Karoliina's blogs all-in-1

I have been ranting about that personal aviation is starving and struggling at best to stay alive. But there is no such reason it has to stay that way. If nothing is done, ever increasing regulation and bureaucracy and the increasing expenses will make personal aviation extinct sooner rather than later. And in my opinion, sportplanes/LSA are not the right answer. They are substitute for something else that would be really needed instead – airplanes are most useful when they are used to get somewhere – with fun and with style. Let’s face it, flying traffic pattern is such hardcore fun that only dedicated pilots like me and maybe the readers of this blog will enjoy about. And to get somewhere, there is the blocker, which is weather. And I think there is a solution for that:

What is missing in general currently in current general aviation market is simply:
– affordable mass produced aircraft that are so simple to fly that much greater portion of population can do that, and with less training than currently is required for pilot’s license.

Lets address this simple to fly thing: mechanically controlled aircraft can be easy to fly to an extent. For example Diamond DA40 is very easy airplane to fly. However, it still requires a lot of training to fly one. To make airplanes more accessible to people, controls should be extremely simple to learn, should not be any harder to get it than learn to ride a motorcycle, or ideally, it should be easier. So what would be the cure then?

In my opinion the answer is in fly-by-wire. No control rods, cables and the like, but instead a (doubled for redundancy) computer that controls all control surfaces and specially purpose built brushless DC servo motors which are directly connected to control surfaces. User uses a fully electronic stick that only gives input to the computer which then decides what control surfaces to move and how much to respond to the input the way user wanted. Pushrod assemblies are very complicated, have many parts, of which many are expensive. To make the plane less expensive, all expensive parts should be designed out of it. Servo motors can be made in large quantities quite inexpensive and the control system will not be super expensive either as it would use off-the-shelf hardware. Doubling that for redundancy would not be very expensive as the hardware in question is similar than what controls all quadro copters and toys like that.

Second enabler will be avionics which displays only important information to the user. E.g. user does not need to know oil pressure, oil temperature, EGT, CHT etc. values if they are all well and optimal, ECU is controlling the engine without bothering you about mixture controls or other obsolete things, and trend analysis done by the computer concludes that trends are not alarming and user does not need to worry about engine failure. Only when something would fail, or something suspicious would be found from analysed trends, the computer would inform the user about the problem. If things are ok and green, why to bother user with 100 gauge displays on a cluttered control panel. User would be left with much less workload and he or she could concentrate on looking for other traffic and flying the plane rather than trying to watch all the engine monitoring etc. values.

The system could communicate automatically with ATC and would display the pilot a very easy path to follow to make a IFR approach without needing any of the workload that is the burden for IFR-pilots. The plane would do things automatically, a bit like a copilot that would be helping you on the right seat. You would not need to worry about what is ILS alpha approach as all the necessary information would be presented you automatically and the display would show you in very clear way which way to turn your plane. You would still be able to control the plane to not lose the fun of flying, but the hard and messy parts would be handled by automation. And for pilot going to weather he or she is not able to fly through, there could be a panic button that would direct the plane to the next airport and land automatically if the pilot so wishes.

And one more enabler would be nice to have. It takes awful lot of time to pre-flight a modern high performance aircraft such as Cirrus SR22. You open the checklist and start checking this and that and that and that and there are zillion items to check before you can even start the engine. What if there would be a computer with sophisticated sensors wired everywhere in the plane and it could do the pre-flight automatically without user needing to care about it unless he or she wants. Sometimes, in case of a short trip, due to the long time spent to pre-flighting the plane, one could reach the destination by car faster by driving rather than getting to airport, pre-flighting plane, filing flight plan etc. There surely should be a faster way to do it with some technology.

It would not be the thing how fast the plane would be. That would be secondary after the plane would be fast enough. How economic the plane would be has greater importance. But how easy it is has greatest importance. Not everybody is skilled enough to ever become IFR-pilots and let’s face it, single pilot IFR is a quite dangerous thing to do in hard IMC to the minimums alone without second pilot as helper. The second pilot would need to be replaced with very intelligent computer system that would take off the workload from the pilot so the pilot could concentrate on flying a perfect approach.

Since the plane would be fly-by-wire, it could be made more stable and the ride could be augmented to be less bumpy by automation. So that the plane would be always rock solid, in perfect trim etc. in all flight conditions that would make flying the IFR-approaches very easy and safe. This would enable really this pre-requisite of getting somewhere. Who would want to drive 1000 km with a car slowly averaging 80 km/h at best if there was a way to do it with airplane with no more expense, as easily as with the car, and much more conveniently and certainly with a lot more style. That would make airplanes desirable again to general public, that they currently are not. Only hardcore pilots (like myself) have a desire for the current selection of airplanes.

None of these things I presented here are technically impossible to do and neither they would or should cost much. Everything presented above is doable with even a less sophisticated hardware than a typical smartphone that costs no more than 400 euros. The authorities with ancient rules, regulations and bureaucracy is a thing that makes everything expensive, and I could imagine that some certification process could kill this idea for starters even before it began and this kind of installed system would cost due to certification costs, millions per one single unit. But lets assume that this would not happen and things would go the right way for a change.

To get somewhere, regulation should be largely reinvented in order to not kill personal aviation. Well it is already killed by certification requirements and regulations, it is more like a zombie now, but I would be really happy the GA to be reanimated and to be a real business again, and this time reinvented to be better than ever before. This is a market that would exist if it was not overregulated and that would employ a lot of people and would revolutionize how people travel from point A to B – instead of sitting in Boeing or Airbus and licking their knees in tourist class, they could enjoy similar freedom as driving a family car and getting to the destination with their own schedule without queues, waiting, walking kilometers in huge terminals of huge airports, and without associated anxiety etc. Instead of a large jumbo-jet now and then, there would be demand for hundreds of thousands to millions of small inexpensive and easy to fly aircraft that would be designed for serious transportation and not to be toys like LSAs. Current airplane market is more like a joke. To make it a real market, it would need to be completely reinvented and revolutionized, otherwise it is a dead end that leads to nowhere else than the gradually reduced amount of pilots and the remaining pilots facing more and more ridiculous expenses which will further reduce their interest and numbers which is no good for the individuals nor businesses.

I am following many people on Twitter etc. and what I am often getting, is all kinds of campaigns for cancers. And they are specifically all for one single type cancer, e.g. breast cancer, prostate cancer etc. most commonly. 

The sad thing on this is that there will be no cure for a single type of cancer. Different types of cancers indeed respond differently to the barbaric treatment used today (e.g. chemotherapy). The sad thing is that people put all their power and thinking on improving cancer prevention and less how to deal with one once it has already happened. And even then, people look at how to treat it, not how to cure it completely.

Even people studying on the field (except some exceptions such as Dr. Akseli Hemminki/Oncos in Finland), seem to be missing the point. They look at treating the patients to prolong their life. They don’t look at curing the patients. And they think about how to improve the treatments, instead of seeking answer how to implement the cure. There will be many steps on this process of course. But only few on the field are actually taking them. Most are studying technologies which will improve the prognosis, but will not be the final answer. 

All cancers happen due to the very same mechanism. There are several safeguards in cells that prevent this to happen normally, but eventually these will go offline and it is inevitable, the longer one lives, the more likely is that a mutation reaches through the “firewall mechanisms”. And then it is thought it is just bad luck. No it is not bad luck. It is inevitable for everybody if they live long enough. 

A real cure for cancer is a such that will repair the cell mutation back. The cure will be found from genetic technology. And the cure will be also a partial answer to combat aging. This should be essential priority on medical field to solve. Only solving this big problem, the cancer will be won. After it is won, aging is also more understood and secret for (much) longer life may be also found. Progress happen on this area all the time, but with very low budget. Angel investors with big amount of money available should go help out the guys and gals which are going to seek out final answer for all cancers from genetic technology. It is sad to see how the only ones who actually work to find out the answer are bound to the limitations of a shoestring budget while big pharmaceutical companies offering only toxins that will not cure, swim in money. 

Since the aerospace technology is changing as the new Internet generation is making their dreams into reality (and space is no longer a program but a place), I am confident that now would be the time to same happen on the medical technology area as well. Finding the answer to this question will be very important for the future of the human race. There will be many things to come that will make preventing cancer harder and harder. We are eating constantly radioactivity, both naturally occurring, and both caused by nuclear tests, nuclear accidents (like Chernobyl and Fukushima) and we are constantly bombarded by particles from space which is unavoidable. And when we travel among the stars, we are at much greater risk for cell mutations when there are no Earth’s huge  magnetic fields giving their protection. To travel in space without dying to cancer young at very high risk (e.g. years long trip to Mars will be lifetime radiation exposure – one way already), a mechanism must be invented to reverse/stop the cellular mutation once it has started. And it does not happen by government programs, it happens by bright individuals working on a goal which is out of the box rather than inside the box, to break the cycle how things always have been done. 

There are many considerations where to put a propellers in a small aircraft or RPV. The common place to put them is at the nose. The biggest reason and driver for this placement is that it is advantageous for CG location. However, from aerodynamic standpoint that is not very optimal. There was discussion at HBA Forums about propeller placement and this document was linked (it studies difference of prop placed in pusher and tractor configuration):

http://www.icas.org/ICAS_ARCHIVE_CD1998-2010/ICAS2000/PAPERS/ICA0344.PDF

Optimal place is behind the wing, a bit above the wing centerline (only small part of the prop circle goes below the wing). This placement has the typical CG challenges with it. And it will require either pylon on the wing, or a pylon on the fuselage (assuming a single fuselage). There is then the question about the effect of the body to the prop located near the fuselage behind the trailing edge of the wing. There might be unfavorable flow due to the effects of the wing-fuselage joint that this study did not take in account.

According to the article, it was possible to increase quite significantly the Clmax of the wing with the rear placement of the propeller due to the suction effect to the wing. This leads to interesting thought about a line-thruster – multiple small electric motors turning multiple relatively small props behind the trailing edge of the wing, providing suction to the whole wing surface, or at least large part of it. Interesting question then would be that would a varying thrust angle be beneficial, should the pylons be actually mounted on the flaps? Downside of this is that this may lead to flap mechanism that is not very lightweight as the flaps have to take all the torque and push from the motors. Normal flap mechanisms would not like that.

Any comments on this?

Rockets lifting off from the ground are inefficient and require enormous amount of fuel and especially oxidizer despite there is plenty of oxygen in the low atmosphere. Rocket engine is very inefficient too, and to save fuel, the best way is to limit the time the rocket engine is needed => more reasonable amount of fuel needs to be carried and subsequently smaller rocket is needed.

To launch microsatellites, a similar approach than Burt Rutan’s WhiteKnightTwo (or Stratolauncher) is the best way to go. The difference for a microsatellite rocket is that the payload is much more modest and a much smaller and much less expensive airplane can be used. The airplane can be either UAV or optionally piloted aircraft. If it is just pure UAV, it can be made smaller and less expensive.

The principle of this airplane would be series hybrid propulsion. There would be a small but powerful modified series turbo liquid cooled motorcycle engine turning a generator (which is also a brushless DC electric motor, but bigger than the propulsion units). The actual propulsion would be provided with several smaller electric motors which would turn relatively modest size propellers (vs. the need for prop size in the high altitude). The large number of the propulsion units would compensate for the diameter. Very large diameter in the prop would cause severe geometric problems for the aircraft (landing gear, wing placement etc. as evidenced by Grob’s high altitude aircraft), but instead lowering the disc loading of the prop by increasing the number of the props, is much less expensive and much less complicated way to do it, especially since the construction with electric motors approaches trivial.

The aerodynamics of the aircraft would be based on a high aspect ratio long wing and conventional tail placed aft of a ideal laminar pod-shaped fuselage (for UAV pod-shape would be even easier because there is no need for seating people inside and no bumps / deviations of the ideal shape are needed). The airfoil designed for the purpose would be obviously a low Re airfoil with maximized L/D at moderately high Cl (unlike the cruise-oriented airfoils presented earlier on this site).

The airplane would lift the rocket with the hybrid electric propulsion to 50000-80000 ft like e.g. the Stratolauncher does, but with the difference that the aircraft would be very inexpensive. Even 80000 feet should be possible with hybrid propulsion since when the dual turbo can not provide enough power anymore (it would cut out pretty much after 60000 according to some studies done for HALE-UAVs), it can continue climb purely by using batteries. There is a limit though how much batteries can be carried along with the plane to not lose too much of the payload (the rocket). This is a compromise that needs to be optimized carefully to maximize benefits.

The airplane would be obviously fully reusable and good for a long long time. Different kind of payloads could be accommodated, depending on the need. E.g. rocket carrying multiple microsatellites or a rocket carrying one payload or a equipment that would study higher atmosphere (without rocket) or possibly a pressurized pod housing a human (as alternative to the rocket). It would be highly interesting concept to design & implement. It requires some budget, but can be done with quite modest budget not commonly considered in the aircraft/spacecraft circles.

Marching order would be this:
First study items for this would be:
1. Determine how large rocket would be needed for reaching orbit from case 1) 50000 ft and case 2) 80000 ft. Someone familiar with rocket equations could contribute if you would be interested. Please note comments are unfortunately moderated due to spam-comment problem, and may not appear immediately (only when I have time to go to press approve).
2. Then the size of the aircraft that will lift the rocket can be determined by requirements set by 1).
3. Determine the propulsion system needed for lifting the 2) to case 1) 50000 ft and case 2) 80000 ft.

Conservative assumption would be that the aircraft would reach 50000 ft and horizontal speed would be negligible at launch altitude, and the size of the rocket would need to be determined based on that altitude (and initial speed). Then if the aircraft could be made to reach 80000 ft, it would be all plus, bigger payload could be accommodated to the rocket.

The configuration for the aircraft could be quite simple:
– 2 small pods with two tails (or interconnected tail) like Burt Rutan’s high altitude lifters leaving the center section for the payload
– one pod could house the piston engine + fuel
– another pod could house the batteries
– four wheel landing gear would be located to both pods, similarly than White Knight

Roughly 4 hours ago, John McGinnis succeeded to raise the goal for funding his Synergy aircraft on Kickstarter. The funding exceeded the goal by couple of tens of thousands. I think this is a remarkable achievement and it proves that also aircraft projects can be crowd-sourced. Congratulations to John and good luck with his project. Now it is his turn to finish the plane and get it on the air. This is now on critical path since as the plane is funded, the reputation of crowd-funding aircraft projects in the future will have this as a case example, so he better succeed. Looking forward to seeing Synergy to fly to Oshkosh! Please make it happen!

I met John McGinnis in Oshkosh and he is a humble homebuilder guy with a dream and passion bigger and stronger than most of the aircraft fellas and he has unorthodox design that will be one of the coolest looking homebuilt aircraft when finished & successfully in the air. It is a kind of like flying wing but elevons placed in a box tail in the wing tips –  a configuration which is supposed to reduce drag. This is combined with very aerodynamic pod shape fuselage and laminar flow airfoil wings. And on top of that the plane will run on Deltahawk diesel engine and will work in places where AVGAS is no longer available and can just fill the tanks with JET-A, even in places like Kuujjuaq or Pangnirtung if he chooses to go for that kind of adventure. You can help this project getting this bird to the air by backing John’s Kickstarter project:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/launchsynergy/synergy-aircraft-project?ref=live

I was today walking with a dog and it occurred to me that with a fly by wire system a helicopter which would have blades outside of a circular lifting body and that would have a pusher prop (cruise prop) on top of the said flat lifting body in a pivoting pylon with thrust vectoring, could possibly fly stable and avoid the not that good things of a helicopter and be more efficient VTOL craft than a conventional helicopter. The bearing on the outer ring would possibly though be some sort of a challenge. On a big one, the outer ring could be not connected to the inner ring at all, but it could actually use maglev technique to levitate in a hole without physical contact with the bearing. This could come with too heavy weight penalties, so not sure if it would be feasible. So this is just a out of the box thinking idea because I have always felt that there is something wrong with helicopters, I have never really liked how they look like and how they function, there must be a better way to do that.

Cyclic system could be hidden inside the center section so that it would not cause drag like on a helicopter where there are lots of mechanical parts directly in the airflow causing drag. In cruise the plane would be a gyrocopter rather than a helicopter because it would have positive angle of attack unlike helicopter which cruises at negative angle of attack (and only blades have positive angle of attack).

I would like to try this as RC-model, but the challenge would be to fabricate such a large and yet lightweight bearing that would be size of the craft itself. The outer shell with the bearing would have a gear tooth that would be driven with a pinion gear that would be connected to the engine. This would also function as gear reduction drive. In addition to the ring drive to takeoff and landing, there would need to be a generator for driving the pylon mounted thrust vectoring prop that would be run with an electric motor.

The shape of the lifting body would be a suboptimal airfoil because it would need to be symmetrical and have both sharp leading edge and trailing edge but. This kind of craft would be naturally unstable but it could be artificially stabilized with software.

I have long time followed exactly the histogram of the DSLR to expose so that as much of the dynamic range is covered. However, that is not ideal in all cases.

In most cases shadow detail is what is lacking and the picture looks very dark and even unpleasant sometimes. Video codec, aliasing, lack of resolution etc. makes things even worse. This occurs mostly when shooting at available light outside and sun is pointing somewhat towards the camera (or some other light source doing the same). Even when it is not directly pointing to the camera, the areas on front of it will be very easily dark. Sun is extremely powerful light source and competing with it with exposure can be tricky.

People usually shoot with flat picture profiles, which a little bit helps on this case too. However, flat picture styles will reduce the available dynamic range because it compresses it. You will get more shadow details because the blacks are moved to right in the histogram, but the image quality reduces.

I found an old article which recommended exposing towards the right side (towards highlights) of the histogram. I could not believe it because I was thinking that I will lose dynamic range if I do that. I made an experiment: I shot an evening scene which was exposed as dark as it was naturally to the eye. Looks like the right way to do it? Yeah right. I took another shot which I overexposed it so that the histogram was leaning to the right (highlight side) so that everything was too light still without clipping the highlights.

As expected from my experiment: the scene that I made to look like it was in reality looked like it was in reality. Fiddling with Aperture – there was some noise and I could not get much more shadow detail out of it than there was. It was like it was exposed to look like it was and that’s it. No further alterations very much possible.

Ok now I then went to the next picture which was overexposed and a bit too bright. It looked like a failure to begin with. However, after I adjusted the exposure in Aperture, it started looking like it looked to the eye in the evening. And guess what – it had less noise – with same ISO setting! I could find lots of shadow detail in the picture.

I was recently also looking my old video scenes that I have shot for example in North Cape. In general they are rather muddy and dark. Some have rather unpleasant look. I have been trying to adjust them with Color and then with these couple of free plugins for FCPX but if I bring up the blacks, block artifacts and noise start to show up rather severely and the video quality drops to almost to a level of SD. In middle of these scenes there was one overexposed scene. And voila, when I exposed it in post processing towards blacks, there was lots of shadow detail, and even highlight detail in the scene and no visible noise.

So what I do now when I shoot next time (this is still an experiment, so don’t ruin your footage based on this instruction, or if you do, do it with your own risk):- I use a bit less flat picture style than e.g. Technicolor because the picture style after all is not a holy grail and does not fix all the problems in the exposure there are because the file format is not 12 bit RAW. Neutral picture style with contrast reduction is fine. Another possibility is to use Technicolor Cinestyle profile with contrast setting in the middle (not dialed all the way down). – Then I expose a bit towards highlights but make sure the highlights do not clip (otherwise the image quality will be low because highlights are clipped).

Nokia N9 has Dolby Headphone effect, which is gives pretty neat effect – makes the sound being perceived to be less inside the head. I have tried with several tracks that it can be helpful sometimes and I could even use that in my music. However, I don’t have Dolby Headphone encoder in my Logic Studio (as far as I know). However, if you want to spend the time, you can use N9 for the task and here is how:

1. Record your (stereo) audio track in your audio sequencer (like Logic, Cubase, whatever). Add a loud beep or loud peaky drum sample to the beginning of the track.
2. Mount the N9 to your computer. Then copy the track to N9. I have not tried wav files, if these don’t get indexed, you may have to do a detour and encode the file to lossless flac format.
2. Go to Settings application -> Applications -> Music. Turn on the switch Dolby Headphone.
3. Connect your computer audio input to the headphone output of your N9 (assuming you have the cable)
4. Start recording on sequencer (another stereo track) and go to Music player on N9, locate your track and play back the sound.
5. Now cut the track so that it starts from the loud peak in the beginning.
6. Line up the original track and the track you just recorded visually – the peaks should align exactly with each other.
7. Now you can cut the synchronization sound from your track and mute the original track and you have a track with Dolby Headphone encoding on it.

This roundtrip will add noise of course because it goes through analog domain (DA->analog head phone amp->analog input->AD-conversion) and it will also otherwise reduce the quality slightly. However, many synthesizers I use have only analog outputs and it does not prevent me to use them and I have never had trouble with noise. The added noise may be negligible.

This is not the fastest way to do Dolby Headphone encoding for your audio track in your sequencer probably and certainly is not the official way, but this is a neat effect that you can do with the built-in software of your N9 and is kinda awesome feature. And I think the quality of the audio output in the N9 is so good that I could consider using this myself like I explained above.

I have been using this kind of syncing with a peaking signal in DSLR movie making (where I have recorded the sound separately with a audio recorder (I have Zoom H4N for that)) and it works because unlike in the prehistoric times when you could not sync two tracks if they were from separate machines (as there was speed variation, e.g. if you had two drum machines from same manufacturer, set both to 120 bpm and then record both separately and then try to line up the tracks, it started going out of sync in mere seconds if these were not midi synced with each other), but with modern equipment this is not a problem. The tracks will line up nicely.

If you are into flying wings like me, this PowerPoint slideset might interest you. It compares the basics of conventional airliner and flying wing airliner.Much bigger planes in other words, than my interest area. However, some of the pros and cons findings for each configuration also apply for the small version. Not all though as the starting point does not have engine nacelles and engines sticking out of the wing. http://www.engbrasil.eng.br/index_arquivos/ap23.pdfI haven’t done yet comparison for the wetted area of a flying wing compared to a sailplane like structure.Logic tells that the flying wing in this size category might have more wetted area. But I am not sure. I need to design both and then measure the wetted area of both and compare.I am not a big fan of wing twist and the amount of wing twist on PUL-10 causes me shivers (wing tip twisted 10 degrees). That can’t be good for cruise, simply can not. Ten degrees is insane amount of twist – on cruise the tips are on negative angle of attack and cause a lots of negative lift. The wing tips act as rather poor tails this way – it is very short coupled and if you have tail deflected that much on that close, the wing center section will need to lift also the negative lift of the tips which will make the plane to perform poorer. I am quite sure that a flying wing should be made stable without that much twist.I have a related idea for a flying wing:- one problem with flying wing is that flaps can not be used- what if you had small trim tails that look like the ones in SpaceShipOne. When flaps would be down, the trim tail, would cause opposing pitching moment to negate the pitching moment of the flap- The elevator control otherwise would be like on a flying wing, with elevons.- I haven’t tried this out yet but it can be tested with RC model.

HD-link: http://youtu.be/HSwkY5M4pPo?hd=1

I recorded this highly interesting presentation at Oshkosh 2011. John Roncz is telling inside story what happened with various designs he had teamed up with Burt Rutan.Link: http://youtu.be/E9eEwyVrAps?hd=1

We got interesting ideas at Oshkosh and I think we have a plan now

So the concept is about high efficiency, high altitude and long range. In other words, these are called as HALR.None of these concepts have been designed yet. But I think we have now defined a goal that can be used as a target where to aim at.And what is the motivation for this? For fun of course. And because we can.

The plan now has the following steps:

 1. Develop, test fly, measure scale model aircraft of the full size concept. Electric propulsion is going to be used.The aircraft shall model the full size aircraft in configuration and prototype control mechanisms of the model 2 aircraft.Possibly more than 1 RC model needs to be built to validate feasibility of different configuration features. This step is very likely to succeed. There are no impediments for executing this plan.

 2. Develop, test fly, measure a human piloted scale model of the full size concept. The plane is intended to utilize electric propulsion. The aircraft shall be able to carry at least 100 kg payload, stay at least tens of minutes in air and then safely land on a grass runway.This requires some feasibility analysis – this one needs to be super-light because the full size one needs to be light as well, and needs to be able carry substantial amount of fuel (300-400 kg). I will blog about what I will learn about structural design and alsocan validate the feasibility of the concept along the way. We saw that single place CriCri size small aircraft is ideal test bed for testingconfigurations, technologies etc. for the full size aircraft. This one must work from our summer cottage neighbor’s airfield, in other words, needs to be relatively STOL. This has good chance to succeed but there are few impediments to clear out before this can succeed.

 3. Develop, test fly the full size plane, and then fly it to Oshkosh. The plane is intended to have hybrid propulsion.The aircraft shall be able to fly at high altitude non-stop from Helsinki to Kangerlussuaq, refuel, and continue and fly next leg non-stop to Oshkosh.The plane shall be practical efficient transportation tool that can partially replace using commercial aviation. The plane shall carry at least two persons plus rescue equipment plus baggage plus full fuel, and must defeat Toyota Prius 2011 model in transportation efficiency. Some serious problem solving is required before this will succeed.

The plane shall be able to fly long distances non-stop to avoid cost of landing fees and other costs associated by stopping on places of no interest.There are no guarantees of success of any of the mentioned steps, but this is the intent. The intent is subject to change. But this is where we are at today. We are very limited by the budget unfortunately and it can affect to the timing and success of each step. If we had substantial budget for this available, we would like to work on this full time, but unfortunately this is not the case.
  

We were discussing with Kate about possibilities to use tip propellers, in tractor configuration. Tractor configuration would cause a swirling motion to the opposite direction of the tip vortex before the tip wortex forms and it would reduce the tip vortex. Therefore the propeller at the wing tip would give more efficient dynamic thrust for the plane than propeller at some other location in the aircraft. In cruise condition when the tip vortex is low with low span loading wing, this could eliminate significantly the unfavorable tip vortex. With electric motors, additional tip propellers would be fairly easy to arrange.

Some analysis would be needed how much this would help. Of course it would depend on the weight of the plane. The heavier the plane, the more leakage to the tip, the more tip vortex would form. The bigger the benefit of having a opposite direction swirling motion to nullify the tip vortex formation.

I was reading http://www.eaa.org/news/2011/2011-08-11_bipod.asp
I also listened Burt Rutan’s presentations about Bipod in Oshkosh 2011.

This article on the EAA news tells that some carplane designer thinks Burt’s Bipod is “too slippery”. I really wonder what is the definition of too slippery. There is a group of misguided people who want airplanes to have lots of drag for them to “not be too slippery”, in other words have aerodynamics of brick. I have bumped into Cessna pilots who think like that and they look for example our Diamond that “oh that is too slipperly plane for me”. From my standpoint, that is not too clever.

Drag is always unfavorable and waste of resources. There can never be too little drag (except in landing configuration when drag is helpful to land the plane in a meaningful distance). Low drag when plane is cruising, has absolutely nothing to do with the flying qualities of the plane. Having more drag does not make the plane any easier to fly. Having more drag just means you have to burn more fuel, you have to have bigger engine, you have to beef up structure, to compensate, you have to put even bigger engine, and have even more fuel on board. Airplane being slippery is a myth. Some Cessna pilots think our Diamond is “slippery” or “too slippery for them”. Yeah right, the truth is that the Diamond has better flying qualities than the C172, is easier to land and especially flare and it also stalls softer.

I wholeheartedly agree with Burt [about his Bipod]:  “Gee, he complains that we have too much drag as a car but not enough drag as an airplane!”

I think the US LSA specification is deeply flawed as they have introduced the top speed limit. It will limit the category of LSA planes to such that it is not worth to make efficient planes and high drag has been made a standard. That is not too clever either. Apparently the rules have been set by non-pilots who do not have slightest clue on what makes airplanes safe and what makes them easy to fly [and land]… It is all about stability, stall speed, stall charasteristics and inertia. Europeans have understood that better since there is no top speed limit in Europe but there is a stringent stall speed requirement. Low inertia, low stall speed and gentle handling qualities, and no matter what is the top speed, the plane will be easy to fly.

Read about Burt Rutan’s Bipod here:
http://www.airventure.org/news/2011/110727_bipod.html

I was just thinking about Curtis channel wing. I have a concern that this kind of design will result in tip stall in addition to the other problems there could be if something would fail.

However, what if you use electric motors instead and place that channel as a C on the tip of a wing? There is this 3D effect that flow tends to want to slip towards the tip and it causes wake turbulence and reduces Clmax. However, what if there is this C and then there is a prop inside the C. The flow comes to the prop and the prop sends it away and causes even bigger pressure differential between lower side of the wing and the upper side of the wing. With brushless DC electric motor it could be technically doable – one could not think about putting a Lycosaurus to the wing tip. You could even add redundancy by adding two motors in cascade. Should one fail, the another one would still be operational.

I think there are two kinds of aircraft that would be needed to cover the needs of personal air transportation: super stol/vtol for flying to airport from home to the pressurized long range plane that can cover large distances. I think today’s general aviation falls in the middle of these, but I think it could be obsolete with these new two categories. I think the today’s GA is not popular exactly because it falls between these two categories and does not fit in either purpose properly. And they are neither good toys nor good tools. This first VSTOL would cover the toy part and day to day short distance travel, and the HALE the serious transportation case.


I will write another blog entry about this split of concepts later because I believe I have – as a GA customer – found what’s wrong with it. What are the needs and what is the gap. I think I have the answer.

>I found this one for example:

Turnigy CA120-70 Brushless Outrunner (100cc eq)

With two of these a small single seater would fly quite easily.

Philosophy of today: You remember Babylon 5 series and Vorlons “who are you?” and Shadows “what do you want?”? I have been thinking and actually the shadows are actually more right. It does not matter who you are but what you do and what you don’t do. Vorlons were advocating for maintaining the status quo, but what actually is needed is a continuos ever accelerating invention of new. That is not status quo or improving the status quo but that is what another article referred as “disruptive technology” – i.e. technology that comes from nowhere and does not fit to the market but totally disrupts the market, reinvents what people need and want and gives them what they did not know they want.

So how this applies to e.g. Microsoft article that was mentioned in my Facebook: Praising the importance of some old technology that has been around and everybody has used for long long time is the Vorlon thinking “status quo”. Has been like this and will be like this forever. However, this is not how it works out. It is instead “What do you want?”. So “Who are you?” “What do you want?”. The truth is out there.

Here is what useful you can do while waiting:
1st task: if you are located in downtown San Francisco in a boring hotel without a car, move yourself away from there at once. You need a car and more central place to for seeing interesting things. We prefer usually Palo Alto as the central location. Car you can get from Hertz if you don’t have already one. Prices are great e.g. in Palo Alto city center, much better than on airport.
Other places to see in San Francisco Bay Area:
– Hiller Aviation Museum, San Carlos
– The hills between Silicon Valley and Half Moon Bay. Find a way first to Skylonda, then follow Skyline boulevard to south. There is for example nice place to see called Russian Ridge. Go to the parking lot and then walk maybe a kilometer or two on trail and the view is magnificent. You can see Silicon Valley and San Francisco at the same time. Take camera with you.
– Half Moon Bay: Pacific Ocean seashore. There is a nice beach there. Take swimming gear with you. At this time of the year the water is pretty cool, but by Finnish standards, it is humanly possible to go swimming.
– Mountain View – Palo Alto sector: the best Sushi and Indian restaurants I have ever visited.
– Fry’s Electronics in Stanford: If you are missing any gadget, cable, card or anything that you would look from verkkokauppa.com in Finland, you can find it from Fry’s electronics.
– Apple Store (one is in Stanford shopping center): If you want a good deal for a Macbook or Macbook Pro or perhaps iPad (that you will be able to carry back), that is a place. Also software for Mac. And bonus: You will get Nokia discount there too, not only in Humac store and Mac People Store in Finland. Take Nokia card with you, otherwise you don’t get the discount.
– Palo Alto airport: one of the most active general aviation airports in the world. If you want to see bay area from the air, you can go to West Valley Flying Club and ask for demo flight and specify that you want it to be the Bay Tour. Recommended aircraft: try one of these: Cirrus SR20, SR22, Diamond DA40. You can safely be in controls as a prospective student pilot with a flight instructor. You don’t need TSA approval or anything for the demo flight. You can also walk around there if you want to see all kinds of small airplanes, the airport is full of them.
– The woods/forest between Palo Alto and Half Moon Bay is pretty cool. There are roads through it and you can see very tall and very thick trees, there is nothing comparable in Finland, go there to see it by yourself.
– Of course you have to drive all the bridges.
– There are more hills on the other side of the bay too, these you can also explore if you have time, these are between Oakland and Livermore.

I started my IR training in West Valley Flying Club ( http://www.wvfc.org ) in San Francisco area . The plan was to get fast and cheap instrument rating. Soon I noticed that if you really like to get easy IR as as quickly and fast, the San Francisco bay area is worst possible choice. If you like to get good IR with it you can fly about any busy airspace, it is excellent choice.

First surprises were that American airspace system and regulations differ a lot from European ones and San Francisco bay area airspace structure is really complicated and busy. Helsinki area is about small village compared to SF-bay area. There, Palo Alto, just one of dozens local general aviation airports has as much GA-airplanes that exists in all Finland. It was also surprise that radio fraseology differs a lot from European one and if you are non native English speaker, busy fast IFR radio communications needs some time to adapt.

It is also not the fastest and cheapest to start IR training with Cirrus SR20 with Avidyne glass cockpit. When I started the training, Cirrus was our number one alternative and WVFC did not had Diamond in this time. They charge $199 or $214 for SR20, $164 for C172/G1000 but Steam Gauge Cessna or Piper you may get around $100 . Cirrus is also not considered as ordinary airplane for WVFC, it needs minimum 11 hours type training and special check ride called phase check.

Flying club as like WVFC was not a fastest way to get training, there is also other members booking planes and flight instructors and therefore you can’t fly when you want to do so. Some flight schools may designate plane and instructor for you all of the course. This Flying club system is just not most cost efficient if you are not local but coming from distant country and need to pay hotel and car rental for every day you are flying or not. Also Silicon valley is not the cheapest place to stay.

When i started my flight training 2008 I Strongly underestimated my schedule, I scheduled one month period for flight training. It was strongly underestimated, i just could not got booked enough plane and instructor to get training completed. I spent many days just for keeping vacation, that was not bad idea at all in SF bay area. IR Training is also and work, so it is not bad idea to have some free time between sessions. I had plan to return autumn to complete training but this did not happen. In 2008 trip I also learned that many things can go wrong in paperwork. I had plan to get FAA Medical and FAA PPL . When i was already in Palo Alto, FAA told to me that they did’t approve my translated medical records because they are not translated by FAA approved translator. Even today, i don’t know what is and where to find FAA approved Finnish to English translator. For next trip, I asked doctors to write their statements in English and sign them as originals to avoid this translation problem.

I returned spring 2009 continuing my instrument training, I chose cheaper C172 G1000 plane that the club had more of them than Cirrus SR20’s and i got in practice designated flight instructor. I think that also economical depression affected so that instructors and planes were no longer so booked than spring 2008 . Now I also has basically all paperwork done. I had European JAA and FAA medical and i had file application for FAA Restricted PPL .

When I returned after one year since i had my previous instrument training, it needed several hours training just to get level where I was year ago when i left. In Spring 2009 i did written test and got basically training program done but once again bad luck with paper work. I got my FAA Restricted PPL based on European pilot’s license but i was unable to get appointment booked to San Jose FSDO and therefore I was unable to have Check ride.

Now in this trip, i finally had everything done. I had training done, I had all medicals in my hand, i had appointment booked to San Jose FSDO and I had check ride booked. The trip from Florida to Palo alto took couple of days longer than estimated and we needed to re-schedule my check ride to Monday 27 July. Now i had couple of days time to refresh my IR skills before check ride. Then Monday i was thinking that everything is ready and we started ground part of checkride but it was interrupted n beginning because there was couple on flight instructor signatures missing from my logbook. The Check ride was then re-scheduled Wednesday 29.

In Wednesday, we finally were able to begin my checkride. I had Tom Hornak as my check ride pilot. At first he went thru my application and logbook, then checked airplane documents, maintenance records etc. Then he did tho oral part, series of good questions like what i would do in complete radio failure situation, some details from approach plates, how to get weather briefing etc. Then started actual check ride, I filed flight plan to Stockton ( KSCK, route SJC V334 SUNOL V195 ECA ). In Stockton we did VOR rwy 21, touch an go, then continued GPA A to Tracy ( KTCY ) and that approach we did as partial panel. From tracy missed approach we did couple of holds and then ILS rwy 25R to Livermore. That was the check ride and I was really happy and relieved when Tom said that I passed. Finally long lasting dream and couple of years long project was completed.

About actual training, my instructors in West Valley, Scott Stauter and Brian Elliot give excellent instruction. Wvfc had excellent facilities, wide variety of planes to chose, starting from old steam gauge Cessnas to modern glass cockpit Diamond Star DA40, TwinStar DA42 Cirrus SR20 and SR22 and several G1000 Cessna 172 . They also have Frasca G1000 simulator that we used as mush as we could for my training. There is several good reasons to use simulator. With simulator you can practice mush more approaches in same time, you can practice more fault conditions than in real plane and it costs 100 dollars less for hour than aircraft.

Then there is question, should you get your instrument training with glass or with steam gauges. As my personal opinion, if you plan to fly modern glass cockpit planes, you should get your training with glass. Flying glass needs so much different skills. Reading the attitude indicator , altitude and airspeed is the easy thing. Much more skills is needed to program flight plan, selecting approaches etc. Your most busy times comes when you approach your target airport, get weather and you are cleared to approach. In this situation you need to program right approach into system, brief it to yourself and be all of the time up to date with radio traffic and on course fly the plane. You can practice most of the things in ground but then real thing is to do it in busy conditions in flying airplane. Partial panel is also completely different with glass and steam. In practice difference between Cirrus with Avidyne/GNS430 or Diamond with G1000 is not as big at all. Garmin logic to program flight plans and approaches is very similar in both of these.

Other question is that should you get your IFR training done in some peaceful little city or in busy San Francisco bay airspace.If you like to get it done cheaply and fast, small city flight school may be good choice. If you like to get your skills to level where about no airspace is too busy to you take SF-Bay but remember
that you may not got it done with minimum hours.

Now, i have crossed north American continent twice and passed many big cities Class-B air spaces but i have not yet found as busy as SF-bay area . Some rumors tell that Los Angeles area is even worse but i have not yet had change to try.

Lessons learned. Best is not cheapest and fastest. If you fly glass, take your IR with glass even it costs more. If you plan to fly in busy airspaces get your IR there but you need more hours. If you need split your training to multiple chunks, it causes some penalty, may be 10 hours to get level you where uou were when you left. If you are flying IR in flying club, verify that you have plane and instructor available or you can’t keep your schedule. Be prepared that what ever you try, some factors may ruin your schedule. Prepare your paperwork lot of advance, book appointments to FSDO etc lot of advance. Remember, that if there is something wrong in papers, it may took two months round trip to fix it.

And at last but not least, IFR if fun, i don’t regret that i started . I think that getting training in SF-bay and with glass was right choice but it definately was not fastest or cheapest one.

We kept Sunday just for resting with our friends, in Chrissi’s and Randi’s place. On Monday morning we checked weather and noticed that there is front with thunder storms moving across our route. We filed IFR plan to Salina (KSLN) via route 1H0 SNYDR V12 OJC V508 TOP V4 ZITIK KSLN but then we saw thunderstorms front of us and decided to land in Topeka (KTOP) to wait front pas us. We waited couple of hours in Topeka FBO weather briefing room and followed from Nexrad thunderstorms moving south east. After thunderstorms passed, we filed IFR plan to Hays (KHYS) via route
V4 SLN V508 KHYS. At beginning of route we needed to fly in rain but still in VMC.

We landed to Hays in perfect VMC conditions and sunny weather but there was big cumulonimbus growing nearby and it looked threatening. We decided togo on as
quickly as possible and now it was Karoliina’s turn to fly. We filed route to Pueblo via V244 but
soon we needed to ask defer from our course because there was really beauty monster, huge thundercloud from our right side. I have never seen same time s beauty but also so threatening thundercloud before. It did not cause a actual danger to us because is was easy to see and avoid. I just looked lightnings sriking from cloud to ground. There was other thunderstorm to go around that just passed Pueblo. We were able to land Pueblo without any problems.

In Pueblo, there was local FBO, Flower Aviation, they booked Hotel to us and arranged transport. We spend night in La Quinta inn after long and challenging flight day.

Our first day, we drove from Miami to Jacksonville, 6 hours via Inter State 95.
Karoliina was using N97 to write mails to our insurance broker. We got all needed work for insurance done just 15 minutes before we arrived to pick up plane from Sterling Flight training.

There the our new Pretty Bird was waiting for us. Just fresh annual done and no
extra repairs needed. We decided to go for test flight with Sterling flight instructor and at the same time get checked out to the plane. First Touch and Go’s in At Augustine ( KSGX ) and then scenery route to Space Coast Regional Airport ( KTIX ).

It would be big sin to go so near of Nasa Cape Caneveral launch site and not even seeing it. Sad that so distant but we have wery tight schedule. Next morning we needed
to fly the plane to St Louis.

In KTIX we switched pilots and it was Karoliina’s turn to fly. She went to St Augustine to do touch and go’s as night flight. We happily landed back to KCRG 10.00 pm. Then it was time to get some sleep in hotel, happy but really very tired.

Malmin ilmailukerhon luentosarja jatkuu: C210 siirtolento USA->Suomi SIL-luokassa.
Luennoitsijat: Ilari Härkönen ja Matti Suuronen, jotka itse lensivät ko. koneen Grönlannin yli Eurooppaan.

Paikka SIL-luokka, Malmin lentoasema. Klo 17.00-
Tilaisuuteen on vapaa pääsy. Tervetuloa.