Private Pilot: Maintaining Currency

Posted on by AstroPilotDad

As I might have mentioned more than once, my IFR journey is going very very very very slow! I haven’t finished my required cross country time and haven’t been out flying. Life got in the way! With a recent job change and weekends becoming busier with a hyper active toddler, its hard to find 3-4 hours required for me to drive to the airport, get cross country time in and drive back. My thought process has been, if I cant get a clear day and enough time for me to do cross country, I’d rather spend that time at home. However, I can’t get rusty by not flying so I have been doing bare minimum for now. My last cross country was about 2 months ago where I got a $100 burger with the high school buddy of mine.

This past saturday, I broke the almost 2 month long streak of no flying! I needed to get this done because my flight school – Regal Air has a 60 day currency requriement. Meaning you are required to fly with Regal atleast once every 60 days. If not, you need to fly with an instructor before being able to rent. While strict, I think its a good policy to ensure pilot profeciency and safety. So, to add to my cross country time and maintain currency, I decided to go for a flight. Unfortunately, I had booked the plane only for a couple of hours which meant I could do the shortest of cross country flights (to Port Angeles) and that too would be cutting it close if things get delayed. I decided to play it by ear so had not filed a cross country flight plan. Prior to leaving my home, I checked the enroute and destination weather and everything was green. I got to the airport right on time, checked out the plane, did my pre-flight. It was a pretty busy day at the airport given the clear weather. I knew that if I get stuck at the runway for take off clearance, it would add to the time and it would be challenging to come back in time. Given all this, I decided I won’t do a cross country flight but instead head over to Jefferson county airport, do a couple of touch and gos and be back.

It was a nice, calm and clear but hazy day in pacific northwest. The flight to Jefferson county airport is a pretty short one. Aftter getting there, I decided to do a couple of touch and goes. However, on my first approach I thought I was a bit too high and decided to do a go around. In reviewing the video (you can watch it below), I think I could have made the landing but I think my decision to go around was a good one. I don’t want to be in a situation when I am planning for a touch and go and don’t have enough runway ahead of me to take off. My second approach was pretty good, after which I headed back to Paine field. All in all it was a good short flight for me to maintain my currency. Here is a video for anyone interested (43 minute video sped up to 3 minutes 40 seconds):

Astronomy: When cheap LPF solutions aren’t enough

Posted on by AstroPilotDad

For a little over a year I have been doing astrophotography from my drive way, I have talked about how there is a lamp post right in front of my house creating challenges in photographing North Eastern Sky. I have, over time, employed crude techniques to limit the light intrusion from that lamp post including a crude cardboard placed on the OTA. Last night I was trying to image the fishhead nebula (IC 1795). It is visible on the north eastern part of the sky and I have been avoiding objects on that side because of the aformentioned reason. However, last night I had a plan! Well, what I thought was a fool proof plan. To block out the light pollution from the lamp post, here is what I did:

A relatively inexpensive solution that actually did a pretty goood job blocking the light from the lamp post. It’s a bit short and doesn’t cover the entire lamp but that I can fix for next time around. It has now become a part of my setup! However, the night was still mostly a bust for two reasons:

  1. Full Moon
  2. Autoguiding

I had accounted for the fact that it was a full moon night and hence deliberately chose a target (away from moon) but the second issue forced me to choose another target. Given that the nebula is faint, I wanted to capture as much data as possible which meant atleast 180 sec, if not 300 sec light frames. Unfortunately, autoguiding was failing due to mount backlash issues. From my prior googling, I know that the mount needs to be balanced and not over capacity. I ensured that th mount was balanced before I started. I need to try next time with one less counter weight placed at the end to see if two counter weights are taking mount over capacity. Anyway, because of spectacular failure in autoguiding, I had to resort to unguided images which meant easier targets. I slewed to triangulum galaxy as I thought it would be okay to get 100 sec or less unguided exposures. While I did achieve good round stars and no star trailing (surprised as autoguiding was failing but this worked 😐 ), there was a glow from the moon that washed up the images. I could not go longer exposures for the fear of getting even more glow from the moon. Unfortunately, that meant no salvagable data from the night and a key learning – there is more astrophotography related spending in my near future 🙂 .

I need to decide what the next steps are. First, I think i need to try out another night to see if guiding issues still persist. If so, it might be time to retire the mount. It’s been with me since 2012 and has fallen from my hand more than once. More on my thoughts on that later. Second, I need to decide between continuing with OSC (one shot color) photography from my driveway, knowing that the lamp post light pollution is potentially solved but moonlight is not, or go with RGB with a monochrome camera. The advantage of OSC is that I get the entire color spectrum data at once. Given that I have limited window each night to work with, I can try to wrap up a target in a couple of nights. However, OSC also means I am limited to nights when the moon isn’t a problem or I have to invest in a LP filter or a nebula boost filter that can block moon light as well. Its a couple hundered bucks and I’m set. I do need to research what filter to buy though 🙂 . Monochrome photography means a whole lot of expenses – Monochrome camera, filterwheel, filters. While it might clearly seem that the scale is tipped towards OSC from cost perspective, monochrome *may* be the way to go if I consider long term where I will invest for my potential (hopefully) future observatory. So … A lot of contemplation, deliberation and reflection lies ahead. Will come back and share my decision and the rationale in the next post. Stay tuned!

Personal: What a day!

Posted on by AstroPilotDad

Couple of weeks ago, I had a pretty interesting 24 hours. Before getting into it, here is some background: Last year I bought into an LLC that affords it members a dark sky site and a piece of land to pursue astronomy. I will get into the details of that exciting part in a later blog. Suffice it to say that I am a member of Goldendale Sky Village (GSV) and I’m in the process of (hopefully) building a remote observatory. I had hired a contractor to install a concrete pier towards that goal. Goldendale sky village is a LLC formed by like minded astronomy enthusiasts who purchased a piece of land in Eastern Washington to pursue their hobby. I too enthusiastically bought into the venture and have 5000 sqft of land for my personal use. I don’t own the land but can use it in any way I like for my hobby.

Last year, I got the plot cleared and this year was working on getting a pier installed. It is towards this goal that I had to drive there. I had built a template and secured J-bolts to attach to the pier. The plan was to go there in the middle of the night and early AM the contractor would pour concrete (about 30 minutes worth of effort). My presence was there to ensure that the J-bolts and pier plate template are level and aligned to the celestial north. I wouldn’t need to worry about it if i was getting a custom plate machined for my mount and the J-bolts but I wanted to have the option of using Dan’s Pier top plates. These are custom built pier top plates with adapters to switch out and replace for any mount type. Having these would make my pier (and potentially future observatory) mount and future proof. Those plates are a bit expensive and they have a long lead time. I could not order them in time to use directly for concrete pouring. So I built the template, with the hopes that in case my pier top is not aligned to the north or my template was off, I could still use custom machined plates. My neighbor at GSV kindly offered to machine one for me in case I need to go that route.

Any way, I digress. My plan was to reach GSV before sunrise to make sure I got the polar alignment marked out and hope was to leave GSV around 7:30 am so that I could reach home around 10 and be able to get to work. I left from home at 2:00 am to reach GSV just before sunrise. I also had a doctor appointment in the afternoon which I thought I could comfortable make it to. Well, hehe 🙂 . After getting the concrete poured, I left for home hurriedly. Half hour on the road from GSV, I got engine temperature hot warning. The indicator was yellow, meaning I could still drive but cautiously. Within a couple of minutes it turned red and there was smoke from the front of my car!!! I had to stop on the side of the road, wait for a while for engine to cool down and check whats going on. To my surprise, there was hardly any coolant! I did not have AAA with this car as we hardly use it after our son was born. Its a 2010 mini cooper so no place to put a car seat 😐 . To top it all off, I was in an area with no cellphone coverage. I knew that I won’t have cellphone coverage for another 30 miles. So after waiting for a while for the engine to cool down, I decided the only option was to drive to an area of cellphone coverage and get a tow vehicle. Oh, did I mention that I dropped my cellphone on gravel early in the am? It was causing the screen to flicker wildly making it unusable after 30 sec to 1 minute of activity … Calling the tow companies would be fun. It was for the same reason that I couldn’t call to cancel or reschedule my dr. appointment (the timing of these appointments is critical for my FAA medical certificate – I can write another blog about those stories 🙂 ). But first things first, I had to get to cellphone coverage area.

So the next 30 miles took me close to 2 hours as the car was getting hot if my speed went over 20 miles an hour. It was annoying the hell out of other drivers on a singe lane highway. I tried to drive as close to the shoulder as possible with my hazard lights on so that they could overtake me but, you know, there are some drivers who just get pissed off no matter what ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Anyway, after driving for what felt like hours, just as I got to an area with cellphone coverage (that was the first life saving moment of the day), the car wouldn’t start. The day was getting hotter too so the engine wasn’t cooling enough. With my broken cellphone, I couldn’t browse the web to be able to find towing companies in the vicinity so I called my wife, explained my situation and had her call the towing companies. No one was available. She called 4 of them and all had one excuse or the other and could not be bothered to help out. I was just 5 miles from the town center!

Assuming that no one was ready to help out, I thought my best bet was to abandon the car, walk the 5 miles to town and talk to one of the towing companies. If that did not work, either stay the night in a motel or see if any of my friends could come pick me up. I was talking to my wife discussing what to do and how to go about things when she asked if there is anyone from GSV that could help me out. I’m like ofcourse, I should have thought of that!!! One of my fellow villagers also had concrete poured in the morning and he was gracious enough to let me go first because I had to go to the dr. appointment. Welll so much for that 🙂 . Anyway, I did not have his contact information but we are all a part of a slack group. I called him on slack right away! This was my second life saving moment of the day. He not only picked up but was about to leave from GSV back to Seattle area after finishing up his lunch. I asked if he could pick me up and he kindly offered to do so. Since I was fully vaccinated and he too was, it was not a concern to sit in close proximity with each other. I would have worn a mask if he insisted or if he wasn’t vaccinated but since we were both vaccinated, it did not come to that.

After about an hour, his car pulled up behind mine, I just picked all the valuable stuff from the car and hopped on to his. After an uneventful journey where we talked at length about our life and background and interest in astronomy, I reached home at around 4:30pm. He also gave me tips, suggestions and pointers on what kind of a mount to go for as I am in the market for a new mount (more about that in a subsequent blog). I owe him a big one for being the life saver on that day! I was up from 1:00 am the previous night and survived only on a protien shake, cashew cookie bar. So first thing I did after getting home was had breakfast+lunch+dinner combined then a nice hot shower. I was totally exhausted but stayed up till late evening so as to not got to bed at an odd hour.

It was a very long, very tiring and an eventful day. One that I’m sure I will reminisce at a later point in time! Oh btw, I did call the state troopers in Yakima county to let them know that I had left my (my wife’s) car on the highway and plan to pick it up in the next day or two. I owe another friend a huge one for helping me with it and spending money on an accessory that he did not immediately need. I will try to cover that adventure (well, it wasn’t an adventure as such but an experience) in the next blog. Until then, stay safe!

Private Pilot: $100 Burger

Posted on by AstroPilotDad

As a part of getting my cross country time, which by the way has been very very very slow, I have been asking friends if they are interested in a cross country trip with me so that we could actually make a trip out of it rather than me just going for a solo trip with time building in mind. One of my friends is interested in getting a pilot certificate, so he was the first one I reached out to. He had not gotten his second dose of covid vaccination, so we waited for a few weeks allowing for his second dose and the two week wait period before we got in the plane together. My friend had a bit of fear of flying so I decided to keep it a very short but still a cross country trip as that was one of the goals of this flight. I decided that a trip to Port Angeles and on the way back stop over at Port Townsend for lunch would be the best thing to do is.

I booked a Piper Warrior for the trip as the flight school I rent from is currently very busy and their 172s book well in advance and usually the warrior is the only one available. I’m glad that I have a checkout in a warrior as well. The weather this summer in PNW has been very hot and I’m sure with each passing summer, its going to get progressively worse. While the day we chose for the flight was not extremely hot, the warrior owing to its one tiny window gets hot AF on the ground while taxiing and during the run up. Once you are in the air, the vents help bring cool air in but you have to endure the heat until that happens. Oh, the other challenge (not really a challenge but a con) with the warrior is that, owing to its low wing and seats, the views from the plane are not as expansive as that from a C172.

Anyway, once we reached the airport, I did a preflight and we got into the plane. I gave my friend my old Faro headset that has been lying around in my home unused since I upgraded to Bose A20. I noticed that his volume was low but did not think much of it and we taxiied, did the run up and took off. Once the plane took off, my friends voice was barely audible. I fidgeted with the volume controls but no luck. So, unfortunately, most of the flight was one way communication where I was talking and my friend was gesturing with his hands 😐 . We flew west to port angeles did a quick touch and go, and on the way back to Paine field stopped over at Port Townsend. There is an airport cafe here where we decide to get our $100 burger sitting outside watching the planes land and take off. However, there was a 20 minute wait for an outdoor seat so we decided to order the food to go and sit in one of the park benches on the grass surrounding the cafe. For those of you who don’t know, this cafe, Spruce Goose Cafe, is famous for their pie. I decided to pick some marionberry pie for my wife, who unfortunately couldn’t join us because she had lot going on at work.

After a nice lunch, we decided to head back. The temperature was peaking for the day and the plane had gotten very very hot on the inside. During the time we taxiied to the runway, did our run up and took off, we were dripping with sweat. The journey back to paine field was largely uneventful except for a few gusts of wind at take off and enroute which caused a bit of turbulence and scared the s**** out of my friend 🙂 . Not sure if it helped or hurt my friends desire to get a private pilot cetificate 🙂 .Here is a quick view of our flight path that day:

Leg1
Leg2

It was, overall, a pretty good adventure. I sure had fun. Hope my friend did too! Next up, a flight with another friend to the Spruce Goose Museum in McMinnville. I’ve been meaning to do this for a while but its an entire day trip so need to figure out the logistics as I dont want to have my wife manage our kid for the entire day by herself while I go have fun 🙂 . I can take them for the museum but I still need to get my son to wear headphones and an hour half long flight and an entire day out is not feasible at this age. He needs to be a bit older before we take him for such long outings. Heck, so far all we have managed with him is one hour and half long drive with him so far!

Personal: Family time!

Posted on by AstroPilotDad

I know its been more than a month since I posted anything on my blog. There’s a lot that has happened and I’ve been a bit busy and a bit lazy and hence the delay. I have tons of things to write about but we will see how many I will actually get to. This post though is about family. After almost 15 months since my son was born, my brothers family and my wife’s brothers family visited us for back to back weeks. Our son, for the first time, was able to meet his uncles and aunts face to face rather than over video calls. While the two weeks of family visit was fun and flew by very fast, it was off to a rocky start. Our son fell sick just before my brother arrived and the whole week he wasn’t his usual self. While he was still very active and had a lot of fun, he was less so than usual. He had lost his appetite as well making us all a bit worried. Luckily, he started feeling better and eating much better the following week.

My brother and his wife drove all the way from bay area to meet their nephew. Given the challenges with changing climate and forest fires, there were several raging all along the western part of United States with a potential to blocking their route. Anyway, they decided to take the risk and drive up. My brother had a week off and he was eager to meet my son. While the trip would have been awesome if my son was feeling 100%, but nevertheless I think they had fun. I know my son and enjoyed their company. My wife and I were happy to meet with our family. During the week, we did a few outdoor things whenever my son was feeling up to it including a few trips to the park. All in all, it was a fun visit.

With no break, the day after my brother left, my brother in law and his family arrived. They flew in from southern California and have a 3 year old daughter. My son had fully recovered so he was is usual self and while he is too young to play with other toddlers or kids, I think having people other than us at home, especially since he hasn’t had a regular social life given, you know, covid, was a good experience for him. My brother in laws daughter had a good time as well. She got to go to the aquarium, and a kind of theme park for kids (Remlinger farms) which she thoroughly enjoyed. We too enjoyed having my brother in law and his family over.

It was really great to have family over, especially after a year in isolation due to covid. However, we needed a week to recover from the back to back family visits 🙂 . Also, my wife had a bunch of work deadlines that got her stressed during the family visit and she had to get stuff done with late nights for couple of weeks after the visit. I was in the process of switching jobs so I had a bit free time on my hands making it easier for my wife to get work done. Given my free time, I could have spent some time updating my blog post but I got a bit lazy so didn’t spend the time.

Anyway, it was really good to see family. I wish they were closer so we could meet more often and my son could get to know them better as he grows up.