#astropilotdad

Private Pilot: Easing back into flying

Posted on June 3, 2021June 3, 2021 by AstroPilotDad

Short post alert! With my required annual review done, I am eager to complete my instrument rating training. However, I still have a bunch of cross countries to finish as a PIC and before getting right into those, I wanted to get comfortable being in the cockpit alone so this past memorial day weekend, I rented a plane to go flying!

I think, touch and go’s are a nice way ease back into flying so that’s what I decided to do. Took the plane to the short runway and did several landings. Going back up in the air by myself, soaking in the beautiful pacific northwest scenery on a nice clear day and getting the rust off of my flying skills. It was liberating!

The first landing and subsequent takeoff was bit rough on the edges but after getting the feel for the plane, the subsequent landings were mostly smooth. Although, I did not practise forward slip like I had thought the last time around. I think it is better to practise them at altitude before trying to do them for landing. If I ever felt I was a bit high and not comfortable/ready for a slip, go around would be an easy option. However, I did not have to do any of that this time.

For those who care, here is a video I took of my touch and go’s. The altitude and the speed G-Metrix are messed up but its just a mundane video showing me take off and land several times 🙂 . Enjoy!

Next, finish my cross country PIC (pilot in command) time and continue IFR training with instructor but before that a lesson with instructor to dust off my IFR skills (practising holds, approaches, naviation etc).

Keep an eye out for updates as I restart Instrument rating training in my private pilot journey!

Private Pilot: Up in the Air!

Posted on May 26, 2021 by AstroPilotDad

This will be a short but exciting post! Now that we have decided to increase our risk tolerance and send our son to day care, and the fact that I am fully vaccinated, I felt a bit more comfortable flying with an instructor to get current on my annual review so that I can get going on my IFR training. So that’s what I did the weekend of 05/15. My instructor had gotten his first shot so wasn’t fully vaccinated yet but given that I was fully vaccinated and wearing an N95 mask, I felt comfortable.

The weather was nice and the review was pretty straightforward. Took off from Paine field, went over lake Steven’s did a few maneuvers including but not limited to steep turns and stalls. After the CFI assessed my proficiency at that, we came back to KPAE to do a few touch and gos. Most of the landings were decent but not great showing that I had gotten a bit rusty due to the lack of practice. For one particular landing, I was a bit high and the CFI asked me to do a forward slip. I did not do a good job at it keeping my airplane nose higher than it should be leading to lower than desired speed for the slip. I corrected for it and made a good landing but the CFI had to remind me to watch my airspeed while doing the slip. Something for me to practice on my next flight

After just under an hour of flight time, the CFI signed my log book and my review was done. I can now freely rent an airplane and finish up on my cross country requirement for IFR. I also spoke to the chief instructor about restarting my Instrument rating and he was going to check on availability and get back to me. I am looking forward to getting back to the training and getting my instrument rating as soon as practical! First up though, some touch and goes and local flying the next time I rent the airplane on a weekend with nice weather! Boy, I am excited to be able to go flying again!!

Astronomy: Light Pollution, Crude fix to save the night

Posted on May 20, 2021May 20, 2021 by AstroPilotDad

I’m not sure if I have shared this before but I currently take pictures from my drive way. Apart from the limited FOV, only the south eastern, north eastern are visible making it a bit challenging to get images for objects more than a couple of hours a night. On top of that, there is a bright street light right next to my drive way 😐 . The light also shines right into one of the guest bedroom. To mitigate the problem, I contacted the light company and explained the situation. The were kind enough to put up a shield on one side of the light. While helpful, it is not completely opaque allowing enough light to pass through so as to be a problem.

This is usually not a huge challenge when I take pictures of objects in the south eastern skies. However, at this time of the year not many targets are visible in that region of the sky during the early part of the night. So I had to resort to targeting objects in the north/northeastern skies. The lamp created so terrible LP artifacts that the subs were unusable. I had a cheap light pollution filter applied but it wasn’t any use either. Here are a couple of sample pictures I tried to take. The first one is a 5 minute sub of Elephant’s trunk nebula (not sure if you can make out the faint outline at the center of the image) and the second is 3 minute sub of Iris Nebula. As you can see, both the images have the light pollution artifact ruining the right side of the image. The more subs I stack the more apparent the problem becomes. Going back to my point about PNW not getting enough clear sky nights, I did not want the night to be ruined. Especially, as I was able to achieve pretty good focus and guiding.

So, I resorted to a very crude but effective way to get rid of light pollution (within limits) as long as the object was not in close proximity of the street light. My solution was to quickly put up a flattened cardboard box at the end of the OTA using an elastic band. Here is what the set up looked like 🙂

The crude and quick fix saved the night. I don’t care how it looks! It worked!! You can see the results for yourself to judge. However, I think I need to improve on my light pollution filter and create a v2 that is a bit more “sophisticated” 🙂 (black chart paper which encircles the entire OTA). Will keep you posted on how that goes

Personal: Out of the burrow!

Posted on April 21, 2021April 26, 2021 by AstroPilotDad

While technically the zoo visit a few weeks ago was what we should call coming out of our burrow from hibernation, this past weekend we took advantage of the amazing Pacific North West spring weather and finally ventured out for some physical activity. I’m voting to call that as the official out of the burrow activity 🙂 . What better way to enjoy spring weather than going for a hike on one of the several thousand beautiful trails offered by PNW.

It was the first time that we were outdoors with our son for such a long period of time, burning some calories and enjoying the sunny skies and clear air. It felt real good, even though we were/are grossly out of shape. We ended up doing a 3.4 mile hike partly through forests and partly through the cityscape. It’s amazing how in PNW it is very easy to go from the concrete jungles to the natural forests with a couple mile drive!

This particular hike had a gradient and is usually done from elevation down but we did it the other way round to burn some more calories 🙂 .While we did not end up burning as many calories as I’d initally thought, I’m sure the added weight of carrying my son is not reflected in the stats so the numbers should be slightly better than below. Here is a snapshot of our hike:

Did you look at the temperature? It was hottt!!! Luckily though the trail was mostly through shaded forests so we did not feel the heat as much. The trip back through the neighborhoods adjacent to the hike was through the sun but it wasn’t bad as the trip back was quite quick given the descending gradient and paved roads.

Like I mentioned before, it felt really nice to get out there. It sure brought in some sense of normalcy. We plan to keep this trend (n=1 is definitely not a trend but I am choosing to call it that 🙂 ) and hope to get out more often during spring and summer. With me fully vaccinated and my wife about to get her first shot soon, we feel a bit more comfortable hanging out with friends outside. Hopefully indoors (with other vaccinated familes) once we are fully vaccinated.

Looking forward to a normal and fun filled summer! For now, time to close out this blog. I will leave you with a picture from our hike:

Personal: One trip round the sun!

Posted on April 20, 2021May 5, 2021 by AstroPilotDad

This past week was my son’s first birthday! All that means is that the planet earth made a trip around the sun and is back at more or less the same place relative to the sun. In terms of space-time, we are never back at the same place. The sun is revolving around the galactic core and the milky way itself is moving relative to the local cluster and space itself is expanding. Check this video out if you aren’t familiar with how everything in the universe moves and how the current calendar came into being:

My point is, the yearly celebration is quite arbitrary. If the earth took a couple of months longer to revolve, our birthdays would have been every 15 calendar months. I think what is important is to celebrate developmental milestones, but may be our developmental milestones also align with the revolution of the earth because of millions of years of evolution 🙂 ? Anyhow, given our lives revolve around the revolutions the earth makes 🙂 , it is important to celebrate milestones based on this construct. So we planned to do exactly that for our son’s birthday. Except, you know, COVID!

We still decided that such an important milestone be memorable. While we could not invite friends and family to a party, we neverthless did a small celebration where we decorated the house and my wife made a cake and we did a video call with out close family on his birthday. Our son seems to like the llama llama books so we made that as the theme for his birthday. Here is what the setup looked like:

The following day, my wife had planned for professional photoshoot. We were hesitant to do it because of COVID but the photographer had been quarantining between shoots and planned to wear a mask for the duration. So we thought that it was a tolerable risk. My wife was very exicted as this was the one thing she had been meaning to get for a while! We thought that we would do it at our son’s birth but, you know, COVID! We made arrangements for the photoshoot to be llama llama theme and we planned our matching outfits and got new ones for our son. My wife had also ordered a bunch of 12-18month outfits. As is customary, I put all the new clothes to wash and thought I was all set for the photoshoot day. On the day of, I was looking through the wash pile for the planned outfits and could not find them! I spent 30 minutes searching for them and have no idea were they were. Infact, 3 days on, I still don’t know where they are. In my mind a false memory of me washing the clothes was generated and I told my wife we were all set for the day. Imagine my wifes disappointment 😐 ,especially, since she had been looking forward to this for so long. Because of the snafu, we got delayed going to the photoshoot by an hour and did not have time to print our son’s milestone card on the way to the shoot as we had planned. Luckily the photographer was kind enough to accomodate our delayed start. We ended up getting some amazing pictures from the shoot that we will be printing to adorn some of the walls in our house

While the day was a chaotic one, the most important thing is, we had an unforgettable experience and a memorable day with those memories captured for us to relive over and over!