Blogs and Advertising

The FTC has been studying the relationship between blogging and advertising for some time and just a couple of weeks ago published their “Final Guides Governing Endorsements, Testimonials“. The FTC really has their hands full trying to deal with the scammers and spammers out there — unfortunately, there are a large number of people out there who want to invade our privacy and bombard us with advertising, much of it fraudulent. The focus of this latest announcement is on the not so subtle cases where bloggers conceal their relationships.

When I started blogging in 1998, my postings were what I called “reflections” — experiences or opinions in various hobby areas. I would say most postings back then were from bloggers who were sharing information on technical topics. What later emerged was a group of bloggers who were experts on specific products or services. We all know people who seem to know much more than average about photography or how to use Netflix or whatever. Companies mostly ignored blogging in the early years but eventually they figured out that some of the bloggers were actually subject matter experts and equally important they were “influencers”. People may not trust the company web site about XYZ digital cameras but they completely trusted “Phil’s Photography Blog”. This lead to companies paying close attention to these expert blogs and providing them with lots of information to insure the blogger had the facts. Then companies began to see the blogs as an advertising opportunity and they would put ads on the blogger site and pay the blogger for showing the ads.

Paid ads lead to paid fees or stipends to help support the blogger. Cynics might say that as the bloggers came to be dependent on this new source of income they may have lost their objectivity and independence. Perhaps their product reviews were no longer unbiased? That is the focus of the FTC — extreme cases where there is significant money flowing but no disclosure by either the company or the blogger.

Disclosure is a good thing. For many businesses, the imposition of Sarbanes-Oxley and the associated disclosures that are required has become quite a burden in time, effort, and cost. For a blogger, however, disclosure is easy. When I started patrickWeb back in 1995 I added a disclosure page about the web site with a visible link on the home page. I updated it from time to time, most recently in 2005. The patrickWeb disclosure page describes my key affiliations, information policy, and privacy policy.

Brazilian Adventure – Summary

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

Tags: Aviation, brazil, embraer, faa, JetBrief, phenom

Brazilian Adventure – Day 10

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.

Tags: Aviation, brazil, embraer, phenom

Brazilian Adventure – Day 9

A lot of flying would take place on this day, starting out from Belem, which we were all happy to leave and heading northwest along the coast of Brazil to our first stop which was at Georgetown, Guyana. We passed over the country of Suriname on the way.  Suriname is the only Dutch-speaking region in the Western Hemisphere that is not a part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Georgetown is the capital and largest city of Guyana and it is situated on the Atlantic Ocean coast. Nicknamed the “Garden City”, Georgetown would be our launching point into the Caribbean. Now that we were out of Brazil the fuel prices began to get better.

The flight to St. Marteen – about 185 miles east of Puerto Rico —  was over the ocean but never far from an island — hundreds of them. Think of all the famous vacation spots and we flew over all of them. There have also been some famous movies and pictures of very large airplanes landing just barely above the beach at St. Maarten. Our landing was not that dramatic but it was a beautiful sight to see and Captain Bill greased the Phenom onto the runway as usual. The best part about St. Maarten was the fuel price — $2.55 per gallon, less than half of what we paid in Brazil. 

Taking off over the beach we headed straight for Florida 41,000 feet. It was hard to make out which island was which but the Bahamas were down there for sure. We landed in Ft. Lauderdale early in the evening and began the import, immigration, and customs processes. The customs agent looked the plane over but much to our surprise he did not go aboard and inspect. Once inside an agent requested passports and asked if anyone had a visa. Our friend and Brazilian pilot, Captain Rafael Silva did and after presenting it he was accosted by a highly uninformed, rude, and antagonistic customs agent.  There was something the agent did not like about the documentation and he berated Rafael for no reason and threatened him with fines and delays. I was so thankful to be back in America but highly embarrassed that such a crude person wore a uniform of the U.S. Government. The despicable treatment put a chill on the thrill of being back home. After the rants were over we loaded our bags into the Hilton van and headed to the hotel. We celebrated the return to the U.S. at the Crab Shack and introduced Rafael to something they don’t have in Brazil — Keywest Conch chowder.

Tomorrow’s posting will be a summary of the trip. Stay tuned.

Tags: Aviation, brazil, conch chowder, embraer, key west, phenom

Brazilian Adventure – Day 8

It was good to check out of the Caesar Business hotel for the second, and hopefully, last time. Our luck did indeed turn the corner. All the squawks were cleared. The tail number had been transformed (see photos) and was ready to be inspected for airworthiness. The gentlemen from ANAC arrived on time and completed their inspection by noon. There was a delay in getting the over-flight permit from Rio but we had it by 2:30 PM. The Embraer team provisioned the plane with some sodas and snacks. The baggage was loaded. The only remaining step was to purchase fuel.

Jet fuel prices are volatile — down 6% from a year ago but up 10% from a month ago. The prices are also somewhat unpredictable so it is a good idea to use a fuel program such as Colt International to get pre-negotiated prices. Colt can get the price and provide you with a fuel authorization so that when you arrive somewhere the price is already set and the purchase is placed on your Colt card. Colt is international but the airport in Sao Jose dos Campos does not recognize them. In fact they don’t accept any credit cards — cash only. The in thing currently is to say the U.S. dollar is weak but if you are outside of the U.S. people seem to like the dollar very much — in fact insist on it. With a plane ready to head to the U.S. and only one fuel provider at the airport you can really appreciate competition and know what happens with the lack thereof.

We took off around 4 PM and headed for 41,000 feet and straight to Brazilia, the capital city of Brazil. By the time we got to the FBO, the Petrobras fuel truck was waiting for us. Captain Bill and Captain Rafael Silva, who speaks Portugese, got into a discussion with the fuel truck driver and colleagues but then with a supervisor. We had been told by Colt that we had a fuel authorization but the gentlemen from Petrobras said they never heard of Colt and that their price was north of $6 per gallon and they only accepted cash — U.S. dollars. Captain Bill pointed to a Shell fuel truck across the runway and the supervisor knew what he meant. The Petrobras truck pulled out and the Shell truck pulled up to take their place. The price was more than $1 per gallon lower. This is another reason to have a delivery consultant like JetQuik along — they have seen this movie before.

The flight from Brazilia would be the longest leg of the trip — more than three hours. It started out smoothly but we then entered unexpected and heavy icing. Very heavy even by account of the two heavily experienced captains up front. It was exciting to watch the deicing boots expand and contract and comforting to know well the Embraer engineered deicing equipment worked. I certainly did not expect to see the boots in action on the first day of flight. Belem is a large city on the banks of the Amazon estuary. The city was founded in 1616 and was the first European colony on the Amazon. The giant river is a tiny bit shorter than the Nile but is definitely the largest river in the world by all other measures. At some points in the season it has a width of more than 120 miles. It is not the size that has resulted in there being no bridges over the river — engineers could certainly design one. The issue is that the rainforest is so intense that there are no roads and cities that a bridge would connect.

Belem undoubtedly has many treasures worth visiting but for transient pilots the city was not a joy — far from it. The good news was that the FBO had received the Colt fuel authorization so although we did not know the price we were paying we knew it was pre-negotiated by Colt and would be billed to the Colt card. The four of us loaded our bags into a small taxi and made our way over the most pot-holed road I have ever encountered. The drive was a half-hour or so with many red lights. At each one the driver stepped on it! Turns out that stopping at a light is an invitation to thugs to attack. The Hilton was claimed to be the best hotel in the city but the stench upon entering the lobby was a big turn-off and the beds reminded me of my days at Fort Bragg in the U.S. Army forty years ago. It was 11 PM and although we had had no dinner, for some reason no one had much of an appetite.

Tomorrow would begin the island hopping through the Caribbean. Stay tuned.

Tags: Aviation, brazil, embraer, Fort Bragg, phenom, U.S. Army

Brazilian Adventure – Day 7

No trip away from home is complete without looking for a geocache. According to geocaching.com, there are 130 in the State of Sao Paulo and several within a few miles of the hotel. The one I set out to find is called A Grande Árvore – São José dos Campos and it was less than a mile from the hotel — the way the crow flies. If you are not familiar with the area and don’t have good street-level maps, things can be tricky. There might be a river with no bridge between you and the destination.

I headed out from the hotel with the geocaching app on the iPhone. The walk turned out to be several miles including crossing a six-lane highway and walking through a number of neighborhoods that may have been dangerous. I finally turned a corner and immediately knew that the big beautiful tree a couple of blocks away was the spot. Was the cache hidden up in the branches of the tree? Unfortunately, the description and the hint were in Portugese and the passersby did not speak English. I was ready to give up when an elderly couple came by. They interpreted the hint on the iPhone. It said the cache was hidden among the rocks at the base of the tree on the southwest side. I switched over to the iPhone’s compass and then went to the spot. The huge roots of the tree with small rocks scattered at the base made an excellent hiding place, but alas I could find nothing.

I have had disappointments in not finding cleverly hidden caches before, but have found 102 of them since 2003. It was very frustrating to not find this one – I know I was at the right spot. There was a bottle of water where the hint said the cache should be. It is possible I was inept at finding it but I had a suspicion that the cache had been stolen. I posted a DNF (did not find) a geocaching.com. The next day the owner of the cache posted something in Portugese. I don’t know what it said but the symbol used and the line through the cache name indicated that “This cache is temporarily unavailable”. That is code for “stolen”. I could not help but wonder if any government aviation entities were involved in this expedition. The good news is that I got a lot of exercise.

At dinner Bill, Mark and I discussed flight planning and how the day would go on Monday (Day 8). It was time for luck to turn our way. Stay tuned.

Tags: Aviation, brazil, embraer, geocaching, gps, phenom

Brazilian Adventure – Day 6

After simmering down a bit over dinner following the unbelievable bureacracy trap of the day, Bill, Mark and I decided to take a ride on Saturday up to Campos do Jardao and check out what things were like at the higher elevations of the State of Sao Paulo. The ride was at least an hour and a half but well worth doing.

Campos do Jordão has a population around 50,000 but surges to four times that during their Winter vacation time (July). The city is 5,000 feet above sea level and has an economy based primarity on tourism. It reminded me of Telluride, Colorado and of European ski villages. The architecture was a mix of German, Swiss and Italian. I wish I could have been there during their winter (our summer) and attended their classical music festival. There were many nice restaurants, bars and shops. We also visited a state park called Horto Florestal. I don’t know much about horticulture but we saw some trees that I have never seen before. See pictures.

At dinner we decided that Day 7 (Sunday) would be a day to wind the rest of the way down, catch up on some writing and emails, upload some pictures, recharge batteries, and get ready for the (hopefully) final day in Brazil. I learned a lot about aviation from Bill and Mark. Their company, JetQuik, is young but the two of them have 50+ years of experience in the industry.  On Monday I would get an education about aviation fuel!  Stay tuned

Picasa pictures from Campos do Jordao

Tags: Aviation, brazil, embraer, phenom

The Open Internet

I will believe it when I see it confirmed — hopefully in the Spring — but looks like the FCC commissioners understand the importance of an open Internet. Net neutrality is a really really important issue with far reaching implications. Unfortunately, the term net neutrality has become politicized and means different things to different people but I think we can all identify with things that are not net neutral.

Suppose Comcast makes an exclusive deal with ESPN. You read about it in the news and you go to the newly advertised ESPN web page and it says, “This page only available to readers who use Comcast as their Internet service provider”. You use Verizon or AT&T so you can not get access to the new ESPN content.  Or how about going to a healthcare site and finding out you can no longer get access to your electronic medical record unless you change Internet service providers. Perhaps extreme examples, but possible. There have been various efforts over the past fifteen years to “balkanize” the Internet — in other words create internets within the Internet. I recall one effort that I was asked to get involved with — but of course declined — was to create a “New York Web”. It was to be a “private” internet with no access to or from the Internet. A really bad idea which fortunately got no traction. The Federal government has also considered various unique internets to provide enhanced security.

Not that the open Internet we have today is perfect. It isn’t. There are many shortcomings but they are being addressed through an open global standards-based approach. That is what makes the Internet unique and why it has attracted more than a billion users. Think of something else that works the same everywhere in the world — currency? railroad track sizes? which side of the road to drive on? electrical sockets and plugs? I can not think of anything that works exactly the same in every corner of the globe — and even in outer space — except the Internet. It is really impotant to keep it that way. Why? I cite a number of examples in Net Attitude but there are new reasons popping up every day.

Global tracking of diseases so that medical assistance can be where it is needed is made possible by the Internet. The World Community Grid
is running virtual chemistry experiments to determine which of the
millions of small molecules can attach to the influenza virus and
inhibit it from spreading. There is the potential to make the world a
better place because of this project. Using the Internet to connect millions of idle PC’s around the world, the grid is able to work as one massive supercomputer. Not to be minimized is the ability of the global Internet to prevent many countries from oppressing their people as the net provides a way to get out the word on what is actually happening. Last but not least is the power of the Internet to allow a really good idea from anywhere in the world to find an interest by someone in any other part of the world and thereby spawn innovation and new businesses.

I am confident that FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski completely understands all this but there are others who are threatened. Although the FCC voted unanimously to allow the rule making to go forward it faces enormous lobbying over the months ahead from Internet service providers like AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, and Qwest. They say that net neutrality would strip them of the ability to manage their networks effectively and that it would stifle innovation and competition. The providers do not want to be just providers of “dumb pipes” for the Internet. They want to move up the value chain and get involved with the content where there is potentially more profit. No problem with content deals as long as they don’t violate net neutrality. 

This is not a matter of government regulating the Internet. That would be a bad thing. What it does mean is that the government would prevent providers from closing off how the Internet works.

Brazilian Adventure – Day 5

We started the day with optimism but got an ice cold shower when we learned that the FAA had found an “issue” at 2 PM the prior day (and did not notify anyone until late morning the next day). The “issue” was that the paperwork about the company buying the airplane showed that the company was formed on August 1, 2006. The official document from the State of Connecticut confirming the formation was dated August 2. Tilt. Two different dates — something must be wrong. Reject everything. No flying time wire. The best laid plans foiled by the bureaucracy.

We had to think through our options quickly. If we get the wire in the next couple of hours we can still get ANAC in for the afternoon, get the conformity completed, contact ANAC in Rio for the overflight permit, and still get to Belem before dark. Flying over the Amazon at night and then landing in the crime riddled city did not sound appealing. As a backup plan we decided to seek a “ferry permit” to take the plane directly to the U.S. and get the conformity inspection and airworthiness certificate there. 

The afternoon turned into a frenetic effort. People running up and down the halls. Great teamwork. We got the flying time wire at 2:30 PM. The next step was to get ANAC to come in to do the inspection. Too late. They start at 8am or 1pm. Ok, on to plan B. Get the ferry permit and then the overflight permit. People said it was impossible to get a ferry permit in less than a day but Mike Origel at airlinecert.com performed miracles. He had the contacts and the FAA was cooperating to issue the permit. We had to pull together a ton of information — pilot biography and medical, maintenance sign-off that the plane was airworthy, and a number of other documents. Let’s call ANAC in Rio and tell them to get ready to issue the overflight permit. They are at lunch. The Olympic decision had just been announced. They were at a long lunch. We made contact with ANAC before 4pm and urged them to wait. We would have the ferry permit any minute. We got it at 5:15 PM. It was Friday afternoon. ANAC had left for the day.

Day 8 would start with high hopes that we would be airborne before the end of the day. We would get ANAC in first thing Monday morning, get the overflight permit from Rio, fuel and  provision the airplane, and head for the States. Now what to do for the next two days? Some said go to the beach. After months of detailed planning and five days of intense focus on the task at hand, I was in no mood for relaxing. On Monday I get an education on buying fuel in Brazil. Stay tuned

Picasa photo album

Tags: Aviation, brazil, embraer, phenom

Brazilian Adventure – Day 4

The Embraer team must have worked all night — by mid-morning of Day 4 they had cleared 80 of the 103 squawks on the Phenom 100. Mark Stear of JetQuik continued his due diligence working with Marcelo while Paulo ramped activities on the paperwork side of the process. The steps ahead were to sign off on the plane, close on the transaction, and then connect with the FAA in Oklahoma City where Wright Brothers Aircraft Title was holding our registration paperwork in escrow. (When I say “paper” work I mean it. The registration is a three part – three color — with carbon paper form). As soon as Embraer informs WB that the airplane has been accepted by the new owners, WB would deliver the paperwork to the FAA and the FAA would then issue a “flying time wire” that would then enable us to have ANAC – basically the Brazilian FAA — to conduct a conformity inspection that would result in a Certificate of Airworthiness which would then enable us to make a request of the ANAC office in Rio de Janeiro to issue an overflight permit which would enable us to fly over Brazil to Belem where we would officially “export” the plane from the country. 

Believe it or not, this is a repeatable process. JetQuik has done it more than once. Decision #1 was whether to wait until the last squawk was resolved and jeopardize getting ANAC scheduled for Friday morning (Day 5) or to trust that the Embraer team would keep working on the squawks even if we went ahead with the closing. That was an easy decision — I trust the Embraer team completely. Getting the “flying time wire” from the FAA usually takes an hour or so. We completed the closing and got the documents to Wright Brothers in Oklahoma City at 12:07 PM. Around 4 PM the Embraer team said they would like to have a small ceremony to celebrate the acceptance of the airplane. It was only 10:07 AM in Oklahoma City so there was plenty of time to get the wire and contact ANAC to confirm the Friday morning inspection. An alcohol scrub removed the temporary Brazilian tail # and enabled N784JP to glisten. Everyone was feeling good. The ceremony included a short tour of Embraer’s museum upstairs in the delivery hangar, a nice movie about the Phenom, and some toasts among all. 

We got downstairs to the office area — each customer group was assigned a very nice office with unlimited WiFi and long distance phone service and incredibly strong coffee — a bit after 5 PM. No wire yet and the FAA accepts no phone calls after 3PM.  No problem. We will have it first thing in the morning, get ANAC to start the conformity inspection, get the overflight permit, and still get airborne late afternoon Friday, worst case. Captain Bill had reworked all the flight planning details. Got back to the hotel around 8:30 PM. Time for some Brazilian pizza. It was really good.

Day 5 would start with high hopes that we would be airborne before the end of the day. There were surprises in store for us.

Tags: Aviation, brazil, embraer, phenom