W2R's sudden move out of Hawaii.

[harley]

Went to the Snow Hill Blues Jam last night. Recovering nicely, though.

Heading off to the Pork in the Park Festival today. I love spring!

[Dawg52]

Quote:

Originally Posted by harley Went to the Snow Hill Blues Jam last night. Recovering nicely, though. Heading off to the Pork in the Park Festival today. I love spring!

Eat some pork for me. I love spring too!

Actually, I will be having some pork later today. I'm heading up to watch my old college play it's spring football game and there will be some good pork to be found on campus. So that will be fun.

This morning I took the mutt on a hike at the reservoir. Pics not all that good as I have an old cheapo digital camera. Might upgrade later this year. Any good recommendations for under $500?

[IndependentlyPoor]

Great dog!

We have been thrilled with our Canon SX1. It is one of the new super-zoom cameras, and the optics are just amazing. The SX1 is more than $500, but I understand that the SX20, which sells for $400, is the same camera without the HD video capability.

The downsides to the super-zooms are size/weight and they have video (not optical) viewfinders.

Took this pic hand held, no tripod. Auto focus, auto exposure. Just point, zoom, and shoot.
Moon.jpg

[Leonidas]

Quote:

Originally Posted by IndependentlyPoor We have been thrilled with our Canon SX1. It is one of the new super-zoom cameras, and the optics are just amazing. The SX1 is more than $500, but I understand that the SX20, which sells for $400, is the same camera without the HD video capability.

Please, no more. I click the link and the sirens started singing, "Look how sweet and desirable I am. Buy me and the experience will be like freaky sex - or a chocolate sundae."

[Dawg52]

Quote:

Originally Posted by IndependentlyPoor Great dog! We have been thrilled with our Canon SX1. It is one of the new super-zoom cameras, and the optics are just amazing. The SX1 is more than $500, but I understand that the SX20, which sells for $400, is the same camera without the HD video capability. The downsides to the super-zooms are size/weight and they have video (not optical) viewfinders.

The sx20 looks good. I will look into that one. Thanks.

[Meadbh]

Quote:

Originally Posted by nphx Not so glamorous, skirted volcano ash and acrued 9939 frequent flier miles in coach. That shower feels great.

I know the feeling!

Do you get extra FF miles for going around the long way?

I'm up to 210,000 FF miles......Australia, anyone?

[rescueme]

Made love with my wife and girlfriend, all in the same day

[Meadbh]

Three possibilities:
1. You are cheating
2. You got married today
3. You got divorced today, but it was very amiable!

[RonBoyd]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Meadbh Three possibilities: 1. You are cheating 2. You got married today 3. You got divorced today, but it was very amiable!

4. You are... eh, all very good friends.

[W2R]

Quote:

Originally Posted by REWahoo I can't help wondering if this is in some way related to W2R's sudden move out of Hawaii.

Well, if I had KNOWN about it...

I do remember hearing about plans to no longer dump raw sewage in the ocean off Oahu. This was about 50 years ago so hopefully that has been taken care of. That's the same ocean where I was scuba diving more days than not back in the 1970's, and the same ocean I used to surf and swim in daily back in the 1960's. Delightful.

I recall doing research back in the 70's on thermal pollution in nearshore Oahu and the degree of attraction of various fish species towards the warm effluent from a power facility. So, if it's not sewage it's always something.