Jerry 5TJ

Well, as a young design engineer I lead a small tech group working on a solution to a problem. The contract was cost + fixed fee. For many months my status report was “we don’t know how to do this yet and we don’t know how long it will take.” I could very accurately report how much we had already spent, tho. I can’t say the customer took hearing that message every month any too gracefully, but they grudgingly approved continuing. Eventually we found a good solution.

I find that my confidence generally declined with hours and age, but increased after training for new ratings. For instance, I took four knowledge tests and two checkrides in two years for CFI and CFII and after that bout of training I did feel more confident in my skills, for a while. A few months ago I began providing instruction 1 day per week in AATDs at the community college and find that 6 hours of instruction given per week enhanced my confidence. No data on if that actually improved my ability to fly well. The Laws of Recency, Repetition, and Readiness have not been repealed.

Missing GA aircraft have been located from cell tower data, too. There’s almost always a cell phone on board, often one per passenger. If there’s no post-crash fire the cell phones frequently survive and operate for a day or two.

Certainly he did not consider buying the assets of American Motors or the Hudson Motor Car Company as the seed for Tesla. Why buy a 60 year old aircraft design ill-suited for an electric motor?

There are now used Garmin GTN750 and GTN650 boxes available as owners switch to the newer GTN750Xi and GTN650Xi. The GTN series are likely to be well supported for another decade. The GNS units are at the end of product support.

…kept inside these past 90 years. Long range tank option! Out of annual. May need ADSB upgrade.

https://www.apaflyers.com “Under $500 per hour wet!”

Rocket Engineering is based at Felts field. Perhaps you could ask Darwin for a lead on an A&P/IA in the area.

How about measuring the speeds yourself? Then you have the actual indicated airspeeds and ROC for your plane. Straightforward to then calculate the climb per mile for Vx.

How about putting her down in the parking lot of your insurance broker? Hand him the keys and take Uber home.

1090 transponders transmit on that frequency. UAT transmit on 978 MHz. 1090 transponders receive on 1030 MHz. UAT receive on 978. Diversity transponders (and there are both 1090 and 978 diversity systems) have dual antennas (two antennas, not one dual band antenna...) with one antenna on the top, the other on the bottom of the aircraft. It is diversity that NavCanada is going to be demanding next year.

Question: Is there an ICAO flight plan equipment code for diversity Mode S?

We installed diversity Mode S several years ago by swapping a GTX33ES with a GTX33DES which used the same rack and wiring. The only additional installation needed was the coaxial connector, cable and the top antenna.

During a GPS jamming event in 2021 the panel-mounted Garmin units quickly annunciated the loss of GPS signals and X-ed out their affected displays. However, the iPad running ForeFlight did not revert to other satellite navigation sources, nor did it flag or blank the map display. The symbolic airplane just coasted along the Magenta Line showing the previous heading and speed.

I think you will find it to be an excellent system upgrade. I have been giving instruction in a J with that avionics suite, plus a a GTN750, and it is an extraordinary step forward.

I used to fly from Northern California into SNA about once a month, for over a decade. I never, not even once, went VFR. LHS V459 SLI was the route then as now.

I believe that a goal is to carry insurance to make settlement attractive enough so that an injured party decides “Better to accept $2M now than wait years for the trial to perhaps get more.”

I think it took me about 50 hours to become comfortable when I made the change from 6-pack to the G500 a decade ago. At the time I had about 1700 hours of conventional round gauge flying. I also had to learn the GNS530 buttonology and get used to flying 100 knots faster. But the change to glass took longer than I expected. A decade later I'm still trying to learn to scan the bugs rather than read the numbers on the tapes.

Many Mooneys at KLAL.

Francesco and I are flying to the PPP in his M20J today.

If a certified Li battery system is a drop -in replacement, weighs half as much, has more capacity and lasts 5-10 times as long as the lead-acid bricks we use now then 10x the price sounds pretty good, and 3 times more costly would be great.

TrueBlue has been successful with its lithium battery series. They combine the battery with a complete BMS and have STC for a number of airframes. The weight of their battery is usually about 60% of the lead-acid battery replaced, but it has higher capacity and several times the expected life. The only piston single listed on their site with an STC is the A36 Bonanza. At 8 AMU it isn’t cheap.

Check to see: Is there power on pin 1 of the LEMO jacks?

Yes, ADS-B out is accomplished by Mode S ES (or 978 UAT in the USA). Mode S coverage from Aireon satellites https://aireon.com requires a transponder antenna on top of the airplane. Diversity transponders have two transponder antennas, top and bottom.

A diversity transponder uses two antennas, one on top of the airplane and one below. Probably not needed in the USA in the near term but many countries including Canada are scheduled to require diversity transponders to permit satellites to replace ground radar sites.