The FlightSim Hangar

Two or three weeks ago I got my biennial review done and have started to do some regular flying again (and since have finally broken 100 hours logged). Jake works for me one day a week during the winter and this gives me a good excuse to get more hours in. I run over and pick him up for work and then take him back home so I can also write this off as a business expense which is nice. Anything that helps offset the high cost of flying. I remembered we had on old 2.0 megapixel camera tucked away and I grabbed that and have decided to keep it in the flight bag. I have a nicer 10.5 megapixel camera, but it is rather bulky and I just don’t feel safe taking pictures while flying with it. The little Kodak is something I can handle with one hand and just point in the general direction of what I’m shooting while maintaining a good lookout for other traffic. Typically I don’t use it while I hear anyone making radio calls in my vicinity though. Once Jake is in the plane we can take turns shooting as much as we want. I’m trying to get some nice shots of approaches and landings as we go forward.

Anyway, today was a great day to fly. A few low clouds below two thousand feet that I had to dodge around, but that’s fun anyway.

And yes, I know we both need haircuts. We got it done right after we parked the plane.

Ted Aviation

The fellow on the right, Capt. Robert J. Roetcisoender, is the designated examiner that signed my ticket when I earned my Private Pilots License. And that plane behind him is some variant of the SR-71 Blackbird. Yeah, he used to fly those things. I was pretty awestruck by the man, and even more honored to have an airman with his history give me my final examination. And at the risk of sounding immodest, I was floored when he told my instructor that mine was the best check ride he’d had in recent memory. It was a great moment when he shook my hand, congratulated me and told me I was a pilot. I had a picture of that moment, but it was on someone else’s digital camera and I lost track of them. So it’s gone forever and that’s a shame. But I would still see Bob R. around the airport when I was going there weekly. I hope now that I’m going there frequently again I’ll see him some more.

To learn more about the Blackbirds (and the U2’s) visit Blackbirds.net

Ted Aviation

I was thumbing through my logbook and came across the entry dated 9/16/06. That was the day I took my first dual cross country flight. That’s the flight with your instructor where you are introduced to cross country flying, navigating your way from two distant airports. I remember this flight well, because to this day it is my second favorite flight, even beating out my final check ride where I earned my license. The only flight more memorable so far was my first solo. One of the reasons this flight was so memorable was because this was the first flight I had done in this aircraft, a 180hp Skyhawk. In fact this was the first time I had ever flown a Skyhawk, all of me previous hours coming in the school’s 150. The 150 was down that day for a 100hr check so we had to take this.

So then I remembered I had some photos of that flight parked on the hard drive somewhere so I dug them out and here they are. This flight was from Friday Harbor, to Bellingham, to Concrete, to Darrington, and then home.

Heading up the valley towards Concrete, WA. This mist and drizzle is limiting visibility to 5 miles, but we are still well within VFR minimums. Our original flight plan was to fly behind Mt. Baker, but further into the mountains obscuration would make it impossible to continue and we had to reroute on the fly to get there from another direction. This was that reroute. My instructor was always pushing and he made me fly right up to the obscuration (without entering) and constantly talking about ADM (aeronautical decision making). When you earn your license you are tested as much on ADM as you are on knowledge of the FAR/AIM’s and your ability to handle the aircraft.

First approach into Concrete. Way too high. A go around would be the correct call. I remember rounding out for the flare and that it looked like we were going to touchdown about halfway down this short strip and I said to my instructor, “Do you think we can stop in less than 1000 feet?” And he replied, “I don’t want to try and find out.” So, five feet or so off the ground I pushed throttle forward and climbed out and I planted it firm the next time around. Concrete is pretty fun because you have to turn a pretty precise pattern due to the surrounding hills.

In the valley between Concrete and Darrington. We saw beautiful rainbows all day

Another view between Concrete and Darrington. Logging industry.

The valley opens up to the southwest and we start to look for Darrington.

Turning final for Darrington, WA, the birthplace of Bob Barker. Note the trees just south of the end of the runway. They are plenty far away, but they give an inexperienced pilot pause on approach!

On short final at Darrington, WA.

The only other plane tied down at Darrington was this poor twin which had a mishap at some point. The props looked fairly new.

Ready to stretch and get a burger after almost two hours in the air. Darrington has a good burger stand within walking distance of the field. The building behind is a covered picnic area with a bunch of benches. You can see the building modeled in the upcoming Orbx release for FSX.

Getting ready for takeoff roll at Darrington. The runway is 2500 feet long, but the trees give you a boxed in feeling. I did a short field takeoff with a max climb just to practice technique.

Reverting to cruise climb and heading home.

Exiting the mountains and flying over Mt. Vernon. From here we call Whidbey Approach and get traffic advisories for the final leg home.

I’d like to do this flight again this spring or summer with Jake and Dolly. Go get another burger and see what has changed.

Ted Aviation

It was hard to believe, but there it was, staring me in the face. The last entry in my logbook. 5/25/08. 1.8 hours of sightseeing and maneuvers with Jake getting some stick time too even though he can’t log it. Since then it has either been a case, of no time, no desire, or no money. But the itch to get back in the sky has been getting stronger since the summer. We had a good business year and that means I have some money to spend on flying.

So today I grabbed my instructor, Dan (I’m not legal to fly solo or with a passenger until I get my biennial review), and did an hour of air work. A landing at Orcas for fun. It was a little flat, but soft on the touchdown. Some slow flight, a power on stall (just hate that mushy feeling), some steep turns (fun), and Dan never lets a chance to simulate an engine failure. Broken clouds at 1,400 and some few at 800 made for some fun dodging and climbing around the sky to find enough space to work in, and I had to fly the patterns a little lower than TPA, but even that was a treat. The wind gods were nice to me to with 8 knots, but almost straight down the runway, even at FHR which is rare. Final landing was firm, but nice and flared with the stall horn blaring, just like Dan likes it. I’d grade myself a solid B for the first time back. Post-landing checklist use could really be better.

Maybe with about four to six more hours all the rust will be shaken off and I can start flying Jake back and forth instead of him having to ride the ferry on his trips over, at least when the weather cooperates.

It’s good to be back in the air.

Ted Aviation

Getting more comfortable by the day in my MetroAir skin and thought I’d add some shots of my last trip to Flagstaff.

Had to wait for this fellow to go by before we crossed 26R to take 26L for departure.

I like the “ONTARIO” in this shot.

Somewhere along the PRADO7 SID.

On downwind at Flagstaff. The mountains caught my eye.

Ted MetroAir, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004/FSX/Acceleration, Virtual Airlines

Business has finally started to slow down with the off season and so I have started getting back into FS9 and joined a VA called MetroAir. I really like the livery they have created and their fleet are models that I enjoy flying. So far it seems like a pretty good bunch of guys in general.

I feel like I’ve taken my flight simming as far as I can without making the jump onto VATSIM and their live ATC. I don’t just want to jump on and do VFR flights, I do not really need controllers to simulate VFR flying and in real life I’m comfortable with VFR through C and D airspace anyway. What I want is to start doing some live work out of, through, and into Class B airspace and airports.

To prepare myself for this though I need to get familiar and competent using SIDs and STARs and know how to set up my flights before I ever connect. I found four tutorials that are great resources and have been successfully flying accurate IFR procedures offline with Radar Contact 4 for a week now. I’m going to pick one route that I can do practically from memory and take the plunge onto VATSIM shortly.

Ted Flight Simulation, MetroAir, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004/FSX/Acceleration, VATSIM

After failing to make the playoffs I evaluated what I had, what I needed, and how close I could get to being where I wanted to be which was the playoffs. I was happy with our hitting, but felt we needed more power. Not a lot. Or at least I wasn’t willing to sacrifice a lot of hits to gain 10 or 20 more home runs, but some more power would be nice.

I also came to the realization that we had a solid defensive corps and that was what kept us in all those games even though our pitching staff was decimated by so many injuries. Beltre (3B), Ichiro (CF), and Gutierrez (RF) are all rated in the 90’s defensively (Gutierrez is the best at 98) and they started 162, 153, and 153 games respectively. Cedeno (SS) is also a 90’s defensively and played a key role as a late sub for the sub-par defensively (66) Betancourt (SS) and was also a part time starter. Lopez (2B) is a mid 80’s glove and the rest of the platoon are average 70’s fielders. I needed pitching, but realistically I wasn’t going to be able to put together an ace staff so I decided to try and also get some additional strong defensive players.

Several key Mariners had contracts that were up and I needed to decide who to try and keep. The bullpen was a bunch of journeymen at best so I released Aardsma, the aging Walker, and the elderly Batista to free agency since all of their contracts were expired. The remaining Mariners that needed to negotiate were the #1 and #2 starters Felix Hernandez and Eric Bedard, both of whom I had to try and keep. Beltre, Gutierrez, Cedeno, Griffey Jr., Chad Cordero (CL), and the aging Russell Branyan (1B) were all in need of new contracts and I was willing to try and keep them all, but Cordero wanted a 5 year, 6.5M deal and I didn’t want to pay him that much based upon his stats and the fact that I wasn’t willing to use him as a closer as his WHIP was too high and his K’s to BB and K/9 numbers were too low. Bye Cordero. And then there was Griffey. The guy was a stud and I felt like he was the heart of that 2009 team. He hit 50 doubles! But he didn’t want to retire and he wanted a 1 year contract for 6.5M. He was the DH and if I wanted more power in the lineup I was going to have to do it at DH since there weren’t any power hitting position players coming up on the market this year. I made the tough decision to release him. (Incidentally Milwaukee picked up both Griffey and Cordero.)

So I resigned Hernandez to a 7y/59.5M deal. Bedard got a 5y/22.5M deal. Beltre took a pay cut and happily signed for 15M over 5y. Gutierrez, Branyan, and Cedeno all signed deals for less than 1M per year. Branyan signed for 1 year and the other two multi-year contracts. Interesting thing about Beltre…..I never could stand him in video game baseball. I was only so-so about him in real life when we lived in L.A., but always felt he was over rated. The season he hit 48 homers I felt like he had to be juicing, but who knows. He signed a massive contract with Seattle and appeared to go to sleep at the plate again. Then it all kind of came together for me playing through this 09 season and I started to really appreciate him for what he is. A fantastic fielding third baseman who hits for average and can knock 20 to 25 homers a year. When he took the massive pay cut in my franchise I started to like him even more. Now I adore watching him on the field and cheer when he comes to bat, especially against lefties.

I still needed to replace Griffey and find some home runs. The best player I could find for that role was Marcus Thames and I quickly signed him to a 4 y/8M deal. Thames lacks even Griffey’s abilities in the field so I also signed Josh Willingham (LF) who is solid defensively if only mediocre at the plate. I also signed two starting pitchers, Anibel Sanchez and Kyle Davies for the four and five spots in the rotation. I filled out the bullpen with Jeremy Sowers, Kevin Correia, and found a new closer in veteran Jason Isringhausen.

Around the league Randy Johnson, Trevor Hoffman, and Mike Cameron retired. There were no big ticket free agents on the market this season, but some notable signings around the league were:

Jim Edmonds to Atlanta for 1y/5M

Griffey Jr, and Cordero to Milwaukee

Pedro Martinez to L.A. for 2y/13M

Richie Sexson to Wash for 3y/4.2M

Gary Sheffield to Tampa for 1y/6.85M

Omar Vizquiel to Boston for 1y/1.58M

Tom Glavine to Colorado for 1y/5M

Mark Mulder to Minnesota for 3yr/2.8M

At the start of 2010 season I also traded away Jared Washburn to Florida for two minor leaguers, Jai Miller and Bill Simon.

You can see my 2009 franchise stats here.

The pitching rotation for 2010 is

1. Hernandez
2. Bedard
3. Morrow
4. Davies
5. Sanchez

Bullpen:

Correia
Rowland-Smith
Olson
Corcoran
Sowers
Isringhausen (CL)
+ 1 or 2 others.

Starting Lineup:

1. Ichiro (CF)(L)
2. LaHair (1B)(L)
3. Beltre (3B)
4. Thames (DH)
5. Lopez (2B)
6. Balentien (LF)
7. Clement (C)(L)
8. Gutierrez (RF)
9. Cedeno (SS)

Bench:

Betancourt (SS,2B)
Johjima (C)
Branyan (1B,3B)(L)
Willingham (LF)

LaHair blossomed last year as a contact hitter and is better defensively than Branyan. He can also hit with some power. Cedeno is so solid at short I decided to sacrifice Betancourt’s better bat and use him as a backup instead. Future plans might see Betancourt move to DH if we ever find a position player (or two) that can hit for power as well. Willingham is good enough to play every day and can hit 20 home runs. He’ll be seeing regular action relieving the outfielders as they fatigue. I plan to platoon him regularly with Balentien or Gutierrez as the need arises. Branyan moves into a role player now. He has that nice left hand bat and he can hit for power against righties. I plan to use him in key pinch hit situations and to spell Thames when he gets fatigued.

I’m actually over 70 games into 2010 at this point, but I’ll save that for another update.

Ted MLB 2k9

I’ve continued rerouting and flying the Mohawk runs after trimming the fleet back from five aircraft to just one. I developed a matrix system for routing that will automatically select a destination based upon current location and which day of the week it is. It’s working much better than before since even though I had five airplanes I wasn’t able to fly on certain days of the week because I didn’t have an airplane in the right place. After going 700k in the red in the company’s virtual bank account I decided to reorganize to the current scheme. So far so good.

I’ve also added some new links on the Mohawk page which show some information about the airline. The developer at VA Financials continues to provide his subscribers with fun and useful tools like this.

Finally, some recent shots of Mohawk in action:

Moving to “position and hold” on runway 4R at Chicago-Midway (KMDW). Can you guess who uses MDW as a major hub?

Lined up on 4R waiting for takeoff clearance. Chicago skyline in the background.

Climbing out and turning on course for Minneapolis (KMSP). Chicago skyline in background.

Landed at KMSP and turned around to head back to KMDW. Northwest has their major hub at KMSP. Here we are tucking gear and getting ready to scoot.

Ted Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004/FSX/Acceleration, Virtual Airlines

Some exciting news. Some former members of the Aces team at Microsoft, the developers of FSX, have formed their own development company that will focus on simulations.

Here is their press release

Cascade Game Foundry Forges Ahead, Opens New Simulation Game Development Studio

Cascade Game Foundry, LLC is hard at work on the design and demo for their first project.

What is also interesting is that the team members also have extensive experience in game development beyond flight sims. Some of their credits include Fable, Halo, NFL Fever, and the PGR series. Here’s wishing them the best of luck.

Cascade Game Foundry

Ted Flight Simulation

My 360 is in the hospital (some repair shop in Texas) being fixed by Microsoft for free. It got the “Red Ring of Death” after two years of hard service. Real life business is slowing down with the end of the summer and shoulder seasons and without the 360 I’ve been doing some flight simming again and running some Mohawk routes of the late 60’s/early 70’s. I decided to scrap the “Mohawk Tour” and just build different routes to fly where I want to fly with the only stipulation being it has to be to a destination that was really served by Mohawk.

The BAC 1-11 model by David Maltby is really complex and really fun to fly so that is an easy choice to use. However, I can’t find a good model of the FH227 and even if I could I don’t think I’d want to use it. So I’m going to fudge a little and if I do some short hops in a turbo prop I’m going to substitute in one of my all time favorite freeware aircraft, Rick Piper’s Hawker Siddeley 748.

I also found a way to add some financial data which can be viewed through a link at the bottom of the Mohawk page.

Ted Flight Simulation, Virtual Airlines