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Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Brazilian Adventure - Summary

Airplane

I did not really have to go to Brazil for the delivery of the Embraer Phenom 100 -- JetQuik demonstrated that they could have done it very professionally on their own -- but it was a once in a lifetime opportunity. No doubt about it, this was an educational experience. Although a somewhat experienced pilot with 500+ hours of flying, that was a drop in the bucket compared to what I learned over the course of nearly ten days with Bill and Mark and the Embraer team. Reading a great deal about the Phenom was informative but nothing compared to spending a week in the hangar and 15+ hours in flight. It is an incredibly well engineered airplane and I will have more comments on the technology aspects of it in future posts.

After arriving in Connecticut from Ft. Lauderdale, Bill and Mark took the Phenom to Stevens Aviation in Dayton, Ohio where it is undergoing some enhancements. Embraer had thought of just about everything but not quite everything, especially in the areas of collision avoidance systems, air-to-ground communications, and audio/video. The interior walls of the plane have to be removed and a half-dozen wiring harnesses have to be installed. The FAA has to inspect and approve every minute detail. The plane will return to Connecticut before the middle of November. Just so happens I will be in Ohio at that time for a board meeting and will return with the Phenom.

After yet another FAA inspection, the Phenom will be put into "service" with Diamond Air Charters, Inc., a charter aviation company in Danbury. The plane will be made available to anyone through flyDiamond.com. Federal Aviation Regulation Part 135 provides stringent standards -- above and beyond what private ownership requires -- to insure excellent safety, properly trained and experienced pilots, and regular inspections of all operational aspects of the aircraft and the business. Will the demand be there? Remains to be seen but I believe it will. The VLJ -- very light jet or "microjet" -- fills a niche that is getting harder and harder to fill by normal commercial aviation. The market segment I am referring to is traveling between small and medium sized towns and cities.

If you need to fly between San Francisco and New York City, you can not beat commercial airlines -- as of this writing $242 round trip with one stop. On the other hand if you want to go from Danbury, Connecticut to Roanoke, Virginia is costs $904 and takes seven and a half hours plus the time to drive to Laguardia and be there in time to park and get through security. In other words it takes a whole day to get there. The Phenom can go direct from Danbury to Roanoke in 80 minutes. Admittedly it is much more expensive, so it comes down to how much is your time worth. For many busy business executives their time is worth a lot. Being able to be in Roanoke in time for coffee, make a presentation, close a deal, and be home for dinner is very good from both a business and personal point of view. Roanoke is a random example -- there are more than 5,000 general aviation airports, most of which are not accessible to commercial aviation but are accessible to very light jets. The U.S. Congress put a wet towel on aviation temporarily but there is another side to the story. See No Plane No Gain.

t was a pleasure to share the Brazilian Adventure in JetBrief and patrickWeb. Below you can find links to each of the stories and a printable document that includes all the stories.

Day 1 - Flight to Brazil
  Day 2 - Intro to Sao Jose dos Campos
  Day 3 - Test flight and barbecue
  Day 4 - Squawks and the FAA
  Day 5 - FAA Redux
  Day 6 - Campos do Jordao
  Day 7 - Geocaching
  Day 8 - Departure and fuel
  Day 9 - Caribbean islands
  Day 10 - Florida to Connecticut
  Trip Summary
  Printable version including all the stories

Aviation, Travels October 27, 2009 03:44 PM

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Brazilian Adventure - Day 10

Airplane

On the morning of Day 10 the three member crew -- Captain Bill, Flight Engineer Mark, and assistant navigator John -- departed Fort Lauderdale - Hollywood International Airporton the last leg of our 5,000 mile journey and climbed to 41,000 feet in about a half hour. From that point, we were able to fly non-stop to Danbury, Connecticut (KDXR) and land with 493 pounds of fuel on board. The range and performance of the Embraer Phenom 100 far exceeded my expectations. At cruise we were burning 76 gallons of fuel per hour. By aviation standards this is very efficient. Our speed varied but likely averaged above 375 mph.

The winds aloft were highly variable with a constant crosswind from the west that reached as high as 137 knots. At times, we had a headwind component, and at times a tailwind component, with the overall average probably netting out to zero. However, the strong crosswind component required that the plane crab into the wind by as much as 19 degrees. This meant we were tracking northbound over the ground with our nose pointed west. Airplanes like to fly straight and the significant crab angle is not good for efficiency, making the non-stop performance all the more impressive.Once we got to the New York area, there were quite a few vectors due to traffic. We experienced moderate turbulence as we came down from high altitude and the winds on the field were gusting at more than 30 miles per hour. It was quite bouncy, but Captain Bill greased the plane onto the ground very smoothly. The Phenom 100 -- tail # N784JP -- continued on to Dayton, Ohio where it will spend a few weeks at Stevens Aviation for the installation of some additional features.

Speaking of Captain Bill, I must say that the services, advice, flight planning, and piloting skills provided by Bill Minkoff and Mark Stear of JetQuik were superb. I got to know them really well during our extended (partly unplanned) stay in Sao Jose dos Campos. On a scale of 1 to 10, I would rate them an 11. There is much to share about what happened between Day 1 and Day 10. Stay tuned.

There are quite a few pictures and movies of Embraer people and jets in the Picasa Web Album - there are many more and at some point I will get them organized. Note that the Phenom tail # of the plane we flew back was PT-TGX for the first month or so of it's life. (All Brazilian airplanes have a tail # starting with PP, PR, PT or PU. All American airplanes start with N, dating back many years to the Air National Guard.) An alcohol wipe of the engine covers on October 1 (Day 4) removed the PT-TGX letters and revealed the permanent tail # of N784JP.

Aviation, Travels October 11, 2009 11:06 AM

Sunday, October 4, 2009

Brazilian Adventure - Day 1

Airplane It was a great summer and now it seems so long ago. September was a blur with board meetings, charitable events, a high school reunion, the marriage of one of my sons, a trip to Demo in San Diego with a stopover along the way in Telluride with some friends, and then the business trip to Brazil. I would not have predicted that e-tirement would have led to business in Brazil. The origin goes back to 1972 when I got my pilot's license. The interest in aviation was somewhat dormant for a few decades but like motorcycling it came roaring back years later.

The re-kindled interest lead to an investment a couple of years ago in a small aviation charter business in Danbury, Connecticut called Diamond Air Charters. The company started a dozen years ago with one airplane and now has six. Although getting a black eye from Congress and car companies, chartering aircraft can add tremendous convenience and cost effective transportation for busy executives, especially when it comes to destinations that have general aviation airports -- there are 5,300 of them. A major change in the economic model of charter aviation is about to enter the picture with the emergence of a new category of aircraft called "very light jets" or VLJ's. The new jets will typically seat two pilots plus four passengers, can fly up to 41,000 feet at more than 400 mph like big jets, are very quiet, and are highly fuel efficient compared to prior generations of aircraft. The leading producer of the new planes will likely be Embraer. The name means "a Brazilian aerospace company" and it is headquartered in Sao Jose dos Campos, Brazil.

Check-in for the flight to Sao Paulo at JFK was uneventful although it could have been much more automated. A swipe of the finger or a vascular scan could have validated that it was me and then the online reservation could have been confirmed and an electronic message sent to the gate to be followed by a second biometric authentication. In the future I expect that we will be able to go directly to the gate, authenticate and board. Security was rigorous as usual and I knew the pound of oxiniium that makes up my artificial knee would set off the alarm. The body check was easy but the "please remove your laptop" step proved more difficult. What is a laptop? I removed the ThinkPad as usual but the Kindle and Kindle DX were still in my backpack. Are they laptops? They surely are computers -- the person doing the scanning said he believed I had a DVD player. That must be what the scan looked like. I also had a GPS, a pedometer, a Sony HDCam, an iPod Nano, and a few other electronic gadgets in the bag. None of them are "laptops". The line of demarcation will get more and more blurred moving forward.

My first trip to Brazil was in 2004 when I visited Salvador, Bahia for an IT conference. It was very beautiful there but my visit was just an overnight stay to give a speech. Today's flight was to Sao Paulo, Brazil where I would be spending at least four very full days -- no trips to the beach. Brazil is the fifth largest country in the world, with nearly 200 million people and 4,655 miles of coastline and it is the largest national economy in Latin America and the tenth largest economy in the world. Brazilian exports are booming, with major export products including coffee, automobiles, soybeans, iron ore, orange juice, steel, ethanol, textiles, footwear, corned beef, electrical equipment and aircraft. It is the latter product that brought me here. Stay tuned.

Aviation, Gadgets, Travels October 4, 2009 04:08 PM

Saturday, September 5, 2009

Civil War

Civil War The summer would not be complete without reaching the goal of finding 100 geocaches since we started geocaching in 2003. I had mentioned "clever" in the last post and today I found yet another example of clever thinking by some very dedicated people in Pennsylvania. There were two multicaches that I was fortunate to be able to find. They were both in Sterling Township which is an area I know pretty well and enjoy motorcycling through. The first part of the ride for both caches was at North 41 20.477 West 75 23.354 which turned out to be the South Sterling Township Historical Society.

Just outside the building -- fortunate since the museum itself was closed -- there was a wooden sign which contained the Honor Roll of local heroes from the Civil War. There were nearly fifty listed. The first hero was the first on the list and the other was the last of those ending in "L". The next step was to enter the latitude and longitude of each resting place -- one at the Hometown Cemetery, the other at the Zion Cemetery -- to find the caches. In both cases the challenge was to find the tombstone and then go 40 feet in one case and 60 feet in the other case in a certain direction. It was quite interesting to look for the correct tombstone and in the process I saw many that were roughly 150 years old. Some were damaged by the decades of wind and rain and were not readable. I was fortunate to find both cleverly hidden caches and sign the logbooks.

The geocache owners reported that the first hero served with the Salem Independents for 3 years, joined June 5, 1861, and mustered out June 17, 1864. The second hero fought with the 2nd Heavy Artillery Pennsylvania Volunteers. He was born in 1819, enlisted at the young age of 45 and was discharged January 29, 1866. He passed away in 1905 at the age of 86.

The loss of life was incredible. At least 618,000 Americans died in the Civil War, and some experts say the toll reached 700,000. The number that is most often quoted is 620,000. At any rate, these casualties exceed the nation's loss in all its other wars, from the Revolution through Vietnam.

Hiking, Motorcycles, Travels September 5, 2009 08:33 PM

Sunday, August 16, 2009

One Summer Night Doo Wop

Doo Wop singer The day started out with a jet ski ride up the lake followed by a motorcycle ride to search for a geocache whose location had stymied me for the last few attempts. I had not read carefully enough that the latitude and longitude in the geocache description were for the parking area at the the Carlton Drake Park in Newfoundland, not for the location of the geocache. The Three Flags geocache actually has latitude and longitude of 7BeH Ar.CHo 74Re HO.AmN. Look like gibberish? I thought so too until I looked at the work done by Dmitri Mendeleev. A very clever puzzle had been created. I was happy to find the cache once I had solved the puzzle.

Later in the afternoon we drove down to Mt. Pocono Municipal Airport to meet some friends who flew in from Connecticut to join us for the One Summer Night Doo Wop Extravaganza in Stroudsburg. at the Sherman Theatre. This was my second visit to Stroudsburg, a small Northeast Pennsylvania town near Interstate 80 not far from the Delaware Water Gap. Parking on Main Street was no problem and the Gaelic dinner at the Siamsa Irish Pub was outstanding.

I love classical music concerts, but Doo Wop is a close second -- at the time they always seem superior to any kind of concert. Last night's concert featured Barbara Harris & The Toys ("A Lover's Concerto"), Sammy Sax & The MD’s, The Del Vikings ("Come Go with Me" ), Vito Picone & The Elegants ("Little Star"), and a fantastic local group called Joey & the T-Birds.

The Origins of Doo Wop are debated but most would agree that it evolved from a merging of pop, gospel, blues, jazz and swing elements in the late 1940's and early 50's. Doo Wop music is innocent, joyous, romantic and, some would say, almost spiritual. Doo Wop is vocal group harmonizing at it's best.

Watching Doo Wop performing groups on stage is inspiring -- these senior citizens are professional and proud. Their voices have been preserved for more than fity years. They have a glitter in their eye and a spring in their step. I admit that I choke up listening to them. A little arithmetic can quickly show that most of the performers were 60+ and some may have been 70+. Some looked it, some did not. All of them had great voices and rhythm. If you look at their concert schedules on the web sites you can see that they are performing almost constantly -- one group claimed 208 concerts last year. Why are they doing this? Why don't they stop and retire? It is possible some lived past their means or had not invested in their future during the hay days and now need the money. Others may do it out of loyalty to other members of their group. Some may not know what else to do. Most however, are probably doing it because they love it. You could see the sparkle in their eyes and the rhythm in their step. As the audience raved, the performers were inspired, and the cycle continued. It was a great night. Thankfully, our friends had a safe albeit very late flight back to New England.