New Directions

Yes it has been quite some time since my last post.  Quite honestly I didn't think anyone would want to read about me studying.  That has been the majority of my activities the last couple of weeks.  To update the fatal crash of my friend and colleague, we will not know anything from the NTSB for 9 to 12 months.  The school was reopened the next day and we have had a memorial service for the two.  I wanted to go but some tragedy occurred with Jessica's family.  Her step father was killed in a car wreck in the Chicagoland area.  I refuse to call it an accident. I wont go into details but for anyone interested in knowing what happened here is a link to the news story.  Jessica has been with her mom since the incident and is coming home tomorrow.

Some of you have asked if I have been flying.  I have.  Not a lot. But I have gone flying to maintain my skills for the upcoming stage check.  The best news I have of my progression, is I have been assigned a new instructor.  Before the official switch I had a few ground work sessions with the manager of my instructor's group.  It was like night and day.  Light bulbs were exploding with the revelations of things I didn't quite have a grasp on.  After a few of the sessions with the group manager I told him how much more I was getting from him than I was with my instructor.  This apparently sent a ball in motion.  Next thing I knew I was being scheduled with someone new.  

My first meeting with my new instructor was not a good experience.  He was good.  He was really good.  He has very high standards.  Where I thought my previous instructor was really digging with knowledge questions, this guy was going even deeper into some realms I had no idea I had to know.  So when I say it was not a good experience, its because I feel like I have been wasting my money and time with the old instructor.  Now I have to catch up to meet the standards.  But this will be good in the long run.  Instead of a basic knowledge of topics, I will have a deep understanding.  

About my new instructor.  He's a former air force mechanic that worked on jet engines.  He is an A&P mechanic (Airframe & Power plant) and is looking to work in the hangar as a mechanic on top of being an instructor at DCA.  This will really be a benefit for me when I have to go into more detail of the Cirrus systems.  After just one week of ground work I have improved dramatically. I still have a long way to go.  But at least I know for sure I'm on the right path.  He might be a hard ass with high standards... but in the long run I'm only going to benefit.  He and I are scheduled to fly on Monday.  I'm really looking forward to this.

Some of the things that have been holding me back is my memory and remembering what letters of acronyms stood for.  Ive countered this by eFlashcards.  Actually... I've started using PowerPoint to create these cards.  Each slide has another letter.  This has forced me to retype each letter over and over until the end.  Its been working!

Another thing that has been bugging me is playing back what ATC instructs me like a recorder.  I was really thinking hard how I could really improve on this.  And it came to me.  I have a Garmin Nuvi GPS in my car.  It tells me instructions all the time when I ask for directions.  I found a program called TTSVoiceEditor. It allows you to change the set phrases for actions.  You choose the voice you want to edit and it brings up all the phrases the Nuvi uses as you are driving.  When you first set your destination the Nuvi says "Calculating."  Well... not anymore.  Now it says.  "Connection Seven Niner Four taxi to, and hold short of runway." Instead of "Drive to highlighted route" my personal ATC says "Connection Seven Niner Four clear for takeoff fly runway heading."  HA!!  All the cardinal directions have been converted to headings.  North is Three Six Zero, South is One Eight Zero etc.  I had to mess around with this a bit though.  Before it says a heading I had to program it to say Fly heading then the direction.  Otherwise turn right and turn left being changed to fly Zero niner Zero, and fly Two Seven Zero could have been confusing.  In essence I have to imagine North is always ahead of me for this to work. And the dreaded "Recalculating?" which might as well be "HEY DUMBASS! Why arent you listening to my instructions" has been rewritten to "Connection Seven Niner Four fly hold as published until further instruction."  The only other major change I can think of was "Make a U Turn" has become "Connection Seven Niner Four fly One Eight Zero"  Now as I drive around town, when ATC gives me an instruction I repeat it and close the transmission with my tail number. 

Nuvi: "Connection Seven Niner Four Turn Zero Niner Zero onto 3rd street and keep Two Seven Zero"

Me: "Turn Zero Niner Zero onto 3rd street and keep Two Seven Zero, Connection Seven Niner Four"

The best part is the program does not edit what is read off of the display. This is good incase I get confused.  It will still read right and left, North South.  And if I didnt get a part of the instruction I can hit repeat.

GENIUS! I wonder if I can market this to Garmin like other GPS units have after market voices such as John Cleese, Mr. T, and Yoda.  When will they come out with Optimus Prime?

I do want to warn anyone that tries out the TTSVoiceEditor to be very careful.  Its a bit tricky and once you change a phrase it does not keep in memory what was there last.  My suggestion is to record the line number of the phrase and write down exactly what it said before you make a change.  This way if something goes wrong you can put everything back to normal without trying to remember what it used to say.

Thats it for this week.  Hopefully I'll have something to talk about next week other than book learning. In the mean time everyone drive and fly safe!