Cessna 525 Jet crash – WOW

Now here is an interesting report about a Cessna Jet crash. It seems that an 80 year old man with his 78 year old wife, later had engine problems and crashed into the water. Both were rescued by mariners, along with their dog. Avweb has another slant on the crash so go check them out. Luck of the Irish!

Interesting but discouraging!

An interesting but discouraging thing happened today- and it cost me some money – like down the drain! Ok, I bought a cable ($23.99) to connect my IBM Thinkpad 23 to my GPS. Then I bought MS Streets & Trips 2003 ($39.99 less $20 rebate). I was excited as I hooked everything up the other night. We went out for a little drive and sure enough it tracked where we were going – abeit, a little slow due to a licenceing agreement by MS to only update the map position every 15 seconds.

Three days pass and I try my other GPS (a Lowrance Airmap 300 used for aviation): I spent a lot of time making a special cable to connect the Lowrance to my computer. Driving down the road it keeps track of my position like a champ. However, I am having a problem with the GPS reporting lost position alarms popping up and then going away. By the time I get home I am steamed and decide to sell the Lowrance on eBay.

Fast forward to today! Guess what? I want to test out the non-aviation handheld GPS I decided to keep. So I hook up the $23.99 cable and fire up the computer with the $19.99 Streets & Trips software. Man, nothing is working correctly so I remove the more or less permanent install to find out what is going wrong. (do you have any ideas yet?) So, I drive around and not even a peep of a signal is hitting any of the 12 satellites it is supposed to track. So I just disconnect everything and turn on the GPS – bam, 6 solid hits on the meter. I hook everything back up and the signals disappear. To make the short story long – It is the IBM T23 causing the problem – too much radiated interference from the processor or power supply.

Hiatus over

My hiatus from the blog is over. After being bummed for a time I am back and ready for action. I have been out and about doing some techno stuff in wireless LAN. It is pretty cool and my technical expressions can be found at Moore Wireless Communications .

My vehicle decided to act up today (actually for the past several days but very temporary). After going to the airport, I started my 4×4 and the red battery light stayed on and the voltmeter showed about 8 VDC. So I trucked up to the Chevy Dealer to have them check it out. As luck, fate and murphy would have it the issue disappeared before they could look at it. However, after a brief period they came out ( you cannot stay with your vehicle even in the Midwest) and told me that “sure enough your alternator is faulty”. I am not too sure how they made that determination since everything was working again. Now for the bad news: no one in town had an alternator (remember this is the most popular truck in the Midwest and there are lots of them). So, I have to return tomorrow to get it replaced and it is a 135 Amp job so it will cost about 2x$135=$270 plus labor. The formula is one I derived after much study and research over the years and you may use it without royalty or licence.

Sad day for me!

My best flying buddy and friend took the final flight this evening around 2130 so it is a very sad day for me. For many, many years we explored the wonders of our planet from high above and from time to time landed to re-fuel ourselves and our “birds”. Quite some adventures we had – most which only pilots could appreciate – around the Midwest region. Fly-ins, Oshkosh, looking for a vintage “whatever” and expensive repairs were the joys, in good weather and bad, undertaken for the pure love of our skies. DD will be missed, the memories cherished……….

PLB’s Comment

This is the greatest thing since GPS…..PLB’s….Now when they get the uplink enabled and you plug in your GPS they know your location to 3 meters anywhere in the USA & beyond.

Palm-Size Emergency Beacons Make Nationwide Debut

On Tuesday, personal locator beacons (PLBs), which have been in use in Alaska since 1994, became available to pilots in the lower 48 (see AVweb’s review). The small, easily portable beacons, which use satellite signals to pinpoint location, have been credited with saving hundreds of lives in Alaska. Boy Scouts in Waterbury, Vt., carried out the official test of the technology on Tuesday, and were quickly located in the woods by rescue crews. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) says lower-end units are available for $300 to $500, but a quick Internet search this week found many prices from $599 to $1,200. Prices are expected to come down as demand and production increase. Users of PLBs must register them with the NOAA. Upon activation, a PLB sends a signal to the satellites that encircle the globe. The signal is then relayed to a ground station and routed to the appropriate mission control center, where the unique identification signal is matched to the beacon owner’s registered data. The location and data are then forwarded to the U.S. Air Force Rescue Coordination Center, which coordinates the rescue with the local search-and-rescue agency. If no GPS data is loaded into the PLB, searchers can pinpoint the PLB’s location to within 2.3 miles. If a GPS unit is connected to the PLB, emergency response speed is increased. The approval for the technology is long overdue, according to Doug Ritter, of the Equipped To Survive Foundation. The PLB is “a proven lifesaving device that’s been available elsewhere in the world for many years,” he said. Ritter will conduct a forum about the PLBs on July 31 at EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh.

The Doughnut Shop Take XXXX

OK, what a morning we had today – in spite of the fact I am writing in the evening – at the Doughnut Shop. Man, the crew was up-in-arms over the Steuben County Commissioners evicting the Snow Lake “Castle” home owner from his home. It seems that the neighbor(s) complained about the unfinished state of a rather unique home on Snow Lake. The home looks like a castle or at least it did until the homeowner removed the stone due to a leak in the structure – I guess this was more than a year ago. The DS crew was incensed at the temerity of the county commissioners and their removal of the home owner from his home just because an influential neighbor complained (probably a politically correct one). Words like wait till the next election were bantered about quite freely today. The author was neutral due to lack of knowledge on the whole issue but I must admit it seems like boundry’s were pushed on this one. The crew became surly and further camaraderie was futile so we left each on his own path.