Ones and Zeros

I’ve been using a version of David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) organization approach. Personalized of course, my needs will be different from yours. There are plenty of places to read about GTD (here, here, or here for example) so I won’t write about that.

But it did occur to me recently that all tasks, no matter what your organizational methods are, fall into three broad categories.

First, the tasks that combat entropy; I’ll call them maintenance tasks. These are the tasks that involve fixing things and cleaning things, and preventing bad situations from getting worse. Changing the oil in your car (or aircraft), fixing a leak, repairing a fence, etc. These tasks are about maintaining the status quo. Homeostasis for your world.

Second are the recurring things that head off entropy ahead of time. If the first category is maintenance, this category might be preventative maintenance (PM). Weeding the garden, washing dishes, doing the laundry, mowing the lawn, buying food, or if you’re a farmer: planting and harvesting. These tasks help to maintain the status quo too, but are less reactive and more planned. This is the stuff you do to keep your life the way you want to live.

Last, and generally the smallest category are the things you do to improve your life. These are the investment tasks. An accountant might call these the “capital investment” tasks where you improve your surroundings, improve yourself, or improve your work or your community. You’re investing your time and effort to raise yourself or your world to a better place.

One way to think about these might be time-related. Maintenance tasks are reactive and in the current moment. PM tasks are tactical and looks ahead for a short term. Investment tasks are purely forward-looking and helps you fulfill your aspirational goals.There’s a balance between these types. If everything is of a maintenance nature, then you never get ahead of a reactive situation. If all your tasks are maintenance or PM tasks, then you never improve your situation. But if all your tasks are investment tasks, your current world falls apart.

Since we’re often supported when younger in college or school, we put more of our time in investment tasks then. Our lives can be simpler then too. As we age more and more of our time goes into maintenance and PM tasks. But improvement can happen at any age. Part of making time for this is to simplify life. That reduces the time required for maintenance and PM tasks and frees up more for investment into new things. As in all things there is a balance that we can control.

Gyroscopes have been on my mind lately since the directional gyro in my plane failed recently.  And, a few months ago, the turn coordinator (another gyro) also failed.  It probably has to do with them being 35 years old.  We have preparations underway to resolve this, but will take time.  And, with my work schedule I’ll have at least a three-week delay before my next lesson.  I’ll use my X-Plane flight sim at home to try and keep active.  But unfortunately this will be a hit.

But, thinking of gyros, this is a cool video from the ISS about using CD players for gyros.  Hacking hardware in space through duct tape!

Once again it is a beautiful VFR day.  So naturally, instructor M and I are going flying IFR and I will just see the instrument panel and the inside of my foggles.  Ironically during my private pilot training I had a long series of IFR days that prevented me from flying.

Today’s flight isn’t the officially-required 250 nm long cross-country with stops at three airports.  It’s a preparatory cross-country flight to get used to working in the ATC system.  We’re going to York PA.  We’ve discussed what to file previously.  I do the brief and filing on DUATS before the flight and bring printed flight plan with me to the airport.

This is only the second time I copy a real clearance from ATC.  I do that after starting up and before taxiing out.  I set up the route in the GPS.  I’ll be using that for nav, and backing it up with the VOR.  With our route I can’t think of anything I’d like to do with the ADF though.

We depart and I make my radio callouts as normal. I’ve fallen into the bad habit of calling out my IFR fixes to VFR traffic when I depart.  Of course this means nothing to the VFR folks and I need to change this.  M and I will talk about this during post-flight debrief.

As expected, we don’t follow our planned route.  That route is there to give us a predictable thing to do in case of lost communications.  But, Potomac approach and I are talking with each other and they turn us direct to York as soon as they can.  I did file as a GPS-equipped plane so they know we can navigate that way.  (Around this complex airspace, and with the added complications of the SFRA and FRZ, I consider a GPS to be required equipment.)

The rest of the flight is routine.  I do have to adjust the heading on the directional gyro to match the compass more often than normal.  The DG will drift some and this is normal.  It seems to be drifting more than usual though.   I remember to tune for the weather at York, but forget to actually listen to it till prompted by Harrisburg ATC.

I’m handling all the radios this flight (barring traffic calls).  So with pointers from M, I request the approach I’d like in York: GPS runway 17.  He directs us to that approach and clears us.  Through most of the approach the controller was discussing with another pilot the pilot’s amphibious airplane type, where it could land, etc.   No matter, it was just the three of us on the frequency.

I follow that in doing my turns and descents and change to the local frequency.   Naturally, there’s a local VFR guy on the opposing runway direction.  But he’ll be off by the time we’re close, M watches for him and confirms this for us.   I wasn’t perfectly on the approach, but did a reasonable job of it.  My new mindset of “constructive distraction” seems to be helping.

We did a low approach, and with prior arrangement, did the missed to pick up our flight plan back home.  Harrisburg had already given me my initial heading and altitude.  I turned to that and climbed.  My heading indicator (DG) is having fits.  It sticks for a second or two, then catches up, then sticks again.  We agree to keep an eye on it.

M offers to fly or to copy our new clearance.  I ask him to back me up and let me do it all.  This is good practice for busier times in flying.  I copy the clearance, it comes with transponder first instead of clearance first as is usual.  I copy it more or less legibly and read it back correctly to Harrisburg.  Then, I set up the route in the GPS.  M corrects my first fix as PIFER, not HYPER.

My heading is wandering, I fix that, and get back to the route in the GPS.  Change HYPER to PIFER and start heading there.  Harrisburg ATC comes back with a heading for me to fly to HYPER.  M and I realize that I had it right at first.  This is notable as the first mistake M made in all my flying with him.  On a radio PIFER and HYPER sound very similar, next time we’ll verify it phonetically.

I finish the route set up and the GPS wants to go to the second fix instead of the first.  I instruct it back to HYPER and then we’re given a new ATC frequency from Harrisburg.  I tune that, and introduce myself.  He sends us directly to our home’s approach fix.  Great, and I just got the GPS set up.  So, I tell the GPS to skip ahead to that fix and take up my new heading.

The DG is not moving now.  It’s a full 40 degrees off our heading.  I point this out to M and grab a cover for the DG so it doesn’t distract me.  I’m heading home on partial panel.  That’s not supposed to be this lesson, it is a couple lessons ahead.  The cover doesn’t cover the whole DG face so we can see when the DG unsticks itself and spends the rest of the flight and localizer approach to home spinning gently to the left. I believe this is original equipment, that would make it a 35 year old instrument.

This is a pain, and isn’t a cheap fix either.  But I have a compass and I know how to use it.  I also have a GPS that’s showing me heading too.  We discuss mentioning this to ATC, but M reminds me it’s a beautiful clear VFR day and he’s there looking.  Normally, if it were actual IFR or just me, I should tell ATC though.

UNOS: Undershoot North, Overshoot South.  That’s the mantra for the compass errors in turns.  Also, 3 degrees per second (or about 3 seconds for 10 degrees) is the turning rate for standard-rate turns. Right now I’m just holding my heading with small adjustments for wind.  But later I’ll make some turns at ATC direction and to intercept the localizer approach.

We’ve spent some of this flight trying to anticipate the next frequency that ATC will give us.  M is good at this as he knows the area and system very well.  He’s gotten several.  I try it on the way back near home and tune our local home airport frequency in the standby so it’s ready to flip.  Immediately after I do that, ATC gives us another ATC sector instead of the home airport.  M and I laugh, and I change it, acknowledge the change, next introduce myself to the new controller, then set the home frequency in the standby again.

The approach goes well, again not perfect.  But again I’m in the inner circle most - but not all - the time.  I finally get what M’s telling me about “walking down the approach” with the rudders to control direction.  We’re too close to make regular turns, even very small ones.  We land and roll out and go inside to debrief.

I’m disappointed that the DG failed.  This is my second gyro failure in this instrument training (the turn coordinator failed in my first lesson in the plane).  Some people fly for years without this happening.  But I’m pleased that I handled it well.  And, that I didn’t have a melt down with flying and taking the clearance back from York too.  While it could have gone smoother,  I made it work.

Hours: 33.9 simulated or actual instrument.  Now, to get the DG fixed.

First, congratulation to Plastic Pilot for his multiengine instrument check that he passed successfully. I’m hoping I have an instrument check flight success to report too!

But right now, I’m still working through the lessons with instructors R and M. Today it was instructor R and I who did the stage check for the approaches stage together. An ILS, a VOR approach, and a GPS approach are today’s agenda. We’ll track a victor airway to EMI VOR, then make the ILS approach to Fredrick MD, go missed, then do the VOR approach. After that back home on the GPS.

The enroute portion (as short as it is) goes fine, events are happening slowly enough that all goes well. I’m getting more facile at using my GPS for routes and IFR work. R quizzes me about engine RPMs for various airspeeds and descend rates. The idea he’s reminding me of is that I sent power, set pitch (attitude) and I get the performance I want. He also reminds me that accuracy is a mindset. I need to decide I want to be on altitude, on heading, on airspeed, and on the centerline when landing. “Be professional, don’t tolerate sloppiness.” he says.

With R playing Potomac approach I intercept the ILS from radar vectors. At first I get the glide slope nicely - the power & pitch = performance equation is working. My heading is a bit off though. I make an adjustment - turn into that direction, turn out level and check the ILS needles. Not enough. Do it again. Ok, the trend on the heading needle is good now. Check all the other instruments again. Whoops, lower flaps - forgot that earlier.

Heading’s off again (probably because I wasn’t holding wings level), do the turn to make a correction. I concentrate on the ILS needles to get that right, I’m high on the glide slope now too. I’ve spent too much time on heading. I push the nose down, geez, too much. R comments, “Don’t dive for it!”. I go back to the attitude indicator to watch my pitch. R taps the ILS needles. My heading is now off to the other side, I’ve overcorrected.

The ILS approach worked out more or less, I was never more than 3/4 needle deflection off and I found the runway, but I was always chasing the needles back and forth. The VOR approach was much the same. I’ve been thinking about my problems though. These are not terrible problems, I’m more or less where a student should be now, but I have high standards. I don’t want to just be average or typical.

David Megginson at his blog “Land and Hold Short” posted about “Flying and Concentration” today. He says, “I realized something important: it’s not concentration, but lack of concentration that makes a good pilot.” And goes on:

The thing is, when you’re flying, there are lots of things happening at once, and every one seems to need your attention all the time. You simply can’t focus on a single task and finish it. Concentrating on tuning the radio? Guess what, your altitude just changed by 200 ft. Trying to get the gyro compass set correctly? Looks like you just blew through your next checkpoint. Trying to figure out where you are on the map? Maybe you should recover from this incipient spiral, first. It’s like driving a car, but with more speed, (sometimes) nothing visible out the window, and an extra dimension and two extra axes of rotation thrown in.

He’s absolutely right. We all think that working harder means concentrating more. Not true here. My narration above shows the effects of concentrating on one thing. It means I’m ignoring something else. For some tasks, like the software engineering I do in my day job, that’s a good thing. For years now I’ve been figuring out how to concentrate more and not get distracted.

But for flying that’s a bad thing. I want to keep getting constructively distracted. I have a set of things I have to keep track of. It’s like those old acts on TV of people spinning plates. They have to keep tracking all the plates spinning on their poles and keep them all going.

At some point this will all be automatic, like when driving. It is getting there for me but isn’t fully automatic yet.

Next up: polishing up stage (making attention control more automatic), and cross-country flights. I have around 30 hours of IFR training so far of the required 40 hours.