[as the] Radar Sweeps

It all started with the upgrade of my Garmin GNS430 to the new, WAAS-capable 430W. I flew a bunch of GPS approaches probing the new WAAS capabilities and was very satisfied. I never thought to check the ILS or glideslope functions; that’s pretty plain vanilla stuff, right? Not necessarily…

Slow to Notice, Suspect a Problem

Flying in Southern California it is not uncommon to get “last minute” vectors right outside the approach gate, and under those circumstances you wouldn’t expect to get a glideslope needle until right outside the approach gate - you are just getting established on the localizer, after all. So it took me a long time to notice that my glideslope needle was acting differently than it had, or than it should. A few times I noticed the glideslope needle either arriving late, or being twitchy once it had. This was new behavior with the 430W. This should have been, but still wasn’t, enough to get my attention.

Not until months later on a long cross country trip when I got a long straight-in on an ILS did I confirm definitively that my GS was arriving really late - in some cases inside the Final Approach Fix, necessitating a Localizer Only approach.

Tuning, Testing, Smoking Gun

On my return from that trip I started worked with Zenith Flight Support, the dealer from whom I purchased the 430W, to resolve the issue. We tried a number of things, tuning the glideslope receiver, sending it back to Garmin for factory work, all to no avail. Ultimately, inside the rudder cap Zenith found a coupler connecting the antenna to the cable that runs to the panel that was not the right coupler and was only letting a very small portion of the GS signal [I think just the highest freqs] pass through. It has been there since I have had the plane - over 4 years now. And yet, it wasn’t a “problem” until now.

Picky, Picky, Picky

Apparently the old [standard, original] GNS430 took the weak signal it got, accepted a lower strength signal than the 430W will, and made the most of it. I did have some trouble far out on some approaches but never so bad I thought “hardware problem”. I could always receive a GS needle outside the FAF. The new WAAS-enabled GNS430W is far pickier. If the signal isn’t strong enough this unit retracts the needle to indicate “no signal”. When I would get close enough to the transmitter, even my funky coupler setup provided enough signal to the 430W to make it happy. Interestingly the 430W loaner I had for a couple of weeks was able to “accept” the signal much further out. Clearly there is some variance between units.

New Antenna, Coupler Does the Trick

So we replaced the antenna - which was a little corroded - and the new one has the correct coupler built-in. Now everything works great. ;>)

Your Name, Your Work

When I was in training at the FAA Air Traffic Controller Academy in Oklahoma City in the spring of ‘77 I took a tour of the National Weather Service office next door. I’m sure I saw things that were both important and relevant to my work but somehow the only thing I remember is the plaque on the wall with the name of the then director of the NWS: Charles W. Sprinkle. Somehow that stuck.

Likewise, while reading 1 Gallon of Gas, 100 Miles - $10 Million: The Race to Build the Supergreen Car in the current issue of Wired I had the same feeling: the chief aerodynamicist at Aptera, a Carlsbad, CA startup trying to build a very fuel-efficient car is named in the article as Miles Wheeler. The guy responsible for extending the range of a low-power, high-mileage, 3-wheeled motorcycle is named Miles? And his last name is Wheeler? Really? “Miles, I’d like you to meet my friend Charles W. Sprinkle…”

Green + Green

Now I have been very happily driving my Honda Insight for the last 75,000 miles, and I have averaged just under 55 MPG. I fill up about once a month, and this means that I’m being green in two ways: environmentally and economically. When compared to a more common 22 MPG, in addition to all the CO2 I didn’t emit, I have saved about $6,000 during that time just in fuel. Not bad, but the Aptera Typ-1 will likely more than double that fuel economy.

Aptera Typ-1

It is planned to come in two flavors: all-electric and plug-in hybrid [PHEV]. The electric-only flavor is expected to have a range of about 120 miles. It is probably too early to tell what the expected “average” fuel economy will be for the PHEV version but homebrew, plug-in conversions of the Toyota Prius increase mileage significantly - folks are talking roughly 100 MPG. And yes, even when you take into account the upstream pollution from the power plants supplying the electricity for the overnight charge, CO2 emissions are reduced. Of course, if you generate the juice from PV panels on the roof there is zero upstream pollution, and zero recurring cost.

Automotive X Prize - AXP

Aptera is also competing for the AXP, a $10M prize designed to stimulate the production of “viable, clean and super-efficient cars that people want to buy.”

Gonna Get One

So this is just too good: the company and factory is just down the road, so when issues arise [they will] dealing with them shouldn’t be too painful. I still have room on the roof for additional PV panels, which will be able to power this car and probably a few others if some neighbors want to “tank up” with clean, free, abundant fuel. The PHEV is going to sell for just under $30,000 and is expected to go into production in about a year.

I just put down a deposit for an Aptera Typ-1, delivery position #824. Looks like I have some time to add the panels.

I flew some ILS approaches at CNO today to test my Garmin 430W’s glideslope receiver. Here are the 1st two approaches to CNO ILS26R. I’m going to reference video times the way you will see them in the playback frame, in terms of time-to-end.

There is a “false capture” initially, before I’m established on the approach, followed by a retraction of the GS indicator. Then [-2:10] starts a series of kinda twitchy capture attempts. It finally captures solid about 40 seconds later [-1:30]. At this point I’m still outside of DEWYE, where GS intercept is at 2100′ - I don’t get there for another minute [-:30]. Normal?

Side note: the #2 nav is “flagged” almost the whole time outside of DEWYE and then truly decided it had a signal.

The 2nd approach is pretty much the same - false capture and a couple of twitches, but 2nd time around the video is a little better:

The last clip is of an approach to SNA ILS 19R. I should be able to receive the GS at SNAKE at D10.8, but currently I’m having trouble outside about D6.5:

BTW these were taken with a Flip Video Ultra - about the size of my mobile phone, $150 on Amazon. I attached it to a table-top tripod positioned on my chest. The whole contraption hung around my neck on a bungee cord. I would not be surprised to find that I was the only guy shooting myself shooting instrument approaches like that today…

About three weeks ago I had a trip to the Bay Area for a meeting in San Jose. Back when I worked Borland Software I flew many trips in 11D up to the Bay for meetings in Cupertino and Scotts Valley. I got into the habit of flying into Marina [KOAR], a nearly deserted former Army Air Field, North of Monterey and South of Watsonville. No traffic, lots of ramp space for this 50′ wingspan, and about 10 minutes from the Enterprise rental office. Then a beautiful drive up Pacific Coast Highway.

Following a couple of morning conference calls, an hour drive out to Riverside [KRAL] to get the plane, preflight, and a short hop to Long Beach [KLGB] for some reasonably-priced fuel [in context, that is], I didn’t launch for my filed destination of OAR until just past 3:00PM. It would take me about 1+35 from get from LGB to OAR.

Nice day - sunny, crisp. It took the marine layer until about 11AM to burn off in the Southland; likely at least until then for most of the California coast on this day. The forecast for my destination area at the expected arrival time was for marginal VFR conditions - plenty good enough for an IFR arrival. Shortly after takeoff from LGB I got switched to SoCal departure. As I climbed through 800′ AGL the first controller gave me “direct LAX, cross LAX at 6000″. From there it was pretty much “as filed” - out to Ventura VOR [VTU] and then Northwest-ward, along V485 toward Fellows VORTAC [FLW]. When I got abeam Santa Barbara, level at my cruising altitude of 11,000′, the coastline was covered as far as the eye could see with a thick - almost juicy - marine layer. I decided it wouldn’t be a bad time to check and see if this same marine layer was making an earlier than forecast entrance further North as well, along that beautiful stretch of coastline between Monterey and Santa Cruz, where OAR is located.

Used to be I would have to check with Flightwatch to check the weather ahead. It goes like this:

me: “Los Angeles Center, Aero Commander 1-1-Delta request depart the frequency for 2 minutes.”

ZLA: “Commander 1-1-Delta, approved, report back.”

me [switching to FlightWatch on 122.0]: “Los Angeles FlightWatch, Aero Commander 1-1-Delta, 1-1,000, 2-0 East San Marcus, PI-REP.”

I provide a PI-lot REP-ort of current flight conditions and then - quid-pro-quo - he gives me what I want - the weather at my intended destination. And I write down the weather. And if its a crappy day I try to visualize, perhaps, the geographic extent of the heavy precipitation he can actually see on his display from the words he is speaking, and how it affects my intended route. Much better than nothing and not a bad deal, all-in, but definitely non-optimal, and frankly a distracting inconvenience if the weather you’re in at the moment sucks. It would be great to actually have the current weather, right there in the cockpit. So you don’t have to write it down. So you can check it for updates later. So you can actually see that area of heavy precip that he was talking about. Now that would be cool…

And now one can. And I do. And I love it.

On this day I wanted to know what it was like at OAR. But OAR doesn’t report weather, so I have to get weather at Monterey [KRMY], 7 mi South, and Salinas [KSNS], 8 mi East, and then interpolate and be skeptical [I’m always skeptical]. Instead of doing the FlightWatch dance to get the weather for KMRY on this day I simply tapped K-M-R-Y on a touchpad immediately to the right of my right thigh; then the same for KSNS. On this day both KMRY and KSNS were reporting 3oo’ overcast and visibility of 1/2 mile. OAR doesn’t have a precision approach and the lowest one can get is about 500′ above the ground without seeing the runway environment. And the minimum visibility is 1 mile.

So…I’m still an hour away, my destination is very likely already below minimums - for both ceiling and visibility, and the “Marina Layer” is probably still coming in and getting lower and thicker. Wow - easy call!

me: “Los Angeles center, Aero Commander 1-1-Delta would like to revise destination to Oakland, for weather. Requesting re-route via Panoche, Panoche-2 arrival.”

ZLA [5 seconds later]: “Commander 1-1-Delta, LA center, cleared to Oakland as requested.”

Having satellite weather onboard is a very substantial advantage, even here in California, where we don’t have “real” weather.

The last day - heading home now; Santa Fe to Santa Ana.

As is my practice, I filed with FSS, pre-flighted the plane, and the last thing I did before letting Ellen know we were ready to go was load the expected flight plan into the Garmin 430W. That plan, of course, is already on the “airplane computer”[gotta get a better name for that], on which I did the flight planning in the hotel. Loading the flight plan into the Garmin was uneventful, as it should be.

Through a Glass Darkly
Then I fired up the engines, turned on the avionics master and waited for the Garmin to complete its self-test, before activating the flight plan. “Hmm, kinda hard to read…I wonder if the light sensor just went South on me…no, covering that doesn’t make any difference…I can hardly read the top, the bottom is a little better…crap!…my new Garmin is biting the dust!

I got the ATIS, my IFR clearance, a taxi clearance, and went out to the end of Rwy 20 into the run-up area. The controller said, “11D advise when within 1 minute of ready to expedite release.” “Wilco, we’ll be here a few minutes.”

I went to the config menu for the display. It was on auto. I set it to manual and pushed the brightness all the way up. Marginally better. Earlier in the trip my COM2, a KX-170, had been acting up and I determined that replacing it was now near the top of the upgrade list, but not pressing, because Garmin 430W, and the 430 that preceded it, have been very reliable. Until now.

“What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?”
Then I got a MSG annunciation: “Backlight Failure”. I don’t know how the display is lit, but I’m now guessing it is by two lights and I lost the top one. When I determined months ago that I would put together an “airplane computer” [laptop, external touchscreen] to display satellite weather, rather than adding a GDL 69, one of the central reasons was redundancy. If the 430 went South on me, the logic went, I would still have GPS and weather on the airplane computer. Now I quite unexpectedly found myself more concerned with COM than Wx or NAV. I know it sounds stupid now, but I never once considered a display failure on the Garmin. When the display goes, you also effectively lose COM - you can’t see what freq you are on! I changed freqs a few times to make sure I could read what the active and standby were set to. I could, but you had to look pretty carefully and shade the display. After a bit I determined we could fly.

The leg to Lake Havasu City was smooth in the early morning air - a stark contrast to the outbound leg we flew closer to mid-day. When we landed at KHII there were dueling “follow me” carts. One from Sun Western and one from the other FBO. Thanks to Voyager’s fuel price info I followed the Sun Western cart, saving $.75/gal!

All Ahead, Bright!

Yet another surprise: on startup at KHII now the Garmin was completely backlit, on full bright. Very readable by comparison to the previous leg, but also clearly troubled. The LA center controller was overworked, frazzled and not particularly helpful. It took 20 minutes of our 1.1 hour flight just to get the clearance.

In contrast, once handed to SoCal approach they were just as busy, but cool, calm and helpful. I always get great handling from these guys. I asked for the GPS Rwy 19, even though it was “severe clear” to test as much of the Garmin as I could before sending it in for warranty repair. All was good.

Home again, home again.