Audio Review – Lightspeed Sierra vs David Clark H10-13.4

Posted on January 9, 2012 by Pat

When I passed my checkride I decided to buy another headset. After some shopping around I decided on the David Clark H10-13.4. You can read my original review about them here. Well it was time for my yearly aviation gift to myself so I starting shopping around and trying to figure out what to get. Recently I have been flying longer trips and spending more time in the cockpit. I found that my head would ache after each time I flew. Obviously long term exposure to something that hurts your head probably isn’t good for you.

So I started looking for a new headset and was able to try a few of them out at the AOPA Summit in Hartford, CT. I came across the Lightspeed Sierra and after a test fit I decided to go ahead and pick up a pair. One of the big incentives for me to purchase the headset was the trade up program. I was able to trade in my Lightspeed QFR headset for a $250 credit towards the Sierra’s $600 price. I should point out that $250 is more than I paid for the headset in the first place. They will even give you $100 for any old passive headset, as long as it works. You can find out more about the trade up program here.

After flying with them for over six hours I can safely say I won’t be going back to a passive headset. The deep engine drone is just gone and the headset itself is very comfortable. It is hard to explain the sound difference so I decided to take a recorder with me into the cockpit so you can hear it for yourself. The audio didn’t come out as perfect as I wanted it to but it should still give you an idea.

Listen to my real world audio comparison here

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We All Scream For Ice Cream – Penn State Creamery

Posted on December 10, 2011 by Pat

People always say there are never any guarantees in life. While that may be true most of the time, I think I have found an exception. I can guarantee that once the magical goodness that is Penn State University ice cream hits your mouth, you will be guaranteed joy in direct proportion to bowl size. In fact I will take this time to warn you right now. Do not eat Penn State ice cream, it will forever ruin you. You will never enjoy anything as spectacularly creamy and delicious as this ice cream. All other ice cream will be referred to as ‘that garbage’. I even heard a story of a man who spent 3 months hitch hiking his way from Seattle on Chicken trucks to get to the creamery. Alright, I made that last part up but you get the idea.

Penn State started producing dairy products in 1865 as part of their agriculture school. They began offering dairy short courses shortly there after. People still come from all over the world to attend the short courses. In fact you might recognize some of their students. Two men by the names of Ben & Jerry. That is right they learned how to make it right there in Penn State.

So what does this have to do with a blog about flying you may ask? Well it makes a great day trip and I recently did it with my friends Matt & Pascale. The university is served by University Park airport KUNV which is 5mi from the creamery. The flight left Morristown MMU to pick up my friends at Wings Field LOM and then to University Park. We navigated using VORs on the way there. Lately I feel like I have been following the magenta line too much. It was good to know I can still track a radial and actually get to my destination.

When you are about 10min out make a call to unicom and ask them to call a cab. As you approach the airport from the east you will have Nittany Mountain in between you and the airport. This airport recently added a control tower and the charts aren’t completely updated so check the notams for frequencies etc. As you can see the airspace is designated Class D but the airport still shows uncontrolled. However the tower is most definitely there and active. We were told to fly around the mountain and report a left downwind for 24.

New Control Tower

Landing on 24

We were marshaled to a parking spot and walked right into the terminal. The woman at the desk was very friendly and told us our cab would be there shortly. Since we wanted to spend a few hours there we had the cab drop us off downtown to get some food. It is your typical college downtown lots of restaurants, diners, and even more places selling blue and white lion garb. The creamery is a short walk from downtown.

One huge stadium

The Lion - Pascale & Me

Berkey Creamery

You may want to look ahead at the half-gallon flavors if you intend to bring some home. So many students bring home ice cream for their families that they have a special thermal bag you can purchase to keep things cool. You can also bring your own cooler. Either way they provide you with enough dry ice to keep everything frozen for the ride home. Before this trip I took a few orders from friends so I ended up leaving with 9 half gallons. It was pretty heavy so we debated leaving Pascale at the airport and taking the ice cream. A man has to have priorities right? OK so it wasn’t THAT heavy no one had to be left behind.

The ice cream crew

Lots of ice cream inside the terminal

Lift with your back not legs

The cab rides were about $12 each way and there are no landing or ramp fees if you get fuel. Overall it made for a fun trip and something a little different from your typical $100 hamburger. If you give it a shot let me know how it worked out for you. Oh and I will take a half-gallon of Peanut Butter Swirl thank you very much.

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Dulles International Airport and the Udvar-Hazy Air & Space Museum

Posted on October 20, 2011 by Pat

After scrubbing three prior attempts we finally did it. For almost a year I have been planning on flying into Dulles International to go to the Udvar-Hazy Air & Space museum with my friend and fellow pilot Matt. We finally lucked out with the weather and maintenance. The trip would start at Morristown MMU then head to Wings Field LOM to pick up Matt then into the Washington DC SFRA and on to Dulles IAD.

Flying VFR into the SFRA takes a little more planning but it was actually pretty easy. You can find all of the information you need right here. Here is what worked for me, your mileage may vary. The first thing I did was take the online course. You must pass that course to fly anywhere within 60mi of the DCA VOR and I recommend you print out the certificate and keep it into your flight bag. Next I had to work on the flight plan. I picked the WOOLY entry gate and put that in for my departure point with a direct route to Dulles. I filed using the CSC Duats mobile website on my phone. The flight plan is always filed as IFR and in the comments you must write SFRA DUATS.

DC SFRA Gates

As we approached the Westminster VOR we contacted Potomac approach and they assigned us a transponder code. We were then cleared into the SFRA at 6,500ft. The next thing that happened was quite strange. As we approached the Class B airspace Potomac explained that they cannot clear me into the bravo, the next controller had to do that. So I had to spiral all the way down to 2,500ft only to be cleared into the bravo minutes later. It really didn’t make any sense but it worked and no F-16s where scrambled. We ended up being number two to land on runway 19C behind a Netjet. The FBO we chose was Landmark and they are right at the approach end of 19C. After taxing over we were shuttled right from the plane into the FBO’s building. I asked them to top off the fuel and asked for a shuttle to Udvar-Hazy. We were immediately off in a minivan on our way to the museum.

Final Approach to 19C

I won’t get into too much detail on the museum itself because you can find much better photos and history elsewhere online. To sum it up rather quickly, it is amazing. Just think of almost every historically significant airplane and it is there. Everywhere you look there are planes on the ground and hanging from the ceiling. I highly recommend making the trip out there.

I forgot my Jet

Long taxi out

Flying out of Dulles

Flying out was simply the reverse of flying in. The FBO picked us up at Udvar-Hazy. I squared up the bill with the front desk, filed the flight plan on my phone, and we were on our way. The landing fee and ramp fee came to $38. I think it was completely worth it. A taxi would have probably cost almost as much and would not have been even close to the level of service. The FBO even has free coffee which Matt gladly participated in. I used a free program for my Blackberry called GPS Logger II to log the flight path for the whole trip. You can see the flight plan part of our trip home on Flightaware.

DC to Wings track

The flight back was straight forward without any hiccups. We elected to stay down at 2,500ft the whole way to check out some scenery. This was by far my longest cross country to date and an awesome day trip. Total Hobbs time came out to 4.5hrs.I highly recommend giving it a try. Let me know how it works out for you.

 

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Helicopter Lesson at Linden Airport

Posted on October 9, 2011 by Pat

Helicopters have always been a bit of a mystery to me. From a young age I just gravitated towards airplanes and never gave them much thought past ‘Wow that seems pretty cool’. I have always wanted to fly one but the cost was usually the limiting factor. One of the advantages to living so close to New York City turned out to be the helicopter touring business. Most, if not all of the helicopters that take people on scenic flights around Manhattan are based out of Linden airport which is just south of Newark International airport. About six months ago I came across a Groupon coupon for a 1-hour helicopter lesson. The price was basically half off the actual price for a Robinson R22 plus instructor so I just couldn’t say no.

My helicopter lesson took place at Pegasus Flight. They are primarily a flight school (fixed and rotor) but they also do scenic tours. I met my instructor Rob Hirt on a beautiful sunny Sunday afternoon. Rob was already out on the ramp working on the pre-flight when I arrived. He proceeded to give me a breakdown of the controls and what to look for in a pre-flight and we were quickly off rolling the bird down the ramp to position for start up. This R22 also had the doors off for our flight which I really liked.

Rob suggested we fly up the Hudson VFR corridor and then come back for some practice maneuvers. Once I got the basic concept of the controls he started her up and taxied around for take off. Once we were airborne he quickly let me do my best to do all of controls myself. Obviously Rob was hovering on the controls and making corrections the whole time doing all of the actual flying. However he did so without being so over controlling. Some instructors have a tendency to grab the controls and not let you experiment as much but Rob was more than happy to let me get a feel for things.

The first and most obvious thing I noticed is just how sensitive everything is. The instructor said “Just think of where you want it to go and it will go” and he was not kidding. Unlike a plane you are on the controls the whole time making small corrections over and over and just a slight pressure on the cyclic will move the chopper where you want. Rob did a great job with explaining the physics and forces behind controlling the aircraft. I have always been what you could call a man of science so knowing the reasons behind the characteristics of flight helps me a lot.

Once we came back from the Hudson Rob demonstrated an auto-rotation. Then we tried the one thing I couldn’t wait to do…..HOVER. To me that is the coolest part about a chopper, just being able to hang up there. Obviously Rob made things look easy and the hovering was very cool. He let me give it a try and it was by far the hardest thing to do. It was actually pretty funny because every time I could see him take his hand off the cyclic we would start oscillating fore and aft. This clearly takes a lot of practice!

While the flying itself was of course difficult the first time I had an absolute blast. Being able to fly so slow and low with such a great panoramic view was amazing. I really didn’t expect to like it so much. Having never even considered a rotor rating before I can say now that I am completely sold on beating the air into submission.

Now I just need to find a bag full of money, damn you aviation.

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Free Book – Nine Lives: Adventures of a Lucky Pilot

Posted on September 22, 2011 by Pat

About six months ago I bought my first e-reader, an Amazon Kindle. To be honest I wasn’t sure if I was going to like it. I didn’t want another gadget that I had to update and troubleshoot when I wanted to do something as simple as read a book. The other big thing was the screen. Like many people I spend most of the day in front of a monitor and didn’t want another back lighted screen in front of me. So after reading about ten books I can safely say the Kindle is awesome. I love it plain and simple. It is very convenient and the e-ink screen is not like a computer screen at all.

One major advantage to an e-reader is being able to load free books. There are tons of free books online whether they be in pdf, epub (nook), or mobi (kindle) format. In order to convert and organize your collection you need to download a free program called Calibre.

I recently came across this free book from the EAA website and thought it was great. It is called Nine Lives by Malvern J. Gross. The book is written by a private pilot who spent most of his life flying. The author passed away in 2010 and I found this article from the Washington Post that does a nice job summarizing his accomplishments. I won’t make a big summary of the book here because that can be found elsewhere.

Mr. Gross was actually an early proponent for the development of Morristown Municipal Airport (KMMU). I thought that was neat considering I currently fly out of MMU and can see how big of an airport it has become and how he had a big role in making that happen.

I liked this book a lot because it shows how you can have a successful and exciting life in aviation without being a commercial or military pilot. Any regular Joe Pilot can break records and cross the country even with a family in tow. So give it a read I think you will enjoy it.

Download the book here

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