Failed Path

"Failed Path-A data path has failed". That is a very vague message that basically means data isn't flowing from point A to point B. It doesn't signify what type of data, the significance of that data, or the source of the failed path. It is a message that if it were to happen to us on our phone, tablet, or computer, we would very likely ignore it because of its vagueness. I had that message on a flight yesterday, and while I looked at it, I didn't do anything about it. Why you may ask? Because there is no checklist for it, and there is nothing that I or anybody could do during flight to restore the data path, partially because we don't know what path has failed.

The message presented itself in the same place as other advisory messages (sometimes referred to as nuisance messages) like "airspace ahead", or "inside airspace." We get those two messages constantly on every flight, so we acknowledge the message button so it will stop flashing at us. These type of messages are not what we call a CAS message and does not have a checklist associated with it. CAS stands for Crew Alerting System and it is the system that alerts us to malfunctions or failures such as "flap malfunction", "generator failure", "battery discharge", "battery offline", etc. but the CAS system can also send advisory messages. On the Phenom 300, we get a CAS message when we turn on our ice protection systems, and we expect it.  There is a checklist for every CAS message and they can be as simple as saying "Crew Awareness" (turning on the ice protection is an example of when the checklist would say Crew Awareness) or they can two to three pages long. Why all this talk about messages? Because as it turned out, the data path that failed was to a computer that controls our multi-function spoilers and our pitch trim.

Here is what happened. I saw the Failed Path message and pretty much wrote it off. At the time we were descending about 2,000FPM (feet per minute) and a couple of minutes after the Failed Path message, I start getting this gut feeling of "something's not right". I scan the flight instruments and we're about nose and level and we're descending about 600 FPM, but the flight director is still commanding 2,000 but the autopilot servo isn't responding. Hmm, something is going on. At this point I start scanning the rest of our instruments and I notice yellow Xs on the spoiler and pitch trim indicators, which means their position can't be determined by the system. The autopilot isn't pitching the nose down for the descent, so I turn the autopilot off and start hand-flying the airplane and realize that the plane is way out of trim for level flight. Partially out of habit and also to troubleshoot the issue I try to the use the pitch trim switch on the yoke and nothing happens. After discussing the situation, we decide to treat it as a normal pitch trim fail and turn on the backup pitch trim. When we activate the backup trim system, we are supposed to get a PTRIM NML FAIL CAS message, but we don't get this CAS message and the yellow Xs don't go away.

What do I do now? I fly the plane, fighting against the nearly full nose down trim the whole time. How out of trim was the airplane?  If an airplane is trimmed properly, you can fly it with your fingertips, but I was having to use both hands to hold the nose level. I comment that it feels like we are doing a sim training session, because this is the type of malfunction and abnormality we train for in the sim. Adding to this feeling of doing a sim session is the fact we are flying at night, in the clouds and rain, and going to an airport with a low cloud ceiling of about 800 feet and a gusty crosswind. Yeah, I have my hands full at this point. 

We shoot the instrument approach and land without incident, though we did get a "SWPS FAULT" CAS message. (This is the stall warning and protection system which is completely unrelated to the pitch trim system except that it is fed information from one of computers that controls the pitch trim) Needless to say we contact the company and as I write this they are in the process of replacing that computer.

We start talking about why the backup pitch trim wouldn't work, when it uses a different computer and the only conclusion we could come to is that because the system couldn't determine the position of the trim that the backup computer basically said "I don't know where the trim is or what it's doing, so I'm not gonna let you use it".  This is pure speculation on our part but is the only logical conclusion we can come to. We power the plane back up and the yellow Xs are gone, but the SWPS FAULT CAS message is still there. A system reboot works on airplanes too.

I know a lot of people don't like to hear this, but it is a machine with a lot of components and those components start acting up. Even though the backup system didn't work, the airplane was still flyable and as I said in my Aircraft Training post, "We practice so this stuff becomes second nature so that if something happens in the real world, we can respond to the situation calmly and efficiently and without over reacting."

A New Experience

I recently experienced something on a flight that neither the captain, the controller, or myself had EVER seen happen or even heard of happening. We were supposed to ferry (empty leg with no passengers) from Fulton County Airport, which is in the Atlanta, Georgia area to West Palm Beach, Florida. There was a lot of weather moving through Florida (so basically a normal a day in Florida) at the time and pretty much every airport in Florida that was south of Orlando was ground stopped and we had been advised by ATC that our expected departure clearance time was about four hours away. An expected departure clearance time or EDCT is, as it's name implies, the time we can expect to depart for our destination and they are assigned anytime there are delay programs in effect at our destination, whether the delay program is for weather, airspace congestion, or some other reason. If you've ever experienced a ground delay and heard the crew say that your expected departure time is insert time here and that it could change, the time they gave you is the EDCT time that ATC gave them.

Before I get to what happened, there are some terms I want to briefly talk about so that when I tell the story, it will make more sense. VFR(Visual Flight Rules) and IFR(Instrument Flight Rules). These are different sets of flight rules that an aircraft can operate under. These are the rules that govern the flight, and do not necessarily reflect the weather on a given flight because an aircraft operating IFR, can fly in visual conditions. When operating VFR, an aircraft must remain out of the clouds and have a certain inflight visibility in order to be legal and VFR aircraft are not necessarily required to talk to ATC. Unless they have requested radar flight following (basically ATC will follow their flight on radar and basically provide the same services they would to an IFR aircraft) VFR aircraft squawk 1200 on their transponder, and if they are receiving flight following they will squawk an assigned code on their transponder just like an IFR aircraft. (IFR aircraft always receive radar services.) When operating IFR, we receive our IFR clearance or flight plan which gives us our route, altitude, squawk code, and initial departure Controller frequency. This is separate from our IFR release, which the tower has to receive before they can clear us to takeoff. (When we receive an EDCT, ATC is basically holding our IFR release which prevents us from departing). When we land at a towered airport, the tower closes our IFR flight plan for us. When we land at an un-towered airport, if the weather is good we can cancel IFR in the air or close our IFR flight plan after we land (If we forget to close our flight plan after landing, search and rescue procedures will be initiated after about 30 minutes). When we choose to cancel IFR in the air, ATC tells us something along the lines of "Squawk VFR, frequency change approved." This tells us to change our transponder code to 1200 and gives us permission to change to a different frequency.

So, back to what happened. If you remember, we were looking at a four hour delay, so we were sitting inside the FBO (Fixed Based Operator, basically the fancy name for the general aviation terminal) watching TV in the crew lounge. Somebody from the FBO told us that the control tower was on the phone and wanting to talk to us. The controller in the tower said that the ground stop had been lifted temporarily and we had a small window of about 15 minutes to get in the air, if we wanted to try and make it. We told him we would try, so we called the company and filled them in. We started the engines, picked up our IFR clearance, got everything programmed, and taxied to the runway. We contacted the tower and the tower controller cleared us for takeoff. We had climbed to about 300ft, and the tower controller tells us "Squawk VFR, and enter the left traffic pattern, you're cleared to land runway two-six." The captain and I look at each other like "Did we hear him correctly?", so the captain changed our transponder code to 1200 while I banked to the left to enter the left traffic pattern.

We landed without further incident, and once we landed the tower controller apologized and said that about the time we had started rolling down the runway, Atlanta Center called them and told them to not let us go, that West Palm had gone back into the ground stop and that our IFR clearance had been cancelled. The tower controller handed us over to the ground controller to taxi back to the FBO. The ground controller apologized as well, and said "I've worked here for 30 years, and that is the FIRST time I have ever seen that." That was the first time any of us had had a flight plan cancelled by ATC as soon as the plane got into air. It just doesn't happen. Center advising the tower to hold an airplane, even after issuing a release for the plane is not uncommon. The tower typically will have enough notice to advise the plane before the plane gets to the runway, and the plane will go sit wherever the ground controller tells them to. Once we're airborne we continue on towards our destination, and if ATC needs to delay us, they'll slow us down or, put us in a holding pattern (everybody's favorite), or we'll divert to our alternate airport if we need to. 

Ultimately, we wound up flying to Miami later that evening with no issues. No, this wasn't a dramatic event that would make the news (and honestly, most non-normal events that happen during a flight aren't as dramatic as the media would have you think), but it was still something that neither the controller, the captain, or myself had seen in 55  years of combined experience.

Monterey, California

Here are some airborne pictures of Monterey, California. I have not been lucky enough to have an overnight in Monterey but I would love to explore the area some day. It is an absolutely beautiful area. Even though I have only seen Monterey from the air, and airport, I am still lucky and blessed to have a job that takes me to places like this.

June 2020 Colorado Pics

Here are some pictures from Colorado I took flying over the last couple of days.

Page and Lake Powell, Arizona

This was the first time I have been to Page, Arizona and had some time to explore the area some and saw some amazing scenery. Pictures can’t always do places like this justice but I still wanted to share some of them.

Colorado "Vacation"

One thing I love about my job is always getting to go different places and places I've never been to before but more times than not, going to those places means the airport and hotel. We (my flying partner and I) don't always get a chance to explore the cities or surrounding areas but I always take advantage of those opportunities when I do get them, even if it's just a couple of hours walking the city streets and playing tourist.

When I went to work this past Friday, I had no idea I would get a mini vacation in Colorado. On Saturday, we finished for the day in Hayden, Colorado and stayed at a hotel in Steamboat Springs. We got to the hotel around 4pm so I was able to walk around downtown Steamboat Springs and some of the trails around the Yampa River.

On Sunday, we flew to White Plains, New York (NYC area), St. Louis, Missouri, and back to Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport in Broomfield, Colorado (Denver area). We flew 8.2 hours that day which set us up for part 2 of our Colorado vacation. We can only fly 10 hours in a rolling 24 hour period and we have to be able to look back to the same time the previous day and not exceed 10 hours of flight time. We departed for White Plains around 9:30 a.m. MST and landed around 3:00 p.m. EST. We landed in Broomfield around 8:30 p.m. Sunday night, so we legally shown around 7:00 a.m. on Monday but because of 10 in 24, we would have only been able to fly 1.8 hours before having to sit until the flight time from our Hayden-White Plains dropped off our rolling 24 hour clock (it's confusing, I know). Because of this we didn't report for work until 3:00 p.m. MST on Monday which gave us all morning to explore. We drove up to Nederland, Colorado and hiked around the Barker Meadow Reservoir and grabbed lunch in Boulder on our way back to Broomfield.

Omg.lol Weblog

I know the weblog functionality of omg.lol is still in a pre-pre-alpha stage (would this be classified as one level below a minimally viable product???), but I am really liking it so far. It is quick and easy to write a blog post in the browser, even on a mobile device which isn’t always the case with some blogging platforms. Omg.lol just keeps getting better and better.

Test Post

This is another test from Working Copy

Another Test Post

This is a quick test post from Working Copy

Work in Progress

👨‍💻🚧

This site is very much a work in progress, which means constant changes in layout and appearance!

Testing A Shortcut

This is another test post from Textastic and working copy. I’m trying out a shortcut to autogenreate the front matter for a post.

Testing 789

I am once again testing my shortcut. I modified it to set the file name. Well technically it saves the file then renames it.

Are You Tired Of Test Posts

I know. I know. Yet another test post. The shortcut works as I want but a .txt.iCloud file is showing up in Working Copy. Deleting it doesn’t seem to affect anything.

New Blog Home

I have decided to move my blog over to Weblog.lol. The DNS changes have been made but DNS does what DNS does so it make take a while for the change to propagate everywhere.

New Blog Name (possibly)

When I was origignally testing weblog, I named the test site Thirty Five North since I live along at 35 degrees latitude. I will probably keep that as the title.

Refreshed In The Wind

I have always enjoyed watching airplanes take off and land, and fly overhead. As a kid, whenever we drove past an airport I remember looking as hard as I could in the hopes I would see an airplane, even if I knew I wouldn't see one.[^note1] I can remember my dad stopping on the side of the road to let me watch a plane take off or land. My kids are the same way I was as a kid, and yes, I have stopped the car to let them watch an airplane. Why do we do this? I was reminded earlier of a quote from one of my favorite books that I think perfectly describes why.

"...Here, refreshed in the wind, I rediscover what I had previously held to be certain truths. I again become aware that no pilot alive can resist watching a plane takeoff or land. He may pass a motionless airplane without noticing it, but the moment his ears detect the first burst of power from a plane, however distant, he will turn his head regardless of everything else around him and watch it. "He will also rudely break off in the middle of a conversation to watch a plane landing, though there may be a constant flow of them. From observance of such activity he enjoys an abiding satisfaction, as basic and everlasting as that found by a deep-sea sailor on his obligatory pilgrimage to the nearest harbor..." — Ernest Gann in Fate Is The Hunter

The "refreshed in the wind" line has always stuck with me, because of a feeling I sometimes get at airports when the wind is just right. It is a feeling of calm and peace, and it is in those times that I'm even more grateful that I am able to do what I love. I don't know why I get this feeling when the wind is a certain way, I just do. I get this feeling the strongest on clear days, when the temperature is around 75 to 80°F, and the wind is about 5 to 10 knots. When I get this feeling all I want to do is stop and watch the airplanes take off and land, and simply take in the sights, sounds, smells, and as crazy as it may sound to some, the beauty of the airport. As stressful as my job can get, it is in these times that I am refreshed in the wind, and that I can't imagine doing anything else.

[^note1]: Who am I kidding, I still do it as an adult.

Testing Image Upload

I am testing image uploading through Owlfiles on iOS (for now). Hopefully you will see an image here.

Another Test Post

Thanks to Gabz for sharing his template, I think I have my image sizing sorted out. This is another test post to confirm that.

Messing with Shortcuts and Posting to Weblog

This is a test post from Drafts and Shortcuts. In theory all of this text here will become the body of the post. This shortcut I’m testing is a modification of one I create which generates a draft post by prefilling the needed front matter, asks for a name for the file and then saves the file to Working Copy. I had been using Working Copy and/or Textastic to write the body of the post and then commit and push the post using Working Copy. This new shortcut should allow writing the body in any app by using the share sheet (or Drafts ability to run a shortcut) which will use the text as Shortcut Input and pasted below the front matter and markdown title in the Shortcut Text Field. If it works as intended, I’ll share screenshots and the shortcuts in another post.

Sharing My Shortcuts Setup

As promised here are the shortcuts and screenshots. These shortcuts do require Working Copy in order to work. This shortcut is the one that creates a blank draft file in Working Copy. This Shortcut is the one that work in Drafts and via the ShareSheet and imports text as the body of the post. Both shortcuts require manually pushing the files via Working Copy. I am troubleshooting a version that automates this process.

They are both fairly simple Shortcuts as seen in the screenshot. There are two Current Date variables used, the first is the current date in ISO 8601 format, and the second is the current device time.