J.P.

Flat Tire.

On Tuesday I flew with an instructor and friend for my Biannual Flight Review. This flight review is required for private pilots that wish to continue flying. As suggested by the name of the event, it takes place every two years.

I can’t believe it’s been two years since I went on my checkride.

I was a bit apprehensive about flying this BFR because there are a couple of maneuvers that I haven’t practiced in a while, mainly stalls. I’m not a fan of stalling the airplane. My goal as a private pilot is to never stall the airplane. I want to keep the airplane flying. Honestly, stalls make me nervous and it is something that I need to get over. While I got through my BFR just fine, I need to go up with an instructor again and do some stalls. Lots of stalls. I need to stall the airplane until I laugh about it.

After we dropped the instructor off, my friend Ryan and I went flying for a short flight just for fun. There was some weather moving in and the wind was providing plenty of opportunity for a crosswind landing practice, so we headed back to the airport.

I have to say my landing was picture perfect. Ryan remarked on how great it was. I felt good for two seconds. Then the left main tire blew while the airplane was still moving at around 50 MPH. This made for an interesting challenge in keeping the airplane headed in a forward direction. I managed to get the airplane stopped and off the runway so that the airport could remain open.

Ryan took a photo of me being cheesy next to the flattened tire.

The club mechanic verified that my landing technique was not the culprit of the blowout but rather low tire pressure. Visually inspecting the tire pressure during pre-flight is not solid enough for the cold weather at this time of year. From now on we’ll be checking the pressure with a gauge.

This was my first incident during landing and while I didn’t get nervous as the events unfolded I did find it to be a good learning experience as I made my way through the challenge.

Now I just need to get up there and practice those stalls!

15 December 2016 by J.P. Fly. 0

Emergency.

Earl and I were driving in a rural part of the county when every iDevice within our reach vibrated, squealed and displayed this.

Notice there is very little information contained in this noisy, urgent alert. There was apparently an emergency in the area we were driving through. I tuned the radio to a local station and they were offering up an ad on mattresses. Since we were headed in the general direction of the local nuclear power plants, I was considered that perhaps something was melting down. Briefly I thought that Russia was hacking into our emergency alert system. For a moment I considered that perhaps PEOTUS was doing something stupid.

With no answers from the radio, I pulled over and searched Twitter, where tweets were starting to appear from our general area asking the same question that I was seeking to answer: what was the emergency and why was there a mobile device blast alerting everyone about this vague crisis?

I found little in the way of answers on Twitter and decided that nothing awful was happening, so we continued on our trip. Earl monitored Twitter and Facebook for a few moments and we deduced that there was a warehouse fire about 45 miles from our location at the time. Later, the local television station updated their Facebook status with a notification that the alert was meant for the small village where the warehouse was located and that it was inadvertently sent to every mobile device in the county.

Mistakes happen, I get that. When an error was discovered, another blast should have been sent indicating that the first was a false alarm. But no such thing happened, we were on our own to discover the source of this very vague alert. Not the best way to notify the populace of an emergency.

Mobile device blasts like this should contain the nature of the alert and the action required. Alerts like this should be reserved for instances where evacuation is necessary: an incoming nuclear warhead, a terrorist attack, an F5 tornado wiping out towns or a potential meteor strike. To the best of my knowledge from all the research I’ve since done since this alert blast, there was no evacuation of the small town where this fire was taking place. No one was asked to move.

Back in the day the Emergency Broadcast System made a wailing noise that got your attention. It made your hair stand on end. The newer Emergency Alert System (the one with the “duck farts” noise) does not grab one’s attention in the same way. The EAS is used for every weather warning, every threat of snow and with the lack of an attention grabbing sound, results in the message being easily ignored. Repeatedly using the EAS once or twice a month results in apathy.

If we are going to have this 21st century way of alerting citizens of a dire emergency, we need to use this new system with caution and reservation. Overuse results in ineffectiveness. And with undoubtedly turbulent times in the coming months (see the Presidential election results), having emergency related technology we can count on for information and urgency is important.

Let’s step away from the Chicken Little mentality.

11 December 2016 by J.P. Fun and Games Dept 0

Time.

Early this morning my phone chimed with an alert usually reserved for “Breaking News”. I set this up a while ago. The chime has sounded for earthquakes, tsunami warnings, mass shootings, things that are happening in the world that can be quite concerning. This morning, the Breaking News was that Time Magazine had announced their Person of the Year for 2016.

Abuse of “Breaking News” notifications results in the deletion of that app (name intentionally withheld) and my ignoring of anything further spewed from that “news organization”. It’s almost as bad as talking about the lives of the Kardashians on Twitter. Instant deletion in my book.

Time Magazine has named President-elect (PEOTUS) Trump as their Person of the Year.

The caption under Mr. Trump’s name is “President of the Divided States of America”.

At first I was angry that Time was pandering to PEOTUS. I felt like they were trying to get in good graces for his upcoming ~~dictatorship~~ Presidency. Mr. Trump has mentioned, in a backhanded way, that he doesn’t like the media and his actions have historically indicated that he enjoys punishing journalists. This Breaking News announcement felt like an olive leaf of sorts.

But then I looked closely at the photo.

First of all, this is not a flattering portrait of the President-elect. He looks menacing. The lighting is dark. The shadows are stark. Mr. Trump’s head is placed squarely under the “M” in TIME. The first thing I saw was a pair of horns. All that was missing was a graffiti quality to the lettering. There’s also the “President of the Divided States of America” byline.

This is not a flattering cover. This is a portrait of a man who sees himself as Big Brother. And I’m not talking about Julie Chen.

Upon further study and reading on the Internet, I began to wonder if the chair featured in this photo was a reproduction of a chair used 78 years for a similar Time magazine cover.

It was then that I remained irked by the abuse of a “Breaking News” alert for this announcement but my displeasure about Mr. Trump being named Person of the Year seemed to be not so bad. Time stroked the PEOTUS’s ego, albeit in a backhanded way, but they deftly conveyed the current mood of the nation. We are a divided nation. Many of us do feel that we have entered dark times. Many feel that Trump has no understanding of the role of President and that he has confuses it with a dictator-like role.

Honestly, if anyone has impacted the United States in this seemingly dismal year of 2016, it would be Trump. So now when I see this cover being, er, trumpeted across the web, newsstands and television, I smirk a little bit. Kind of like when this crazy eyes photo was featured a few years ago.

We are in for some crazy times in these here Divided States of America. We might as well make the best of the situation and smirk while we can.

It’ll keep us from becoming weeping alcoholics.

7 December 2016 by J.P. Ponderings and Musings 0

Memories.

During our travels today Earl and I wandered around the quaint downtown of Lambertville, New Jersey. I walked through a large antique and such type of store (though the name escapes me at the moment). The owners were out on the front sidewalk having some sort of lover’s/owner’s quarrel/cat fight. It was a bit of a spectacle.

I went inside and looked around and found a couple of items of interest. I didn’t buy anything but I enjoyed the memories.

When I was a teenager, my grandmother used to type up all of the correspondence and the billing statements for the family business on a manual typewriter. In the early 1980s her typewriter was upgraded to an electric Smith-Corona typewriter (though it still had a manual carriage return). At the time I brought home the RC Allen manual typewriter and in 1986 I typed a couple of term papers on the old manual typewriter. I guess I was hipster several decades before it was fashionable to be hipster. The RC Allen typewriter in question looked exactly like this.

While walking around the antiques and such store, I found a couple of ceramic Christmas trees that were identical to the one I inherited from Grandma City. I know that my uncle’s first wife painted the tree for my grandmother, so this must have been some sort of ceramic kit. I found one tree the same color as the one I have, another with white paint representing snow on the branches, though it was the same ceramic tree mold. The trees in question are in the photo below are the one in the middle with the blue star and the one in the lower right hand corner with the red star.

I was also excited to see a genuine 50s or early 60s silver tinsel Christmas tree. If our next house is of the proper vintage I plan on picking up one of these trees for the season.

I really like the village area of Lambertville, New Jersey. It doesn’t fit anything that I picture to represent New Jersey, though the accent is the same. It’s always amazing to me that the native accent seems to be considerably different from what’s heard just 30 miles away in Bucks County, Pa.

4 December 2016 by J.P. Ponderings and Musings 0

Bowman’s Hill Tower.

Earl and I climbed to the top of Bowman’s Hill Tower along the Delaware River today.

The elevator was out of service so we made the climb along the narrow, winding staircase.

The view from the top was quite impressive. Not a bad jaunt for $6.00 a person.

4 December 2016 by J.P. Ponderings and Musings 0

Five Years.

My Dad passed away five years ago today. It’s hard to believe that it’s been a half decade since he passed during his last flight, the second flight in his second homebuilt airplane. He was test flying his Wittman Tailwind W-10 when he crashed on the left downwind to Runway 33 at KFZY Oswego County. I’ve flown over the spot many times. I think of him more often than that.

I consider myself a very lucky man to have grown up around airplanes. My dad earned his pilot license when I was still in elementary school so I spent many hours with him in the right seat of a Cessna or a Piper Tomahawk and later in the backseat of the Piper J-5A he restored. As an adult I flew with him a few times in his homebuilt Acrosport II. That’s the airplane in the pictures on this blog post. Passengers ride up front in that airplane. My first blog post was about flying with Dad in the Acrosport II.

I once asked my Dad why he was building a second airplane, after having restored the J-5A and later building the Acrosport II from scratch. He told me that he liked the Acrosport but flying it was sometimes like driving a car with the hood open. He wanted more visibility.

I had always wanted to be a pilot but kept putting it off while he was still alive. If I wanted to fly I could just go with him. It was while standing in line at the funeral home, hugging visitors as we exchanged pleasantries, that I realized I would not be able to fly in a small airplane again unless I continued the family tradition and became a private pilot. I could not imagine being earthbound for the rest of my life.

Once I became a private pilot I was able to fully understand what happened five years ago today. Carb icing resulting engine issues at pattern altitude, so he most likely stalled into a spin. Having less than one hour in a brand new experimental airplane his familiarity with how the airplane would handle in a stall would be cursory at best. Knowing my dad he read everything he probably could have on the subject but I don’t think he ever flew another W-10 before flying the one he built. His death probably made me a more conservative pilot but that’s not a bad thing; it’s my goal to be a very old pilot.

My dad was my inspiration. You could always tell what he was thinking when he was gazing skyward. Even though he has passed on, he still inspires me everyday.

1 December 2016 by J.P. Ponderings and Musings 0

Free Speech.

While I do not support the burning of the American flag in any way, I will always defend a person’s right to the First Amendment and freedom of speech. President-elect Trump wants to either jail or strip citizenship from those that are exercising freedom of speech. Imagine what he would want to do to a woman that exercises her right to choose. Again, I do not support flag burning and I personally believe that abortion is the wrong choice 99% of the time, but I will fully defend the right to freedom of speech and a woman’s right to choose. Thank god he wasn’t running things at the American Revolution. All of the patriots and Founding Fathers would have been in jail, or worse.

This tweet from the President-elect is very telling. It tells of a leader who believes in more of a dictatorial role. It tells of a man who has a very narrow view of what American citizens should do, how they should act, what they should say. It shows a line of binary thought, everything is black or white, there’s no room for gray, no room for color, no room for compromise.

When people defend their vote for Trump and say, “but he’s going to drain the swamp and clean up Washington!”, were you willing to give up freedoms to accomplish this? Were you willing to change the very fabric of what makes this country great just because you didn’t like her, her pantsuits and her sense of entitlement? If you’re willing to give up freedom of speech, if the speech doesn’t fit what you define as proper, then this country is in more serious trouble than I realized.

In 1783, George Washington proclaimed: “If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”

29 November 2016 by J.P. Political BS. 0

Lies.

I’ve stretched the truth countless times throughout my life. When I was younger I would embellish a tale a bit to mask an otherwise mundane existence. I found myself to be very uninteresting and therefore I compensated by making the story bigger. Honestly, I considered the habit to be a pretty significant personality fault and for the past couple of decades I’ve made a very conscious effort to break the trend. I feel I’ve been very successful and recognizing and correcting this trait has made me a better person. We should all strive to be better people. It’s part of the human equation.

The fact of the matter is, you can’t lie about facts. When the numbers are printed in black and white or multiple folks tell one story while one person is saying something completely different, it’s pretty hard to deny the truth. And I have a really hard time accepting anything but the truth, especially from our elected officials. We don’t have a lot left in Washington, I’d like to think that we have at least some truth coming from our highest offices. Unfortunately, the truth is that I’m completely naive about that.

President-elect Trump (and I’m sticking to my promise to respect the office, regardless of what I think of the man) erupted with some sort of Twitter rant again yesterday, this time about the election results audits getting underway in key states across the country. His tweet talked about his winning of the popular vote, if it wasn’t for the “millions of illegal votes” for Secretary Clinton. I’m always amazed that the next person to hold the highest office in the world has the communication skills of a junior high school student and the temperament of a five year old. But this is what we are saddled with.

There is absolutely no evidence of dozens of illegal votes for Clinton, let alone millions of votes. His words are not an embellishment, they are an outright lie. There is absolutely no truth to his claims of illegal votes for Clinton. There is no evidence to be found. Unfortunately, Trump the presidential candidate is acting no different as President-elect. While his bombastic screaming of lies wooed millions of people to vote for him in the election, his distortion of the truth has no place in his role as President. He keeps repeating his lies until he believes them and then he expects the American public to do the same. Unfortunately, too many folks buy into this and start repeating the same lie, trying to solidify these falsehoods as truth.

Campaign Manager Kellyanne Conway tweeted today about “a mandate” for a Trump presidency. The people have spoken with this “landslide” victory. She called it a historic win. Again, more lies, more distortions trumpeted loudly. The louder the more like it’s the truth, right? I have no idea how that woman sleeps at night.

Whatever.

The true historical value of this election is the fact that there has never been such a wide disparity between the popular vote and the Electoral College. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by over two million votes. And the absolute final results are still being tabulated. There is no mandate. There’s little hope for unity. I fear there’s little hope at all.

The truth of the matter is I’m already beyond tired of this presidency and it hasn’t even officially begun. It’s hard to respect the highest office in the land when you can’t believe a word that he says. Trust in government? No one in their right mind would trust anything from a Trump Administration.

But then again, a lot of people trust reality television as being real. And that’s what we have now, right? Reality television trying to be a real Presidential administration.

God help us all.

28 November 2016 by J.P. Ponderings and Musings This Ain't No CNN. 0

UAS.

Fun with flight in the backyard today.

27 November 2016 by J.P. Fun and Games Dept 0

Meandering.

Earl and I have been meandering out in the Jeep today. At this time of year I enjoy the challenge of following roads that say “Seasonal Use Only / Road Not Maintained Nov. 1 through April 1”. These roads are fun to drive in a Jeep Wrangler Rubicon.

We found ourselves at Selkirk Shores State Park along the eastern shore of Lake Ontario. This state park is about 10 miles or so from the house I grew up in. We drove by the old house. It’s not really that old; my dad built it and we moved in for my first day of Fourth Grade in 1977. The new owners of the property are being very kind to it. I’m happy to see life thriving in what I used to call home.

Having grown up pretty close to the Great Lakes, I find myself longing to hear the crashing of the waves, even when it’s 40ºF. Earl is a good sport; we walked out on the pier and took some photos. In the distance you can see Nine Mile Point, home to three nuclear power plants. Two of those plants have been active for nearly my entire life and I don’t glow in the dark. Nuclear power doesn’t scare me.

We are now meandering around in the outskirts of the city of Syracuse. We have stopped for a Starbucks break, as we don’t have Starbucks at home and we like to indulge once in a while. After this blog entry and the completion of our treat, we shall continue our meandering with a target of getting home some time tonight. We are only 45 miles from home but it might take us several hours to get there.

Meandering is good for the soul.

26 November 2016 by J.P. Ponderings and Musings 0

J.P.

Flat Tire.

Emergency.

Time.

Memories.

Bowman’s Hill Tower.

Five Years.

Free Speech.

Lies.

UAS.

Meandering.

About J.P.

Meta

All The Places

Pages

Recent Posts

Blog Resurgence

Geek Stuff

Legacy Blogroll