Coincidental Floss: Blog

From Out of the Clear Blue of the Western Internet ...

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 20:17:50 GMT

Sky King was a television series that ran in the US in the 50's (see the Wikipedia link above for the convoluted history of networks and run times) that was based on a radio series by the same name. It featured the adventures of the titular character, a rancher and pilot, and his niece Penny, a pretty and blonde Robin to Sky's Batman. The plots usually involved some wayward criminals passing through the area, the local sheriff needing help, and Sky flying his airplane (first a Cessna T-50, then a Cessna 310) to the rescue, landing on a dirt road in the desert and punching the bad guys in the head.

I have a soft spot for the show since the first airplane I ever flew was a Cessna T-50, and, as my friend Glenn hates me pointing out, at Oshkosh in 1989, I not only got to fly one of the T-50's used in the series, I waved an original screen-used Sky King cowboy hat out the window when we taxied by the crowd.

The whole series is now available on DVD, or, thanks to the good people at American Flyers, you can watch most of the episodes online here - click the logo above to watch the first episode right now.

My thanks go to my friend Bruce of BruceAir for sending the link, and for undoubtedly giggling quietly to himself about my use of the word "titular."

If you're inspired by the flying in the show and want to take a virtual T-50 around the patch, Alphasim's version is now freeware and can be had at Simviation. (Note: the red one is our family airplane (though ours has never been on floats to my knowledge.))

In the meantime, why not reach for Nabisco?!? After all, the bright red seal on the package end means mighty good cookin' inside, my friend ... Or at least have a look at the NabiscoWorld web site, which is almost certainly the only place on the whole Interweb where you can download a recipe for Crunchy Stuffed Zucchini Boats whilst playing a spirited round of Nut Vendor.

Who is John Galt?

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 14:44:44 GMT

That question opens (and recurs in) a book called Atlas Shrugged, by novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand. Galt is described, indirectly, as the “…man who said that he would stop the motor of the world—and did.” In the story (does a 51 year old book, touted as the second-most influential of all time, need a “spoiler alert?”), Galt is initially presumed to be a myth, but turns out to be quite real. As the story unfolds, it’s revealed that Galt has created a haven, a gathering spot for the like-minded to meet and live and interact according to their own standards of value.

More on that in a second.

I first read Atlas Shrugged in 1987, when I was 19 years old. At that same time, I also dove into the flying stories of Richard Bach – Biplane, Nothing By Chance, A Gift of Wings, etc. Both authors became favorites of mine, joining Ian Fleming and Douglas Adams on the short list.

AirVenture 2008 Days 6 & 7: Endgame

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 22:56:17 GMT

If you read the cleverly titled (because I titled it) blog Information Mike, written by friend and colleague Mike Singer, you'll see that, earlier in the Oshkosh week, we took a trip to a place called Fisk and watched the controllers there do their thing. If you haven't read it, click the link and give it a read now. I'll wait.

Anyway, while we were out at Fisk, politely conferring with the controllers, asking intelligent research-related questions like "Hey, Mister - can I look through your buboculars?", the idea of a visit to the control tower at the airport itself came up. And, by "came up", I mean we said "Hey, mister, can we PUH-LEEZE go up in the control tower?!?!" Foolishly enough, they promised to work something out. At which we point we gave them their binoculars back.

My turn in the tower came on Saturday. As it happens, they close the control tower during the daily airshow (the airspace is handed off to the show's "air boss"), so the best time to visit the tower also just happens to be (thanks to the view) the best time to be in the tower. It's a heady feeling, to say the least, watching an airshow from above - especially given the dramatically increased height of the new tower.

Two of my colleagues, Brandon Seltz and the aforementioned Mike Singer, went up that day as well, quite a bit higher than the tower ... and, at times, considerably lower! Brandon and Mike have been the driving forces behind some of the work we're doing with Dale "Snort" Snodgrass and American Topgun Productions (yes, I know, and no, I won't tell). Dale wanted a chance to say "thank you" to the two of them in particular, and, ignoring my jealousy-driven suggestions of memberships for each of them in the Jelly of the Month Club, decided to give them each a ride in a Mustang. North American, not Ford. The real thing, the one that Christian Bale points at frantically in the movie Empire of the Sun and calls the "Cadillac of the sky!" They each truly got the ride of their lives, and my therapist has told me repeatedly that the seething, bitter envy I feel is far outweighed by my happiness on their behalf.

Then again - they actually earned their flight, ~~the chumps,~~ while I, in good Socialist fashion, chatted my way into my hop in the Soviet Yak-9 by claiming that I needed it.

Saturday night afforded one last photo run through Aeroshell square, snapping sunset pics, before everyone started heading out on Sunday. I can't quite articulate why, but somehow, the image of the V-22 guys loading up a ladder they bought from the ladder guy really captured the spirit of AirVenture perfectly. So perfectly, that, even though I thought I had, I don't seem to have taken a picture of it.

You'll just have to trust me.

Sunday rolled 'round, and, thanks to some threatening weather, the grounds were all but empty. I knew a number of people (such as friend-of-friends Fern Villenuve, first team leader of Canada's Golden Hawks flight demonstration team - the first person I've met whose face is actually on money) who figured if they didn't leave Saturday, they'd be stuck in Oshkosh (not always a bad thing) for another week. Of course, I couldn't be absolutely certain that the grounds were empty without seeing it for myself, so I went back up in the control tower. Because I could.

Other exhibitors were quietly (and some not so quietly) packing up and shutting down throughout the day, but we kept ours going until the very end. You should assume that we did this because of our near fanatical dedication to reaching every last customer we possibly could, and not because we'd contracted with a company called The Production Network who, in the person of the incomparable Steve Mallinson, was completely responsible for the teardown of the booth.

Just as it has done the other nine times I've been, the end of AirVenture came too soon. Once we'd ~~abandoned Steve~~ shut down the PCs and headed out, we took one last end-to-end run on the golf cart, reluctantly returning it to the EAA, just as the first real storm of the week kicked in.

From Oshkosh, it was on to Toronto for a week or so but that's another story.


A room with a view ...	X-Plane's Austin Meyer poses with us proving that we can, in fact, all just get along.	Is there a word that means "the opposite of advertising?"	The Walking Taco seemed like an unnecessarily smug dig at the handicapped corn dogs of Reno.	Good night, Panchito.

AirVenture 2008 Day 5: Do the Yak!

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 13:15:59 GMT

I decided to go ahead and finish the story and just replace the previous post with this one. This event was clearly the most notable of my Day 5, so I think it deserves its own full-ish post. Congratulations to those of you who read the first version - it is now, officially, mega-rare, the rocket firing Boba Fett, the Beatles' Yesterday and Today Butcher Cover, the inverted Jenny postage stamp of blog posts.

On Friday the 1st, after a couple of days of false starts and missed connections, I met up with my new (best) friend, Jim Cook out of Auburn Alabama, and we had an absolutely beautiful flight in his Yak 9. "How did this happen?" I hear you asking (though it sounds suspiciously like "big deal!") Well, it went something like this: Jim came by the booth earlier in the week and introduced himself, and, thanks to my desire to go up with him in said Yak, we found common ground very quickly. As it turned out, we have mutual friends in people like Snort Snodgrass and Sean Carroll (not there actually are people like either of those gentlemen), and, while Jim was telling me a bit about his background as an Army aviator flying the Blackhawk, I was kicking him in the shins and demanding a ride.

When I met Jim at the airplane, we did a test fit. Jim describes the Yak as a "1.75 seater", and the backseat doesn't go out its way to favor anyone over about 5' 11". I slid down in, and found that my knees were about one inch too high to fit under the back of the seat in front of me. This kept from sitting down fully, and would have meant that the flight was a no-go unless I was willing to consider surgery. (I was.) Then, magically, my right foot slipped a little, and my right knee popped under the seat back. I figured out what I'd done, repeated it with my left leg, and, Yuri's-your-uncle, I was in. Wedged in, but in nonetheless. Then, just to show off a bit, I got back out.

After waiting about an hour for the fuel truck driver (Slacky McLostington) to show up, we gassed up, and it was time to commit aviation for the glory of the Rodina. I worked my way into the seat, repeated my knee adjustments, then affixed the four-point harness. Once I was set, Jim started the engine, and, after whining for a few blades, 12 cylinders of 1600+ horsepower Allison goodness came to life, the relatively small Yak rocking back and forth in time with the idle. Taxiing out, we S-turned along (like most of the best airplanes, you can't see straight ahead in the Yak 9 when you're on the ground, so you weave, veering left and looking right, then reversing that) behind the EAA marshallers on scooters. There was quite a crowd lining up along the taxiways, jockeying for position to take a picture, or just wave, especially the little kids. I waved back to as many as I could, not because I was deluded for an instant that they were waving at me, but because Jim had his hands (and feet) full, and because the airplane had no hands. "Stay in school and off the crack, kids, and one day you might be randomly lucky like me, sitting in an airplane like this through no particular hard work of your own, though probably not."

After the runup, we were cleared for takeoff on runway 36L. The power went in, the tail popped up, then the mains, and we were in a climbing right turn heading east over Lake Winnebago. Jim had cautioned me about the noise, recommending earplugs under my headset, but I was glad I'd forgotten, because the noise, the confident growling power of this machine was, in a word, glorious. The views were every bit as spectacular as you'd expect, and the the weather was "severe clear" in almost every direction. The only exception was at twelve o'clock, level: there was a "cloud street" around a mile or so long, with a string of small and obviously fascist cumulus puffs that were, simply put, asking for it. Jim wove us in and around and through the edges, doing loops, rolls, wingovers, and cuban 8s, the long forgotten pressure on my knees relieving any time we were inverted or went negative. The clouds knew when they'd been outclassed, and quietly did their part providing an all-too-rare sense of speed at altitude as we tore past. At one point, we nudged through 5 Gs, I clenched a little, grunted a little, and smiled a lot.

All too soon, it was time to head back to the airport. We entered a long, curving right base for 36L; the curving approach keeps the runway in sight in a taildragger like this for as long as possible, right up until the point when you actually need it and touch down. By then, the theory is that the runway is probably where you think it is, and, if not, it's fairly close. Rolling out at idle, the engine popped, the short stacks clearing their throats for attention they already had. The tail came down, and we turned off, once again following an orange vest on a red scooter with a volunteer in between who led us straight back to where we started, then proffered us each a bottle of ice cold water once we'd opened the canopy. The water was welcome, a cool jolt that unfortunately wasn't quite enough to wake up my legs, which had dozed off somewhere over the lake. I clambered up and out, and didn't so much hop down off of the airplane as bounced on lifeless legs that, thankfully, remained straight.

Then it was time for pictures and handshakes, promises to stay in touch (we have, so far), and a blurry golf-cart trip to our booth for a few hours. I'd literally come back down to earth at this point, but part of me was still up over the lake, giving the imaginary Luftwaffe a bit of what for.

I took a lot of pictures of the airplane before and after the flight, got a few pictures from one of Jim's friends of us departing and arriving, and snapped some stills and video on my phone during the flight, then put these things together as short video, linked below. Now, I'm not a photographer, and, if there's one thing worse than a non-photographer taking pictures, it's a non-photographer taking pictures with a camera phone. And, if there's one thing worse than that, it's that same person shooting video with said camera phone. I'd apologize for the quality, but I think the images that need to will apologize for themselves.

Like it says in the clip, Jim - Spaseba, Tovarisch!

AirVenture 2008 Day 4: End-to-End

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 02:47:46 GMT

This one began with something that began a few years ago as a nice gesture, evolved into a tradition, and now, thanks to me and my soulless corporate approach to things, has become mandatory: the patented Hal Bryan AirVenture End-to-End Golf Cart Experience. As I wrote in my official guide to the show that I handed out to all of my fellow boothizens (as part of the care package that my friend and colleague Mike wrote about here), AirVenture is big. If you've never been, it's bigger than you think, if you haven't been in a while, it's bigger than you remember, and, if you have, you know I'm right. By giving them the lay of the land, the tour helps people decide in what direction to stagger during their precious free time in order to see what interests them, and also helps them become a little more self-sufficient when it comes to getting back and forth between the booth and the hotel, etc. We start in front of the Super 8, work our way around the north 40 camping area, then pass through the warbirds and across the taxiway to the experimentals. From there, we pass the tower(s) and the government pavilions, then straight across Aeroshell square. Next comes the light sport aircraft, the past grand champions, and then the antiques and classics. Continuing south, we head past the vintage campground and the ultralights, then, finally, to the southiest end of the south 40 camping. Then it's back north for a spin up through Aeroshell square, a look at the sponsor facilities behind Hangar C, a quick look at the Fly Market, and, finally, a trip round the two best-kept secrets of AirVenture, the EAA AirVenture Museum and Pioneer Airport.

I love giving these tours, because I love seeing this place, my home for 1/52nd of a year, through new eyes. Not to mention the fact that I love having an audience; when I'm narrating, I'll catch myself starting to gesticulate, making broad, expansive hand gestures that put a little bit of pontiff in my pontificating. Day 4's tour customers were Rick Hudson and Shawna Williams. Paul Lange was supposed to be there as well, but he was in a meeting that I can't talk about.

And speaking of which ... at noon, Mike Singer and I met with 8 of our colleagues from the EAA to talk enthusiastically about something that I shouldn't mention here. Just picture a lot of people in blue shirts nodding and trying not to interrupt each other.

After that, I met with a colleague and potential partner at the booth, gave her a demo and then met with her in the air-conditioned "Exhibitor's Comfort Center" for about an hour and a half. I won't mention who she works for, but it was the kind of meeting that started with "do you think we should look at working together" and ended with "well, yes, but, once we've actually dominated the entire world, what do you propose we do with it?" At one point, I actually used the word "synergy" and, to my shame, I meant it. Then I apologized, unnecessarily. One thing I can say without apologizing is that this company (I know her boss and one of her colleagues as well) is doing things that are undeniably brilliant. We're still not sure exactly *how* we'll work together, but we're all convinced that it's the right thing to do. If I could hire them to handle our marketing in the aviation community, I'd do it yesterday.

A bit later on, I stopped in at Flight1's booth to catch up with my friend Jim Rhoads, and he showed me their new Citation Mustang add-on (utterly gorgeous, and the first FS add-on I've come across with an opening toilet seat) and their new instructor's console. This last was running on ESP, and, after about 30 seconds, I came away convinced that this was the "killer app" the platform needs to get the attention of flight schools of all kinds. While I was busy being impressed, an older gentleman came up, followed by a few of my colleagues. The gentleman's name was John, and he'd come to Flight1's booth from ours to buy a copy of RealAir's Spitfire add-on (one of my personal favorites.) John and I had a wonderful conversation about his flying history, and about the role that Flight Sim plays in his day-to-day life. He enjoys it with the sort of passion that I'll happily remember any time that I find myself a little slow to get out of bed and head out to work. His gratitude was energizing and humbling. I hope I'm half as sharp as he is, when I'm half his age ... in 3 and 1/2 years.

Not a bad day's work, especially since it was my day off.

Wait ... listen ... do you hear that? It's the sound of me not complaining!


The view out my window, first thing in the AM	Because if you're John Travolta, you fly your 707 to Oshkosh	So many toys, so little time ...	The party was going fine until these guys showed up

AirVenture 2008 Day 3: Am I the Only One Who Didn't Think That Was Lunch?

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 23:35:56 GMT

No, I wasn't, as it happens. You see, I'd been invited to an executive luncheon to discuss some partnership opportunities best left undetailed. It was a great meeting, but the meal itself was jarring. It started with a fruit salad - a bit of pineapple hollowed out with a couple of spoonfuls of sweet rice, some strawberries, and some sliced mangoes. The word at my table, including that of some new friends from a company that makes Very Light Jets (friends, but not great friends - no stick time was offered at any point in the meal) was that the presentation was sans pareil. As it turned out, the meal was also sans main course, since the next thing to arrive was dessert. I was a bit nonplussed (not to mention nonfull), but I shrugged it off and focused on the meeting itself, which was considerably more substantial.

Later that night, I ran into a couple of people who'd also attended, and tentatively broached the subject of lunch with "Now, was it just me-" only to be met with an immediate "Oh my god, no! We couldn't believe it!" Vindication was satisfying, though a ham sandwich would have been more so.

The most notable customer at the booth that day was a guy who was kind of enough to point out that he was a real pilot with literally hundreds of hours who was just about to give up on our little video game. He went on to explain that, in some of our aircraft, our gauges just "go nuts." I had him show me the problem on one of our demo stations. We started at Denver in the Beech Baron, and he took off and started pointing out problems as he climbed out. First, as he moved the yoke all the way fore and aft to try to maintain a particular pitch attitude, he pointed to the Vertical Speed Indicator, which was indicating momentary climbs and descents ... as the airplane climbed and descended. Then he showed that the altimeter was moving as well, as if the altitude was changing ... which, conveniently, it was. I pointed out that everything was happening exactly as it should with a diplomacy that was, well, sans pareil.

Then he went on to point out that the airspeed indicator was broken, because he was only making 90 knots at full power. At 10,000 feet, with mixture set to full rich. I suggested that he either lean the mixture or just turn on the Automixture feature in FSX, and he said "Why on earth would I want to lean the mixture?!?!"

"Because of your altitude...? It's common practice to lean a piston engine above 3,000 feet, otherwise it will continue to lose power as you climb," I replied.

"Well, I've never heard of such of thing. I never touch the mixture when I fly, and I've flown for years!"

What was there to say to that?

We'll leave that in the rhetorical category, and close with a few pictures:


Not the Super 8	Norah and Aaron await their driver	3 Yak 52s at the bottom of a loop	Harrier than thou

AirVenture 2008 Day 2: I Can Sorta See the Future From Here, Maybe

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 02:03:26 GMT

Those of you that read my post on FSInsider entitled Of Jetpacks and Autogiros knew that I was especially looking forward to seeing the unveiling of the Martin JetPack, which happened on Tuesday morning at Aeroshell Square. The area was packed and, unfortunately, there was no clear indication as to where the event was actually going to unfold. The area is also very flat, so, unless the event were to have unfolded within just a few feet of me, there'd be no chance of seeing anything over the heads of those around me. Eventually, there was some general commotion about 50 feet away, and then Glenn Martin of Martin JetPacks gave a brief introduction and unveiled something that I couldn't see from where I was standing. It wasn't long before I could hear it, however, as could most of the greater Winnebago county area, as this particular jet pack is actually powered by a 200hp 2 stroke engine, driving a pair of ducted fans. From where I was standing, it sounded like what I'd imagine it would sound like to wear a gas-powered weedeater as hat. The noise, however, along with the technical absence of a jet and the inevitable bulk of the thing really don't detract from its sheer that-looks-like-fun-itude. Check out EAA's coverage here:

http://www.airventure.org/2008/4wed30/jetpack.html

And speaking of coverage, while jockeying for and failing to get into a position for a better view of the goings-on, I bumped into somebody. Actually, that's not true. We were wedged together in the crowd, and it wasn't until the crowd ebbed an inch or two and we actually weren't connected at the shoulder that this person noticed me and said "Hi Hal!". As it happens, it was a young man named Pete Muntean. We first met Pete at Oshkosh 10 years ago, when he was a slightly shy and exceedingly sharp kid that hung around the Flight Simulator booth. All day. Unlike some of the "full-timers" at shows, however, Pete was a huge help, and could do anything we asked in the sim while we talked through our demos. Over the years, we've seen Pete turn from a nice kid into a good man, in spite of some terribly tough times. Pete's a pilot now, going to school, and his latest adventure of many is an internship with CNN, lugging a camera around behind Miles O'Brien. If you happen to see CNN's coverage of the event, and notice something unusually artistic about some of the crowd shots, it's because Pete let me push the red button on the camera, allowing me to add "yeah, I shot some B-roll for CNN" to my curriculum vitae.

In keeping with the retro-futurist theme of the day, I had a good look at the Terrafugia Transition, one of the more solid attempts to attack the "roadable aircraft problem" in several years. I'll believe it when I see it fly, but it does show considerable promise. Even though the simulator model they've released for download is designed for X-Plane ... And speaking of flying cars, I got a chance to catch up with my friend Greg Herrick of Aircraft Owner magazine and the Historic Aviation catalog. Greg's jaw-dropping aircraft collection includes an original and flyable Taylor Aerocar among other gems. One thing I've missed if it's here is the Super Sky Cycle - hopefully, I've just not seen it yet, along with other things I've somehow missed like the free lunches in the sponsor tent and the air show just about every day.

After another satisfying day of customer questions ("Can I run it on my Mac?", "Does this thing do instrument approaches?", "Is there a 'show special' price?", "Does it model a Tubman 601?", etc.), the gaggle of us flopped on the grass in front of a giant inflatable movie screen for the premiere of Speed and Angels. It was great to see it on the big screen under the stars. Rather, it was great to see two thirds of it on the big screen under the stars, before the stars were slowly replaced by cumulonimbus clouds, and a bit of rain, at which point they pulled the plug, promising to show the rest of after the next night's movie. That was a disappointment, even though a few of us have owned the DVD for about a year. Not seeing the ending because they decided to stop the movie was certainly better than not seeing the ending because lightning decided to strike me, so I didn't complain too loudly when we caught up with Paco and company in the Hilton's Lindbergh Lounge later that night.

I didn't complain too loudly about the movie that is. No, my too-loud barroom complaining was reserved for things like the government, people who don't "get it", and these kids today with their iPods and text messaging. And, maybe sometime soon, their flying cars and their JetPacks.

The lucky punks.

AirVenture 2008 - Day 3.1: Wait! What About Days 2 and 3?!?!

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 05:56:31 GMT

They're coming, honest. In the meantime, I wanted to share the breaking news of whom I was quite pleased to have met tonight, thanks to some mutual acquaintances.

I didn't ask to have a picture taken, though naturally I was tempted. By not taking a picture, I can stagger off to sleep pretending that we're peers, and that I wasn't in any way just another fan, reverting to the me from 31 years ago at the first handshake.

Insert obligatory (and apropos) reference to "delusions of grandeur" here, and kindly enjoy the artist's conception of how the untaken picture might have turned out.

In answer to the inevitable questions:

1. Gracious and patient.

2. Strong, with a shoulder squeeze and good eye contact.

3. No.

AirVenture 2008 - Day 1: Other Shoe Steadfastly Refuses to Drop

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 05:36:02 GMT

It was a good day. The Flight Simulator booth opened officially at 9:00 AM, to a disturbing lack of last minute crises. The hardware and software worked all day, nothing overheated, the 100% CoolPlus Hang 'Em Dry Space Age Moisture Wicking technology of our new trade show shirts wicked as promised.

Speaking of shirts, here's a tip for anyone preparing for an event like this (not that there are any): don't go out of your way, as I unwittingly did, to make your shirts the same color with the same color embroidery as the event staff. Unless, like me, you think it's actually an odd sort of fun to give strangers rides to and fro in a golf cart. The best part is when it finally dawns on them that I'm not event staff, that I'm just some guy from Microsoft who said yes when they asked for a lift. My favorite fares of the day were the guys that I named "the three mugs from Philly." They flagged me down, and one of them said "Yeah, where do they keep the vintage aircraft?"

The answer was "turn right and go half a mile." What I said was "Ok, just tu-" at which point Mug 1 interrupted with "Oh for cryin out loud! You could drive us there in the time it's gonna take you to friggin' explain it." I took a breath, said nothing, took another breath and said "Why not?" On the drive, Mug 2 reported that he was glad to be on the trip to "geddawayfromdawife", and that when he told her he was planning to come to the show for a few days, she strongly suggested that he stay for the entire week. Mug 3 managed to earn the trip for all of them when, (at my urging), he told me that it was "wicked cool" of me to give them a lift.

As it always does, the landscape of the show morphs as more airplanes arrive, and, surprisingly, some actually leave. Boeing's modified 747 Dreamlifter, a landscape unto itself, was the largest arrival, easing into Aeroshell square with with the steady patience of continental drift while a DC-3 called Duggy smiled nervously. At least one USMC Harrier came in, hovering on a smokey pillar of racket, as did more Mustangs, homebuilts, antiques and classics. Our friend Stephanie Allen of the Washington Pilot's Association, along with her husband Rich, brought their '58 Bonanza, and their '69 Cessna 172, unquestionably the prettiest 172 in existence. Stephanie told me this evening that she actually removed the engine in order to detail it for the show. Addison Pemberton's Boeing 40C was on display, looking nothing but pleased to be flying again after an 80 year nap, and the Tiger Moth count was increased to three.

At the booth, a gentleman came up with what ended up being the single most satisfying version of the "will this simulator software of yours run on my computer?" question I've ever had. When I asked him what kind of computer he had, he just said "here" and handed it to me. Even better, it was remarkably well equipped for a laptop that had been purchased by somebody who didn't have Flight Sim in mind at the time.

It'll run just fine, sir.

I met a nice Canadian fellow (that's almost a redundancy, but I do know a few that are a little rough around the edges) who confessed to being a fan of the FSInsider newsletter. This was convenient for me, since I was naturally a fan of his collection of L-29 jets, and his previous career flying the magnificent Martin Mars firebombers in British Columbia.

The person I was happiest to meet, however, didn't actually own or have access to an airplane I wanted to fly. It was a young man named Kevin Query, whom we called out briefly on FSInsider last January. Kevin, an 8th grader at the time, took it upon himself to go and visit the oncology ward at his local hospital, and brought a laptop running Flight Simulator that he started using to educate, entertain, and distract the patients, taking them on virtual flights all over the world. What began as a simple idea and a nice gesture has become a rapidly growing program that's expanding to help bring Kevin's idea to hospitals in other areas around the country. It was my pleasure to meet Kevin face to face, to load him with a bit of swag, and to take him shopping at the CH Products' booth (See the picture at right: Kevin Query, seated, and Michael Sexton of CH Products). You can learn more about what Kevin and his supporters are up to at the aptly named Sky High Hope website.

Tomorrow opens with a jetpack and closes with Speed and Angels. The AirVenture continues ...

The Internet is Really Quite Popular

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 05:27:58 GMT

So much so, that I the hotel's wi-fi can't get to it. The tubes are clogged! I'm using my phone to publish this, since the laptop can't seem to get anywhere. I tried uber-geek plan B, tethering the phone to the laptop to connect, but it turns out that cell phones are popular as well - data from the phone is slow and inconsistent.

Here's to better connectivity tomorrow, and to letting my mobile pics tell as much of the story as they can.

Looking for Peace in the Midwest

Sat, 26 Jul 2008 02:14:43 GMT

Off I go, back to my annual home-away-from-home at AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Click the pic to read about how some people are joining us, and watch this space for updates and photos and textual self-aggrandizement.

And, while you're watching spaces, watch the one to the right for a "Mobile Photos" photo album that will be updated with exciting shots in occasionally near real-time, thanks to my hip-bound Windows Mobile phone.

Mike – We Have a Guest! We are NOT Going to Taco Bell!

Thu, 22 May 2008 19:56:46 GMT

“If you’re ever in the Bay Area, you should head out to the Nut Tree and say hello to Duncan Miller … he’s been around a long time … still flies, and has hangars full of interesting stuff. If you’re lucky, you can sign his guestbook like about 4 million other people.”

This bit of advice came, more than once, from my friend and former colleague Marty Blaker. (Marty – if you’re reading this, “Hey.”) It came most recently about a week ago on a trip that found me in said Bay Area with a bit of extra time on my hands.

Now, I’m a gregarious sort of fellow – after all, one doesn’t become the single best Flight Simulator Community Evangelist in a company the size of Microsoft without being a bit of a people person. But I already know a lot of people, and I’m inherently skeptical when anyone says “Oh, you have to meet so-and-so”. Given that, my knee-jerk response to such a suggestion is to want to simply smile and nod, say “I’ll be sure and do just that” while gingerly filing the whole thing under “I’m really just being polite.”

(Besides, the last time I went to the Nut Tree, a roadside fruit-stand turned fly-in restaurant and mini-theme-park, I had a soul-shatteringly terrifying experience involving a miniature train and a scarecrow; was I really ready to go back to that area, only 36 years later?)

Thankfully, I have two knees, and, in this case, the second one jerked and reminded me that Marty wouldn’t steer me wrong, not to mention the fact that I’m a connoisseur of interesting stuff. So, like George Costanza ordering a chicken salad on rye, I decided to give it a go. I called Marty and asked if he would call his friend Duncan and give me an introduction.

Marty’s response filled me with the opposite of confidence when he said “Oh, he won’t remember me at all! Just show up, and tell him that you heard that, if you’re into old airplanes, you have to stop and say hello to Duncan. It’ll be great!”

So … I was not only expected to just walk into some stranger’s hangar and say “Hello”, I was supposed to do it entirely unannounced. With a jaunty “why not?”, I set out to do precisely that. And I would have made it, too, if it hadn’t been for those meddling kids at the TSA who decided to erect fences and security gates around this little airport in a fit of post-9/11 spending. Thanks to those precautions, I arrived at the airport and found myself peering at Duncan’s hangar and what I could see of his airplane collection, clutching at the chain link fence like a Dickensian orphan or a really easily deterred terrorist.

A few minutes after I gave up, I saw someone circling in front of the hangar on a bicycle, took my chances and waved them over. As he coasted to a stop, I asked if he was Duncan Miller, by any chance.

“I am,” he said.

“Well … my name’s Hal, I’m an old airplane guy, and I’ve heard that, if I’m in this area, I have to stop by and say hello. So … hello!”

Duncan sized me up for half a beat, then said “Head down to the gate over there. The code is and I’ll meet you back at the hangar.”
When Duncan said “hangar,” he may well have said “museum,” or, simply, “home.” I walked in past the Lockheed PV2 and the Grumman S-2 Tracker parked on the ramp and saw two beautiful restored Stearmans, two vintage Fords, and a spotless Piper Cub, all surrounded by photos and parts and memorabilia, the seeds of a thousand stories. Duncan got me a soda from his refrigerator, and we sat in an air conditioned “ready room” in the corner of his hangar. One of his hangars, that is.

There’s an unspoken ritual when pilots meet, especially those of us with a penchant for the old and unusual. It’s something that my friend Jim called “authentication,” and he was spot on. In this case, I was the interloper, the stray punk off the street who may or may not have been selling something, so the burden to authenticate was clearly mine. This process usually, and often very subtly, involves answering three questions in the course of a conversation: “Do you know what you’re talking about?”, “What have you flown?”, and “Who do we both know?”

My authentication took the form of interested commentary on some of the pictures on the walls, and then we started leafing through one of Duncan’s sixty-five overstuffed photo albums. He pointed at one picture and asked if I recognized the location—I did, it was Reno/Stead. Other pictures came and went, each with their own stories, spun quickly and handed off by a man who has been flying nearly every day since 1939. I mentioned flying Tiger Moths and growing up with a “Bamboo Bomber” (a 1944 Cessna T-50), and, naturally, Duncan used to own one, back when he started a non-scheduled airline flying C-46’s out of Boeing Field near Seattle, which reminded him, did I know so-and-so, oh, great, he thought I might …. The connections were found and forged almost synaptically, and before I knew it, it was time to go.

Time for Duncan to go, that is. He had to run an errand, so I started to take that as my cue to leave, but he asked me to stick around. He gave me the keys to his other hangars, reminded me about the refrigerator, asked me to sign his guestbook, and told me to make myself at home. I’d clearly been authenticated. Wandering through his hangars I saw Stearmans and T-28s and more classic cars and even a Vultee BT-13, not to mention countless more bits of aero-ephemera. I was like the proverbial kid in a candy store except that nothing was for sale and there was no risk of diabetic coma.

After about thirty minutes, some kind of 70s Oldsmobuick docked itself outside, and a guy named Mike hopped out.

“Hello there. If you’re looking for Duncan, he went to get a part and said he’d be right back,” I offered, helpfully.

“Oh, hi … yeah, Duncan told me he was going to go get a part, and said he’d be right back” said Mike.

With that superfluous redundancy out of the way, Mike and I sat down for a chat. He’s based in Alaska but had come down to stay for a few weeks and fly the BT-13 to a few air shows. I never did get Duncan’s age, but Mike is 86 and adamantly identifies himself as the younger of the two. They’ve been flying and working together for a long time, at least as far back as the early 50s, and, when Duncan got back, the three of us settled in for a marathon of story-swapping and a few more test questions for me, though all in good fun.

There was an unobtrusive wooden sign on the wall that read “Pals Forever.” It seemed a little trite at first, frankly, but, in talking with these two guys, the cynicism ebbed. Sometimes, people actually do say just what they mean.

Between the two of them, I’m fairly certain that they’ve flown everything and been everywhere. We talked about the handling of the BT-13 compared to the Harvard, we talked about Moths and Bamboo Bombers and Beech 18s, about one of their friends who flies a DC-3 out of a 700-foot grass strip. Duncan talked about ferrying an RP-63 King Cobra during WWII, and how heavy it felt with the additional armor plating. It seems the R model was used for gunnery practice— not as a remotely piloted drone or towing a target but as a manned target that fighter pilots shot at with plastic bullets, their hits scored automatically by what the pilots called the “pinball machine” inside the cockpit.

Lousy work, if you can get it.

Duncan had mentioned earlier that he was going to show me “something that Churchill gave back.” When I reminded him, he responded with a question, another test:

“Do you know what an AT-19 is?” he asked.

The wheels turned, the gears ground…. AT was the U.S. Army Air Corps designation for “Advanced Trainer.” Our very own Cessna T-50 was known in some guises as an AT-8 or AT-17, for example. In addition to those, I could identify an AT-6, AT-9, an AT-11 …. Then something clicked, and a picture snapped into my head.

“Was that the gullwing Stinson? The V-77?” I asked with what I’ll call “confidesitancy”.

As it happened, I was right, and that seemed to be the last of the tests. Duncan asked if I wanted to go and look at one, and I replied with something articulate like “well, duh!”, but before we got up, Mike interjected.

“Wait. What was the AT-19? Did we figure it out?” he asked.

“Yes, Hal got it. It’s a gullwing Stinson. Where were you?” Duncan replied.

“I was busy trying to remember what the hell an AT-19 was!” Mike responded.

“Don’t you remember? You crashed one!” said Duncan.

“I crashed? Are you sure? I don’t remember … “ Mike said.

Duncan gave an exaggerated eye-roll and I said something about hoping to live long enough and spend enough time flying that I’d someday not be able to remember something as dramatic as a crash. They both laughed, and then Duncan said that it was great to see that the younger generation was taking an interest in these things. Having accidentally turned 40 a couple of days ago, being referred to as “the younger generation” was surely the best present I could hope for.

As promised, Duncan took me to look at the Stinson, and, as expected, it was absolutely gorgeous. Of the 500 or so built, about 380 of them went to the UK as part of our Lend-Lease agreement and this was one of the aircraft that was given back—truly lent, rather than leased. This example looked factory new in British Royal Navy colors, ready to patrol the seas on the lookout for enemy Unterseebooten. It’s for sale, too; a fact that I immediately tried to forget.

At this point, something like six hours had flown by, and I started to politely make my exit, not especially looking forward to the 90-minute drive to my hotel with a stop at a restaurant where some fancy waitress with big hair and fake nails tries and fails to find a polite way of saying “Oh … just one of you tonight?” Then, mercifully, the idea of the three of us having dinner seemed to spontaneously suggest itself. I agreed to join them, but only if they were sure I wasn’t intruding, and if they’d let me treat.

It was then that Mike suggested Taco Bell, and Duncan shot him a look filled with what I’m fairly sure was mock indignation and said:

“Mike! We have a guest! We are NOT going to Taco Bell!
We… are going … to Denny’s!”

And so we did, Mike and I shrugging and shaking our heads while every waitress in the place cooed and giggled with Duncan, all but sitting on his lap to take his order. Duncan must be somewhere around 90 and belies the old adage about there being no such thing as an “old, bold pilot.” If he ever does leave this world, heaven forbid, the odds are it won’t be in an airplane, or in a hospital, but at the hands of a jealous husband. God bless ‘im.

After dinner, we (and by “we” I mean Duncan) got one of the waitresses to take a picture of all of us, after she had several taken with him, of course. While we sat smiling for the camera, I heard Duncan whispering something. It wasn’t “cheese,” it was something that sounded like part toast, part mantra: “Pals forever, pals forever.” There was obviously a story behind it, but it seemed private, and I was perfectly happy to just take it at face value.

And so it is that I’ve found another home-away-from-home, a reminder of the kinship of aviation, where just a few key pieces of trivia are a viable shortcut to a very real friendship. And all I had to do was trust somebody I already trusted anyway, and then simply show up.

Pals forever, indeed.

So, here’s a bit of advice. If you’re ever in the greater Bay Area north of San Francisco, California, and you like old airplanes, you just have to stop in and say hello to Duncan Miller. And if you go out to eat, don’t settle for Taco Bell.

Recent Feedback, Part 2: The Jaw-Droppingly Peculiar Kind

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 04:07:10 GMT

Note: Anything in the following that might remotely resemble an opinion is mine and mine alone, and reflects neither the stuff nor the things of the Microsoft Corporation, its subsidiaries, associates, customers, antitrust investigators, or anyone who ever has or has not actually heard of the company.

So.

A while back, somebody sent us a fax. Faxes, or facsimile transmittals, for the cognoscenti, all go to one place at Microsoft, and are then routed individually thanks to the tireless efforts of our crack team of certified faxographists. If a fax isn't specifically addressed to an employee by name, sometimes it takes a little while to find the right person, but, eventually, they get there.

(Postal mail works the same way ... the customer who sent back their boxed copy of Combat Flight Simulator 3 to "Microsoft" with a piece of paper taped to it that read "won't download" with no other identifying information would be happy to know that it arrived on my desk just about one week after it was sent. This timeliness is appreciated on my end as well, since the sooner something like that arrives, the sooner I can start spending weeks and weeks frowning at it, wondering exactly what it is I'm supposed to do about it.)

Anyway, so I got this fax from someone who identified themselves as a pilot and Flight Simulator customer who had some questions about our latest release related to an upcoming book that he'll be self-publishing and selling out of a van down by the river. Click the thumbnail to see the actual fax, censored so I can take the moral high ground and avoid a lawsuit.

I made the call, and it was answered promptly by a reasonable-sounding gentleman who seemed glad that I was able to make the time to contact him.

He was right, it was brief. Of his promised 3-5 minutes, he spent three of them berating me for the fact that a company as high-tech as Microsoft had to rely on something as archaic and "totally 1975" as a fax. He was wondering why he hadn't been able to simply reach us directly by phone, a method that I didn't point out is archaic and "totally 1876". I did, however, suggest that he could have gone to our website and clicked the link to send us an email, something that might be charitably referred to as "fairly 1995 or so", at which point he changed the subject.

The subject to which he changed was a question of realism. He said a few kind things about our products and the time and energy he presumed we spend on details and things, but said that there was one gigantic, glaring error.

My first thought was "Only one? You're not paying attention!" My second through fifth thoughts were quick guesses as to where we had failed this particular pilot-author. Stalls and spins? SIDS and STARS? Winds aloft? No yaw string on the glider?

I could have been precisely none more wrong.

"Now, I got my numbers straight from the FAA - you can check them yourself", he said. "According to their statistics, only 2% of all the commercial pilots in the US are <edited> or women. In FSX, though, when I look at the exteriors of the airplanes and see the pilots inside, they're 25% <edited> or women. My book is about how political correctness is ruining this country, and I'd like to know whose idea it was to make this one area so unrealistic? Is it company policy, just somebody's idea, or is it part of your settlement agreement with the government?"

Wow.

Never mind the fact that I dislike political correctness more than most, personally (though people like this make curmudgeons like me look squishily sensitive and fanatically open-minded.)

Never mind the fact that we sell Flight Simulator all over the world, so US-only statistics are bogus to begin with.

Never mind the fact that we sell many times as many copies as there are pilots in the world, so, if the appearance of the figures in the cockpits were to reflect anything, it would be our customer base.

Never mind the fact that the makeup of the characters modeled in FSX was all but random - if there was an edict, it was something like "Let's show more than just middle-aged white guys flying the airplanes", and it would have come from retired FS artist and middle-aged white guy Jason Waskey.

No, let's set all that aside.

Let's also forget terrorism, high gas prices, sub-prime mortgages, the falling dollar, our own apparently anti-competitive tendencies to charge too much money for some things and too little for others, people with mullets, war, and the impending return of the Camaro, and pretend that political correctness is the thing that's actually ruining this country.

Having swept the elephants in the room under a rug, I'm left with one question:

Is there anyone, anywhere who actually thinks that some textures wrapped around a handful of polygons and viewed through a virtual camera system that doesn't let you get that close anyway could actually influence anything?

Well, okay, yes.

There's one.

And he's writing a book. A book that I, on behalf of Microsoft, declined to support, with Herculean politeness.

I won't mention his name here, tempting as it is. But I will say that when one ~~Googles~~ performs a Windows Live Search for his name, it turns out that he runs a consulting company that trains sales people by modifying their thoughts and institutionalizing behaviors to help them better connect with their customers.

I wonder if he teaches a section on what to do when you get a fax from someone like him?

Recent Feedback, Part 1: The Good Kind

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 02:18:39 GMT

Not too long ago, I published a few million words on FSInsider about my role demonstrating Flight Simulator X to His Royal Highness Prince Philippe, Duke of Brabant, Prince of Belgium. For those of you that read me here but not there <Hi, Donna! - ed.>, here's a link to the article:

http://www.fsinsider.com/team/Pages/UsetheHatSwitchtoLookAround,YourHighness.aspx

This particular article was, I report with happy confusion, quite well received. So much so, that a number of people were compelled to comment via electrical mail. In order to keep my perpetual vanity machine well lubed, I thought I'd share excerpts from two of my favorites here.

The first was from a gentleman in Germany, who said:

Gentlemen,

I'm a (mostly silent) fan of the Flight Sim since Version One was released on 5,25" disk, later swapped to the Amiga and returned to the MSFS with version 4.

Normally I prefer to stay silent but Hal's very honest and subjective report about this incident is really a rare PR stunt with more benefit for the company (MS) than a few millions of normal (and likewise stupid) advertisement for those, who can't read anyway...

Hal, I bow deeply and "Chapeau" for this great article!

As someone who knows a thing or two about stupid advertising and PR stunts, all I can say is Vielen dank!

My other favorite came from an actual Belgian, who wrote:

As a Belgian resident I can safely say that Hal Bryan’s ”A tale of a Royal visit!” is by far the funniest FS related story I have ever read. BTW, in Belgium the prince is also known as <no need to reprint it here - ed.>, but let us not be too disrespectful (anyway, he prefers to be called <skipping this one too, just in case - ed.> ).

Also, Hal forgot the “accent aigu” in chargé d’affaires - but otherwise not bad for a ‘yank’ ;-) And his Dutch is excellent – “eenvoudige missies” indeed, “te eenvoudig zelfs!” :)

Best regards!

For the record, it was Sharepoint Designer <no need to reprint my occasional nicknames for it here - ed.>, that stripped the accent aigu, but I should have caught that and fixed it after the fact. Excellent eye, safely anonymous Belgian customer! Excuseer me en Dank u!

Which American Incompetence Envies Afghanistan - Smallpox or Facebook?

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 22:18:37 GMT

I spend a lot of my workday these days tinkering with web stuff. I'm no stranger to the mysterious vagaries nor the vague mysteries of dynamic content roll-up queries and the like, nor am I an expert. I know just enough to get it wrong three times, then right on the fourth try. At least one of the three tries finds me cursing the designers of a particular software tool we use occasionally, though I tend not to do so loudly, as there's at least slim chance they'll overhear.

Anyway, I've noticed every once in a while that Slate Magazine's headline listings on the MSN home page get munged together in wonderfully senseless ways. If I happen to see an instance of this first thing in the morning, I'll stare at it angrily for a minute or so, as if the downward pressure of my eyebrows will somehow squeeze that part of my brain that is certain that, while it agrees that what I'm reading should make sense, just shrugs and returns only a gruff "...can't help ya."

Then, happily, I remember the immortal words of Francisco d'Anconia--"Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong."

Of my premises, I'm not sure if "Things on the Internet must make sense" or "Software people don't make mistakes" is the faultiest.

Regardless ... here's my current favorite. Don't stare too long, it won't get any better.

Childhood's End: Sir Arthur C. Clarke (1917 - 2008)

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 17:39:33 GMT

Being called Hal, spending so much of my life intertwined with computers, and having been born in 1968, the year that the film version of the now late Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey was released in theaters, it was inevitable that people around me would associate me with the fictional HAL9000 computer. I meet a lot of people in my line of work, and it seems that about half of them get a self-satisfied conspiratorial sort of twinkle in their eyes as they suggest the connection - "Oh, Hal ... and you work in computers ... have you ever seen ...?" A few take it a step further, confiding authoritatively the old myth that HAL was so named because he was one (letter) better than IBM, alphabetically speaking. If I don't like the person, which is pretty rare, I'll point out that HAL was actually an acronym for "Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer", usually pushing my glasses up the bridge of my nose and spitting a little on the S's to complete the image of irretrievable geek.

The one connection I've found most entertaining is the one that no one has pointed out to me but me: In the mythology of the various books and films, HAL9000 was first activated in 1997 (1992 in the first film) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The very first iteration of what would become Microsoft Flight Simulator was born there, too. Original developer Bruce Artwick graduated from UI in 1976, and his company, SubLOGIC, was based in Urbana-Champaign, releasing the first version of Flight Simulator for the Apple II in 1979.

Maybe that's too much of a stretch, for most people, and I should simply attribute any connection with my not-quite-namesake to my extraordinarily placid demeanor and my constant stubborn refusal to open any pod bay doors, anywhere, at any time.

Regardless, I've been a fan of Clarke's writing, and, to an even greater extent, an admirer of his mind, for as long as I can remember. He had a permanent spot, now sadly vacant, on my list of people I'd have loved to have met. As it happens, there weren't that many degrees of separation between us - you can even find both our names on the same page of supporters of the X-Prize Foundation here. (You'll find mine towards the bottom, due south of the important people.) Last summer I was lucky enough to meet and spend time with Rob Godwin through a close mutual friend. Rob is the CEO of Apogee books, one of my favorite things about Burlington, Ontario. Clarke was a friend of Rob's family and a supporter of his business. Rob has posted a touching memorial page here.

As Rob said, we have lost far, far more than an inventive and well respected writer, we've lost one of the truly great minds of our time. I leave it up to the likes of Kira, Kiersten, Annika, Quentin, Charlotte, Garrett, or any of my other honorary nieces and nephews as yet unmet (or even unborn) to grow up and help fill the gap.

Buy This. Right Now.

Sat, 02 Feb 2008 03:21:48 GMT

Updated: See the YouTube trailer below!

I have previously disclosed on this site, more than once, my habit of collecting DVDs, especially those that have anything, whatsoever, to do with flying. There is, apparently, a masochistic underpinning to this, because so much of what I collect with such joy is, by most objective standards, terrible. (I somehow managed to inherit this trait sideways from my brother, a man who won't bother with the culturally accepted worst movie of all time, Plan 9 From Outer Space, because it's too good.)

In other words, I own a lot of movies with airplanes in them that are so bad they're ... well, still bad, but, as I said, they have airplanes in them.

Once in a while, though, something will find its way into my collection that reminds me that not every movie with an airplane in it is a guilty pleasure. Some of them, but not many, let you check your guilt at the door, and are simply pleasures.

Fearless Widget Productions' Flying the Finch is just that: a pleasure.

It's a lavish and loving look at at a fairly obscure airplane, a 1940 Fleet Model 16B "Finch", used as a trainer by the Royal Canadian Air Force as part of the British Commonwealth Air Training Program during World War II. The film features one of the few surviving and actively flying examples of the type, owned and operated by my friends the Tiger Boys in the city of Guelph, Ontario, Canada. (More disclosures on my connections to the film in a moment.)

Flying the Finch presents the history of the type and of the individual airplane, as well as an affectionate look at Tiger-Boy-in-Chief Tom Dietrich and a "rotten little airport kid" who grew up to be really nice guy named Bruce. Actor and, more importantly, exceptional pilot Michelle Goodeve serves as host, while pilot's pilot and long-time filmmaker Glenn Norman took care of things behind the camera, and in the editing room.

And then there's the flying.

Shot in rich, warm high-definition, the blue sky and the green grass and the yellow airplane made my television disappear, and replaced it with an open window. It made me happily homesick for my belov'd southern Ontario, and I'm betting it will have the same effect on other viewers, even those unlucky enough to have never been. It captures the essence of flying for its own sake, especially the passionate finesse of flying an antique.

A documentary like this strikes a balance: it's part history lesson, part human interest, part pilot-talk, and part "Holy crow, would you just look at how beautiful that is! Really! Just look at it! Are you looking?!?! How do I rewind this thing?!?"

In so many cases, that balance is, well, unbalanced. Usually, the human interest and history bits are about right, the pretty bits are shortchanged because it's cheaper to Ken Burns your camera across an old photo than it is to buy avgas, and the pilot-talk is just a tease, if it's there at all. Some films can talk about an airplane, but not really offer a look at the cockpit, never mention things like approach speeds or how soon you lift the tail up on takeoff, or, most unforgivably, not actually show a landing for goodness' sake. If you're going to tell me about an airplane, you had better tell me what it's like to fly it, or there will be trouble.

Flying the Finch pulls it off. Fearless Widget found the secret to producing a balanced documentary: include the right amount of everything.

One of the very best things about this DVD is that it is "just" the first in a series.

One of the most remarkable things about the DVD is how much it made me want to fly the Finch on my next visit to Guelph, even though that would inevitably mean taking time away from flying the Moths that drew me there in the first place.*

Which brings me to my previously promised disclosure:

I know most of the people involved in the production of the film. Glenn and Michelle are like family, only better, because they're family by choice, not by chance. (Nothing by chance, after all ...) Tom, the man for whom they invented the word "avuncular", and his business partner Bob "knock knock" Revell actually made me a Tiger Boy on my first visit, a decision that was every bit as kind but potentially ill-advised as feeding a stray dog; I just keep going back.

Conventional wisdom demands, then, that I apologize, or, at the very least, somehow qualify my opinion, because it's presumed that more knowledge equals less objectivity. Yes, the people and places and things in the film carry some extra meaning for me, but that doesn't mean I suddenly forgot the difference between a good airplane movie and a lousy movie with airplanes in it.

I have way too many of those to be considered anything less than an expert.

If you like airplanes, especially old ones, if you understand - or want to - why absurdly lucky chumps like me fly them, then do what I told you at the beginning: Buy it. Right now.

You'll love it, and, besides, 50% of the proceeds go to the restoration and upkeep of the Tiger Boys' Antique Aeroplane Collection - aeroplanes that deserve to keep flying.

Here's the trailer, courtesy of YouTube:

*-Note: I was also drawn to the place by the people. But don't tell Bob. He'll never let me hear the end of it.

Be Just Like John Travolta!

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 21:22:10 GMT

No, not Sweathog Travolta.

Not Vincent Vega Travolta.

Not even Battlefield Earth Travolta.

No, in this case, you can be like Airliner Pilot Travolta thanks to the Interweb and this great and surprisingly high-res VR view of an A380 cockpit courtesy of French photography Gilles Vidal. Use your mouse to look around and the wheel (or the controls on the bottom of the screen) to zoom in and out. It's the next best thing to being the sort of person that a company like Airbus actually invites to be the first non-test-pilot to fly an airplane like the A380.

Even if the slight fisheye and so-close-but-you-can't-quite-touch-it effects of the VR do make you feel a bit like (wait for it ...) the Boy in the Plastic Bubble.

Sorry. I couldn't resist. That's we we in the self-aggrandizing world of online self-aggrandizement call "an easy one."