First free weekend.....

Drove up to Geneva yesterday to get some flying hours logged towards my private pilot's license. Stopped at a winery along the way to see about possibly working there for a summer job. Trying to keep my options open.

Started the preflight inspection of one of the 2 cessna 150's at Penn Yan Flying Club for my lesson around 4pm. I had booked N714NX or "November X-ray" in cool pilot-speak. The other cessna I normally fly, N9801J ("Zero-one Juliet") was out of action due to brake fluid leak. Within a half hour was ready to start the engine and Dave, my instructor climbed in and we took off for some short field takeoff and landing practice.

The plane is a little two seater made by cessna, runs on a tiny little 100hp 4 cylinder, air-cooled, boxer engine made by continental motors. Weighs a little over 1000lbs and can zip along at a modest 110mph with a range of about 400miles. For a used plane (1976) it gets pretty good gas milage of about 6 gallons per hour burn. This translates into 20 something miles per gallon depending on wind speed and direction. I don't know of any cars that can get 20mpg at 100mph. This is one reason I like flying besides being fun.

So today's lesson: Short Field takeoffs and landings.

Normally we perform takeoff by slowly increasing the throttle to full power and the plane starts rolling on the tarmac until it reaches 60 knots indicated airspeed (70mph) at which point we rotate or pull back on the stick to raise the nose and leave the bounds of the earth and accelerate to climb at the aircraft's best rate of climb at 68knots. This procedure works fine most of if not all of the time.

With a short field takeoff we want to get off the ground a lot sooner (because maybe the runway is a very short one) and climb at a much steeper angle to avoid potential obstacles like trees or powerlines.

To do this, we hold the brakes with our toes, (the cessna 150 has differential brakes oporated by your toes by stamping on the tops of the rudder pedals.) With the brakes on, we increase the throttle to full poweand and then lean the fuel air mixture by pulling out the mixture control until we see an additional gain in engine RPM. Let go of the brakes, and let the plane roll to about 50-52 knots. Pull up on the stick to pop the plane in the air and accelerate to climb at the plane's best angle of climb which happens to be 55 knots. Onece we see that we have cleard the obstacles on the runway, we lower the the nose and accelrate to climb at best rate which is 68 knots.

The short field takeoff is really exciting becuase you feel like you're riding a rocket because the climb angle is much steeper and you're off the ground in much less space.

Now to the landing part which is a lot more interesting. To spare with all the detail involved with flying a pattern, (some other time) we'll start by already being on final approach.

We're lined up with the runway centerline and have started the decent from pattern altitude which for Penn Yan is 1,800ft. We are aiming with our imaginary gunsight on the windscreen at the runway numbers and are decending at 70 knots with full flaps down. As we get lower and lower, we start to slow down to 60 knots wich is the cessna 150's approach speed. When we get to nearly in contact with the runway, at about 10ft. We reduce the throttle to idle and pull back on the stick to flare the airplane as we enter ground effect and slowly sink down further until the tires chirp at which point we slowly lower the nose until the noseweel touches and gently apply the brakes, slowing down to turn off at the nearest taxiway.

Now here'a short field landing:

On final approach, full flaps down, but slower at 55 knots. When we get close to the gorund, pull back on the stick to flare and let it settle until the tires chirp. At this point we let the nose down faster by stepping hard on the brakes. This compresses the nose suspension and further lowers the nose. At the same time, we pull all the way up on the stick to raise the elevatores which helps transfer all the weight to the main landing gear, and retract the flaps all the way. This kills the lift in the wings brining even more weight to the main landing gear which adds to the friction of the tires wich slows the plane down to a complete stop on the runway. If you do it right, you can be down and stopped in less than 500ft. of tarmac. Pretty impressive.

On top of the new takeoff and landing techniques I was learning, Dave gave me another standard engine-out emergency landing practice. While we were flying the traffic pattern crossing one of the runways after taking off, he pulled the trottle to idle and told me to find a place to land. I pulled on the carburator heat, checked the mixture control, and checked to make sure the fuel tank switch was set to ON. I then lowered the nose to reach best glide speed wich is 60 knots. Yes planse do glide and for the cessna 150, 60 knots is the magic number wich gets you the most distances covered over ground in the event of engine loss. Since we were right next to a runway, I chose to land on it instead of on one of the fairways at the golf course next door. Made a steep bank "airshow-style" (i.e. more than 60 degrees roll to the left,) to line up with the runway and lowered the flaps. Got lower and eventually flared to a perfect emergency landing. All done without loosing a single knot of airspeed. If there was no airport, the nearest open space would suffice for landing. Remeber you only need a little more than 500ft to safely land. It's pretty easy to do this, you could land in a football field, highway, farm feild, it's all been done.

The biggest mistake people make with engine loss is not lowering the nose to maintain best glide speed, they try to strech the glide distance by mistakingly trying to remain in level altitude. This is a bad idea because by the time you think you've found a suitable place to land, you've already reached stall speed and your airplane ceases to fly. Typically resulting in a stall and spin (more on spins later) at low altitude and gravity takes over and you, the airplane and the earth become one for the last time.


On Sunday after crashing at Alex's Odell's unit, he and I booked a cessna 172, a four person cessna so that he could come along as a passenger while Dave and I practiced navigation with VOR (Very high frequency omnidirectional range) Pre-GPS ground based radio beacons that are still used in aircraft navigation to this day as a back up if the GPS doesn't work and is used as primary form of navigation for people who don't use GPS.

Ate lunch at the chinise buffet place but could not fly because the winds were way too high to have a good time. 15 knots with gusts up to 26 knots coming out of the northwest. Not too good as this would have exceeded the maximum demonstrated croswing component allowed by the flight manual for the cessna 172. If we did fly, it would be extreme turbulence that would be no fun and landing would be next to impossible as we would be blown off the centerline of the runway. High winds are the main cause for delays on what looks like a nice day for a flight. Oh well, at least Alex got to sit in some of the different airplanes owned by the club and make engine noises.

The Economics of Sports Industry @ SUNY Binghamton

I'm all squared away with my rented room in a private home in Vestal, NY. The host family has a newish chocolate lab that is still in puppy mode which gets annoying but it's nice to be able to hang out with animals again. They've got a 12lb fat cat too but I don't see much of him. And there are horses in the field next door that are out and about most of the time.


So I've survived a week of taking a summer course at SUNY Binghamton: The Economics of Sports Industry.

So far it's not boring compared to regular economics. Although what I like about it despite not being that into sports is that it is a glimpse into applied economics. We're taking what is a billion dollar industry and many people's hobbies and applying microeconomic theory to help shed some light on to why prices in sports (tickets, player's wages, rich Yankees vs. poor Oakland A's. etc.) are they way they are.

Economists are a weird bunch. They have a silly double-handedness way of answering most questions. "On the one hand, blah and on the other hand blah......" Here's a very cheap and easy solution: Cut off just one hand of all the economists. Then they'll think whilest thumbing their new stumps before opening their mouths. It's too bad the general public points the blame at them when they open their mouths to say things and if they don't open their mouths when the public feels they should i.e. "We're in a reccession, all economists are bad because they should have told us that we were going to be in a reccission." Or...."The economists said we'd be out of the recession by now but I still don't have a job, what gives?"

Purely looking at markets and how they function with certain assumptions made that all consummers and producers are rational utility maximizers, i.e. not stupid, is not a very accurate measure of what's going on. That's why we have booms and busts, simply because not everyone thinks alike or at all for that matter and they don't all rationalize the same way.

Now back to the sports part. If we could imagine each induvidual sports league: NFL, NHL, NBA, NBL ect. behaves like one giant multi-plant monopoly. All each induvidual baseball team for instance is a separate plant that produces a particular product for the consummer. The products is competition, people pay so see teams compete against one another. So the worst thing that could poetentiall happen is for a team to become too good and win all the games. People would stop going becuse it would no longer be sporting. However teams are in the business of victory and the best teams are the one's that can afford the most expensive free agents. So hence the Yankess are one of the best simply because they shell out the big bucks to have all the best supposed players. Not suggesting that they really are the best (remember I'm not a sports fan.) Cetaris Paribus: Bigger budget = better team. Now here's where it get's interesting. When you can get a really lousy underfunded team to get cheap players that are good enough to actually stand a chance against the big guys you will se much more turn out at games and ticket prices will go up as an effect of increased demand because the competition became very intersting.

So that's it so far for the course, hopefully I won't have to get a new glasses prescription at the end of the semester due to reading PDFs off my laptop screen.

A Graduate.....

So now I'm a graduate, I don't feel any different though. Wasn't really able to post since exams were over and had senior week to deal with so my apologies. Senior week was pretty busy, lots of drinking (pub crawl,) a wine tour, trying to stuff absolutely everything I own into the rear quarters of my VW Rabbit and be all dressed up ready to walk the walk. I was amazed at how much crap had accumulated over 4 years even after selling most of the bulky stuff on ebay. Only thing I miss is that big orange sumo lounge bean bag chair, so many good things happened to me on it :P.

I finally got the car fully stuffed, cleaned the apartment, had dinner with the rents and the girlfriend's rents and extended families in Canandaigua. They were so kind to have made me a graduation cake! I was really stoked despite having Seneca lake fall out of the sky whilst riding my bike and wearing a suit.

I went to the ceremony, it was cold and windy. I graduated. Then had brief reception with some of the faculty, lunch with the rents. Then saw everyone off in front of Scandling center. And at last met up with Bai for some more cleaning and quality time.

My plan was originally to follow her back to Vestal, stop in for a bite and then continue on to NJ. Instead I got to spend the night and go in the hot tub. Much better than the original plan. I chatted up her grandfather and we were talking war history and tips on how to stay young whilst growing old. The trick is to stay active and stay with it. Bai's dad gave me the best advice I've ever gotten: HOP. Health comes first, keep an open mind, and be passionate. These two tidbits together should make for a fun and fulfilling long life. I know one thing for sure, I love Bai and her family!

So I'm now siting on a sofa in New Jersey having just fried up some bacon and I'm not wearing pants. (This seems to be a common occurrence after waking up late.) It's Wednesday afternoon, it's nice out and I've spend the last day unloading the rabbit, ans listening to my resurrected i-pod mini on my aunt's Bose. I'm really blown away by the sound quality and regret ever buying a stereo.

So the plan is to continue unloading, look for food that isn't weight watchers, which is all my uncle and aunt eat here. So far I've got bacon. Drive to my grandfather's eventually to pick up more of my stuff that went there after graduation. Find a dry cleaners. And hopefully be in Surf City at the Jersey shore for the weekend. I can't wait to don my wetsuit, grab my egg(a 7ft funshape I had custom made in '06) and get some much needed surfing in before heading back up to b-town to SUNY BU for a summer course. I hope the water isn't 55 degrees cause then I'll need to find my ninja booties and amphibious gloves and a neoprene hood. Ah who am I kidding, surfing is fun regardless of water temperature.

Hey it's the only form of waves that humans can actually play in. Think about it....and go rent "Step into Liquid" by Dana Brown (same guys who brought you the "Endless Summer" flicks.)

DONE!

I'm done. I hope I passed......

Awake again.

So the crash effect from the caffeine has worn off and I'm up bright and early at 6am. Will be prepping for micro econ (sounds cute doesn't it?) and hopefully getting to see Bai when she gets here. I need to start packing my dorm up, GRE prep, grad school apps. looking for summer readings that first year geographers would read, oh and maybe Japan for a week. I'm going to be so happy once undergrad is done!

Almost there.........

Waiting on Quiznos to deliver me from not enough broccoli and cheese . After having taken caffeine pills for a good half a day while finishing a GIS project on potential bird strikes at major NY airports after finishing a 6 hour macroeconomics exam, I've begun to wonder if I could have done things differently. Perhaps not minored in economics or even taken any economics course for that matter! If I could do it all over again, it would've been geology and asian languages and cultres with a hint of eastern philosophy.......but hey we can't so I'm content with what I've got. Like Buddha said: "we can't know what we don't know." Yes, I can chill like a monk.

The day before I took the macro exam, my GF: Bai the writing mathtician took me to see Star Trek. Amazing! and Ironic. What happens when you mix actors from Shuan of the Dead, Harold and Kumar go to Whitecastle, Heroes, and Star Trek? Well here's what you get: new-old-improved, warp drivin' adrenalin thril ride! Go see it, it's that good!

Zen On Wheels......and the simplicity of the track bicycle

If you've read my blog thus far (unless you're a bike geek like me,) you're probably wondering what the heck track cycling is and why am I interested in it. Well if you've ever watched spandex clad people wearing what look like Darth Vader's helmet perched upon carbon fiber rolling contraptions go round and round a wooden, convex, oval track, you've witnessed track cycling. It's actually a very old sport that originated soon after the invention of the conventional (Starley) diamond-framed bicycle. The name of the game is pure speed and pure strength of the riders.

There are a number of events. The most popular is the pursuit. This is where two riders start out slowly trying to fake their oponent into getting in front of them. Once one rider jumps the lead, the pursuit is on. The lead rider must not allow the rider in trail to overtake or they lose the event. The rider in trail is going to try very hard to catch up and overtake. The lead rider has to ride as fast as humanly possible (sometimes in excess of 40mph) to keep the rider in trail behind or catch up to overlap. The race is over when one rider passe the other. It's very exciting to watch. Track cycling is perhaps one of the fastest sports that don't use the assistance of gravity or a motor.

The track bikes differ from the bikes you and I encounter that they are as mechanically simple as possible. The first thing you'll notice is that they have no brake levers and thus are brake-less. How do you stop? You might ask. Well the idea is not to. Or at least not until the race is over. Actually there's another reason why they don't have brakes. You simply don't need them. They operate on a direct drive mechanism. The rear wheel has but a single gear or cog which is connected to the cranks which are connected to the pedals which are connected to your feet. There is no freewheel so you can't stop pedaling to coast, well you could but you'd probably not like the outcome of flipping over the bars and into the ground. So a rider must always keep their legs moving. You can slow down in the exact same way you might have slowed a big wheel or tricycle when you were a child. It's just that your speed and momentum are much higher. The track bike is in fact what the earliest bicycles were like. Simple machines with few moving parts.

So here's the zen aspect. You're connected to a machine which there is no freewheeling. The wheels turn, your legs turn, you move the bike and it moves you. Imagine being on a bike, wind in your hair, legs pumping till you feel the lactic acid burn, and you're flying at 40mph. Seems slow until you actually do it. No brakes or anything peripheral to add weight and complexity. The fact that stopping is more difficult makes you look for "holes" to go through when faced with an obstruction. If you have no fear (mostly stupidity) try riding a brakeless track bike in downtown traffic. Hills become a chalenge going up and down as you hammer hard and slow to climb and then your legs go jello as the bike accelerates down the other side. Once you've ridden a track bike for a while, say a week, your legs will feel like you've been running several miles a day. Get back on a multi speed bike and you'll be amazed at how easy it is. Not to mention it's suprisingly healthy for your knees.