Marc's Public Blog

One of the few things you're likely to notice when you get there, is the amount of planes parked everywhere. It's pretty amazing.

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Then, you get through the main gate, and go look around at all the vendors and displays. If you're thorough, it can take 2-3 days (especially if you account for pretty much guaranteed times of bad weather where you'll be hiding in vendor tents).
Seeing the vendors in the big hangars was definitely useful, I learned about a nice Angle of Attack (or reserve lift) indicator which should be on all planes in my opinion, as well as saw the Vista Nav 3D synthetic vision device, and got to meet the nice folks from Seattle Avionics I had corresponded with many times.
I also learned in the process that Garmin were actually a bunch of bastards who managed to get near exclusive rights to all XM weather hardware, preventing innovation or competition among XM weather receivers for PC tablets, which is a damn shame considering that XM weather should be available to all due to the extra safety it brings to pilots. Anyway, I'm personally hoping for a combined PC tablet with solid state hard drive, a small XM weather receiver/GPS combo and vistanav + voyager on it. We're close, but not quite there yet.

The Xwind trainer is a great idea, I paid for a session and it was quite useful

What's also cool is some of the formation flights over the expo. Likely more planes than you'll have seen anywhere else.

There was so much to see and do. In 3.5 days, I only got to see a portion of it (and missed a few evening movies and talks due to being a bit too far and too tired to come back just for them). It was nice to be able to see and hear historic people like Chuck Yeager recounting his war stories and talking about how he broke the sound barrier.

Of course, a good portion of your day is likely to be taken by the airshow performances, some of which are quite good. Unfortunately, the F22 performance got cancelled two days in a row (the second day, due to a fatality during the air show unfortunately), so I never got to see them perform outside of their arrival from a distance. Seeing a couple of Harriers doing hovering up close was pretty ool though.

Outside of the main conference location, about a 15mn walk way, the air museum was nice to visit, and across from the museum, they were selling cheap 7mn heli rides above the whole place. Nice to get a bird's view if you were too busy flying the plane when you got in (as you should have been :) )

Before heading home, at the recommendation of Dave, my CFI, I got a real live briefing at a flight service station, probably something I won't get to do again in the future. It was nice to see one of the guys who picks up when you call WXBRIEF

I was a bit apprehensive about landing at Oshkosh, mostly due to some horror stories I heard about very long wait times to get out. I didn't quite figure it out, but on wednesday morning, I walked to the entrance instead of taking the bus (not very smart: 2.5miles/45mn), but I got to see a scary line of people waiting to get out:

Luckily, when we left on saturday morning around 09:00, they were sending planes out 2 at a time and we got out in less than 15mn.

I obviously have many many more pictures. You can following this link for the pictures of EAA/Oshkosh 2007 including the 10H flight from and to Oshkosh.
It was definitely worth attending and made for an interesting cross country flight.

I hadn't been able to go to Oshkosh last year because it conflicted with OLS, which in turn conflicted with my Birthday. This year, I only had a double conflict (my BD), so I figured I'd give it a shot.
I used the flight to make more serious use of Seattle Avionics, my flight planning software, and it did a good job. My main problem was to have to print all those pages of airports I might stop at, or not, just because I couldn't use my laptop at altitude in the plane. I think I'll be getting a custom laptop/EFB with a solid state hard drive (i.e. Flash Ram) so that I can just use that in flight and not have to worry.

I was first hoping to rent a Mooney 231 for the flight so as to get a good cruising speed (190kts), but unfortunately, it was already rented, so I had to select another aircraft. I had to settle for a Cirrus SR22 :) (well, it was settle because it did cost a fair amount more and was somewhat slower. That said, we got slightly better avionics in return)

The trip was nice for my getting used to the plane, There is no better than a 22H/3200NM cross country to get used to a plane :) but it confirmed that I don't like Avydine avionics. They have too many quirks and just aren't well integrated. We had several bad behaviours from the STEC 55x autopilot (going left and right on an ILS without staying on centerline, or pitching wildly down), a total localizer heading failure on NAV 1 (Garmin 430) where it went on a completely incorrect centerline, and weird communication problems between the PFD, MFD, and Garmin 430s. Stuff that's just unacceptable for a $400k plane.
Apart from those issues, the plane itself flew well though, and we ended up averaging 160kts ground speed on the way there, and 170kts+ on the way back (yes, I know it's opposite from the typical prevailing winds), and I did the flight with one of my CFIs, both to learn from his experience in flying around or close to thunderstorms, as a copilot to help out if I got too tired, and because I wasn't fully checked out to solo in the SR22 yet.





Let's now look at the legs:

Flight from Palo Alto to Oshkosh

The flight was about 1900NM (3060km) in 10.9H of hobbs time and 3 legs. We left a bit after 09:30 and first stopped at Evanston, Wyoming to refuel. In hindsight, we had enough fuel to go a bit further and we should have because we almost got pinned in the airport by a thunderstorm. Luckily, it was only a big rain and thunderstorm cloud, and it blew over while we waited on the runway.
After that, we went to Sioux City and we had to traverse a line of thunderstorm sigmet to get there. Luckily, it was rather mild, and thanks to XM weather and looking out the window, we were able to find a reasonable hole in that line of thunderstorms to get through.
The next morning, we left for Oshkosh by first finding a hole in the low broken clouds at Sioux City, and we got to Oshkosh under lowering overcasts 'on the green dot' of runway 27 thanks to Dave's help feeding me the instructions on how to fly there while I was doing the flying.

Our plane at Palo Alto


I brought in a good bottle of Oxygen so that we could climb at higher altitudes (low fuel flow/high speed cruise at 12500 to 14500)


Departure at Palo Alto was almost IFR but we got out




Salt Lake City


Approaching Evanston, NV for landing


By the time it took to refuel, weather had caught up with us: thunderstorms with lightening on upwind. Luckily we were able to get out




I went through my first convective sigmet, a line of thunderstorms, that was exicting (even if they were mild)




Arrived in time at Sioux City (KSUX) before sunset and before the fuel tank ran dry :)


Flight to Oshkosh was medium to low-ish ceilings


Landing at KOSH on runway 27

The pictures from this flight are here

Return flight from Oshkosh to Palo Alto

The return flight was easier to do in a day since we had 2 hours additional in that day instead of two hours fewer (or a 4 hour differential).
I had planned the flight a bit more to the north to stop at Rapid City, South Dakota for refueling and a quick lunch, and then to fly by Mount Rushmore before flying north of Salt Lake city towards Elko, Nevada. We did a quick refuel in Elko and got to Palo Alto "soon" after that.
Turns out that by sheer luck, my alternate routing mostly kept us out of thunderstorms, which made the flight pretty uneventful.
We got home a bit quicker, but I still recorded 10.9H hobbs on the way back since I shot some approaches for each of the 3 landings, including an ILS approach into Moffett, which was a bit of a detour.

Waiting in line for takeoff (thankfully a short wait)


People were leaving let and right, and those were only the ones that had their transponders on (they were supposed to be left off for about 30NM)


Some light thunderstorms on the way back too


Crossing the Mississippi


Our lunch stop in rapid city, mixed with a few airliners




Mount Rushmore


There were some thunderstorms on the way, but by luck, my flight plan managed to skirt the edges of them without having to worry about them much








Salt Lake City seen from the North this time


A quick fuel stop in Elko, NV for fuel (KEKO)

The pictures from this flight are here

Conclusion

All in all, it took about 20H of flying (plus ground run time), 3800NM (7000km) of distance covered, nice landscapes along the way, and weather that was interesting enough to learn from, but never a thread to the flight.
It was definitely a nice experience, in addition to the time at EEA itself (see separate entry for that)

After some trouble with paperwork and getting the phase check to happen, I got checked out in the Mooney 231, my first turbo plane. I'm exited, it'll be the perfect plane to fly across the Sierras to Lonepine for our John Muir Trail hike.
The Mooney 231 is a very capable plane, but it does require some special handling (risks of overboost, and crappy flaps actuator). Yet, it can easily get to FL 240.

The rest of my time, I've been working on learning the Cirrus SR22. It took a while to learn the avionics and the specificities of the plane, but it is our most advanced plane up for rental right now, and it looked like a good choice for my upcoming flight to Oshkosh (the mooney 231 being already taken), so while I really don't like the avidyne avionics, it'll be useful for most destinations (and will get me there faster than the other planes I've been flying so far).

Last, but not least, I've been studying the flight to Oshkosh, some 1700 miles (about the same as SJC -> Chicago). I used Seatlle Avionics' Voyager to make a few routings and spit out some flight plans and plates. It's very good software for such uses, I just wish I had a laptop with a solid state drive to use it inside the plane to view my real time routing and approach plates if/as I need them

It was good to see Armin at Ruby Skye again. He still has a strong following, and fans who've seen him elsewhere (I saw someone who had also gone to Rotterdam to see him at Armin Only).
As always, he played a good set and gave everyone their money's worth. I ended up leaving a bit before the end because we were exhausted and Jennifer had to go work the next morning (which really was more "in a few hours" by the time we got home)
My only wish is that Ruby Skye sold stage access tickets as opposed to reserving them to a few VIPs (as in "you need to know someone"). Either that, or for them to put me on the said list so that I can take better pictures :)

But it was a great evening, and a real pleasure to see Armin as always. And here's a link to the rest of the pictures and videos of Armin Van Buuren at Ruby Skye

For July 14th, I had a nice and unexpected visit from part of my family in France who was over to visit part of the West Coast. We met for a few hours in San Francisco to have dinner and we happened to catch part of a chinese festival in chinatown ( see video of the dragon)

This summer, we got many trance DJs in San Francisco (not counting a monster set from AvB in Los Angeles). There were unfortunately more DJs and parties than I was able to attend, due to other prior travel plans, but the first party I was able to attend was Blank and Jones at Ruby Skye (in case you hadn't noticed yet, that's pretty much where everything is now, 1015 is pretty much dead after years of bad customer service, crappy decors, searching their customers like you would thieves, and not giving a rat's ass about having their main DJ start at any pre-set time, up to you going home without even seeing the supposed main DJ).
Anyway, back to Ruby Skye and Bland and Jones, while I knew their music quite well, I had never had the opportunity to see them play live. Now, play is a big word because they pretty much plugged in a Mac, and apparently pressed play. While I might be wrong, it didn't look like they were mixing songs live. Then again, while this isn't much of a performance anymore, I suppose I don't mind too much as long as the music is at least good (which it was).
All in all, it was a good evening.

And here's a link to the rest of the pictures and videos of Blank and Jones at Ruby Skye

Foreword

This hike over July 4th was our last training hike before our planned 10 day hike of the end of the John Muir Trail(to Whitney Portal)
I was able to get my backpack down to 35 to 43lbs depending on how much water I was carrying, and 7lbs for the fanny pack, while Jennifer's backpack was down to 20-25lbs depending on the water. Those were reasonable weights considering that they included a bulky bear vault 400 and an ursack with aluminum liner (we'll need those two to carry enough food for 10 days on our next hike)

Like the previous hikes, I brought the Garmin Vista Cx and the Forerunner 305 as a way to get a real recorded track (see previous comments about the Vista Cx recording crap trails in many cases).
After doing some power math, I decided that my previous solar panel was woefully inadequate, and that the lack of battery to store the solar panel energy for later use, was disqualifying. Instead I brought my flexible solar panels from my ScotteVest and the accompanying lithium ion battery back. But because I'm a moron, I forgot to bring the USB power adapter connector I made, and I had to build one out of a couple of tie wraps and a battery USB charger I had happened to bring (thanks to Jennifer for reminding me that tie wraps were also electrical wires :) )

Unfortunately, some random failure (never figured out what), actually caused my forerunner to go dead after the first night, hence a second day track that isn't as good since it was only recorded on the Vista Cx (fortunately, we mostly were within good reach of GPS signals that second day, so the track isn't too bad). The third day, I was able to run the Forerunner after it miraculously came back to life and I was able to give it enough charge with 4 AAAs to run the 3rd day.

Here are the trip results (I gave the calorie information from the forerunner, but it's way off, I've already told Garmin that they need to rework their algorithm. It's likely off by at least a factor of 2, and their tech support said they only take speed into account, not even heart rate, altitude, or ascents. How lame...)

Day	Moving Speed	Avg Speed	Distance	Moving Time	Total Time	Avg Heart Rate	Max HR	Total Ascent	Max Elevation	Cals
Day 1	2.1mph	1.5mph	16.2mi	7H43	11H06	116bpm	145pbm	3757	10053	2064
Day 2	2.3mph	1.4mph	14.6mi	6H21	10H30	?	?	3037	11057	?
Day 3	2.6mph	2.0mph	9.4mi	3H40	4H50	101bpm	126bpm	533	9065	1114

Day 1

Anyway, for the trip, we flew the previous evening to Mammoth, which took a little less than 2H instead of maybe 6H of driving (you can see the other pictures of the flight )

We got up pretty early the next morning to get the first 07:00 shuttle to Tuolumne Maedows from the far base of Mammoth Mountain (adventure center) and we were at the Devils Postpile just before 08:00. Unfortunately, due to me being a moron, I left my camera in the shuttle and had to run after it for a bit more than a mile. Even without the backpack, running at 7500ft was a good way to get in shape :). Luckily, I did get my camera back and we started on the trail around 09:00.
Since we were there, we first went to check out the Devil Postpile national monument, and it is indeed pretty impressive. Seeing the almost perfect hexagonal shapes on top is pretty nice

After that nice beginning was time to head out for our actual hike to Tuolumne Maedows, and cover the 14+ miles and 3000ft elevation gain ahead of us. While we lost a bit of time due to a clogged water filter problem, and a late departure with my camera issue, we did decent time. We were originally hoping to make it to Thousand Island Lake on the first night, but that was just a bit out of reach. We did however reach Garnett Lake, which was still a good distance (finding a campsite was also a bit hard due to most lakes having lots of rules about where you can't camp).
The starry sky by the water at Garnett Lake was quite nice.

Thankfully we didn't have any problems with the rangers because we didn't have our actual permit with us. After calling 3 times and getting briefings over the phone and 3 people who confirmed our permit would be in the overnight pick up mailbox, it wasn't there we we got there that evening, and we just didn't have the time to wait the next morning for them to open and find out what happened to our permit: we'd have been more than 2 hours behind schedule and would never have made it to anywhere close to Garnett lake. This is kind of sad considering we played by the rules and did everything we could to be legal. At least we had our reservation confirmation with us.

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Don't camp here, keep walking...


Oh, there comes my transport team, please carry my bag ;)


Garnett Lake, our destination for night 1




The red path is portion of what we did on the first day (blue is day 2)

Day 2

Day 2 was also a good hike. We covered a good amount of terrain. The Highlight of the day was crossing Donahue Pass a bit above 11,000ft. Jennifer had a bit of a hard time part of the day likely due to dehydration and a bit of altitude sickness. I had mild symptoms (light headache) but was ok otherwise. I was hydrating a lot though, so that probably helped.
It was nice to see people on the trail (mostly going the other way), including the insane people who do the whole PCT (Pacific Coast Trail, or 4-5 months of walking 3000 miles).
Once we were past the pass, it was a long and nice downhill to Lyell fork, which we pretty much followed the entire way to Tuolumne Maedows.
We did however stop exactly at our planned stop for the night, along Lyell just down a quite steep 600ft vertical descent a mere 30mn before sunset. That was however probably pushing a bit more than necessary as Jennifer was having some boot/blister issues, and was also fatigued, which is not the best combination when you're fast descending pretty rugged terrain with loose gravel and big steps soon before sunset. We got lucky though and made it down to the forest down to where the water joins the trail again just in time to set camp before sunset. This also gave us a campsite with fewer mosquitoes than the foot bridge area higher up where we could also have camped.
Admittedly, we were a bit close to the water, but we just didn't have the time to go any further and Jennifer was too exhausted to go any further anyway. Regardless, we kept a clean camp site, so it shouldn't matter either way.

Their camp site was not even lose to being legal, but finding the legal ones wasn't easy either


Thousand Island Lake




A long gradual climb to Donahue pass




And here's the other side, finally...

luckily we did this piece going down to the river, it was nice that way :)

Day 3

Day 3 was smooth sailing. While Jennifer unfortunately had issues with blistered skin going raw right on her ankle, making walking quite painful, moleskin and super glue took care of that. We did some pretty good time still, with 2.6mph moving time and 2.0mph average speed.
By 14:00, we had reached Tuolumne Maedows.

The problem at that point was getting back to Mammoth, and after about 1H of asking, we got lucky and had a nice couple who drove us east on 120 back to 395/Lee Vining.

From there we got a cab back to Mammoth. I opted not to fly back out that day due to some very ugly looking clouds over the Sierras, which made it potentially dicy to fly home, and the fact that by the time the weather improved, I was feeling tired, so we just spend the night at the nice Shilo Inn in Mammoth.
The flight back home the next morning was uneventful.

Conclusion

We learned a few things on this hike. My feet faired much better with sock liners, foot powder, and proper tightening. Jennifer's boots were so so though and she opted to get new ones.
While we covered some good distances at altitude with the weight we were carrying, we also found out that now that I lost some additional weight, I actually do need to eat my daily share of calories, or I get hungry (something that wasn't the case before). We also figured that taking diamox would probably be a good idea for our next trip since we'll be climbing higher and longer. No need to add altitude sickness to the list of challenges if it can be mostly avoided.

For the rest, you can look at all the pictures of this hike from Devil's Postpile to Tuolumne Maedows , and you can also download a garmin gps track along with route and waypoints (or the Google Earth kml version )

OLS, the linux symposium moved to an earlier time this year. I was on the fence as to going, but in the end, there seemed to be enough people going and suitable talks to go to, so I went there again this year.
I didn't bring any pictures from there outside of the rollerblading rides I did, one of them during Canada day, and a few nice sunset pictures from the plane back (of course, I got stuck in Chicago on the way there, got not much more than 4h of sleep and missed the beginning of the conference as a result. Chicago still sucks, even more than always).

My two rides there were a rollerblading ride around the bridges from Ottawa to Hull and back and a second ride where I joined the hacker bike ride on my rollerblades and we went much further into Hull on Canadia day ( see some of the celebration pictures )

and a few from Canadia Day