Operation Butt Freeze

We had something similar in our mooney once, and had the avionics shop blow out the static line with compressed air after sitting in a warm hangar. He put some sort of filter paper over the "far" end and noted that it got wet (and then blown away) during the process. So our conclusion was that we had some water trapped in there that was freezing and plugging the system instead of being able to move in response to pressure changes.
 
"Plan B" is forming. A local CFII has now until Jan 3rd off work for similar reasons that I did. He's tough but fair.

He says his plan was to "fly, fly, fly" during this time off, and he loves to do finish-ups and things like that...

So I think if *MY* schedule (being back at work, and all...) works out and we can find a DPE here during the holidays or shortly thereafter... this thing will be done!

Plan C, D and E are also all swirling around in the background too, including a friend's kid who's doing a similar "hammer it out" IR up in Cheyenne, WY who'd probably appreciate some Safety Pilot time and I have a reference to *his* CFII also, who only does one student at a time for this kind of stuff... so the kid gets priority...

Anyway... it's going to work out, one way or the other... still haven't found enough time to post thoughts on the whole thing yet... because, as they say...

IT'S ON! I still have flying to do! :)
 
Nate - contact Drew Chitiea for DPE. If he's in town. Contact info in the CPA roster or on the website.

If you need a safety pilot or whatever, let me know.
 
Nice writeup! Looks like you got a lot done in a short span of time. Which FBO did you use? I went to Silver Hawk a few weeks ago. They were like a racing pit.
 
murphey said:
Nate - contact Drew Chitiea for DPE. If he's in town. Contact info in the CPA roster or on the website.

If you need a safety pilot or whatever, let me know.
Click to expand...

So it turns out Jer/ is available. He's on forced time off from work through Jan 3rd. He's tough but fair.

Drew is also tough but fair. I'd be more than willing to take a checkride with him on any rating.

The biggest pain right now is that I have a CAP duty function every night this week at 19:00. Last week was actually my week and now I'm reverse-covering for the person who volunteered to handle my week.

And it's a holiday week... So asking for yet another volunteer is rough. Still going to ask, but it's definitely a big problem in the schedule right now.

Jer/ is raring to go, of course. (Well heck, so am I...) We talked this evening about the minor squawks on the airplane (post lights inop, landing light inop) and what Jesse and I did last week, and he's good to go.

He joked that I should just create a simulated emergency like I went into the hospital and it'd be good training for scrambling the troops to cover. Haha.

Yeah, that's a crazy option... but people remember when you screw them over like that for something you committed to. I think I'll start with immediate extreme begging. ;)

Jer/ and I tentatively scheduled to meet at KFNL tomorrow night. It's going to add an hour of VFR time round-trip to every flight so its gonna get a little more expensive... But worth it.

If anyone's ultra bored, and wants to play Safety Pilot from KAPA-KFNL and back, and if Jer/ approves, ride in the back seat during lessons... They're welcome to. It'll screw up all my power settings nicely, I'm sure. ;) No expense sharing required.

I hadn't thought of that until just now, so we'd have to run it by him first. Or someone REALLY bored could hang out at KFNL during lessons, but that's no fun. :(

I'd also better give my co-owner who's thinking about doing his IR that "slot" first if he wants it. Time to go send some e-mail. Also need to book the airplane out and make sure I'm not being an utterly annoying airplane hog. ;)
 
denverpilot said:
So it turns out Jer/ is available. He's on forced time off from work through Jan 3rd. He's tough but fair.

Drew is also tough but fair. I'd be more than willing to take a checkride with him on any rating.

The biggest pain right now is that I have a CAP duty function every night this week at 19:00. Last week was actually my week and now I'm reverse-covering for the person who volunteered to handle my week.

And it's a holiday week... So asking for yet another volunteer is rough. Still going to ask, but it's definitely a big problem in the schedule right now.

Jer/ is raring to go, of course. (Well heck, so am I...) We talked this evening about the minor squawks on the airplane (post lights inop, landing light inop) and what Jesse and I did last week, and he's good to go.

He joked that I should just create a simulated emergency like I went into the hospital and it'd be good training for scrambling the troops to cover. Haha.

Yeah, that's a crazy option... but people remember when you screw them over like that for something you committed to. I think I'll start with immediate extreme begging. ;)

Jer/ and I tentatively scheduled to meet at KFNL tomorrow night. It's going to add an hour of VFR time round-trip to every flight so its gonna get a little more expensive... But worth it.

If anyone's ultra bored, and wants to play Safety Pilot from KAPA-KFNL and back, and if Jer/ approves, ride in the back seat during lessons... They're welcome to. It'll screw up all my power settings nicely, I'm sure. ;) No expense sharing required.
Click to expand...
What time & where? I'll happily sit in the back and play havoc with the CG. I'll even bring the hot chocolate. Only hot chocolate. Nothing else in it except hot chocolate.
 
I'll hit my hangar at KAPA at 17:15 +-5 every night after work that I can go up, and the weather is VFR to get to KFNL. Let me check with Jer/ on the passenger stuff. I'll PM you with the schedule I just sent him.
 
Nate, way to be perseverant!

WRT being a plane hog. I don't know how many partners you have in the 182 but you having a IR should lower your ins premiums. That would be something to smile about.
 
What's up with the / at the end of his name?
 
SCCutler said:
What's up with the / at the end of his name?
Click to expand...

No direct knowledge but met Jer at CPA mountain training and he's got a good sense of humor. Bet it struck him as funny when directing folks to his website and Nate being the geek he is, is willing to participate in the joke. Both Nate and Jer are CAP guys. Jer is always prepped for a SAR flight, salt of the earth type and loves to fly.

http://www.jerslash.net/
 
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SCCutler said:
What's up with the / at the end of his name?
Click to expand...
I was wondering that too. I don't know Jer or anyone else to recommend although I think I may have met Drew and accidentally spilled coffee on his stack of paperwork...
 
Everskyward said:
I was wondering that too. I don't know Jer or anyone else to recommend although I think I may have met Drew and accidentally spilled coffee on his stack of paperwork...
Click to expand...
My understanding is that he mostly wanted to see if all the government's computers were capable of handling a slash in his name.
 
jesse said:
My understanding is that he mostly wanted to see if all the government's computers were capable of handling a slash in his name.
Click to expand...

And he's a *nix geek. At least he didn't write it /jer/null
 
Clark1961 said:
No direct knowledge but met Jer at CPA mountain training and he's got a good sense of humor. Bet it struck him as funny when directing folks to his website and Nate being the geek he is, is willing to participate in the joke. Both Nate and Jer are CAP guys. Jer is always prepped for a SAR flight, salt of the earth type and loves to fly.

http://www.jerslash.net/
Click to expand...

Sometime, ask him about the tornado and the sailplane.
 
My understanding of the story is way back when as a young Unix programmer at HP, there were two "Jer"'s in the department, so he started using "Jer/" internally, then it turned into thinking he'd change it legally... and he did...

I'll refresh myself on the story this week sometime, I'm sure.
 
exploits_of_a_mom.png


http://xkcd.com/327/
 
The quote you're seeing is the close quote, the opening one would be inserted by the application. So what it's doing is closing the name field with that quote, then running another command to drop the whole table.
 
bluesky74656 said:
The quote you're seeing is the close quote, the opening one would be inserted by the application. So what it's doing is closing the name field with that quote, then running another command to drop the whole table.
Click to expand...

Which application? Oracle? MySQL? SQLServer? Is this ANSI SQL 2.0 compliant?

(sorry, too lazy to run it on my system to see what happens...)
 
denverpilot said:
My understanding of the story is way back when as a young Unix programmer at HP, there were two "Jer"'s in the department, so he started using "Jer/" internally, then it turned into thinking he'd change it legally... and he did..
Click to expand...
Oh, computer geek joke. No wonder I didn't get it. :rofl:
 
Me too Mari... It took me a couple of reads to figure it was some programmer thing.
Cute
 
Aka a SQL injection attack...

Good job, Nate and Jesse. Jer/ would be good to wrap things up. I talked to him before about doing a mountain training course...
 
Jeanie said:
How do you pronounce Jer/? Like short for Jerry?
Click to expand...

Yup, it's Jer. Or more formally, "jer slash". Altho the FAA still has him listed as Gerald. He was the other pilot on the trip to Edwards AFB last year.
 
Awful. Just awful.

I realized at lunchtime the schedule would be tight and I hadn't fueled the airplane after the flight home. So I took my lunch hour to run to the hangar and fuel up. Should've taken all of 35 minutes from my office.

Got there, found that Centennial hadn't bothered to plow the inch or so of overnight snow in our hangar row (that's what an over $200/mo ground lease under the hangars buys you these days, I guess) and I know this slushy crap is going to freeze into a solid sheet of ice at nightfall. Great.

I shovel a huge path for the tug and airplane since it's slightly uphill out of our hangar and create some paths for the melting snow to run off to, hoping I can get the airplane out. I put down some sand where the tug tire will be pulling later on.

Work shoes now full of cold water I run to the house to change them.

Back to work, excited for the evening. Want to do well. Printed some plates for backups for the iPad. Didn't really get time to look them over.

Back to the airport, excited to try out the Lightspeeds that came back from repair after coming out of the box, broken.

Preflight, checklist, start, and crunch through the frozen crap between the hangars.. find a non-ice-covered spot that will actually allow braking and do a run up. Cleared for takeoff Runway 10 and I see the first 20' of the runway is covered in that ice.

Power and rudder to get straight and final checks and I'm off. Rest of the runway looks decent but I can feel it's a little slippery. Concentrate in kerping her straight and knew the takeoff roll would be longer but had kinda gotten used to the sea level DAs. Seems like forever and I'm off. Climb feels sluggish. Yeah. Back home in Denver!

Chat with Denver Approach and get FF. On up to KFNL. Relax a bit. Stressful takeoff.

Get to FNL and Jer is ready to go. Throws me off my game a bit trying to tell me I don't need a full pre-flight. I walk around the plane anyway. I don't know if that was a test or if it was his real opinion that a pit-stop is a "check oil, check fuel, and go" but I didn't like it. Whatever. I'm walking around.

No briefing what we're going to do. About all I got out of the pre-flight briefing was that he was disappointed we pulled our ADF. We're in the aircraft and he says he'll be the departure controller. Okay.

There's a helicopter doing taxi work on the taxiway and he moves over to the ramp as I taxi by. I realize later that I'm completely not used to the Lightspeeds and I have volumes set way too low for what I think is normal.

Jer starts quizzing me on situational awareness. He asks what kind of airplane is on final who's been making calls.

Frankly, I don't care. We're not even to run-up yet, I know theres a guy out there shooting approaches and I'll get his type and tail number later. I'm paying attention to the helicopter. I tell him that and he laughs.

He also wants one radio tuned to 121.5 and says something about having to monitor it when we can.

The other will be on CTAF.

Something about an Advisory Circular for the 121.5. Sigh. Okay whatever... totally different Instructor, totally different habits.

I want my stuff set up differently. He's messing with my radios. At least he's leaving the Nav alone.

(continued...)
 
I call the simulated Departure and get "cleared direct EBBIE direct COLIN, FNL, expect ILS 33 approach"...

I catch that EBBIE is nowhere to be found on an FNL plate and guess that it's on the GXY plate somewhere. Jer laughs. Yep.

Trying to wrap my head around how to go to EBBIE then COLIN I'm already in the weeds and we haven't taken off yet. Outbound towards GLL VOR to 18 DME, turn 90 degrees right (or make up your own DME arc) and intercept a different radial outbound from GLL to a different DME. Ok. Maybe I can do that.

Run up completed, I make a takeoff call and we're off.

I'm immediately all over the place. I try to get the needles to settle down. It was as bad as mid-week with Jesse. God-awful, I'm just trying to keep us upright. Jer's barking about calling the simulated Departure controller. He also wants the CTAF calls done properly and he's barking about the climb checklist. I'm thoroughly screwed.

I manage to find my way back to the ILS 33 somehow and do an absolutely awful job of shooting it. Jer's barking the whole time about wings level rudder-only turns. I've never done that ever. Everything with Jesse was about small corrections, learning to make them really small, and coordinated flight.

So I'm trying to teach my feet to track a localizer which is something they've never done. I'm also totally weirded out by all the opposite aileron pressure I have to hold to even get the nose to move.

Go missed. Still completely in the weeds. Jer clears me to intercept the ILS outbound (oh crap, reverse sensing... Jesse and I didn't get any opportunity to do that at all) and hold. Oh and he wants anything outside of two miles to the station at cruise speed. Crap. I've been flying around at 90 knots for a week at sea level. I'm a god awful mess.

I'm so screwed up I roll into a procedure turn. Jer laughs and gives me an amended clearance to do the turn come back to COLIN and then enter the hold.

Back inbound Jer is now barking about the Five Ts out loud. Jesse's admittedly not a fan of that.

He's also barking about peddle turns and holding everything still. Trust me, I'm trying. I have no idea how to hold a localizer with opposite aileron and my feet. I just did it completely differently for over 30 hours.

(continued...)
 
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Inbound to COLIN I get the only moment of everything looking even partially right to me in the flight so far. Then on down and more barking about leveling the wings and peddle turns. I try them instead of what I know. The needle is all over the place. My blood pressure is sky high and I'm beyond annoyed.

He says to land out of it. I slow up and he grabs the yoke and pushes. I'm really ****ed now. He may have forgotten about the STOL kit. We hit pretty hard and I'm saying "It has a STOL kit, that speed was fine" and he's explaining he was just avoiding a stall. Misunderstandings in the flare. Great. After the smash and go, I go missed and a complaint that I didn't call the fake controller.

Jesse and I were filed and talking to real controllers most of the week and usually I had that going fine. Talking to the fake controller isn't working well. Neither are the CTAF calls.

Missed I get a radial to fly direct GLL. No further instructions. I ask what that means. Jer says, "What would you do if you get there?" Enter a hold.

"Which one?" I'm still working on figuring our the intercept angle and have it jacked up. Jer says he wants to see a 30 degree or less within five miles of the station, and 45 outside that. Jesse had always just let me figure out my own. New Instructor new habits. Fine.

Still getting barked at about our loud Five Ts. I'm as far in the weeds and ****ed off as I've ever been in an airplane.

Get on the radial and then goof around with iPad to find out what the published hold on some plate for GXY is. Completely lose my heading and the radial. Jer starts barking about keeping the radial needle in the donut. Hell, I'm just trying to keep it in the window!

Jer makes more CTAF calls at GXY. His "vector" has us above the pubished holding altitude which is messing with my head a bit. Fine.

"Approach" comes on and says I'm cleared back to COLIN for the VOR/DME own-navigation. Back we go. I fiddle with iPad to switch back.

All of this was while speeding back up to cruise and messing with trim. Power settings learned at Lincoln aren't working well and I'm chasing altitude all over the place.

(continued...)
 
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Somewhere in the middle of all that I got "you didn't get a clearance for the approach, you busted the ride". This isn't a ride. This is a nightmare.

Anyway back to COLIN and I manage to fly a barely passable ILS with all CTAF calls missed and totally behind the aircraft.

Land, flaps up, Jer starts barking about not touching anything until past the line and off the runway. Sigh. More complaints about the checklist.

We taxi in, I smile and nod and we sign the logbook while I get chastised that I'm working on my IR before my glider rating. Yeah, I've heard this one before. The IR is something I have badly wanted since the early 1990's. Telling me I should go gliding after thirty hours out of town working on it isn't exactly going to make me happy.

Jer says something about why don't I have a favorite instructor at APA? I'm so tired and ticked I don't even feel like going into the long story about starts, stops, schedule conflicts, and instructors who won't fly in private aircraft because their FBO/rental bosses don't like it. I get the distinct feeling Jer's ready to dump me as a student.

Pay the bill, sign the logbook, and more words about how our local DE is a stickler for procedures so the checklist had better be nailed. Yeah, I know.

As we're shaking hands I say I needed the workout and it was fun, but it wasn't. Not at all. Jer asks me if I'm going to talk to Approach on the way back, and I mis-speak and say, "I usually do." In my head this is, "I always do unless they're too busy to talk to me." I get a lecture on how I should because I haven't filed a VFR flight plan to go home and it's more than 50 nm.

I'm so ****ed I just say, "It's 52." from memory (it's actually 53, I looked on the way back) and smile. I'm sure Jer thinks I'm some kind of dangerous VFR yahoo out flying around without a flight plan now, but I don't even care what he thinks at this point.

I check the plane, fire up and head back. Flight home is nice after all that. Denver is great and gives me a Bravo clearance and direct APA near BJC.

Land, taxi off and go to the hangar. Realize I didn't fuel up again and what a pain that was so I taxi over to self serve and top off. Then I struggle on the now completely frozen crap to safely put the plane away.

(continued...)
 
Nate, two words: call Bowman (no barking at all and he really does want you to get the rating).
 
I get the bird in somehow very carefully and load the piles of crap into the Yukon that I took along not knowing if Jer would want to discuss anything. Books, laptop, tons of crap. None of it used.

I forgot another weirdness. Jer kept asking me to pull the throttle "off the stop" after departure.

I had no clue what he was talking about. Apparently when the throttle is full forward it's resting against a stop and with vibration over time there's damage to the stop.

There's a small dead band between the forward stop and when the linkage actually starts pulling power back and, "as an aircraft owner" I'm supposed to know this little tidbit.

I didn't. Makes sense but during an Instrument training flight when I'm ten miles behind the aircraft probably isn't the time to learn this.

I've had other instructors that played the "if you don't guard the throttle and leave your hand on it, I'll pull it" game... So I tend to leave my hand there near the ground and even push a little.

I wish you guys had consistent messages. Really. I'm a computer guy. You tell me to guard, I guard. You tell me to pull it off the stop, I pull. It's starting to really **** me off.

I've never hated a flight as much as this one. And I will admit that I intensely disliked one flight with Jesse but we de-briefed and figured out the reasons after we landed.

Debrief with Jer wasn't do much a debrief as a "see ya" with the distinct feeling that we weren't going to get much flying in the rest of the week.

Got chastised for not coming to the Marble fly-in again. Got chastised for still having wheel pants on our STOL 182.

Humbling. Yes. Learned something. Yes.

Want to do it again? Hell if I know.

Haven't ever gotten out of an airplane this angry before.

I refuse to say I'm angry with Jer. I'm not. I'm angry at myself. My performance was terrible. Beyond terrible.

But I will say I wished I'd thought harder about the choice of Instructor.

I've heard all this, "You need a glider rating first" and "You can land this airplane at Marble" and "As an aircraft owner you need to do X" stuff before. It gets old.

It's wasting hot air and time telling me these things again, but they're his passions and I respect them. At least we weren't on the clock for these never-ending rants.

I don't know. Mostly I just hate being talked down to.

Look, I wanted to say... I'm here to learn something specific, and I'm trying. I don't give a crap about this other trivia.

"What kind of airplane is on final?", while I'm taxiing past a helicopter? Give me a break. I don't care. He'll be long gone before I hit the runway.

I'm overloaded flying under the hood and trying to figure out how to fix it. If we get in the airplane and go somewhere other than multiple approaches unbriefed back to the same airport I settle into that okay.

If we attempt to go around in circles with the sequence all jacked up, I never catch up.

That... Is the only topic I'm interested in right now.

Worst flight ever.

The WX is going down the tubes tomorrow so I have time to think about what's next. I like Jer/ but that was awful. I'm considering not willfully repeating it.
 
Clark1961 said:
Nate, two words: call Bowman (no barking at all and he really does want you to get the rating).
Click to expand...

I think you might be referring to someone named John Bowman. I've heard the name is all. No idea who he is.

Will he fly in privately owned aircraft, because I'm really tired of spending a half hour getting a CFII up to speed on the phone about where I'm at, and then having them back off as soon as its not their favorite rental aircraft. It's now my first question.

Jer will fly in private aircraft but I literally had to sign a contract that I'm acting 100% PIC before we started the lesson tonight. A full-pager with briefing info about his mountain flight and various other stuff on it that didn't apply to this flight at all other than the PIC clause.
 
Confidence management is one of the most important aspects of flight training - and it seems that wasn't very well respected.

Not every instructor will be compatible with every student. It sounds as if that flight was about as productive as trying to get my cat to come to me on command.

I'm not sure if he was unable to recognize how buried you were, or he feels that overloading students and trashing their confidence completely is an effective teaching technique. Either way it seems that technique isn't compatible with you - so don't force it.

It seems there were a lot of details in there that simply are matters of personal opinion with no positive benefit. As an instructor I do my best to not push personal technique on pilots that have established procedures if those techniques offer no benefit.

Perhaps we can figure something out. I don't want you to be left hanging on this.
 
Don't worry Jesse. We will. I'm just steamed right now at nothing in particular.

I've known Jer a long time and no hard feelings there. Just completely not my style.

He barked a lot at my co-owner during the C2O Formation Flight training and my gut was telling me this wasn't going to be a good flight long before I got in the airplane tonight. I should have listened to my intuition.

I just thought I'd waltz up there and magically be the kind of pilot Jer wants. That was naieve and stupid of me at this stage.

Down the road a bit when I can keep up with flying and have a bit more left over bandwidth, he can add in all the stuff he wants or tell me what a bad airplane owner I am for pushing on my throttle all he wants, and I'll be fine with it.

It just was an ugly flight tonight because he throws it all at you at once, which is his style.

The whole messing with the yoke thing had me really ticked. He messed with it, I basically initiated a go-around without calling it, because if you're jacking with my yoke I'm not landing, and he was thinking I was just correcting the speed.

I ended up making the landing anyway and shouldn't have. He probably heard the stall fences start to sing and thought we were in imminent danger. There's a pretty big margin below that noise starting before you even get to the stall horn, let alone a stall, in my airplane, as you saw during slow flight. If you're shooting for the horn at touchdown you have to make 'em sing.

It's freaked many people out, not just CFIs. I think I learned tonight that I won't be making any landings with new CFIs in my bird until they've seen it's slow flight behavior.

It just sounds "wrong" to a pilot with a ton of 182 time without the kit. I can't blame him for blocking the yoke. I set myself up on that one.
 
Do you have any friends who are IFR and can be a "safety pilot" for you? Maybe you need to relearn Denver weather and surroundings. You had Lincoln immersion for a week. (I wouldn't be surprised if you see Lincoln landmarks when you're sleeping) Get use to your stomping grounds. I know I wouldn't have had a good day after getting my work shoes all wet that afternoon!
 
either get a new CFII or start the pre-flight briefing with "you-STFU unless something dangerous is happening, I have my own way of doing things that I like and don't need you screwing with"
 
denverpilot said:
I think you might be referring to someone named John Bowman. I've heard the name is all. No idea who he is.

Will he fly in privately owned aircraft, because I'm really tired of spending a half hour getting a CFII up to speed on the phone about where I'm at, and then having them back off as soon as its not their favorite rental aircraft. It's now my first question.

Jer will fly in private aircraft but I literally had to sign a contract that I'm acting 100% PIC before we started the lesson tonight. A full-pager with briefing info about his mountain flight and various other stuff on it that didn't apply to this flight at all other than the PIC clause.
Click to expand...

Yes, John Bowman based at BJC with Western Air. He flys with me in the Frankenkota. I'll introduce you to him if that would help. I did my last IPC with John and he was very good with constructive criticism.

I'm also happy to be safety pilot on weekends.
 
jesse said:
Not every instructor will be compatible with every student.
Click to expand...
This. It's also hard to switch instructors midstream especially if they have very differing styles and you were happy with the first one. It doesn't sound like Nate and Jer/ were even close to being on the same page so I would suggest to Nate that he find someone else. Personally, I think it's unproductive to overload the student and bark at them about their technique when it's obvious they are already behind. Also, this being the first lesson with a new instructor, it would have been nice if it had been more of a observation session to see what he already knew.
 
denverpilot said:
I think you might be referring to someone named John Bowman. I've heard the name is all. No idea who he is.

Will he fly in privately owned aircraft, because I'm really tired of spending a half hour getting a CFII up to speed on the phone about where I'm at, and then having them back off as soon as its not their favorite rental aircraft. It's now my first question.
Click to expand...

Well, there's always Bruce H.

[ducking and running as fast as possible!!!]

If it's VFR day, I can safety pilot while you're under the hood. I know most of the approaches along the Front Range.

We need to get Jesse out here to finish you up, and me, too. Drew's had me on his DPE "checkride to-do" list for years (no, I'm not kidding - since 2007).
 
denverpilot said:
Jer will fly in private aircraft but I literally had to sign a contract that I'm acting 100% PIC before we started the lesson tonight. A full-pager with briefing info about his mountain flight and various other stuff on it that didn't apply to this flight at all other than the PIC clause.
Click to expand...

Ive seen another instructor with such a document... certainly wishful thinking
 
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