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tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-100001442016-09-23T12:12:05.980+00:00Cockpit ConversationAdventures of an Aviatrix, in which a pilot travels the skies and the treacherous career path of Canadian commercial aviation, gaining knowledge and experience without losing her step, her licence, or her sense of humour.Aviatrixhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-10000144.post-44366834492655228922016-08-30T00:00:00.000+00:002016-08-30T01:00:06.062+00:00Drone vs Helicopter
This wasn't put together as a PSA on drones, but it's being passed around the aviation community as one. I haven't figured out how to embed it as a video, so let me know if the link doesn't open a video for you.
 video
Having the audio on is not strictly necessary, but after the main sequence there's an explanation that you may find interesting if you like that sort of thing.

Drones are scary little things. You'd think the danger a small thing like a bird or a drone can pose to a large aircraft would be impressed on the minds of the public after things like US Airways Flight 1549. (I'm not going to call it by its nickname because that undermines the training and expertise of the aircraft designers, SOP writers, pilots, flight attendants and rescue personnel). But people go on thinking that anything in the sky above them is as impervious to as the moon to their interference, and they try to check us out. Transport Canada has a renewed campaign trying to protect us from them. The roads around my airport are marked out with bilingual and graphic "no drones" signs. I was going to say that people wouldn't throw rocks at passing cars, so why do they launch these things at airplanes, but then I remember a relative of mine getting picked up by the police for dropping rocks off a pedestrian overpass, so yeah, people would do these things. I can almost imagine this Casualty One episode inspiring people to attack helicopters.

I've reported drones twice in flight, both times while in the immediate vicinity of an airport, and both times taken very seriously by ATC. Just like playing with fireworks, lasers, or things that look like grenade launchers, even if you think you're not causing any harm, you do that in the vicinity of people operating aircraft and we're going to launch law enforcement (or more) right back at you.
Aviatrixhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-10000144.post-20719739618553890672016-08-09T00:00:00.000+00:002016-08-09T00:00:00.940+00:00One To Beam Up
I'm on my way into into a major Canadian airport and overhear another pilot on frequency asking to fly direct to a particular fix. A "fix" is a point of latitude and longitude that has been designated with a five-letter code so that air traffic controllers and pilots can refer to it. It might be the point at which pilots are supposed to change frequency, or allowed to start descent, or just another way for a pilot to request to deviate from course, usually to get around convective cloud.

In any event, this pilot asks to fly direct the fix, but the controller doesn't recognize it. That's not surprising, there are hundreds of these things in any patch of airspace, and people only pay attention to the ones that are on the route they are flying right now. The pilot repeats the waypoint name. The controller still doesn't recognize it.

"You're going to have to spell that," advises the controller, sounding a little crusty.

The pilot spells it. It has a couple of Ks in it, I think. VIKOK or KADOK or something.

"Great," says the controller with heavy resignation. "Another place out of Star Trek." I didn't notice if the pilot got his clearance or not.
Aviatrixhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-10000144.post-22138875674931525772016-07-30T00:00:00.000+00:002016-07-30T00:00:37.829+00:00Incognito
I'm at my desk checking NOTAMs while my co-worker pops out for a quick Tim Horton's run before boarding. Seconds after he leaves, I hear footsteps on the stairs again. Thinking he has forgotten his keys or something, I start to say, "That was the quickest Tim Horton's run ever," but it's not someone I recognize. He works for the company next door.

He says, "Oh, not one of your pilots. Do you know where he has gone?"

It takes me a moment to parse this. The first sentence makes perfect sense, because I'm the chief pilot here, so a pilot working for this company is in some sense "my" pilot. But why does he want to know where my non-pilot co-worker has gone, or even know that he exists? Then he continues with why he's here, and my understanding cuts in. In his eyes I am not a pilot. I am a woman working at a desk. The possibility that I am the pilot he seeks has not even crossed his mind.

The guy who is now on his way to Timmy's towed the aircraft out to an inappropriate position, and it is blocking the egress of another airplane that is ready to depart. I apologize and leap up to help move it, but he says that's okay, he has a co-pilot. With my permission they will push it back a few metres. About a minute later their assistant chief pilot comes in with the same complaint, but he knows who I am. I grab a reflective vest and go out to the ramp even though I know it's handled.

I suppose I could choose to be offended or outraged that some twenty-something (who is inexplicably wearing a toque even though it's about twenty degrees now and will go up to thirty by the afternoon) has a concept of "pilot" that does not include people who look like me. On the broader scale, there are huge problems in a society when people's concept of "law-abiding citizen," "person suitable for employment," "person worthy of respect as a human being," and "potential friend" arbitrarily exclude huge swathes of the population, but today I will just be amused by my own power of invisibility.
Aviatrixhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-10000144.post-60120738741852348842016-06-03T04:09:00.000+00:002016-06-03T04:10:08.536+00:00Antitailgating Access Portal
I'm currently struggling with a security clearance issue. I can't talk about it specifically, because the security training includes my agreement not to disclose details. I'm hoping this issue is a misunderstanding or an incompletely articulated policy, because like many valid security procedures, makes no f[iretr]ucking sense. While researching the issue in search of more definitive information on what I am allowed to do in secure areas with the pass I hold, I was amused by this:

Three airports – Kelowna, Winnipeg and London – have installed an access control system called a "mantrap," so named by Washington-based Newton Security Inc., the manufacturer of the operative mantrap technology called T-DAR; Canadian airports variously refer to it as a mantrap, persontrap or, in Winnipeg, antitailgating access portal.

Who would have guessed that little Winnipeg was the epicentre of Canadian overnaming conventions? Henceforth I shall call them Stargates, and fully expect that every time I pass through one, there is a good chance I will encounter an alien civilization that curiously speaks English or French almost exactly the way they do in my part of the universe.

Also, here's your daily dose of pilots landing a Cessna on a highway.
Not a lot of detail there. The Mayday call reports engine trouble. The vehicles following seem to have figured out that tailgating is not a good idea.
Aviatrixhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-10000144.post-9243742456052894062016-05-11T00:00:00.000+00:002016-05-11T00:00:35.254+00:00Resident Coyotes
I'm taxiing out at an airport that I haven't been to much and I can hear the ground controller coordinating with wildlife control, with input from various pilots, in pursuit of a coyote that is on the airport. I don't see the coyote, and I depart. A few days later I land at that airport again, and in the short time I'm taxiing, hear another report of a coyote on the grass. The ground controller thanks that pilot for the report. I overnight, and when I depart the next day the coyote is still a topic of conversation on the ground frequency. One pilot suggests that they just issue the animal an airside access permit and be done with it. Another counters that he wouldn't make it though the security interview. The ground controller shushes the wise-asses, but a few days later the authorities seem to have accepted the suggestion.

Pilot, "Ground, there's a fox or something just crossed the taxiway."

Ground, "That's just one of our resident coyotes."

I suspect that eventually wildlife control will shoot the animals, because they could cause an accident, but in the meantime I cheer for their wiliness and adaptability. I hope it's a tranquilizer gun and that they find them a home with fewer aircraft. A coworker suggested that they issue the coyotes transponder-equipped collars so we at least know where they are.
 Aviatrixhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-10000144.post-34996870943163165012016-04-28T21:32:00.001+00:002016-04-28T21:54:57.122+00:00Non-Stop
A month ago I blogged about the LRBL and today I watched an wonderfully bad movie that used the concept. Naturally it features an alcoholic air marshal, a cute unaccompanied minor, a nervous Arab passenger wearing a taqiyah, an uncooperative black man in a camo hoodie and dark glasses, a cellphone hacking expert, an arrogant white man in a suit, a redhead who insists on the window seat, a New York cop, a dead captain, beautiful flight attendants, and a guy in glasses who has to land the plane. I confess that I wasn't paying enough attention to remember whether the guy who wrestled with the cockpit controls during the inevitable crash landing was the original co-pilot or some passenger who was drafted for the task, but he clearly worked very hard at it. About fifteen percent of the movie consisted of text messages and another ten percent was exteriors that looked really cool in the 2005 edition of Microsoft Flight Simulator.

It amused me that Hollywood was as inspired as I was by the concept of there being a preferred spot to put a bomb. If you share my taste in bad movies, it's called Non-Stop and is on Netflix, in Canada, at least.
Aviatrixhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-10000144.post-27123015317629766322016-03-30T00:00:00.000+00:002016-03-30T00:00:05.002+00:00How Far Along Are You?
My company recently bought a new airplane for our fleet. I may have blogged already about the previous owner and his son watching it go like it was a child going off to college. We told them we weren't sure exactly when we would arrive, so to leave it out on the ramp for us to collect, after the payment cleared. But they preferred to make the trip from town out to the airport on our schedule, to open their hangar and tow it out for the last time. The ops manager and I flew it to its new home, and then it sat in our hangar for a while, which maintenance discovered and rectified decades of idiosyncratic repairs. The wiring for the wing strobes was literally wrapped around the aileron cables, because there's nothing better than abrading through electrical wiring right by your fuel tank, while restricting the movement of your flight controls. There were a coupled of days I was alerted for an impending test flight, and then waved off, because the final run up had turned up a new leak or suspicious behaviour. The right side brakes weren't working. Even though I fly it single pilot from the left, and right brakes are optional on the type, a problem with the brakes is a problem with the braking system, and cannot be allowed to stand.

Finally, I was to instructed to fly it to another airport for a specialty refit. The avionics haven't been addressed yet, so I waited for the weather to improve to VFR and then grabbed the minimum plot equipment and flew it up, to take an airline flight back. The first officer stood at the foot of the airstairs as I boarded the commuter airliner, and he spotted the VFR charts sticking out of the pocket of my headset bag.

"You're an aviator," he observed. Not one to interfere with the linguistic process that is eliminating gendered terms for professions, I answered in the affirmative. (I also don't mind, guys, if you want to call yourselves aviatrices. It is a cooler word). "How far along are you?" asked the first officer.

I was halfway up the stairs by then, almost entering the cabin. What's the answer to that? Ten different jobs, an ATPL, eight thousand hours ... I ended up saying something condescending, telling him I likely had five times his hours. It could actually have been ten or twenty times: they're hiring FOs pretty green these days. I didn't mean to be condescending. I don't think he intended his comment that way either. I took it cheerfully, like being IDed at the liquor store. I was planning to apologize on the way out of the aircraft at the end of the flight, but it was windy and noisy and he was busy, so I just said goodbye with the other passengers. If you're reading, dude, this is your apology. If he's not, that's okay. I remember some pretty rude pilot passengers who thought they were better than me, from when I was flying airline, but now they're all just funny stories, so I don't mind being one of his.

To him, professional aviation is a progression from VFR to IFR and from small airports to big airports, so someone with a headset and VFR charts boarding a plane at a little airport was perceived to be near the beginning of the chain. I should have answered "oh maybe three quarters of the way there" based on the number of hours I estimate I'll accumulate before I retire. On the other hand, someone has to teach him that it's a bad idea to ask a woman "how far along are you?"
Aviatrixhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-10000144.post-67767200280149008352016-03-27T00:00:00.000+00:002016-03-27T00:00:01.877+00:00Hotspots in the Sky
I'm working in a little corner of the sky that includes the top edge of a cylinder of class D airspace that is monitored by a flight service specialist, a slice of class C terminal airspace, and the edge of an area of uncontrolled airspace with its own air-to-air frequency for the low-level local traffic. I checked in with the FSS and they handled me for a while and then decided that I should talk to the terminal controller, to coordinate my movements with inbound IFR traffic. I did so, and tried to monitor both frequencies for a while, but it was an overlapping cacophony of sound. Even turning down the volume for radio tuned to the second frequency, I wasn't sure I wouldn't miss calls on the primary, so I told them I was going to let them go.

When the work was finished there, my next job was in military airspace. Prior negotiation had secured us permission to work in the airspace, so all I had to do was call their controller for a clearance. But just as I was about to do so, we discovered a problem. Data that was supposed to be on board in our computers was not. The data is required to do the work. We have a satellite link on board, which can be used to communicate with company, but only via short text messages, not special format data files. This wasn't an unprecedented situation. I found a community with a cellphone tower and dropped to a suitable altitude to orbit the tower until we had good bars on a cellphone and could set it up as a hotspot to log the laptop into it. The laptop wasn't charging properly and the battery was low, but there should have been enough juice to grab the data. Then I hear cursing from the back of the plane. Windows has decided that this is the right time to download and install updates.

The town with the cellphone tower also has a little airport, with a little tiny terminal. I check runway length and procedures and put my wheels down. It's much easier to download data while on the ground. Also easier to visualize. I caught myself claiming we were "uploading" data, because it had to come up to get into the airplane.
Aviatrixhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-10000144.post-64231888705820164152016-03-25T00:00:00.000+00:002016-03-25T02:22:04.823+00:00The Second Best Place To Set a Bomb
An airplane I flew today had an oddly located fire extinguisher. While looking up the rules in CARS 525 on where the fire extinguisher has to be with respect to the pilot's duty station, I found some rules on airplane interior design that weren't there when I learned to fly.

 (c) An aeroplane with a maximum certificated passenger seating capacity of more than 60 persons or a maximum certificated take-off gross weight of over 100,000 pounds (45,359 Kilograms) must comply with the following:
(amended 2010/06/16; no previous version)

 (1) Least risk bomb location. An aeroplane must be designed with a designated location where a bomb or other explosive device could be placed to best protect flight-critical structures and systems from damage in the case of detonation.

According to this FAA document the Least Risk Bomb Location (LRBL) has been a thing since approximately 1972. The crew should be aware of the LRBL, but we can be forgiven for not knowing, as the guidance document includes a prohibition on marking it with cute international graphics or bilingual block lettering saying something like "place unattended bombs here." For more information on determining the best location of an LRBL, you may consult a document entitled "DHS Recommended Least Risk Bomb Location Procedures for Airlines," Sensitive Security Information (Limited Distribution). The FAA will need your letterhead and an e-mail address. I hope they do more than glance at the letterhead and go, "ooh, it's embossed, and someone used expensive design software on this, they must be a legit airline. Quick, e-mail them the secret LRBLs." Probably they have more secure procedures than that, but the whole letterhead thing is so quaint that I had to make fun of it.

If you don't have a need to know, or a fancy letterhead, you can still find out about LRBLs. The public document is interesting enough, with little diagrams and recommendations on how the LRBL should work. If you click through to look a the document, don't forget to scroll down to the name of the person responsible for it, and imagine how much fun he has at airports when he's "randomly" selected for special screening based on his name, and then they discover his carry one is full of Sensitive Security Information about where to put bombs on airplanes. Whatever city he lives in, that's where the meetings are.

The airplane I fly does not have a passenger seating capacity of more than 60 persons. Were we to discover a bomb on board, I would direct it to be thrown out the emergency exit. Such a measure would be an extreme emergency procedure for me, but its physically impossible to open an exit on a pressurized aircraft in flight, because the exits are plugs held in place by the pressure. The only way to open one would be to blow it up. The implication of the document is that that's kind of what some LRBLs do. It also points out that decompression is less harmful if it's not done explosively, so I imagine the "oh no there's a bomb on board" procedure involves an emergency descent and controlled depressurization. The descent would be so that by the time the airplane was depressurized and the oxygen in the generators was exhausted, the ambient oxygen would be sufficient to sustain the surviving passengers.

 (2) Survivability of systems:
 (i) Except where impracticable, redundant aeroplane systems necessary for continued safe flight and landing must be physically separated, at a minimum, by an amount equal to a sphere of diameter
 D = 2 v (H0 / P )
 (where H0 is defined under 525.365(e)(2) and D need not exceed 5.05 feet (1.54 metres)). The sphere is applied everywhere within the fuselage limited by the forward bulkhead and the aft bulkhead of the passenger cabin and cargo compartment beyond which, only one-half the sphere is applied.
 (ii) Where compliance with subparagraph (c)(2)(i) of this section is impracticable, other design precautions must be taken to maximize the survivability of those systems.

I think that is meant to imply that if you want to take out redundant systems, you'll need more than one bomb. Plus I'll throw you overboard with your bomb.

 (3) Interior design to facilitate searches. Design features must be incorporated that will deter concealment or promote discovery of weapons, explosives or other objects from a simple inspection in the following areas of the aeroplane cabin:
 (i) Areas above the overhead bins must be designed to prevent objects from being hidden from view in a simple search from the aisle. Designs that prevent concealment of objects with volumes 20 cubic inches and greater satisfy this requirement.
 (ii) Toilets must be designed to prevent the passage of solid objects greater than 2.0 inches in diameter.
 (iii) Life preservers or their storage locations must be designed so that tampering is evident.

What and ruin the plot of so many bad airplane movies? At least there's no rule about disabling the secret passage out of every airplane washroom into the giant avionics bay. I think the life jacket one is interesting. I've never noticed the lifejacket pouches to appear particularly tamper-resistant.

(d) Each chemical oxygen generator or its installation must be designed to be secure from deliberate manipulation by one of the following means:
(effective 2015/03/20)

 (1) by providing effective resistance to tampering,
 (2) by providing an effective combination of resistance to tampering and active tamper-evident features,
 (3) by installation in a location or manner whereby any attempt to access the generator would be immediately obvious, or
 (4) by a combination of approaches specified in (d)(1), (d)(2) and(d)(3) of this section that the Minister finds provides a secure installation.

(e) Exceptions. Aeroplanes used solely to transport cargo only need to meet the requirements of (b)(1), (b)(3) and (c)(2) of this section.
(effective 2015/03/20)

I haven't yet seen a bad airplane movie in which the bad guys repurpose the oxygen generators as poison gas grenades, but maybe it was so awesome I forgot.
Aviatrixhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-10000144.post-20112604555072974292016-03-23T03:30:00.000+00:002016-03-25T02:29:04.016+00:00Security Cordon
I woke up today to social media reacting to the attacks in Brussels. I prepared for work not knowing exactly what they were reacting to, then before I went out the door, read a news story that was low on details, telling me only of locations and explosions with the implication of Islamic terrorism. On the way into work I had the radio on, tuned to the French language station. I'm not fluent in French, so I have to use mental effort to divine meaning from the sounds, to connect the words with their meanings and have them evoke picture of what they mean. I don't comprehend every detail, and I have no mental capacity left over with which to permit the words and pictures to evoke additional thoughts. What's normally just a way to practise my French in the car also serves as a layer of insulation against the world.

I need that insulation. I empathize very easily. I enjoy bawling at fictional people's lives and deaths on Grey's Anatomy. I cry over the crises in my friends' lives. Back in 1991 I sat at the kitchen table with the newspaper front page story on the Highway of Death in Kuwait, and I cried for hours. My roommates took it in futile shifts to try to console me. I can't live like that. I have to insulate myself from other people's horror. When the next Gulf War came along and the coalition went into Iraq, I activated a mental forcefield. I cordoned off Iraq--and most of that region--as a place where bad things happen, where life is worth less. It's not. I'm sure a person in Iraq would be just as sad as you or I would be if her cat died, or he didn't get the job he really wanted, or her child got picked on in school. People don't modulate their emotions to maintain proportion to other people's tragedies. They depth of the heartbreak you feel when the person you love is no longer there for you does not vary with the number of people who died in a Peruvian bus crash the same day. The comparison might make you feel foolish on an intellectual level, but it doesn't diminish what you feel inside about your own tragedy.

The forcefield around places where bad things happen cushions me as the Daesh violence spreads north, because apparently Turkey was already inside the forcefield I was maintaining. And articles like this one show that it's not just me who uses this kind of forcefield. To switch metaphors, when there's a forest fire raging in an area, it's common to create a firebreak. Firefighters take out a swath of trees ahead of the path of the fire, to prevent it from progressing. (I have seen a situation where a forest fire was sweeping through a community, and firefighters drove a bulldozer through a mall, to create an urban firebreak). If the fire is wild enough and the wind strong enough, the fire can jump over the firebreak and spread to the trees beyond the break, or the other end of the mall, or Belgium.

I didn't realize how close to home the attacks in Belgium were, until I was approaching an international airport today. Terrorists attacked an international airport. I'm not afraid that I'm going to be attacked. I'm not walking around the terminal jumping away from Kalashnikov-toting shadows. I'm just angry that terrorists hit where I live. It's not only the people in Brussels and Ankara, and in aviation and public transit, who were hit where they live this week. Islamic people were too. I try to imagine what it would be like if someone committed an act of terrorism in the name of something I believe in. I can imagine if someone maybe killed someone in the name of equal rights for women. There would be a level on which I could empathize with the person. Yeah, it sucks being told to your face that the job is unavailable to people with your genitalia, but it's not a reason to blow people up. If it happened, there would be people hurling all kinds of retaliatory abuse at women in general, and at me in particular for being one. Heck, that happens even in response to lawful protests. I would feel a more immediate need to defend myself against the backlash, than to condemn the one or the few that carried out the act of terrorism. And then there would be men criticizing me for not immediately condemning the terrorist in the same terms that they did.

I understand how people write off all of Islam as a bad thing. Plenty of people condemn all Christians because some of them picket gay veterans' funerals or shoot up abortion clinics. It's emotionally complex to consider that there could be people who pray side by side to the same God, using the same words, but one of them would plan the death of other human beings in the name of that God, and another would be horrified beyond words that anyone could do that.

Despite my self-serving walls, I realize the ubiquity of the human willingness to do horrible things to one another. My sympathy to the victims, to those whose city or trade has been attacked, and to the innocents who are persecuted for their similarity to the perpetrators.
Aviatrixhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-10000144.post-37657113533038117302016-03-16T00:00:00.000+00:002016-03-16T00:00:23.871+00:00All Other Names Used
I'm filling out security clearance forms today. The blank "All other names used" always amuses yet scares me. I know that most people are comfortable mentally editing this to "all other names you've ever had on a credit card" or something of the sort, but it says ALL. The same need to be honest and correct that reduced me to a quivering wreck when airport security used to ask me "Has anyone placed anything in your baggage without your knowledge?" now compels me to frown intensely at that little blank and consider getting out a separate sheet of paper and listing every alias I've ever used since they called me "Spaghetti" at camp. Or maybe I should go back to when I couldn't pronounce my own name and called myself something my parents documented as gaah. The authorities know this is the age of the Internet, but they can't possibly want all my noms de blog and Twitter handles, can they? I use the tiny size of the blank as justification to winnow the list down to just the names that have ever appeared on my ID or in media stories about me.

Maybe security checks should look at people's social media accounts. "I'm sorry, you've been denied a security clearance because you shared a really stupid meme without fact checking it." Do we really want to give someone clearance to walk around an international airport with a screwdriver in her pocket if she retweets everything Justin Bieber says? Attitudes to security do change. Once upon a time it was considered a security risk to be homosexual. Why? Because someone could blackmail you into compromising security. When society reached the point where the worst consequence of being outed by a blackmailer would be losing your security clearance, there was no reason to have such a rule anymore. Your reputation as a Wikipedia editor or a redditor may be a better indicator of your reliability as an employee than what your grade twelve soccer coach has to say about you.

I am officially challenging you to include at least one social media handle amongst "All Other Names Used" on your next airside pass or other security application.
Aviatrixhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-10000144.post-73542015566215811952016-03-05T00:00:00.000+00:002016-03-05T00:00:19.998+00:00Sorry for the Show
It's a federal offence to swear on the radio. Not that it doesn't happen, but it's extremely rare. We all censor ourselves on the radio, because the style of speaking is different, so the same expressions don't slip out as easily. If you do hear cursing on the frequency, most of the time it's because someone doesn't realize their microphone is turned on. A flight service specialist with an open mic said some truly obscene things about me once and I probably could have got him in no end of trouble, but I didn't. Today a controller made me smile by leaving a space where the taboo word fit, but leaving me to fill in the blank.

We'd called for a clearance, and the controller vectored us one way and then the other, and couldn't give us a good altitude and then finally got us going. "Sorry for the ... show," he said, the missing word before show clearly distinguishable without being pronounced. There are some expressions in English that lack a good non-profane equivalent.
Aviatrixhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-10000144.post-65729383140799930402016-03-01T00:00:00.000+00:002016-03-01T02:47:54.459+00:00Aviation Tax
Once upon a time I had a math teacher, an old school, male, teacher who taught geometry as though the ability to bisect an angle with a compass was going to be a life skill that could sustain us in our old age. I'm pretty sure I could still bisect an angle if my life depended on it but then angle bisection is the sort of thing you'd figure out how to do pretty quickly on your own, so long as for you messing around with a compass was about drawing arcs and not seeing how many different things you could stab holes in with the pointy end. The latter seems to me a more life sustaining skill than bisecting angles, but I don't have a bad word to say about geometry.

My math teacher cared about his students, even sponsored a shiny award plaque for the top math student in grade eight. And he would encourage us to get going in life. I suppose math was a frequently failed subject. He'd urge us to do well, and if we couldn't do well right away, to go to summer school and get the course completed. He was very fond of telling us that if you spend one more year in school than you need to, you will lose one year of the top salary you will earn in your life. Students often looked confused when he said this. He thought we couldn't understand that we weren't losing the first year of pay, because they were going to get that anyway, that the money was going to come off the top end, right before retirement.

I'm not sure if he realized that we were confused by the unstated assumption. We didn't see our future careers as an even steady staircase leading upwards in salary from fresh out of school to the day we would retire at sixty-five. Do people do that? It was only two years ago that I reattained the salary of my first career, the one that I left to go into aviation. Given that money was probably worth a bit more back then, I may not have reached that level yet. There are other careers with published salary schedules that I could step sideways into with a slight salary decrease, and then pass my current salary quite quickly, for a bigger pile of money on retirement. But I don't think I'll make the career change. I like flying.

And that's how it works. There are some captains at the major airlines that make a metric tonne of money, but for the most part people in aviation make less money than people with comparable training, experience and responsibility do in other fields. The people who maintain my airplane make less than the ones who maintain my car. The people who taught me to fly made less than the ones who taught me to drive. It goes all the way up: there's never a shortage of investors willing to lose money on aviation. Aviation is cool. That's the tax.
 Aviatrixhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-10000144.post-25001671963734879722016-02-25T00:00:00.000+00:002016-02-25T00:00:17.550+00:00Annual Airworthiness Infomation Reporting
Every owner of a Canadian airplane is required to file an Annual Airworthiness Information Report for that airplane. It's not a big deal. Most of the time the information to file per airplane is shorter than the term Annual Airworthiness Information Report. It's almost as short as the abbreviation, AAIR. In the bad old days, they sent you a paper form with a built in carbon paper and you filled in the appropriate blanks. I have a few of the forms here, for reasons I will disclose later, so let's check them out.

Most of the form is already populated with the registration data of the aircraft, weight and engines and propellers and such. It's the same information you find in the Canadian Civil Aircraft Register. In fact, an odd error on the AAIR for one of our planes is reflected in a weirdness in the registry entry for that plane, so I suspect they draw on the same database. The data I add to the form is when the last inspection was performed, who did it, and how many hours the airplane flew in the calendar year. We bought a plane late last year from a private individual, and the total time flown in 2015, including flying it to our base for a still-in-progress makeover, was nine hours.

There are still people who own airplanes and not computers, so the forms persist, but I've been doing ours at my current company for the last three or four years, and I do them online. I'm "computer literate" "detail oriented," and anal about stuff getting done on time (what's the resume version of that? "able to work to deadline"?) so I'm a good fit for the job. The forms are due March 30th, but there's no reason not to file them as soon as the year is over, so they were on my list for this month. Today the forms, the actual forms that I hadn't seen for maybe ten years, turned up on my desk with letters on them. The letter tells me that Transport Canada is going to begin electronic notification of the Annual Airworthiness Information Report in order to reduce its environmental footprint and better manage public funds. It informs me that, You are receiving this notification because we do not have an e-mail address or fax number on your aircraft file. The paper forms are pre-populated with data that includes both a valid e-mail and fax number.

They literally sent me a form with my e-mail printed on it, in order to ask me for my e-mail. I suppose it could have been worse. They could have e-mailed and asked for my e-mail. But that way I wouldn't have to walk over to the recycling with all these forms and letters. I e-mailed the AAIR people to tell them about this, and to thank them for the laugh. I flew two hour and did paperwork for the rest of the day.
Aviatrixhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-10000144.post-60860262356146943352016-02-19T00:00:00.000+00:002016-02-19T00:00:15.502+00:00Dear Candidate
Dear Job Applicant,

The chief pilot saw something on your resume that indicated you might have a skill that she valued, over and above your possibly adequate piloting time. She sent you a quick e-mail asking for more information about that item on your resume. You blew it.

Communication is another skill that she values highly. She understands that not everyone is a novelist. She overlooks clumsy grammar and trite cover letters, because she's been there trying to write something that is going to impress some management droid she knew nothing about. But when she asks you two direct simple questions and your reply answers only one of the two, and that vaguely, your resume quietly goes away. It doesn't get forwarded to a colleague who has a much cooler job than the one you applied for. If that's the quality of response you give while job hunting, the chief pilot does not want to think about how you will communicate with your dispatcher or maintenance staff. She will not inflict you on them.

Spelling is nice. Grammar is useful. Vocabulary is entertaining. Communication is everything.

love and kisses, but no interview,

Aviatrix
Aviatrixhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-10000144.post-52647513184421636702015-12-24T00:00:00.000+00:002015-12-24T00:00:23.738+00:00Anxiety Over Time
I find a letter in my mailbox from Transport Canada. My anxiety level increases. What do they want? I recall that the really bad ones are sent by registered mail, so they can prove you got it, so anxiety goes down a little. It's a window envelope, and the paper through the window looks like the kind government cheques are written on. Anxiety decreases further. Maybe I paid a licence fee than my company had already paid on my behalf and I'm getting a refund? I open the envelope.

Inside is a licence booklet sticker. When I pass a flight test to renew my instrument rating, the examiner will sign my licence booklet, and her signature is valid to prove my renewed rating for ninety days. If I haven't received a new sticker within the ninety day period, then I am not legal to fly. I have not taken a flight test in the last ninety days. My company does renewals in the spring. If I didn't receive my renewal sticker back in April, then I have been flying illegally all summer and fall. My anxiety level increases.

I look at the licence sticker. It has the same type ratings, endorsements, expired instructor rating and English language proficiency certification as the old one. I dig out my licence booklet to compare. Yep, everything is the same except there's no expiry date printed next to my instrument rating. What? My anxiety moves sideways.

I have a hunch. I google Transport Canada instrument rating expiry and quickly find Advisory Circular 401-004. Transport Canada in its wisdom has decided that instrument ratings no longer expire. Anxiety goes way down. Pilots still need to take a biennial Instrument Proficiency Check to ensure we still know what we are doing. Anxiety level reset to where it was before I opened the mailbox. All this means is that the format of the instrument test has changed slightly, it has a different name, and I need to keep track myself of when the thing expires, instead of having it conveniently printed on my licence. I have to keep track of it anyway, because as chief pilot I have to track it for all company pilots. Plus I am required to do a pilot proficiency check for each type I fly every year. Under the old system we simply paid a little extra every second year to have the test also renew the instrument rating. So no difference at all for me.

I read some more. The document says, "failures of instrument flight sequences during Pilot Proficiency Checks (PPC) or IPC no longer invoke suspensions of instrument rating privileges". That takes some stress off. Under the old system, you screwed up on any ride, even if you were just being the other pilot for someone else's test, and you lost your whole instrument rating. The examiner was instructed to scratch it off your licence. So it's a small difference, but worth going to the mailbox for.

I may blog later on the new IPC format. Anyone taken it yet? These changes took effect November 1st, but I was distracted.
Aviatrixhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-10000144.post-24566291698957155252015-11-19T21:45:00.000+00:002015-11-19T21:45:00.137+00:00Pilots and Birds
Pilots have sort of a love-hate relationship with birds. Some learned to fly out of a desire to be like the birds. I came grudgingly to appreciate avian skills while I was a student pilot learning to judge winds and momentum in the flare. I still derive schadenfreude from watching a bird misjudge a crosswind landing, because they usually get it so perfect, angling their wings and tail and settling on a single branch just as groundspeed and vertical speed reach zero. I knew an ultralight pilot whose pinnacle of life experience occurred the day an eagle flew along wingtip-to-wingtip with his tiny craft, checking him out and then seeming to just share the joy of being aloft on a beautiful day. If you've got through any part of a career in aviation without having to reject a take-off, perform a go-around, declare an emergency, or visit maintenance because of birds, then I can't imagine which part of the planet you fly over.

The airplane I flew yesterday bears a scar that we think is a rat strike. I know that a rat is not a bird, but I still blame a bird. See, one day an eagle crossed our path while we were on the take-off roll. There was no thump and no exploding cloud of feathers, so we were pretty sure we hadn't struck the eagle, but after the flight there was nevertheless a small dent, mostly just stretching of the aluminum skin between two ribs on the wing, and some blood spatters. The airport crew reported finding no carcass, and certainly an eagle would have made a bigger dent. Our theory is that the eagle dropped its payload in order to more easily dodge us. I should have gone full CSI on the remains. I'll bet I could have found some fibres and checked them out at the MicrolabNW Photomicrograph Gallery. As it is I just nag maintenance to put the dent repair on their spare time list, because tiny as the dent is, it is a roughness in the wing, and that spot is always the first one to ice up in flight.

The video below (preceded by an ad, you don't lose anything if you just mute the whole video) is from an incident a year ago when a bird strike smashed the spinner on a Dash-8 on take-off. I don't see any damage to the propeller itself, but the damage to the spinner must have caused an imbalance, because the pilots elected to shut the engine down. You can see the blades feathered (aligned with the direction of flight for minimum air resistance). And I have to laugh at the fact that the very terminology "feathered" is bird-related.

They inspired us to fly in the first place. They interfere every day with our ability to do so safely. We can't stop admiring them and we can't stop resenting them. This whole post has just been an excuse to show you this gif. Does anyone not love this crow? It's just a looped gif, but the full YouTube clip shows that it wasn't an accident. That crow was hanging in there for the ride. I suppose it wasn't all that different to clinging to a branch on a windy day, but it's having fun, isn't it?

Aviatrixhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-10000144.post-49051474698795259962015-11-12T00:00:00.001+00:002015-11-12T00:00:06.889+00:00Why Helicopters Work That Way
I've never studied helicopter aerodynamics, but I witnessed a helicopter crash once, and the event was consistent with the theory that it's principally the integrity of the tail rotor that prevents the helicopter from behaving the way the bluebird expects, but the chicken has an excellent point.

 2 Cows and a Chicken Comic Strip on GoComics.com
Also as the days get darker and the weather outside arbitrary northern hotels gets bleaker, I'm tending to agree with these chickens.

Currently binging on House, Grey's Anatomy, Community, and Fringe.
 Aviatrixhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-10000144.post-7698328946291240092015-11-05T00:00:00.000+00:002015-11-05T00:00:08.529+00:00Logbook Strategy
I finally got my logbook up-to-date, every flight entered, every page totalled, grand total calculated. Each line represents one flight, and includes the date, aircraft type, aircraft registration, point of origin, destination, crew, and duration of the flight. There's also a remarks field which I sometimes use to include information like "annual review," "hit an eagle at rotation," "picking up new airplane," or "ferry permit with u/s flaps." Long ago I used to write my first initial and full last name in the pilot in command or copilot field, as appropriate, but that got tiring and sometime over the last couple of logbooks ago I switched to "self" and then "me," with the other crewmembers reduced to initials after the first few entries with their complete names.

The duration blank for each flight is not a single column, but eighteen columns, the whole facing page, in all appropriate combinations of single- and multi-engine time, night and day, pilot-in-command, dual instruction, and copilot, plus additional columns to record time in instrument meteorological conditions (clouds), simulated IMC, and in a flight simulator. For the last seven years I have used two columns: multi-engine day PIC and multi-engine night PIC. I'm even pilot-in-command for my annual training flights, because we hire outside experts who aren't ensured on our aircraft. So on every page I complete there are only two columns I need to total, multi-PIC-day and multi-PIC-night. I sometimes fill in numbers for IMC, or landings, but long, long ago stopped totalling them. There are a even a couple of do-it-yourself columns in which I sometimes track time on floats, turbine vs. piston or tailwheel. I tried to persuade myself to stop carrying forward the times in the columns other than the two that actually get updated every page, unless for some reason I flew a single-engine aircraft or acted as co-pilot, but despite being lazy enough not to update my logbook for three years, once I started updating, I felt obligated to carry those stupid numbers forward, page after page. According to the numbers, at some point in my career I acted as a copilot at night. I can't even think when that was, as the two-crew aircraft in which I logged my copilot time was a day-only operation. I think I must have been acting as co-pilot for new captain. But I'm copying forward that 2.0 every time I turn the page. Also the 13.1 night dual single engine. I have this minor fantasy of renting a single-engine aircraft and flying just long enough, day, night, PIC, and dual, in order to bring all my logged hours up to even numbers. The trickiest part about copying the numbers forward though, is making them fit in the boxes.

Both my single- and multi-engine daytime hours extend to five digits, including the one after the decimal point, and the boxes allocated for the totals are not very big. There are a few possible strategies for coping with this. I generally used a fine-tipped pen and very small printing, but depending on how many 4s, 6s and other digits that don't compress well there are in the total, sometimes I combine this with writing the number diagonally from corner to corner of the tiny box, or writing the decimal point and final digit on a second line. Sometimes I just give up and write the total in the bottom margin, with an arrow pointing into the box it should occupy. I suspect most of you with this kind of time don't bother keeping a personal logbook at all, just hand the paperwork that shows you're legal into company, and then at medical time just add what you've flown in the past year onto whatever total you gave the year before. That's what I've done for the last three years. The real timekeepers among you will be using an electronic logbook that, at a couple of button presses, can extract all your multi-engine turbine time flown on a Tuesday. But I can't be the lone holdout Luddite enough to be still using paper logbooks, but having trouble fitting the big numbers on the page. What's your preferred strategy?
Aviatrixhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-10000144.post-33917539062408554372015-11-01T00:00:00.000+00:002015-11-01T00:00:00.668+00:00Partial Research is Funnier than None
At 1:35:14 of the movie The Bourne Identity, there's an airplane. It's not important to the plot, just a brief scene to show that Important Serious Guy is going to Paris. It only merited a second glance because Important Serious Guy was going to take the "first flight out" which usually refers to scheduled flights, yet the airplane in question is a Dassault Falcon 900 and the passenger is driven up to the boarding stairs in a limo. It's clearly a private flight. So in between writing the dialogue and getting the location, someone decided that the secret agent guy wasn't going to fly airline, or it was just cheaper for the production to get the plane and the location for one guy boarding a small jet than to arrange a whole airline cabin set, and they missed changing the actor's line. I can even accept that by "first flight" the guy meant, "as soon as the pilots have the airplane ready," and that there's nothing wrong with the dialogue.

It's a three-engine jet, which is kind of cool. Wikipedia tells me that it and the Falcon 7X are the only trijets still in production. On the nacelle of the centre engine we see the aircraft registration N-GIDE. I can't say whether it was the oddity of an N-number followed by a dash and four letters that drew my attention to the fact that the N has clearly been stuck on as a patch, or vice versa, but that is one silly aircraft registration. It took me three guesses to find it as French-registered F-GIDE a Dassault Falcon 900 currently owned by GE Capital Equipement Finance, and based in Paris. The airplane looked like this in 1998, which doesn't match the movie, but the 1998 paint job looks like my high school locker room, so I'm not surprised it would be changed. I'm imagining someone has scouted the location, paid whatever is the going rate is for using someone's airplane as a set for a couple of hours, and got airport permission to drive their limo and camera trucks and whatever around the apron. They put an actor in the cockpit--just one, we'll presume that the other pilot is in the back to greet the passenger--and generally tried to make it look as though it's a US government airplane ready to take this guy to Paris. They slapped a US flag decal on it, by the boarding door, and then someone did just enough research to get in trouble. I think the location manager spotted the F starting the registration and realized that that represented France. They somehow learned that American aircraft registrations start with N, without realizing that they don't have a dash, and they have numbers in them. To me the result is as adorable as a kid trying to hide by covering her eyes: that act of concealment draws more attention than none at all, but it shows that they tried. Had they tried harder, they would have discovered that the FAA reserves the tail numbers N88892, N9748C, and N9747P for use in movies and television, and then I never would have noticed. Probably I wouldn't have noticed if they had left the French registration intact, either. I'm sure the US government leases aircraft in more exotic places than France.

Given that it's the same kind of half-completed research I do all the time for my blog, and will definitely be doing for this year's NaNoWriMo novel, starting today, I hope I'm not alone in getting enjoyment from the funny.
 Aviatrixhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-10000144.post-86955228127589600602015-10-29T00:00:00.000+00:002015-10-29T00:00:06.186+00:00The Wrong Trousers
On my first job with a uniform, I was required to wear black pants and a white pilot shirt. That's a pretty standard outfit, and a lot of companies just leave it to the pilot to obtain those articles of clothing. That first company didn't pay much, so I just wore whatever black pants kind of fit me at the second-hand store. Another company sent me to Mark's Work Wearhouse to buy a particular style. I think they wanted beige, but the style number was a men's style, so I spent half an hour or so trying to find the women's style that looked the most like the men's style, yet still fit me. I don't remember how that worked out. At a later company I actually did wear a men's style because I could get far better quality for the same price, and while the fit at the hips was not stellar, at least the legs were long enough, the pockets actually able to hold things, and they didn't have little cutesy buckles or offer tummy control or butt enhancement. Seriously, if you've never bought women's pants, you'd be amazed by what they claim to do. Stupid things had to be dry-cleaned though, and I'm pretty sure they were flammable.

In my job I have to crawl, literally crawl on my hands and knees, under aircraft. I have to lug things against my legs. I sometimes wipe oily hands on my pants (not my underwear, British readers). I sit on my butt for five or six hours at a time. I occasionally need to wear thermal underwear under my clothes. I want pants that are black, cotton, durable, and machine washable. They need to be comfortable, not too tight, but not so loose that you're going to see my underwear as I crawl under the plane. Not that I care all that much about that last one. I always figure if you're hard up enough that seeing a pilot's underwear is going to do it for you, then I can throw you that one for free.

After a while I settled on a style at Mark's Work Wearhouse. I would buy several pairs at a time, making them ship extra ones in from elsewhere to fulfill my order. A couple of years ago they stopped selling them. It wasn't just that they'd changed the style, they no longer sold a medium duty woman's work pant. They had the really heavy duty ones, not something I wanted to sit for hours wearing, and they had yoga pants and dress pants. So last year I carefully measured myself according to the instructions on the website, and ordered a few different styles from Dickies, all of which arrived big enough for two of me. I sent them back and ordered four more that fit me about as well as the ones from the second-hand store, but by this point the old ones that fit me well all had patches on them, so I kept and wore the ill-fitting ones. Now I have a collection of badly-fitting black pants some of which have holes in them.

Today I tried to buy more pants. I finally gave up when a link for women's work pants took me to a page where not only were all the pants too short for the actual models, but the models were all wearing high heels. I guess "working women" need work pants too. I'll have to go back to men's styles.
Aviatrixhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-10000144.post-91503399693499575642015-10-23T00:00:00.000+00:002015-10-23T00:00:09.811+00:00Oxygen Exchange
I work in an unpressurized aircraft at altitudes where the atmospheric pressure is low enough that oxygen is required. Between 10,000' and F180 (about 18,000') I wear a nasal cannula: an arrangement of tubes, including two blowing oxygen up my up my nostrils. Above FL180 I wear a mask that covers my nose and mouth. I could skip the cannula and wear the mask any time I was above 10,000' but I can't eat or drink while wearing it, so it gets old fast. Plus the design of the cannula is such that it recycles exhaled oxygen, meaning that the oxygen supply lasts a lot longer on cannulas. Thus we only use the masks if we're working above 18,000'.

Putting the mask on involves taking off my headset, putting the mask over my face, pulling the head strap into place, putting the headset back on, and fastening another mask strap behind my neck. Finally I have to swap the microphone plug for the headset boom mike with the microphone plug for the in-mask mic. I can do all this before take-off, which I will if I'm in busy airspace. I started up next to a military jet once and noticed its pilot put on his oxygen mask before start up. If I am in uncontrolled airspace, I typically put my mask on just before I climb through 10,000'. If I'm expected to be monitoring a frequency, I wait until a needy or slow-talking pilot starts to make a call irrelevant to me, and then I can get the headset off, mask on, and headset back on before the call is over, ensuring I don't miss any calls. It takes less than thirty seconds. On descent, I can use the same technique, or just leave it on until I park, likely confusing the FBO marshallers.

Sometimes the day starts out with an hour of work at at 20,000' and then progresses to three more at 15,000'. Obviously I need the mask for the high level work, but would prefer to be able to eat and drink for the rest of the flight. In this case the swap involves all of the above, plus disconnecting the mask from the oxygen receptacle, connecting the cannula, and putting the cannula in my nostrils. It looks just like the cannulas the patients in House wear, but rather than looping around my ears and hanging down in front, it just goes around my head, held up by my headset earcups, and secured in place with a baseball cap. The point of this post is that I think about perfecting the swap between oxygen supplies at altitude. Should I breathe normally, or hold my breath during the swap?

The way breathing works is that the partial pressure in the air I inhale is greater than that in the lung capillaries it is in contact with. The imbalance causes oxygen to diffuse into the capillary, until the partial pressures are equal, the way any gas does across any membrane. So if the partial pressure in the ambient air is less than that of my lung capillaries, the act of breathing will actually decrease the oxygen level in my blood, and it would be better to hold my breath while I switch between mask and cannula.

The partial pressure of oxygen in ambient air at sea level is 21% of 29.92 inches of mercury, which is 6.28 inches of mercury. I'm going to convert that 160 mm Hg, not because I'm obsessed with metric, but because Wikipedia gives me biological numbers in millimetres of mercury so I have to convert one of them in order to do the math. At 18,000' the partial pressure of oxygen in the ambient air is half that at sea level, so 80 mm Hg. The partial pressure of oxygen in lung capillaries at sea level is 20-40 mm Hg, and as the mask maintains my blood oxygen at the same saturation as at sea level, then that's the partial pressure of oxygen while I'm wearing an oxygen mask. Eighty is clearly greater than forty, so even at 18,000' breathing is better than holding my breath to maximize blood oxygen during the mask swap.

So at what altitude should I hold my breath? At 32,800' the partial pressure of oxygen in the atmosphere is 25% of the sea level pressure, which is 40 mm Hg, the top of the range for lung capillary pressure. I would say, "so up to 32,000 it's better to breathe than hold one's breath when swapping oxygen sources" but above 32,000' the time of useful consciousness without oxygen is around a minute, even with no physical activity, so one shouldn't be messing around with one's oxygen source at such altitudes. But my conclusion is that above that, hold your breath for those few seconds of scrabbling before you either get your oxygen on or forget how and pass out.

I only took biology to about grade eight, so most of what I know about the human cardiovascular system comes from lifeguard class. I welcome any corrections to this analysis, even if you're stopping by years after I wrote it.
Aviatrixhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-10000144.post-7142812428049126342015-10-19T00:00:00.000+00:002015-10-19T00:00:12.677+00:00Thanksgiving
I was away working last weekend, so I wasn't really thinking of Thanksgiving as a holiday. I usually work right through October, so a proper Thanksgiving celebration only happens by chance. Sometimes a little late, like the one I had this year. But with or without the dinner, I'm still thankful for things that happened and those that didn't.

Things happen and things don't. Whether they happen or fail to because of our own skills and planning, because of stochastic processes, or because of an omnipotent being, I am grateful when the right things happen and the wrong things don't. Neither history, nor science, not even religious texts seem to indicate that gratitude or the lack thereof has great influence on what happens and what doesn't, but I still have gratitude. The engines turned when I needed them to. The electricity flowed when I depended upon its service. The ice and the air and my wings did not interact in a way that had a disastrous effect on my flight. Over the years, the malfunctions that have occurred in flight did so after sunrise, within single-engine fuel range of a usable airport, once I was clear of IMC, when I had sufficient altitude, or before I was too tired. I saw what I needed to, and am surrounded by those who look out for me. I am grateful.

Also, you will find it hard to convince me that there is a better way to eat leftover turkey than cold, with my fingers, while standing in front of an open refrigerator.

P.S. to foreigners: Thanksgiving is a post-harvest festival that Canadians celebrate on the second weekend of October. It's not a public spectacle or a commercial event (for places other than grocery stores), just something you do in your home. People with normal jobs get a day off work on the Monday, but family or groups of friends will get together on any of the weekend days for a meal, usually involving roast turkey and seasonal vegetables, especially squash. If you're crafty you can score two or even three turkey dinners over the weekend, and everyone eats turkey sandwiches, turkey soup and turkey salads for a week afterwards.
Aviatrixhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-10000144.post-35451430866119969042015-10-15T00:00:00.000+00:002015-10-15T00:00:00.876+00:00Extra-Vehicular Activities
I was trying to find a clip of the coffee-ordering scene from the movie Pushing Tin. In the film it's a demonstration of how many pieces of data on different aircraft that an experienced controller can hold in his or her head simultaneously. I didn't find the clip, but I came across a pilot ordering coffee and wings in the midst of an emergency, and a fun YouTube channel of humourous exchanges from the New York Kennedy ground frequency.

Taxiing at a large, unfamiliar airport is just about as stressful as flying at night in ice. There's just one of me to keep the airplane moving, watch out for bad pavement, find the directional signs, interpret the taxi diagram, identify the intersections, and spot the aircraft I'm supposed to give way to. It's obvious to the controllers which way I should go, but they know the airport layout perfectly, and from their vantage point they can see where they want to put me. They seem almost as unhappy when I pause to complete a checklist or figure out my route as they do when I think that Foxtrot-Golf is the next turn, not this one right here. Sure, if I get it badly wrong in ice, I'll lose control of the airplane and die, but that consequence might be less painful than the scolding that an irate controller can dish out. The worst case scenario on the taxi is also death: should I venture onto an active runway at the wrong moment, I could get run over and take out a widebody, too. That is part of the reason the controllers can be so stressed. The rest of their focus is knowing that it is ridiculously easy for us poorly-maneuverable ground vehicles to become gridlocked, delaying everyone. The controllers have a plan for getting everyone where we are supposed to be, and if I miss a turn, I'm like the Tetris brick dropped in the wrong place, messing up the whole board. Meanwhile controllers are really smart, constantly building and recalculating plans, but with enough spare brainpower to make smart remarks.

The link above is not to the first or the funniest of the clips on the channel, but rather to one that is more odd than funny: a Lufthansa crew suspects they have an access panel open and once that's confirmed by another taxiing aircraft, ask permission to put a crewmember outside the airplane to close it. It's interesting and a little outside the norm, but the controller seems to think it's hilarious. I wonder what he would have made of a stop-and-go I did the other day: I landed on a long runway, let a crew member out to adjust an external sensor, and then after he was back in and belted, took off again without ever leaving or backtracking the runway. The controller handling me didn't act as though it were an unusual request. I had assessed the approaching traffic on frequency before making the request, so I was confident there was no one close behind me. I'm not sure we spent any longer on the runway than we would have had we landed and taxied off in the normal way.
Aviatrixhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-10000144.post-4561457864305818972015-10-10T00:00:00.000+00:002015-10-10T00:00:00.693+00:00Runner's High
This story starts about five years ago when I first realized that combining my fondness for running, maps, and cool watches in one technological device was possible and affordable, even if it did barely fit on my wrist. I bought a Garmin Forerunner 305. It's essentially a stopwatch integrated with a GPS, heart rate monitor, and computer, so I can know where I am, how fast I'm going, and how hard my body is working to achieve it, all at once. And then I can upload the resulting data to my laptop and stare at it in tables and graphs and maps to come to conclusions like "I get really tired when I run up mountains" and "I should run faster." I used to come to such conclusions without the technology, but now I have data to back it up. It's ludicrous how much more fun it is to go running when you get statistics at the end. I don't remember how I ever went running without a box on my wrist telling me if I was doing it right or not.

I took my GPS watch in my flight bag everywhere I went, so that if I had time to go running at the end of the day, I'd have the motivation of knowing how far and fast I was going, and also so I could activate the "Return to Start" feature. Return to Start gives turn-by-turn directions to get me back to the hotel, regardless of how identical the suburban streets, wooded trails, or gravel road turn-offs appear to be. I don't know that I would be still wandering around a highway truck stop somewhere without it, but there's more oxygen deprivation in my brain after fifteen kilometres of pushing my pace than after five hours of sucking supplemental oxygen through my nose at 17,000'. It's nice not to have to worry which forks I took in the trail network of an unfamiliar town.

I have my data all in Garmin's Training Center software: years of runs from Alaska to Florida and many where I have to zoom out on the little map several times before I figure out which little town with limited map information is traced by the record of my exertions. I like to review this data and use the Training Center "Compare" feature to virtually race the years-ago Aviatrix. (I'm pretty sure I can still take her). But while I've become sleeker, faster and more resilient with the years, the watch hasn't fared as well. It became harder to charge, and reluctant to connect to the computer to give up its data. The beeping sounds stopped working, and then it started shutting off in mid-workout. It's well out of warrantee, and the model is discontinued, so I had to choose a replacement. I could probably export the data in a standard format. Garmin is so prevalent in the GPS field that any manufacturer that couldn't convert or use their formats might be a little silly. But my first choice was just to stick with Garmin.

Their website is a mess of poor feature explanations. It doesn't suggest an upgrade path from the 305 to another product. I didn't find an overview on what the focus of the Forerunner, vivo-, or fēnix lines is, nor could I see any coherent logic to the Forerunner model numbers and suffixes.

I thought I'd had an e-mail conversation about this back when the Forerunner was still available and one could send it in to a Garmin-approved dealer for a flat-rate "repair" (obviously a replacement with a reconditioned model, but it was worth the $75 for me back then). Mining my e-mail archive for "GPS watch" found me all my old blog posts that mention "GPS" and "watch". The insane detail I included allowed me to relive some interesting flights and revisit all manner of places. No wonder people who weren't on the flights to begin with enjoyed reading them. This has somewhat inspired me to find a way to keep blogging about them. Perhaps I'll talk to the owner about the blog.

I tore myself away from my former adventures to google up second hand explanations and information on features and backwards compatibility of Garmin products. There are SO many models. Finally I decided to artificially limit my choices by going to a store and making my selection from only what they had. I took my flaky old Forerunner with me, and on the bus ride there, noticed that the crack between the layers of the case was quite wide. With no prying or wiggling, I lifted the face of the watch right off the back, revealing its electronic innards. Well no wonder it wasn't staying on, charging and connecting. I was lucky it hadn't fallen apart during a run. I feared I had killed it by carrying it with me everywhere, including into the flight levels in an unpressurized airplane.

The higher you go in the atmosphere, the less air there is on top of you, thus the less pressure you feel, so that instead of being all squished together to sea level pressure, the molecules are all spread out. One breath takes in less oxygen, unless I supplement it from a tank, which I do, through the aforementioned nose tubes. Anything with air sealed into it that I bring up from ground level retains the same pressure inside that it had on the ground. As it ascends, the differential between the inside pressure and the outside pressure increases, producing a force acting to expand the sealed container. The tank full of breathing oxygen is cylindrical, and its strong walls and robust valves are inspected weekly to ensure that as the pressure outside the tank decreases, the tank will not rupture, bulge or leak from the added force. Potato chips are deliberately packaged with trapped air, to protect the chips, and their bags will bulge out drum-tight, and sometimes burst, as we ascend. The gases in our intestines and ear canals expand and escape through the usual routes. I was afraid that the air sealed into my GPS watch damaged it. But then I realized that the Forerunner 305 isn't waterproof, and my Timex wristwatch, which works perfectly, is. (I'd tell you what model Timex, but it's so old that all the words have worn away, and the chunks of decorative plastic stuff have fallen off, leaving a bare case with buttons on it). A little more research showed me that plenty of people had their Forerunners come apart, sometimes falling off bike mounts and/or being run over by cars.

I got to the store and interrogated the clerk about the selection. I was almost ready to buy a Garmin Forerunner 225. It has the heart rate monitor integrated in the watch itself, with no need for a chest strap. It has a built-in accelerometer to give pace and distance information on indoor treadmill runs. "What about winter?" I asked. "Can I use it with a chest strap in the winter, when I wear the watch on the outside of long-sleeved garments?" To answer this question, the clerk went not to the Garmin website, but straight to the blog of DC Rainmaker, an obsessive sports technology reviewer. I'd encountered one of his reviews while googling for compatibility information earlier, and not noticed that everything I could ever want to know about pretty much any sports watch is on this guy's blog. The Forerunner 225 will pair with a chest strap, for people who mount it on bicycle handlebars, as well as winter runners, but it was missing a couple other features that I wanted. Indeed none of the watches they carried had the Back to Start feature, so I went home without buying any of them, and went back to DC Rainmaker's site.

Ray Maker (get it?) conveys the excitement of taking a new electronic toy out of the shipping box, gazing at its packaging, and then breaking the shrinkwrap. He includes photographs detailing the plastic bags and twist ties containing all the sub-components of the products. He does more running, biking, and swimming to test one device for a review than some buyers will log in the lifetime of their device. Every review is ridiculously detailed. Some people would say too detailed. So a little like many of my blog entries, if I did way more research. It parallels the way I'd like to blog if I had the diligence to drill down to the technological and legal root of everything I said, rather than speculating and drawing on knowledge already in my head. It made me cheer a little when I found a typo now and again, on his site, because it just goes to show that typo-free is not a requirement for an insanely awesome blog. He also displays a lot of integrity: he borrows and returns all reviewed gear despite the fact that his reviews are clearly enough work to deserve a lot of freebies. If you run or bike and like gear, you almost certainly already know his site, but if you don't you're in for a treat. If you never do anything more energetic than opening the refrigerator, but just like tech, especially GPS, you'll probably still want to read his site. The comparison tool there allowed me to quickly determine that the correct watch for my needs is the Forerunner 310XT. It wasn't at the store nor prominent on Garmin's website because it is ALSO being discontinued. I decided to get one now, through a site DC Rainmaker partners with, to compensate him for the work he does. I had some trouble with that site, so posted a comment on his blog, and as I was already thinking of blogging about the experience, I signed the comment "Aviatrix."

It turns out that DC Rainmaker is a long-time reader of Cockpit Conversation. It made me feel like a member of an elite when he asked if I was that Aviatrix. As I told him, some days I'm convinced that there are far fewer people on the Internet than is generally thought. Maybe it's just you, me, the awesome people who comment on our blogs, and a lot of Chinese spambots.

Meanwhile I ordered a Forerunner 310XT somewhere else, bound my Forerunner 305 together with rubber bands, found it worked perfectly, glued it together with silicone sealant (as recommended by several people on the Internet), and am currently in high level discussions with my printer on why it should print the return mailing label for the 310XT. When the 305 gasps out its final beep I'll do this again, probably with a whole new set of features. I might get one of the "lifestyle" watches that track your every move, including sleeping.
 Aviatrixhttp://email@example.com


text:
Are you interested in a ZEISS Partnership or do you have questions you would like to ask?
ZEISS Single Vision Individual embodies the entire, outstanding technological know-how and optical excellence of ZEISS. As a result this lens offers outstanding visual quality for the lens wearer. Absolutely top-class, totally individualised.
The combination of the optical expertise of the optician or optometrist, the professional measurement of all personal data and an optimisation process precisely tailored to the needs of each individual wearer results in a level of individualisation that will immediately impress the wearer – individualisation which is symbolised by the personal engraving on the lens.
ZEISS Single Vision Individual is focused on all spectacle lens wearers who want premium optical quality for their eyes.
For ZEISS Single Vision Individual the higher order aberrations of the lens are evaluated by wavefront technology in order to optimise the lens design and ensure optimum visual quality for the wearer. Wavefront metrology is also used to determine the performance of optical systems in satellites.
Individualised for every power
Only optimisation for every individual power can ensure that the wearer always enjoys outstanding ranges of vision. This is particularly important for higher cylinder powers and prismatic prescriptions.
"Real time" optimisation
To achieve the optimum design for every wearer, each lens design is calculated online by the ZEISS optical design software engine, using the wearer's exact prescription and his or her individual position-of-wear parameters, immediately prior to fabrication.
Freeform production makes it all possible
ZEISS is a pioneer in the field of freeform technology for progressive lenses. This production method is also used for ZEISS Single Vision Individual in order to transfer the design optimised for each individual power directly and precisely to the surface of the lens.
The measured powers have a very special function: they ensure that the spectacle wearer receives exactly the needed power measured during refraction, even when looking obliquely through the lens.
The measurement is performed in the measuring circle. The measured value is exactly computed for this point of the lens. This results in deviations from the ordered power which is adapted to the centring cross, i. e. it is calculated for the point on the lens where the wearer looks into the distance.
In addition to the ordered powers, these measured powers are shown on the lens packet.
|Clear / tinted
|Organic 1.74
(only clear)
|Organic 1.67
|Organic 1.6
(also available in Sport)
|Organic 1.5
(also available in Sport)

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Julie was born in Staten Island, New York to Jamaican parents of West Indian origin. Being born into such a rich and varied culture, she acquires the ability to be multi-faceted in the music industry; by offering a wide variety of musical selections within her individual musical empire. Her fun and upbeat personality transcends thorough her music and is contagious to anyone who is listening to her music.
Julie is more than attractive; she is clever, strong witted and most importantly determined to show the world that she has "crossover lyrics and slick melodies that are as good as any male counterpart in the music game." The multitalented vocalist has been in love with the entertainment sector her whole life; forging ahead in the Miami market, growing and nurturing personal relationships with top DJ's, music industry insiders and socialites. Julie's music has been played in some of South Florida's top nightclubs.
As a UPlaya artist, she has achieved great success. She received the coveted Gold, Silver and recently Platinum Auddy award for her music. However, her achievements don't stop here! She was also chosen to be the opening act for the Heat playoffs in 2009. As she starts in her career, she draws inspiration from some of her favorites, including Britney Spears, Janet Jackson and Jennifer Lopez. Not only does she learn from these artists, but also she makes it her mission to study both there handwork, dedication and endless work ethic within the entertainment industry. With both admiration and fortitude that songstress Julie displays, it's safe to say this song bird is destined for nothing short of long term success.
Julie Ciero's soon to be released debut album will mark as the new threat to the music scene. The blunt singer plans to do nothing more than "tell it like it is" and breath fresh air back into not only the female music scene but the music industry as a whole.


text:
- 20Hz - 20KHz
- 3.5mm Connector
- 6.0 ft. Cord Length
- $19.99 19.99
- $8.99 –
- Save: $11.00 (55%)
- Free Shipping (restrictions apply)
physically weak 10/01/2012
This review is from: Rosewill RH-001 - 2 x 3.5mm Connector Circumaural Multimedia Stereo Headset
Good sound and decent mic pikup
The mic boom was sloppy (loose) almost immediately, then after three months it was only holding on by 1 screw out of three. Now (6 months after purchase) the boom has fallen off and cannot be twisted back in because the sockets are striped out.
Other Thoughts:
Great sound for the price, but having it all fall apart within 6 months is not worth it, regardless of price.
Manufacturer Response:
Dear Valued Customer,
Thank you very much for purchasing this unit. We strive to provide the most reliable and highest quality products to our customers. Please kindly contact the Rosewill support team either via phone at 800-575-9885 or via email at firstname.lastname@example.com so we may assist you with a replacement.
Rosewill Customer Care
Did you find this review helpful? Yes / No Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!


text:
See J.K. Rowling's Epic Response to a Fan Who 'Can't See' Dumbledore as Gay
J.K. Rowling did not mince words when a fan tweeted her and questioned the Harry Potter author's decision to make Dumbledore gay.
J.K. Rowling did not mince words when a fan tweeted her and questioned the Harry Potter author's decision to make Dumbledore gay.
The "Harry Potter" and the "Twilight" series were some of the most iconic movies of the past 10 years. Both feature memorable characters, a story line that anyone can follow and they both certainly have very large fan bases...
Potterheads, your Halloween just got a major upgrade! Pottermore.com just announced that J.K. Rowling will release a new 'Harry Potter' story on Halloween. The subject? Dolores Umbridge!
For decades, scientists have used references to popular culture to help people understand breakthroughs in technology. Although the go-to series for the smart folks behind every innovation in your life has been 'Star Trek,' the latest crazy advancement is also applicable to something a little more, well, magical. Yes, someone has gone and built themselves an rudimentary invisibility cloak, like the one seen in the Harry Potter series.
Hold on to your wannabe wands, Muggles -- we've got a huge 'Harry Potter' update for you.
J.K. Rowling has taken to Pottermore.com to expand on obscure 'Harry Potter' character Celestina Warbeck.
Dave Legeno, an accomplished British mixed martial artist who also acted as Fenrir Greyback in the 'Harry Potter' movies, was found dead at the age of 50 on Sunday.
Harry Potter fans gasped yesterday when author J.K. Rowling surprised the world with a new story on Pottermore that brought new life to the characters we said goodbye to after 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows' was published in 2007. But does this mean we'll see anymore Harry Potter adventures on the big screen?
Probably not. At least, that's what Daniel Radcliffe thinks.
Daniel Radcliffe recently sat down for a round of 'Celebrity Sorting Hat,' where he acted as the magical talking hat from the 'Harry Potter' series. He was asked to sort some big celebrities into Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Slytherin and Hufflepuff, and the result is hysterical.
Well this is kind of disappointing: for fans who were excited to see director Alfonso Cuaron return to the 'Harry Potter' universe to direct the spinoff film 'Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,' you're out of luck. Turns out that the director will not be returning to the wonderful world of J.K. Rowling after all.
The saga of Harry Potter may have come to a definitive end with 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2,' but his mysterious wizarding world will live on! We already knew that original Potter Author J.K. Rowling would be making her screenwriting debut with upcoming spinoff film 'Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,' but now we know when we'll be able to see the movie!
Talk about a 'Harry Potter' bombshell -- seven years after the final book's publication, author J.K. Rowling confesses in a new interview that Hermione Granger should have ended up with the series' hero, instead of with BFF Ron Weasley.


text:
The R&D-growth paradox arises in fast-growing sectors
Several notions of a R&D paradox can be found in the literature. In the Swedish Paradox version, the emphasis is normally on high and growing levels of business R&D connected to comparatively low GDP growth rates. This paper examines whether this pattern is consistent over time and, more importantly, which sectors drive the aggregate patterns. Based on an investigation of the entire Swedish economy 1985-2001, there is clear evidence that the paradox occurs only in fast-growing manufacturing and service sectors. Fast-growing sectors show an increasing gap between R&D and value-added growth, while the slow-growing sectors do not. This paradox is not interpreted as a sign of failure of the national innovation system, as the largest gap would then be for the slow-growing sectors, failing to transform R&D to economic growth. The gap between R&D and GDP is consistent with the idea of diminishing marginal returns to R&D investment in high-investing sectors. The evidence does not rule out, however, that rendering the innovation system more effective could yield better outcomes. As the findings of a gap are quite consistent over time, it seems fair to conclude that businesses have good reasons for their high R&D investments, despite not being on par with their production growth.
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Volume (Year): 40 (2011)
Issue (Month): 5 (June)
Pages: 664-672
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References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
- Richard C. Levin & Alvin K. Klevorick & Richard R. Nelson & Sidney G. Winter, 1987. "Appropriating the Returns from Industrial Research and Development," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 18(3), pages 783-832.
- Charles I. Jones, 2002.
"Sources of U.S. Economic Growth in a World of Ideas,"
American Economic Review,
American Economic Association, vol. 92(1), pages 220-239, March.
- Jones, C.I., 2000. "Sources of U.S. Economic Growth in a World of Ideas," Papers 99-29, United Nations World Employment Programme-.
- Charles I. Jones, . "Sources of U.S. Economic Growth in a World of Ideas," Working Papers 98009, Stanford University, Department of Economics.
- Dahmen, Erik, 1984. "Schumpeterian dynamics : Some methodological notes," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 5(1), pages 25-34, March.
- Francesco Lissoni & Patrick Llerena & Maureen McKelvey & Bulat Sanditov, 2007.
"Academic Patenting in Europe: New Evidence from the KEINS Database,"
KITeS Working Papers
202, KITeS, Centre for Knowledge, Internationalization and Technology Studies, Universita' Bocconi, Milano, Italy, revised Jun 2007.
- Francesco Lissoni & Patrick Llerena & Maureen McKelvey & Bulat Sanditov, 2008. "Academic patenting in Europe: new evidence from the KEINS database," Research Evaluation, Oxford University Press, vol. 17(2), pages 87-102, June.
- Francesco Lissoni & Patrick Llerena & Maureen McKelvey & Bulat Sanditov, 2008. "Academic Patenting in Europe: New Evidence from the KEINS Database," Working Papers of BETA 2008-16, Bureau d'Economie Théorique et Appliquée, UDS, Strasbourg.
- Aghion, Philippe & Howitt, Peter, 1992.
"A Model of Growth Through Creative Destruction,"
Scholarly Articles
12490578, Harvard University Department of Economics.
- Aghion, Philippe & Howitt, Peter, 1992. "A Model of Growth through Creative Destruction," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 60(2), pages 323-51, March.
- Aghion, P. & Howitt, P., 1990. "A Model Of Growth Through Creative Destruction," DELTA Working Papers 90-12, DELTA (Ecole normale supérieure).
- Aghion, P. & Howitt, P., 1989. "A Model Of Growth Through Creative Destruction," UWO Department of Economics Working Papers 8904, University of Western Ontario, Department of Economics.
- Philippe Aghion & Peter Howitt, 1990. "A Model of Growth Through Creative Destruction," NBER Working Papers 3223, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
- Aghion, P. & Howitt, P., 1989. "A Model Of Growth Through Creative Destruction," Working papers 527, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Department of Economics.
- Freeman, Chris & Louca, Francisco, 2002.
"As Time Goes By: From the Industrial Revolutions to the Information Revolution,"
OUP Catalogue,
Oxford University Press, number 9780199251056, December.
- Freeman, Chris & Louca, Francisco, 2001. "As Time Goes By: From the Industrial Revolutions to the Information Revolution," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199241071, December.
- Karl-Johan Lundquist & Lars-Olof Olander & Martin Svensson Henning, 2008. "Decomposing The Technology Shift: Evidence From The Swedish Manufacturing Sector," Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG, vol. 99(2), pages 145-159, 04.
- Grossman, G.M. & Helpman, E., 1993.
"Endogenous, Innovation in the Theory of Growth,"
165, Princeton, Woodrow Wilson School - Public and International Affairs.
- Gene M. Grossman & Elhanan Helpman, 1994. "Endogenous Innovation in the Theory of Growth," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 8(1), pages 23-44, Winter.
- Gene M. Grossman & Elhanan Helpman, 1993. "Endogenous Innovation in the Theory of Growth," NBER Working Papers 4527, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
- Malerba, Franco, 2002. "Sectoral systems of innovation and production," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 247-264, February.
- Pontus Braunerhjelm & Zoltan Acs & David Audretsch & Bo Carlsson, 2010. "The missing link: knowledge diffusion and entrepreneurship in endogenous growth," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 34(2), pages 105-125, February.
- Ejermo, Olof & Kander, Astrid, 2006. "The Swedish Paradox," Papers in Innovation Studies 2006/1, Lund University, CIRCLE - Center for Innovation, Research and Competences in the Learning Economy.
- Pavitt, Keith, 1984. "Sectoral patterns of technical change: Towards a taxonomy and a theory," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 13(6), pages 343-373, December.
- Karl-Johan Lundquist & Lars-Olof Olander & Martin Svensson Henning, 2008. "Producer services: growth and roles in long-term economic development," The Service Industries Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 28(4), pages 463-477, May.
- Anders Granberg & Staffan Jacobsson, 2006. "Myths or reality - a scrutiny of dominant beliefs in the Swedish science policy debate," Science and Public Policy, Oxford University Press, vol. 33(5), pages 321-340, June.
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text:
Grizzly Bear shows growth, in fan numbers and song repertoire
Standing on the stage of the Pabst Theater Tuesday before a single note was played, Ed Droste from Brooklyn band Grizzly Bear could see how far its fan base had come. When the band first played the Pabst, he said, tickets were available for only the lower level. On Tuesday, both the lower level and the lower balcony were filled, and there were even some folks up at the tippy top.
That's not surprising. After coalescing its lovely sound - most distinguished by angelic voices - around a gorgeous single, 2009's "Two Weeks" from breakthrough album "Veckatimest," Grizzly Bear came roaring back with last year's splendid "Shields," its grandest accomplishment to date and one of 2012's finer albums. »Read Full Article
Cold closes Oriental Theater until further notice
The cold snap has taken its toll on the boiler at the venerable 86-year-old Oriental Theater at 2230 N. Farwell Ave.
According to a spokesman for Landmark Theatres, which operates the theater, the Oriental will be closed until further notice, and at least until Thursday. »Read Full Blog Post(1)
Local TV news viewership climbs as temperatures drop
There is no thermometer to measure the number of people stuck at home watching TV because of the cold.
The Head and the Heart to headline Riverside Theater
The Head and the Heart is heading back to Milwaukee.
The Seattle-based folk rock sextet--which first impressed Milwaukee audiences with a 2011 set at Turner Hall Ballroom that outshined main act Iron & Wine--is headlining its biggest room in Milwaukee to date. The band will play the Riverside Theater April 5, with autoharp-playing singer-songwriter Basia Bulat opening. »Read Full Article
On Tap Today: Seriously, you want to go outside TODAY?
If you're going to brave the frigid weather, perhaps you should spend it inside a movie theater watching Golden Globe best picture nominee "American Hustle." Photo by Francois Duhamel. »Read Full Blog Post


text:
Photos: Stevenson Presser Regarding Carl Froch Fight
MONTREAL - Finally, after much speculation about his next opponent, International Boxing Federation (IBF) super middleweight Carl "The Cobra" Froch (30-2-0, 22 KOs), of Great Britain, is forced to defend his belt against mandatory contender Adonis "Superman" Stevenson (19-1-0, 16 KOs). Photos by Robert Levesque/AR Photozone.
In a letter from IBF representative Lindsey Tucker, dated January 2, 2013, sent to the promoters of Froch and Stevenson, both parties were invited to negotiate and Jan. 15 was imposed as the deadline. If at that time the parties were unable to reach an agreement a purse bid would be held in the IBF offices in New Jersey.
If Froch, for whatever reason, decided to withdraw from this process then it would he removed as champion and Stevenson would be invited to fight for the vacant title against the next highest-ranking available IBF challenger. If Stevenson withdrew he would be excluded from the IBF's top 10 contenders for six months and the highest-ranked available contender would replace him.
"I'm finally realizing my goal of a world championship fight, facing a great champion like Carl Froch," Stevenson said about the turn of events. "I know he's had great victories during his career, particularly against two other Quebec fighters, Jean Pascal and Lucian Bute, but I have all of the tools needed to emerge victorious in a great fight. I would obviously like the fight to take place here in Quebec, but I have no problem winning the title in England, if necessary. "
**** Stevenson. [QUOTE=shoog;12888362]Not to excuse the guy in anyway but 1998? how long ago was that, i mean **** Stevenson was around 18 at the time, can we chalk it up to youthful transgressions and let the man live his…Comment by richardt on 01-05-2013
I'm hoping for a brutal KO by Froch to take out that pathetic excuse of a human being Stevenson. I'd be even happier if Stevenson's legs do a quiver while he is prone on the canvas. Low life punk. Getting…Comment by New England on 01-05-2013
[QUOTE=ElBossHogg™;12888263]that was easy time for that ****, herad they were like under 15 too. I knew a guy they gave 98 years for here in AZ for pimping type charges.[/QUOTE] evidently i was mistaken, and he acutally served four years.…Comment by T.Horton on 01-05-2013
[QUOTE=ElBossHogg™;12889711]Stevenson just another ghetto scumbag.[/QUOTE]you're mistaken. he's a scum bag...he ain't from any ghetto that I know of.Comment by T.Horton on 01-05-2013
[QUOTE=The Weebler II;12889770]Part of me feels this way, but the guy was 21 in 1998. Everyone makes mistakes but given some of the stories coming out (like him KO-ing girls and the fact these girls did not want to become…Post a Comment - View More User Comments (30)