Cheerful Curmudgeon

Way to go Boeing!

We have many opportunities to experience both good and bad customer service. Rarely, though, do we bump into extremes at both ends of the spectrum in the course of one technical support issue. Doing so makes both experiences all the more poignant.

I use a Garmin GPSmap 396 coupled with a hockey puck sized XM Radio receiver in my airplane. The combination gives me NEXRAD weather radar in near real-time, with my current position and course superimposed. It has proven invaluable in keeping me safe and well clear of thunderstorms. Recently, the weather got “flakey,” sometimes I would receive it and sometimes not. On an August flight back from Wisconsin, when I was flying along the front edge of a line of rain and thunderstorms, the NEXRAD radar vanished and I could not get it back. After experimenting on several follow-up flights, I determined that the problem was heat related: when the XM receiver had been on for 30-40 minutes and got hot, it stopped working.

I called Garmin and asked whether they wanted the XM receiver back with or without the GPS unit and how much it would cost to repair/replace it. The Garmin rep, for whom American English was clearly his primary language, asked what model antenna I had and I told him that it was the old, original GXM 30 and that it was almost four years old. He immediately offered to replace it with a new GXM 40 for free under warranty. (I looked it up later; the GXM 40 retails for $268.) I shipped my broken receiver to Garmin on Wednesday and had the replacement on my doorstep on Friday. That’s amazingly awesome service, Garmin. Thank you!

I just phoned XM Radio to have the old receiver removed from my account and replaced with the new receiver. I got a woman who spoke English with such a thick accent that I had trouble understanding her. She then informed me that this “service” would cost me $15. Excuse me? Garmin just replaced a very expensive piece of broken equipment at their expense and XM wants to charge me $15 to type an eight letter radio ID into their computer?!?! Talk about petty. Worse, she then tried to “up-sell” me to a lifetime music subscription for “only” $399.99. I was flabergasted but did manage to recover my voice and tell her how angry I am that, after paying them $75 per month for weather, XM has the gall to charge me  an additional $6 for music. Truly apalling.

Garmin: I have had several of your products over the years. All have performed wonderfully. This is the first time that I have had to work with your customer service and I am thoroughly impressed. You’ve got a very, very happy customer who will certainly return to purchase more of your products.

XM Radio: The aviation weather “service” that I receive from you is overpriced and the additonal charge for music is insulting. I have had to make several calls to your customer service over the last four years and every one has been, without exception, infuriating. Were there any alternative source of cockpit weather data, I would drop you in an instant.

Candy and I have talked it over and decided to build a Vans RV-7A. To make room for the RV in our lives, we are selling our 1968 Piper Arrow. Details at www.N7430J.com

I am excited about the RV-7A. It will be almost 50 MPH faster than the Arrow, simpler (fixed gear and fixed pitch prop), and equipped with the latest whiz-bang electronic flight instruments. More on that in another post (soon).

Buy my Arrow. You’ll love it and I’ll get to start building my RV! Thanks.

The reactions to the mid-air collision last month between an airplane and a helicopter over the Hudson River in New York City have me thinking about safety in airplanes and safety in cars. For those unfamiliar with the details, just before noon on August 8, a six person airplane and an eight person helicopter came together in the air over the Hudson River; the nine people on board the two aircraft died in the ensuing crash. This was a terrible tragedy and my heart goes out to the families and friends of the nine people who lost their lives.

Immediately (as in, within a couple of hours) after the accident, the calls-to-action to improve safety in the “VFR corridor,” the name of the airspace where the collision occurred, began. These calls took many forms, from the sensational TV news reporters and politicians who demanded that the VFR corridor be closed and the helicopter tourist business be shuttered to the FAA which convened a New York Airspace Working Group panel to review everything from airspace structure to pilot training to air traffic controller practices. The focus has been on safety much more than on blame, and that’s a good thing.

Compare this to the common reaction to a driving accident: If the accident is big enough to make the news, the key reporting points are a) what happened, and b) who caused it or blame. Rarely do we react to an automotive accident with an urgent need to prevent future accidents in the same place and of the same type. We may well get to this point, of course, but only after several accidents have happened. A city might install a traffic light at an intersection, for instance, but only after several accidents have occurred at the intersection.

According to the Air Safety Foundation, the August 8 collision was the first accident of this type (airplane and helicopter) over the Hudson River in ten years. It may well have been the only accident ever. What is the cultural difference between flying and driving that we demand safer flying, even after a single accident, yet we accept car accidents as the daily norm?

Pilots place safety first. The Federal Aviation Regulations stipulate biennial “flight reviews,” essentially flying tests, by FAA certificated flight instructors. Fail the review and you don’t fly until you get some training and are “passed” by the flight instructor. Beyond that, the flying culture strongly encourage all pilots to participate in on-going training such as the FAA’s WINGS Pilot Proficiency Program. This, in turn, builds on the assumptions that none of us are perfect and that all of us can learn from others’ mistakes and can become better, safer pilots. We actively seek out and study stories of bad situations, not to assess blame but to learn and improve our skills. Even more to the point, most of us regularly fly with a safety pilot, asking the safety pilot to critique our performance. I try to get up once a month, though it is sometimes as infrequently as every three or four months, with either Jack or Linda. On these flights, I expect them to be vocal with me about anything I do that is less than perfect. Some of the training is during the flight; some during a debriefing afterwards. I always come away from these flights having learned valuable lessons.

We act differently with our cars, though. Most of us are deeply offended if anyone suggests that we might need to take either a written test or a driving test when renewing our driver’s license. We never volunteer for recurrent training on driving. One of the best ways to make a friend angry is to suggest that he or she do something differently while driving. Why? I think because driving is more important to us, on a personal level, than safety. We judge that we are “safe enough” that we don’t need to stress about driving safely any more. What is most important is that we preserve our “right” to drive, pretty much at any cost.

I think our priorities are a little mixed up and I have a suggestion. First, bear with my while I share a few figures with you.

• In 2005, 43,510 people died in the US in fatal car crashes.
• That same year, another 2,699,000 people were injured in the US in car crashes.
• In 2005, the latest year for which the NTSB reports aviation statistics, 563 people died in the US in fatal aviation accidents.
• That same year, another 723 people were injured in US aviation accidents.

Consider again our reactions as a society to aircraft accidents and to traffic accidents. Now take it to a personal level: How do you react to aviation accidents versus fatal car crashes? Are your reactions congruent with the numbers of people killed and injured in each type of accident?

Here is my suggestion to improve traffic safety, to reduce the number of deaths and injuries.

1. I’m not a perfect driver. Join me in admitting that you aren’t perfect, either.
2. Get a friend to act as your safety driver for an hour. Go drive around. As you drive, talk to your safety driver about what you are seeing, what you are thinking, and how you are making your decisions. Invite your safety driver to give you constructive criticism on how you might improve your driving.

It’s that simple. Imagine how many fewer people would die if we took driving safety as seriously as we  take flying safety.

Candy and I took a day out of our Door County escape to visit Oshkosh for the AirVenture 2009 airshow. Landing on “runway” 36R was fun.

Landing at Oshkosh on 36R. It's a runway, not a taxiway. Really.

With only a day to spent, we saw the airshow and pretty much whatever we happened to wander by, such as the business end of this Thrush ag sprayer.

Thrush Ag Sprayer

Click through to visit my photo gallery of AirVenture 2009 photos.

Oh… I also downsized several of the photos to 320×240 so they work as Palm Pre wallpaper.

This is why we fly. I took these photos flying over Illinois at 5,000 feet. Make your browser full screen and click through to see the pictures large.

If you are reading this on Facebook, you won’t see the photos until you click on Cloud Dancing.

The sun set as we flew home over Illinois yesterday. Here is a small sample. These photos really look better large so make your browser window full screen and click through to the photo gallery for maximum enjoyment.

This just in from the Alliance for Aviation Across America:

The Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security recently released a report that dispels many of the myths about the security of general aviation.

In the report, DHS Inspector General Richard Skinner stated that “Although [TSA's Office of Intelligence] has identified potential threats, it has concluded that most [general aviation] aircraft are too light to inflict significant damage, and has not identified specific imminent threats from [general aviation] aircraft.”

Recognizing the great steps the aviation industry has already taken to keep our airports and airways safe, the Inspector General continued that “The current status of [general aviation] operations does not present a serious homeland security vulnerability requiring TSA to increase regulatory oversight of the industry.”

Click here to read the full story in GovExec.

Perhaps now DHS will stop treating small plane owners and pilots like we are inherently more dangerous than the people who own and drive trucks, minivans, and cars.

Julie Pukelis put a camera in front of a telescope to get this view of the scene in the river.

As I am sure you know by now, a US Airways A320 ditched into the Hudson River this afternoon, just minutes after departing from LaGuardia Airport. The accident appears to have been caused by multiple bird strikes. It is truly amazing that the simplest things, from ice to birds, can bring down our most promising machines despite our best efforts.

But, and this is huge, unlike that fateful night in 1912, today everybody lived. It looks like everybody got out of the plane to safety due to the exemplary work of the pilots, the crew, the mechanics, and the people who designed and built the plane and its safety gear.

Did you realize that the US airlines did not suffer a single passenger fatality in a crash in either 2007 or 2008? This is the first time since the airlines began flying jets, 50 years ago, that two consecutive years have passed this safely. So the next time you fly, or see an airplane, or think about someone who is flying, send some appreciative energy to the men and women who make aviation safe, the

• Pilots
• Crew
• Mechanics
• Air traffic controllers
• Designers
• Builders
• Managers

Safety is no accident.

I purchased my Sony PRS-505 ebook reader primarily to run Reader Plates. This is a set of electronic IFR approach plates or, to be technically correct about the name, the FAA (NACO) Terminal Approach Procedures. When I fly IFR (in the clouds), I use these half-page charts when taking off from or landing at an airport. For example, here is the St. Charles Municpal Airport GPS 9 Approach. Several things bother me about these charts. We kill too many trees producing them; the FAA sends me a 3″ stack of paper every 28 days, and I only subscribe to three of the 17 books in the United States set. The things are expensive; including shipping I am paying about $23 for every set of three books. The things are heavy and bulky; by far the heaviest thing in my flight bag on a cross country flight is the approach plates. And last but certainly not least, they are inconvenient; it is a royal PITA to assure that I have the books for distant states before leaving home, especially since they have to be mail ordered.

A small company just released an electronic version of the terminal approach procedures which actually makes sense to me. Reader Plates offers the entire set of approach plates, everything in the US, for a very reasonable $9.99 per month on a device which fits both my cockpit and my wallet. The Sony PRS-505 is about the size of half a sheet of paper, so it fits nicely on my kneeboard. At $299, the PRS-505 is one third the price of the eFlyBook and the $9.99 per month subscription works out to less than half the cost of the chart subscription for the eFlyBook. And I love being able to carry all the charts for the entire US in a ½” thick package.

Last week, I tried it out, flying both day and night approaches using the PRS-505 in lieu of paper. It worked great.

My first stop was at the local office supply store where I bought one of those rubber pads that you are supposed to stick on the dashboard of your car so that you can plop your cell phone on the dash and keep it from sliding onto the floor. I stuck that onto the back of the Sony Reader so that it would not slide off my kneeboard. With the pad in place, I took off into the wild blue yonder (with a safety pilot in the right seat, of course).

The screen on the Sony Reader is 6″ diagonally. Fold a sheet of paper in quarters and you will be in the ballpark. Reader Plates presents an entire approach plate on this screen and it is surprisingly readable, even with my eyes which need reading glasses. (Click on the image to see it larger.)

Reader Plates full page view

Since this is pretty small, pressing the center of the navigation wheel (lower, right corner of the PRS-505) magnifies the image, zooming in on the top half of the chart. In this mode, the image is exactly the same size as the printed approach procedures.

Reader Plates magnified view

Pressing the center of the navigation wheel a second time switches to a magnified view of the bottom half of the chart. Pressing a third time cycles back to the full page view. Reader Plates has a larger set of screen snapshots on their web site.

This actually works out quite well for me. When I fly an approach, I prep by looking at the whole page and getting an impression of the overall route which I will be flying. After that, I really only look at the bottom half of the chart, constantly reminding myself of the MDA or DH. I leave the lateral navigation to the GPS with its moving map display and the CDI needle.

The Sony Reader takes its time doing things when you press buttons, so it requires several seconds (and several button pushes) to navigate from one chart to another. This is generally not a problem except after landing, if you need to quickly switch from the approach plate to the airport diagram. In this one case, you may find it handy to have the airport diagram on paper.

Having initiated Reader Plates with my day practice approach and a night IFR flight from Kalamazoo back to St. Charles, I am thrilled with the combination of the Sony Reader and Reader Plates. I have already cancelled my subscription to the paper terminal approach procedures and plan to use the PRS-505 on a 2,200 mile cross country trip in a couple of weeks.

There are several concerns about electronic charts, especially for the landing phase of flight which is particularly critical. I have given them some serious thought since I am kind of fond of being alive:

• What if the battery dies? The Sony Reader uses eInk technology so it only uses power when you change pages; when simply displaying an image, it consumes absolutely no electricity. With an advertised battery life of 7,500 “page turns,” I don’t worry about running out of batteries during a flight.
• What if the PRS-505 dies? It is unlikely since the Sony Ready is pretty durable and, other than the switches, has no moving parts. But if the PRS-505 did expire mid-flight, it would not be the end of the world if I had to fly an approach without the chart. My plane is equipped with a KLN94 IFR GPS and that has a database of all approach procedures. Beyond that, I would need someone on the ground to tell me the MDA or DH for the approach, and that would be a hassle, but I would get safely to the runway.
• But the Sony Reader does not have a light. Neither do the paper charts that it is replacing.

If you are an IFR pilot, give Reader Plates a serious look. I think you will like what you see.