Graziosa revisited.

The first blog post here at The Whole Damn World was posted on August 19th, 2008. This blog is now 4 years, 3 months, and 2 days old.

That first post just said hello. It explained that I was using google earth quite a lot, and that I was making a blog to share the interesting things I found. Since then, it's broadened out into my general, life blog, sharing the good times and bad, whatever comes along. Still, it's always had, and probably always will have, a focus on the world as seen through this remarkable bit of software. Now, as then, there can be few clearer signs that we're living in an age of marvels than being able to zoom in, in 3 dimensions, on pretty much any point on the planet, and close enough to see, in some places at least, what colour hair someone has.

But you also get, free of charge, a flight simulator that allows you to pilot a plane over that generated landscape. The regular reader is aware of course that my efforts to get to grips with this have also been a sporadic but fairly frequent subject of my posts.

My second ever post dealt with attempting to take off from an island airport, to fly around that island, and to land on the same runway. On that occasion, I crashed. Would I be any better now?

Well I do have a little more knowledge now. For example, at the end of the runway is a number. This marks the bearing (he\ding? - bear with sore head) of the runway. For Graziosa, one end has a bearing of 09, the other has a bearing of 27.  The runway at Liverpool Airport has exactly the same orientation. I thought they should add up to 36, but Manchester Airport's twin parallel runways each have 05 and 23 as their numbers, so I'm barking up the wrong tree a little on this. Still, as the picture below shows, when in flight, you get numbers on the HUD that correspond to that heading.




This time round, I have video capturing software, so if you have 6 minutes and 38 seconds to spare, you can watch it. I've even set it to music. It turns out that I have several tunes of exactly the right length. The love scene from Zabriskie point was as boring as the video, so I went for a bit of classical instead.

As you can see, I managed to land on the runway, although it was a little bouncy. The runway is somewhat obscured by clouds, although the clouds themselves are  a clue to it's whereabouts. Still, a straighter approach would have been better.

Being competent at something doesn't mean never making a mistake. It means when you do make a mistake, you know how to get back in control.

driving lessons in Wallasey? learn to drive in Wirral? driving instructor in Birkenhead?

High as a kite

I tried to fly my kite a couple of days ago down on New Brighton Prom. The wind was pretty strong, and the kite was flapping around all over the place.

After repairing the damage caused (spreader bar penetrated ripstop nylon) with some insulating tape, I tried again from a different more sheltered  location. The wind was a bit weaker, but very turbulent. It was impossible to get the kite high enough to find steady winds.

Today though, the winds are much lighter, so I went down to the Prom again, and risked sellotaping my little camera to the kitestring.

And I actually ended up with some footage!

 

As you can see, the results leave a little to be desired! I may need to attach a weight to the bottom of the camera to make it less affected by the buffetting. Also, attaching the camera to the string a little below the kite might help too.

Still, early days. If you click pause during the video, you can occasionally get some reasonably interesting still images. 

The little camera itself seems pretty shock resistant. It took some fairly hard landings, although no direct high speed nosedives, and still works just fine. I really wouldn't want to try sending anything expensive up there at the moment. 

Take two...

I added a pound coin and some blu-tak to the bottom of the camera. I also attached the camera to the string about a foot or so below the kite, instead of much closer to the kite. Finally, I attached the camera to the string with two pieces of sellotape, instead of one. I also used my Bren attachment, to facilitate launch and recovery. This time, the kite didn't crash to earth even once.

Here's the result:

Although still far from perfect, there are moments of lucidity here.

Bren has an idea for a housing. I've suggested adding a tail to the housing to make it point into the wind.

And then I found...

A bottle cage that I never got around to putting on my bike...

Attach camera to cage. Tie cage to kite...

And...

I tied the cage to the kite using only one piece of string. Hence the assembly was free to rotate. But tie it on at two points, and I think it's going to finally be pretty stable. You can see for yourself how much better this third try is.

How do you make a Swiss roll?

I've just been doing a bit of flying.

I found Geneva airport on Google Earth, and then looked for a different airport in the area. The one I found was Turin airport, in Northern Italy.


That meant I had to fly over the alps. Fortunately, my little SR22 was well up to the task. It climbed slowly but steadily, and eventually was 20,000 feet above sea level, and well above the highest alpine peaks.




The highest point in Europe isn't in the Alps at all. It's Mount Elbrus, and it's in Eastern Europe, in the Caucasus range. Its' summit  is 18,510 feet above sea level. The highest mountain in the Alps is Mont Blanc. That's a mere 15,782 feet tall.

Either way, I'd have got over them. Unfortunately, after safely getting over the mountains, I lost control of my final approach, and crashed on the runway of Geneva airport. There were no survivors. Bummer.

One of the things I can't find on Google Earth is a particular mountain.

You see, I've been to Geneva airport in real life. When I was a teenager, I went on holiday with my school. I flew in a Hawker Siddeley Trident.



I was autistically obsessive about aeroplanes at the time, and it was the first time I'd flown. I loved every minute of it.

We landed at Geneva Airport, without the pilot losing control of the final approach, and killing everyone on board, and disembarked through underground tunnels topped by round terminals that are still there, 30 years later.



We stayed in a hotel in a place called Leysin (not Lausanne) and spent a lot of time at the local ice rink. Leysin is about 4,500 feet above sea level. I think it's a ski resort during the winter, but when we went it was summer, and there was no snow.



But we did get some snow. We went up a mountain, after a journey that involved a funicular railway, a chairlift, and a cable car. I don't know how high we were, but there was certainly deep, blindingly white snow. Sticking out of the snow were the posts of a fence, and I looked down over the other side of this fence to find myself looking at a sheer drop of what seemed like thousands of feet. My toes are curling even now, just thinking about it.

It's certainly the highest point on the the whole damn world that I've stood upon. Ben Nevis doesn't even come close.

But I don't know what the mountain is called, or where to look for it.

I suppose I could try to remember more details of this 30 year old journey. Look for a railway. Look for a cable car, etc. But for now, this particular mountain eludes me.

Edit:

Well, I think I've found my lost mountain! I think it was a mountain called Plaine Morte (or at least it's associated glacier is called Plaine Morte) It's just under 10,000 feet above sea level. It has ski runs. It has a cable car terminal. It has a cafe. And it has some terrifying drops. I can't be certain, although the photos of the cafe look right. So I reckon that's the one.

Here's a picture of how it looks on Google Earth.

And here's a KMZ...

Airports and airstrips.

In my dreams, I'm in a small 2 seater light aircraft when the pilot is unexpectedly incapacitated. (It was the salmon mousse) and I've somehow got to make the plane land on a runway.

Seems to me that it's a bit like driving a car. If you can't make it go, then it's pretty safe. If you can't make it stop, then you're up shit creek.

So anyway, if using the flight simulator on google earth is anything akin to doing it for real, then maybe I could get down without killing myself, at least some of the time.

Manchester Airport's quite a good place to start. I can then try to follow the lines from the terminal areas onto an actual runway and I get to run over other aeroplanes while I'm doing it. Yay!


So I can either try to land again at Manchester, or I can head out and try to land somewhere else, like Liverpool or Birmingam or something. Knowing some landmarks is really really useful. I know what Ellesmere Port looks like, and the pattern of oilseed rape fields flanking the canalised River Dee just north of Chester so I can come in from the West almost straight into Liverpool. Only altitude and speed to think about...
It's now called "John Lennon International Airport" and has "Above us only sky" as it's corporate slogan. How Lennon would feel about that were he still to be alive, I can only imagine. But then, if he'd still been alive, he probably wouldn't be the icon he is, and they'd have called it "Carla Lane International Airport" or something instead.

One of my first posts on this blog was about flying around an island. Now I've found another one on an island called Raivavae and it's lovely. Nice and easy to see. On a pacific atoll, marked onto huge concrete base. Turquise seas surrounded by a coral reef. Mmmmm. I've been taking off from there, and flying out to the reef, then turning around and trying to land back on the runway. I'm generally succeeding although it often takes a few aborted but non-crashy attempts before I finally get it on the ground. Not crashing is what I'm aiming for. Landing on the runway is a bonus. Landing on the runway, staying on the runway and stopping before the end of the runway is ideal. If you want to give Raivavae a go, start here! (turn left at the end!)

I think I'm improving. Even though I still crash sometimes, I'm starting to get a better understanding of how things feel. I could go on about how people learn etc. But I'm gonna go and fly around the island again instead.

uʍop ǝpısdn ƃuıʎlɟ

If you use the flight simulator, and just let the plane fly itself, it will eventually crash. It just does. It becomes unstable and eventually nosedives into the ground.

But there is a way around this. Here's how you do it...

1. Take off using the SR22.

2. Get up to a height of about 1500 to 2000 feet (about 500-700 metres.)

3. Put the plane into a nosedive. The Elevator setting should be just a little bit away from right up to the top of the slider.

4. Well that's all really. Make sure the plane is at full power, that the controls are centred, the landing gear is up and the flaps are at 0% and do nothing.

The plane will do an upside down loop and will fall away to one side, but all the time it will become slightly higher and slightly steadier. Eventually it will fly upside down and very slowly gain altitude. The propellor plane will max out at just a shade under 25,000 feet.

Despite you pointing it in a straight line, it will actually travel in a huge circle. Since it doesn't really exist, it doesn't use any fuel, and so you can leave it for hours or days or weeks, and because it goes slowly around in a miles wide loop, it will still be more-or-less in the vicinity of where you left it. Handy if you need it in a hurry.

By the way, if you're wondering how I managed to write "uʍop ǝpısdn ƃuıʎlɟ", it's because of this neat little website...

http://www.revfad.com/flip.html

Flying around an island.

Graciosa Airport (Portuguese: Aérodromo da Graciosa) is an airport in Graciosa Island in the Azores. It's precise location is 39° 5'32.00"N 28° 1'48.20"W.

(I wonder if there's a way of embedding kmz links into my posts here?)

Last night, I set myself a mission. Using the propellor plane, the SR22, I had to take off, staying on the runway, fly right around the island, and land on the runway again.

Taking off was fine. I can take off, no problem. Flying around the island was fine. I can fly around an island 3 times before breakfast.
Landing was not so fine. It never is. Scared and hesitant, I came in too slowly, lost my stability, and landed on a wing and a prayer, except without the prayer. At least I managed to crash on the runway.