so of course the weather was crap on saturday morning! but at least my head felt good! ;)
Sunday was looking OK... so I headed out to the field to check what was happening... cloud base was up over 3200', which was more than enough for some stalling practice so I booked JFY and headed up...
I also decided to test my new (homemade) toy:
I originally got the idea from Nick Ugolini... but didnt really think much about it until I stumbled across Drew Chaplin's site while trying to 're-find' Nicks site... and with extra ideas/inspiration from a couple of guys from here and here I thought "Why not?"...
Originally had some issues sourcing an old headset to scavenge parts from, but luckily got hold of an old Telex Airman 750 (the -100 model)... I borrowed the mic and boom, the circuitry from the earpiece and the cables/plugs...
Then I had to try and source the earphones... what a nightmare! No-one in NZ or AU seemed to stock what I wanted (I would have like the Shure e3c's but they're ridiculously expensive here)... so I settled on the Hearing Components NR-10's... aroun 35 to 40 dB's of noise reduction and an inline volume control... sweet!
the next mission was getting them to NZ... for some reason everyone in the US wants to ship international orders via Fedex or UPS... so a US$50 pair of earphones, that weigh about as much as a packet of gum, come with a US$75 shipping fee! crazy! Luckily a friend in the US was coming back to NZ for Xmas, so I shipped them to him (for like US$4) and he bought them back... really it should not be this hard!
I tried the earphones out while mowing the lawns and they worked really well... I plugged them into my phone and got to enjoy mp3's while getting dirty and sunburned :)
Then, I had some issues with the mic, as after making the headband and mic assembly I took it up for a test fly (i just plugged it into the spare sockets while flying solo) and it was constantly transmitting... regardless of the squelch setting... so after some investigation (ie. 'googling') I discovered that the little adjustable potentiometer on the circuitry actually controlled the mic gain. So I got out the multimeter and adjusted the 'pot'... testing last week proved that the mic was now working as it should (albeit with aircraft on the ground and engine off).
I could not test the whole unit, as I was flying dual, and I wanted to be able to have my 'real' headset plugged in as a backup incase it was a dismal failure. But as I was going solo yesterday, it was the perfect opportunity to test it out...
and it worked perfectly! So much lighter and way more comfortable than having a whopping great big headset clamped to your noggin... you dont have to worry about your sunglasses ruining the seal on the earcups (because there arent any!) and letting in noise... and you dont get all hot and sweaty from the bit headband etc...
Anyway, the flying was good... I nailed the medium, steep and compass turns and feel comfortable with stalls etc. but my forced landings were poor... I just felt really rushed and only got 1 semi-decent approach out of the 3 attempts... I will definitely need to practice some more...
Trevor should hopefully finish his MEIR (Multi-Engine Instrument Rating) this week, which will free up his time and hopefully mean we can get some midweek flying after work now that its light until around 9pm...
I am still missing some instrument flying, so I think the next lesson is going to be a good solid hour of instruments... with partial panel and unusual attitude recovery... good fun!
This flight: 1.4 Solo
Total Hours: 76.3 (59.1 Dual, 17.2 Solo, 3.2 IFR)
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