Ones and Zeros

At this moment some of my traffic is not working at all, other traffic is fine.  Definitely a characteristic of a routing issue.  Some traceroute work is showing that the traffic that’s not working has it’s last hop at IP address 152.63.0.130, named “0.so-6-0-0.xl4.iad8.alter.net”.  That’s a Verizon IP address (they bought alternet).

Either that router at alternet is not working, or the one it’s attempting to connect to isn’t working.  Probably the latter.  Or possibly there’s an actual wiring problem.  In any case, it’s not being worked around.

The story goes that the internet routes around problems.  Like a lot of stories, it’s only partially true.  In many cases due to economics, geography, and rights-of-way, there aren’t that many alternative connections to use.   Certainly not of the required bandwidth.  And depending on router protocols used, the “routing around” part can be more manual than automatic.

The ultimate answer is to use a mesh network.  But there are technical problems in making those protocols work well, and idea meshes don’t fit with the population densities and geographical constraints of where network demand is and how cables can be run.

I had a nice big breakfast of oatmeal with honey, raisins, banana, and chipolte pepper powder.  I meant it to be cinnamon but the bottles of spice looked a lot alike to me right then.  I ate it anyway.

Not bad at all.   A good way to wake up certainly.  However I’m not planning on doing it again anytime soon.

Dulles is open, National is closed, I don’t know about BWI.  But all the smaller airports are still closed, the GA reliever airports are still clearing out.  They’re probably be clear by tomorrow sometime, just in time for the next storm.

Here on in the Washington DC area we’ve been getting rather more than our fair share of storms this winter.  It and other issues have curtailed my flying since I got my instrument rating in November.  On Friday I found an opportunity to go flying again, I wanted to see if I could remember what all those controls did!

I took off from the home airport and headed to Winchester VA for a little landing practice.  This got me some flight time and I was able to watch the countryside roll by below which I always like.  Friday it was a countryside is muted black and white.  Mostly white.  There was an indistinct ceiling reported at 12,000 ft, but it could have been at 6000 ft and I would have believed it too.  Some haze, visibility was around 6-8 miles.

I decided to do the ILS32 to OKV (Wichester) in VFR conditions.  This is not loggable as an IFR flight - I was in VFR conditions and not wearing foggles.  Traffic at OKV was light - only one guy.  I would join the pattern as needed if it looked like I would interfere with his operations.

I was able to track the ILS and GS (glideslope) accurately and correct to the runway.  I did this by alternating looking inside and out.  I would not have done this on a busy day!  I touched down in the softest landing I’ve ever made - I knew I was down when I felt the wheels start rumbling on the pavement.

This is a touch and go, so I tracked the center line while the flaps came up, then I put in full throttle with 2500 feet of runway left.  Rotated at 60 mph and lifted off with plenty of runway left over.  I climbed at 85 mph (my plane is older and calibrated in mph, not knots) and did the missed approach.

Then, headed north to the MBR 231 radial for the hold at CWINE and the VOR-A approach back to OKV.  I over climbed to 3500 feet, my target was 3100.  I used the hold to decend to my target altitude and completed the one turn around the hold.

Then I began the VOR-A approach to OKV, but overflew the field at 1500 instead of the 1180 minimum altitude of the approach as the other guy was departing. Then I joined the downwind, 200 feet below the pattern altitude, and did another touch-and-go.  Also a very good landing, but not quite to the olympic standard of the first one.

Time to head home.  The air was so smooth that I pushed up the speed to the bottom edge of the yellow zone.  I don’t usually do this as low-level turbulence is always an issue.  But there’s no problem today.

Three of us were coming into the home airport at the same time.  It took a bit of collaboration, and trading of distances and landmarks, but we arrived in sequence instead of all at once.  Another nice landing, my third in a row, and back to the tiedown.

All in all, 1.1 hours, nine gallons of avgas, three very good landings and one excellent one, and two simulated approaches (non-loggable).  A good day and wonderful to get back in the air.