Pilot Mike’s Weblog

Yesterday was a big day for us voice geeks at work. We did both a 7.1(5) to 8.6(2a) migration on Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM) and an 8.0(3) to 8.5(3) migration on UCCE. This upgrade was the last in several days of upgrades to get to the most recent releases on these products. The CUCM upgrade went well (the 8.6 install process is much different than other CUCM releases, but it’s documented well). The UCCE upgrade also went fine, well, until we started to test call routing to agents…

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This post is a deviation from my typical aviation topics towards a problem experienced in my work life. In my day job, I do not fly airplanes, I work as a Network Engineer where I work on a team that supports data and voice network infrastructure components for a company in town with a global presence. If you have said or heard the saying, “the network is slow”, I work on the team that handles redirects those problem reports daily.

This morning started off with a trouble report that outbound calls to our external conference bridge number were resulting in a “fast busy” after 2-3 minutes of being on a call. Of course there also happened to be a corporate wide “all managers” meeting this morning that was using the bridging service which increased the urgency greatly. Upon testing, it was easily reproducible. Sure enough, the call would go “fast busy” at about 2 minutes 53 seconds.

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Today I did the second of two flights with a new instructor (to me) to complete an Instrument Proficiency Check (IPC). I did not bring a cockpit audio recorder with me so I had to go “harvest” what made it from the LiveATC.net audio archive. I pretty much got most of the departure audio from KOJC and the audio on the last leg returning to KOJC. There are radio calls that are missing just due to the nature of how scanners work and the number of frequencies scanned on the KOJC LiveATC.net feeder.

This instrument practice flight was 1.5 hours. We did four approaches including a hold over the TOP VOR. The route of this flight was KOJC -> KTOP (LOC BC 31) -> KLWC (VOR-A) -> KIXD (GPS 19) -> KOJC (LOC 18). Overall I was happy with my radio calls. I was a bit detracted setting up the approach on the G1000 when I made my call to KOJC for the LOC 18 approach, you will hear it in there towards the middle.

This audio was edited to trim out the long delays and non-essential transmissions, but the content of the transmissions was left unaltered.

Next time, I’ll bring my digital audio recorder.

(Flash Plug-in Required)

You can also download the audio here [MP3]

Today LiveATC.net posted to their Twitter account saying they had started beta testing their mobile browser support. As an avid BlackBerry user, I was happy to have a possible alternative to “hacking” the LiveATC.net mobile support on the BlackBerry.

According to the Twitter post the following browsers are supported at this time: iPhone/iPod Touch, Android 2.0+ & Blackberry Bold. The mobile URL is: m.liveatc.net

Testing with my BlackBerry Bold 9700 performed well! The interface is very thin/clean and you can search and browse the same feeds that are already available on the site. With single click you can start streaming any selected feed.

Thanks to this new mobile browser support, I can now delete my dozens of LiveATC.net bookmarks that I had created manually for my favorite ATC feeds.

If you have a supported phone, give it a try. I would love to hear your experience.

I’ve been flying the Garmin G1000 platform since my first flight in 2006 and it seems that every time I fly, I discover some new feature or function.

In this post, I will attempt to summarize some tips/tricks. This is in no way a substitute for a checkout on the G1000 platform with a CFI. There are lots of great G1000 training courses out there which will help you learn much more about the system, but here are a few of my quick tips. [Read the rest of this entry...]

If you were near Kansas City yesterday, it was a perfect day to get some “actual” IMC (Instrument Meteorological Conditions) time logged. We had a cold front slide Southeast in the morning leaving us with temperatures in the 50s and 60s F (10-15 C). The front left a low level cloud deck from about 1000 feet AGL (Above Ground Level) to 3500 feet AGL (several broken layers above) and there was light rain/mist. Below the overcast, the visibility was 7-10 SM (Statute Miles). A great IMC day for doing some approaches.

Late this afternoon, I was listening to the KOJC feed over at LiveATC.net, and I overheard a pilot struggling with an approach into Johnson County Executive Airport (KOJC). As I listened and thought about it, there were several things (good and bad) that could be shared from his experience.

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