Sunday 27 April 2014

28 Hours of Flight

Ok, so I'm sure you probably all noticed that I had a bit of an Easter break but I'm back in Sheffield now trying to prepare for exams in just over a month.

Anyway, I'm not trying to think too much about exams for now, instead my first Arduino switch box for Flight sim is nearly finished (a few more things I need to get tomorrow but then it should be done so I'll post about that soon). Now, I'm sure anyone that read my last post will remember my 'project', well the title of the post gives it away a bit...



 








I am planning to do a sponsored flight (on flight sim) from Vancouver to Vodochody airfield in the Czech Republic. Sound easy? Well it would be but the plan is to fly it in an L-39 Albatross jet trainer with no auto-pilot and a maximum range of around 700 miles. Fortunately 700 miles is just about enough to run the 'prop' route for the North Atlantic stopping in Northern Canada, Greenland, Iceland and then Scotland.

You may ask why I would do it in an aircraft that isn't really capable of the flight but the simple reason is that the 3rd of August this year will mark the 5th anniversary of the Lotus Simulations L-39, an aircraft often flown by the ATC Magic group of which I am a part. The aircraft has also been the basis of the route, I wanted the flight to be long and challenging, else why would anyone sponsor me to do it? The real aircraft was built by Aero Vodochody in the Czech Republic (No prizes for guessing where they are based) and the designer of the flight simulator X version lives in Vancouver.



 






 










So the final question is what am I fundraising for? Well my Air Cadet squadron (1206 (Mercian)) is currently fundraising for a flight simulator and what better way of fundraising for one by using my own to fly online with some friends (at least for parts) of a flight to celebrate an aircraft we all love.

That's it for now, like, comment, share, subscribe and generally interact in whatever way you choose.
I'll be back in about a week (fingers crossed) with a working Arduino switch box for flight sim.

Friday 4 April 2014

MH370: The End (For Now)

Firstly, apologies from me for my sudden stop in reporting on MH370, I have a half written post that I meant to publish over a week ago and didn't finish it before it became fairly irrelevant. I've also started to work on a little 'project' which has been taking up plenty of time. I will probably give some details on in a few weeks when I have more than just a plan.

What happened to MH370?                    What is this 'project'?

Anyway, I stopped posting on MH370 because I was trying to formulate an opinion and disregard some conspiracies using 'fact'. I got to a point where I felt this was impossible because there has been very little in the way of fact on the incident. One would expect to get facts from people like the BBC, however they did what many other media sources decided to do and felt a need to report anything they could find. With the lack of actual facts this reporting was mainly conspiracies. I simply got tired of reading things and trying to post them and fit them into a scenario before they were denied the day after. I was also becoming irritated by the fact that many things that were reported were technically wrong anyway (more understandable by the majority of people but still wrong). In the past few weeks I have noticed that the aviation industry as a whole doesn't seem to think people will understand what is going on with a lot of things, so they use vague terms like 'technical fault' instead of explaining which for most people would be fairly quick and easy.

There has been plenty of media produced by plenty of people on MH370, I no longer feel that adding to it will be of much use. In the future I will try to revisit MH370, but only when there is some physical evidence (bits of plane!) that has been pulled from the ocean. As a final couple of notes on MH370, the arc that they are saying the aircraft had to be on was a truly extraordinary use of technology, I won't go into detail but someone was certainly doing a good job. Finally (actually the end of MH370 (from me)) my thoughts and prayers continue to be with the families and I can't imagine what they must be going through, but pointing fingers at Boeing isn't the way forward at the moment.

To conclude this quick(ish) post I will be in touch soon with details on my 'project' if it's going ahead, as well as a couple more posts if I ever get round to writing them.