happylife

Confusing words

Pilots in command are supposed to read number separately in radio communications. We read for example 2,300 "two three zero zero" instead of "two thousand and three hundred." But some pilots or even tower officers say "two thousand and three hundred" or "twenty three hundred." So there are three ways to read one number. It's very confusing. And moreover, the preposition of "to" makes it much more complex. I heard in today's ground school that once actually occurred an air accident caused by the misunderstanding of pilot who took the tower's instruction "Descend 22,000." for "Descend to 2,000." English is really a explicit language but still has ambiguity.

Laundry

My apartment is very comfortable to live in and I'm satisfied with it. It has a great view, spacious rooms, and the manager is very kind. But there is only one problem. It is about laundry. There is one clothe washer and dryer on each floor. On my floor, eight residents are sharing them. They are so crowded that I often miss cleaning because they are in use. And the both machines require a lot of coins. I have to prepare 6 quarters and 2 loonies before starting the machines. I hope using 2 tloonies even if it is more expensive. And this is not special to my laundry machine, but my sock is sometimes lost in the universe of laundry. Washing clothes has a lot of problems in my apartment.

Pitot tube

Every airplane has this tube. It is called "pitot tube" and is installed in the nose direction of airplanes in order to measure the air speed. The mechanism is very primitive. As the airplane flies, air comes in from this tube and blows up a balloon moving the needle of the airspeed indicator according to the quantity of air which came in. To adjust the error of low air pressure at high altitude, there is also installed a "static hole" on the side surface of airplanes. These are the all mechanism of how airplanes know the relative air speed. That's it. Very simple! It is so simple that it sometimes indicates a strange value. For instance, while we're making steep turns, more air comes in to the static hole than to the pitot tube, and the indicated air speed becomes near to zero although the air plane is fling! We pilots have to anticipate this kind of phenomena and always be calm.

Long distance call

The day before yesterday, I talked with my friend in Tokyo for more than one hour. The talk time with the other friend in Toronto last night was more than one hour too. But the cost of the call are both free thanks to Skype or IP phone. I think that the old type of long distance call without the Internet is out of fashion yet. And telephone companies have to change their business model right now or they would vanish away in the next decade. It looks like the relation between cars and trains. Just like trains gave way from the main stream of traffic, and cars became the most popular transportation device, communication devices are shifting from telephone to the Internet.

Flight computer

I'm now learning how to use a flight computer. It is a computer which doesn't need any electronic devices. It is a very simple computer made of some pieces of cardboard or metal plate. We can do a series of calculations such as speed, time, and distance. We can also do some conversions between units like how much statute miles is one nautical mile. The backside of a flight computer is called the wind side which we can use for our flight navigation. We can do most of calculations around flight with this tiny, cheap, paper computer. Of course an electronic calculator is more accurate and easier to use, but a flight computer is more convenient and practical for pilots because it is specially designed for aviation use and contains everything pilots need. I think en electronic calculator give us a digital answer which is just a number and has no practical image. On the other hand, the answer from a flight computer is not an accurate figure, but has a practical image beyond a number itself.

Passed PSTAR!

Today I took PSTAR, the written exam for student pilots, and passed it at full mark. The test itself is not difficult, because we can exercise 200 quiz prior to the exam, and 50 of them selected at random are in the exam. But anyway,  I'm happy. I have already passed the medical too, and the next step is radio exam. Although I'm not good at radio comunications but the radio exam is just a written test and I think it's easy for me. I hope to take it next week. Making a step-by-step progress toward the goal, I feel good.

Radio, radio, radio

I was told that I have to do something about radio communication with tower. Without an efficient communication with tower or other planes, I can't fly solo. I know that and these days I park my car under a tree near the airport and listen to the radio communication. The sentence in the radio itself is not difficult but it is too fast, busy and noisy for me to understand and response quickly. For example, they say "Victor November Uniform, downwind, touch and go." "You're number 2, bra bra bra." I need to understand the conversation fully, imagine the traffic status, and make a proper action within a short time. I need much more exercises.

Circuit training

Today's flight lesson was circuit training which is a total exercise from take-off to landing. There are a lot of procedure I have to do in a short time; taking off from the runway, climbing, left turn at 500 feet, continuing climbing until 1,000 feet, slowing down to 65 KTS maintaining the altitude, pre-landing check, tower call, left turn and start descending, one more left turn for the approach, touch and go, and climbing again. It is a good exercise because it contains all the normal procedures. I repeated it five or six times, and succeeded in landing only once. Medium cross wind prevented me from a successful approach yesterday, but I have to overcome any kind of obstacles, because just one mistake means a crush in flight.

Wind power

Today English Bay was crowded with several tankers. They were all waiting for their turn to dock and be unburden. Vancouver harbor has enough capacity for them all to stay in, but most tankers do not so because of the expensive mooring charge. They save money by anchoring in English Bay. It is easy to distinguish anchoring tankers. They are all parallel to the wind direction. Although they are huge and look motionless, they are changing their direction following to the wind. The power of wind is overwhelming. In Tokyo I was living without regard to wind, but here in Vancouver, I often feel and recognize the power of it.

A strange regulation in Japan

I read a strange news that Nara prefecture, the center part of Japan, is considering about a new regulation about child protection. "Any children without their parent should not be talked to on the streets" is the outline. On the back ground of this idea, there are series of tragedies occurred these past months around children, who were kidnapped and some of them were killed in a cruel manner. But, even for them, this regulation looks so funny that many papers are playing it up. I think the more communications between adults and children contributes to the safer community and this new bylaw runs counter to it.