I was “stumbling” tonight and found a great website that I thought you would enjoy. But first, maybe I should explain what I meant by “stumbling” before you call my AME.

Stumble Upon! is a website and application that allows you by simpling clicking a button “stumble upon” new websites. It is kind of like having a “random” button on the internet but with preferences. When you set up your profile you can say what kind of sites you enjoy and has you begin to stumble upon new sites and approve or disapprove them it creates a preference pattern of what kind of sites you like or dislike compared to what other users with your tastes liked as well.

Ok, so the site I stumbled upon tonight is “the oops list” which is basically a collection of links to photographs of “oops”. What I like about this “opps list” was of course, a lot of the pictures were aviation and aircraft related. This picture of an airliner that landed with it’s parking brake on is an example of the kind of photo you will find on “the oops list”.

You can learn more about Stumble Upon here and here is a link to my stumble profile.

Fly Safe (so you don’t end up with a photograph in the oops list!)

I recently had a privilege to fly a Beechcraft Baron, a multi-engine piston aircraft made by Beechcraft (Hawker). That flight came as a result of the corporate jet I usually fly being in for some routine maintenance. After the flight, a friend said to me, “What did you think?” (comparing the two very different types of airplanes) and as I struggled to answer him, I thought of an analogy that I think pretty accurately describes at least my feelings regarding the comparison.

The analogy I came up with was that of comparing digital music (CDs or MP3’s) to flying a jet aircraft and comparing vinyl records, or LPs, to flying a piston aircraft.

Most audiophiles will tell you that when it comes to richness and fullness of sound, nothing comes close to the fidelity of vinyl records. There is just a hidden quality with analog music that you can’t find with any digital music medium (especially when played through a good tube amp!). I kind of think the same about flying a piston aircraft, especially something like the Baron. Being able to feel the hum of the motor through the seats, seeing the analog gauges move directly in correlation with the engine controls and syncing the props perfectly by ear….I don’t know, there is something there that is missing when you fly a highly computerized jet aircraft.

Then again, how many people own LPs anymore right? (I do, but that is a different website entirely) Digital music is more reliable, more efficient, portable, modern and you can say similar things for a jet aircraft. Jet aircraft typically see the first wave of technology, cutting edge, efficiency…modern. There is something to be said for the reliability of the jet engine (the rest of the airplane…eh).

Which one is better? I can’t say. If I had to chose to fly around the world in a piston or jet, that choice would be easy (jet). I also wouldn’t take my turntable to the gym which I can with an iPod. But if could choose an airplane when flying my wife to lunch somewhere or taking my friend fishing, well, the choice would be easy.

I guess when it comes down to it…I’m just lucky to fly at all.

In whichever airplane you choose…Fly safe.

I was given the task recently of creating a map with aircraft range rings centered on my home airport. We were comparing two different types of aircraft and wanted to see visually what extra destinations would be available to us with another aircraft. I mentioned making the map briefly in my previous post about 85% Boeing Winds.

Now I have a secret. I just happen to run another forum and website about Global Mapper. Global Mapper is a very useful mapping program that allows you to do just a thing (plus a whole lot more). I posted this tutorial and video on the other site but was thinking to myself that some pilots here may want to be able to create a map like that as well. So I uploaded the video to Youtube and I am posting it for you here. It honestly took me less than 10 minutes to create this map, the program is that easy.

You can download a trial version of Global Mapper by clicking here. This trial version is fully functional (with some export limitation) but will allow to create a map like this.  The download is about 21 MB.

You can learn more about Global Mapper and download some of the files I used to create this map by visiting the Global Mapper Forum.  Just go to the download section.

Fly Safe.