Pilot Mike’s Weblog

I feel very fortunate to work for a company that allows dads to take a month off to spend time with their new kids. After my wife spent 12 weeks at home, it was my turn as primary care giver for a month with my baby daughter. Between feeding and playing, I’ve had much more time this past month to compose blog posts and get to know some other pilots on the web.

Today, via Twitter, I was introduced to the Girls With Wings organization (Follow them @GirlsWithWings). This organization seeks to introduce girls to aviation at a young age and encourages them to follow their dreams.

“Instead of encouraging our girls to wait for their knights in shining armor, how about encouraging them to explore the night in their shiny airplane?”

To learn more about Girls with Wings, visit their web site or their parent organization site, Very Important Pilots, LLC

For over a year, I’ve hosted the KOJC feed over at LiveATC.net. I know there are several people who listen regularly as I have seen the feed appear several times in the Top 50 stream list. I would like to get your feedback on some proposed changes based on my monitoring of the feed over the past month.

In a nutshell here is what I’m proposing: 1, removing the High Altitude ARTCC frequencies and 2, adding some of the area Low Altitude ARTCC frequencies.

[Read the rest of this entry...]

I have a confession to make — I love to listen to Air Traffic Control (ATC), even if I’m not in the cockpit. Sometimes driving to work, I will visualize/audibilize communications to ATC as if I were in the air. (It’s also a big hit with my 3 year old). Enough of my personal issues — with the release of BlackBerry OS 4.3/4.5 and higher, it is now possible to listen to live ATC on your BlackBerry as long as you have some type of data service/coverage (EDGE/WiFi/3G, Even GPRS/1XRTT will work).

I have a BlackBerry Bold 9700 running BlackBerry OS v5.0 with T-Mobile so my instructions will be specific for T-Mobile users, however, I’m sure it will work with other carriers and newer BlackBerry OS releases as well, however, the procedure might need to be tweaked slightly. Let me know if you find something that differs on your model.

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In early March, I was excited to learn about a new course from Sporty’s that focuses on modern autopilots. I finally got a chance to watch the video and share some of my thoughts.

The new Sporty’s video short course titled Pilot’s Guide to Modern Autopilots highlights some of the differences, and similarities, of both the Garmin GFC-700 and the S-Tec 55X; two of the most popular autopilots in airplanes today. [Read the rest of this entry...]

The July 11 edition of AOPA ePilot had an article indicating that AOPA was able to obtain the radar data and voice communications of a March 21st incident involving an F-16 pilot flying in close formation with the pilots of a Pilatus PC-12 and a Beechcraft Premier jet.

The GA aircraft were flying through an active military operations area (MOA); however, center controllers had no method to communicate with military controllers in real time.

Besides the fact that this F-16 pilot did something completely dangerous, there is a major opportunity for improvement in ATC communications here. Is anyone else surprised that the ARTCC was not able to talk directly to controllers for these military aircraft?!? I fully support AOPA’s recommendation for the FAA to develop a method for center controllers to communicate with military controllers in real time.

Take a look at the video as the radar echos show on up on top of each other. The radio traffic playing while the radar echos paint will send chills down your back!

Be safe out there folks!

This weekend I was taking a look at the latest Logbook Pro Newsletter from NC Software, Inc. and it looks like the gang has a major overhaul in the works for its popular electronic logbook software — just not for another year. The newsletter states that the public beta is not targeted for release until late 2008.

Read all the details after the jump… [Read the rest of this entry...]