Hurricane Idalia, METAR edition

by philg

Here’s the part of the Florida coast where Hurricane Idalia arrived recently:

Notice that the area where the hurricane was predicted to make landfall, and actually did make landfall, is covered in wildlife refuges. In other words, no humans would ordinarily be resident in this area. What does it look like for pilots? There are two airports with weather stations: Tallahassee (KTLH) and Perry-Foley (KFPY):

How ugly did it get at Ron DeSantis’s house?

KTLH 301308Z AUTO 34028G40KT 2SM +RA BR FEW015 BKN036 OVC065 24/23 A2936 RMK AO2 PK WND 34040/1308

Winds 28 gusting 40 knots, 2 miles of visibility in heavy rain and mist, a broken layer of clouds at 3,600′ above the runway. That was around 9:08 am (1308 GMT).

What about around Perry-Foley, which is much closer to the water?

KFPY 301335Z AUTO 27033G48KT 2 1/2SM RA 25/24 A2904 RMK AO2 LTG DSNT SW T02450238
KFPY 301315Z AUTO 26037G51KT 2SM RA 25/24 A2894 RMK AO2 LTG DSNT NE T02480241
KFPY 301255Z AUTO 28050G74KT 1SM +VCTSRA 25/24 A2865 RMK AO2 LTG DSNT N AND NE P0071 T02470240
KFPY 301235Z AUTO 31044G68KT 1SM +VCTSRA 25/24 A2834 RMK AO2 LTG DSNT NE AND S P0063 T02460240
KFPY 301215Z AUTO 01054G74KT 1SM +TSRA OVC008 25/24 A2828 RMK AO2 LTG DSNT N AND NE P0029 T02470240
KFPY 301155Z AUTO 02043G62KT 1 1/4SM +RA OVC008 25/24 A2860 RMK AO2 LTG DSNT NE AND E P0046 6//// 7//// T02510240
KFPY 301135Z AUTO 04034G56KT 2 1/2SM VCTSRA OVC011 25/24 A2887 RMK AO2 P0029 T02510240
KFPY 301055Z AUTO 06030G42KT 1 3/4SM +RA SCT007 OVC013 A2913 RMK AO2 P0024
KFPY 301035Z AUTO 05024G36KT 4SM RA BKN008 OVC013 25/24 A2919 RMK AO2 P0008 T02520240
KFPY 301015Z AUTO 04019G29KT 3SM RA OVC008 25/24 A2927 RMK AO2 P0004 T02500240

About 2.5 hours of frightening wind, which peaked at 54 knots gusting 74. There was a heavy thunderstorm with rain and skies overcast at 800′ above the runway. “LTG DSNT” means “lightning distant”.

Cedar Key, Florida is a small collection of islands tenuously connected to the mainland with charming wooden buildings (i.e., dilapidated) that look like they could be blown away in a fresh breeze. Cedar Key was widely highlighted in hysterical media stories as likely to be wiped out by Idalia’s storm surge. Yet people refused to take a day for sightseeing in Orlando! “‘We Should Have Gotten Off the Island’: Cedar Key Residents Survived Idalia’s Wrath” (New York Times):

Hours after the waters of the Gulf of Mexico swept through her house, Donna Knight emerged in a windbreaker and boots to try to get her Chevy SUV to higher ground.

“It came through — the whole ocean,” she said, describing a night of howling wind, frightening bangs and flying debris as Hurricane Idalia blew through Cedar Key, a conglomeration of tiny islands connected by bridges that juts three miles into the Gulf.

By noon on Wednesday, the center of the Category 3 storm had passed, and she and her 19-year-old son knew they had survived. “We should have gotten off the island,” she said.

Officials had estimated before Idalia made landfall that perhaps 100 people were riding out the storm on Cedar Key. It was unclear how many had left the island immediately afterward.

Not a great advertisement for the Florida K-12 system…

Ms. Knight, 62, a 20-year Cedar Key resident, had every intention of heeding the mandatory evacuation order ahead of Idalia, she said. “My bags were packed.” She just needed gas and groceries, and would join her husband and mother-in-law near Orlando.

But her son didn’t want to go. “I wasn’t going to leave him by himself,” she said.

This was the absolutely the most obvious place from which to evacuate and yet 100 people (out of 700 total population; the NYT fails to provide context) decided to stay (a “mandatory” evacuation order in Florida is not backed up by COVID lockdown police tactics).

How was it in Palm Beach County, you may ask? A little windy. Hot as hell if hell were also super humid (2-3 degrees above the historical average; 3-4 degrees below the historical record). Scattered thunderstorms (common in the summer anyway). I ended up on a bug-free boardwalk in the Everglades at the Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge, a 145,000-acre swamp. I’ve been on about 15 boardwalks in the Everglades and never been bothered by mosquitoes or other flying predators. This is one of the big mysteries of Florida!

Related:

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God wants you to identify as 2SLGBTQQIA+

by philg

From Needham, Maskachusetts, a suburb of Boston:

Some more images of the church where God speaks directly to humans:

(Sometimes the best way to “Dismantle Racism” is by first moving to a town that is 2 percent Black.)

The church reminds us that it is not Ukrainians who are fighting for their lives:

Speaking of Ukraine, another church in Needham:

Here’s what I think might be a 2SLGBTQQIA+ version of the Ukrainian flag:

What about back in Cambridge? A friend snapped this photo of Riverside Boat Club, which reminds folks that Black Lives Matter, that the trans-enhanced rainbow flag is our national symbol, and that the best way to support Ukraine is to stay safely in Maskachusetts while hanging up a flag.

Who can explain the intersection between Black and 2SLGBTQQIA+ on the boat club whose web site shows only white people? Perhaps a professor of Queer of Color Critique who will soon be working at Williams College:

The Program in Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies seeks a professor of Queer of Color Critique, field open, ideally with interdisciplinary scholarship. We also especially welcome those with additional interests in Disability Studies/Crip Theory, Feminist Technoscience Studies, and/or Migration Studies.

The candidate should be able to teach introductory courses, including WGSS 101 and a Foundations in Sexuality Studies seminar in addition to electives.

We are especially interested in candidates from historically underrepresented groups

Coronapanic is over in Maskachusetts? The August 10, 2023 job post:

We recognize that these are uncertain times with changing health and safety restrictions given the endemic nature of COVID-19 and other viral illnesses. This search will follow all state and college policies, and we anticipate collaborating with candidates to best navigate health and safety during the recruitment process.

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Climate Change alarmist spends $68 million on a sea level barrier island teardown

by philg

2020: “Jeff Bezos Commits $10 Billion to Address Climate Change” (New York Times)…

“Climate change is the biggest threat to our planet,” he wrote. “I want to work alongside others both to amplify known ways and to explore new ways of fighting the devastating impact of climate change on this planet we all share.”

2023: “Jeff Bezos revealed as buyer of $68M Indian Creek teardown” (The Real Deal)…

Billionaire Jeff Bezos, the third richest person in the world, reportedly paid $68 million to purchase a waterfront home in Miami’s Indian Creek Village.

The mansion Bezos reportedly purchased was built in 1965 and expanded in 1985. It spans nearly 9,300 square feet with three bedrooms and three bathrooms on a 2.8-acre lot.

Last year, his parents, Mike and Jackie Bezos, purchased two waterfront homes in Coral Gables for $78 million.

Where is Indian Creek? See the top right corner:

Let’s hope that the new house is completed before sea level rise washes Miami Beach away!

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CNN found 50X more white gunmen than Black gunmen

by philg

Following this weekend’s unfortunate events in Jacksonville, Florida, a gun-loving friend sent me a CNN article and remarked on the phrase “white gunman” occurring within the first three words.

I used the Google to find the precise phrase “white gunman” on cnn.com:

158 results. Compare to “Black gunman”:

(Black Lives Matter, but Black capitalization does not; Google shows the same 3 results for “black gunman”.)

In other words, the reader of CNN would infer that there are 50 white gunmen in the U.S. for every Black gunman.

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Indoor, Outdoor, and Bearded Maskers in the Boston Area

by philg

Photos from August 21, 2023, Allston, Massachusetts (adjacent to Boston University):

My favorite, of course, is the surgical mask over full beard as a means of blocking out an aerosol virus. However, the most confusing are the outdoor maskers. The risk of being in a crowded city is so high that they need a mask when outdoors… yet they won’t move away from the crowded city. I guess the masked supermarket shoppers are also tough to explain. Why don’t they stay safe at home and let the Latinx essential delivery workers incur the risk of gathering groceries? (See The social justice of coronashutdowns)

I visited a friend in Brookline who warned his elderly mother to stay away from me because I was insufficiently cautious about the possibility of a SARS-CoV-2 infection (I had arrived from an oceanfront estate in Maine with about 3,000 square feet of space per person). A few minutes later, he decided that it would be too onerous to cook pasta at home, safe from COVID-19, on the high-end induction cooktop. So we then all went out to a cramped neighborhood Italian restaurant in which the elderly mom was within breathing distance of about 30 local humans (presumably not Covid heretics, however).

Both the mom, a Manhattan resident, and the grandkids spontaneously offered the opinion that Florida schools were terrible, partly due to the fact that reading was banned in Florida. Said grandkids had been removed from the Brookline, Maskachusetts public schools (one of the highest-rated districts in the state) due to being bored and the school system not having any gifted program. So they were paying private school tuition ($55,000+/year per student) on top of state income tax (banned by the FL constitution), state estate tax (also banned by the FL constitution, unless it can be credited toward federal), and property tax at a similar rate to what a typical FL county charges. I pointed out that Florida state law required every public school district to offer gifted education beginning in 2nd grade and that, if necessary, there was also the Big Hammer in which Florida high school kids can take online or in-person courses for free at any state-run college or university (and taxpayers have to buy them the textbooks as well!). Finally, the larger counties run magnet schools for those who are artistically or academically inclined (one of Miami’s is the #4-ranked public high school in the U.S.).

Related:

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Among the Covidians in Burlington, Vermont

by philg

Some photos from a recent trip to downtown Burlington, Vermont…

The front door of a state government building:

Inside a bookstore, a follower of CNN:

COVID-19 is dangerous enough that one should wear a mask, but not so dangerous that one should shop for books on Amazon?

We are informed that marijuana can cure almost any illness, yet below is a marijuana shopper who feels the need to protect him/her/zir/theirself via a mask (Fauci-approved cloth version). If he/she/ze/they is about to inhale healing cannabis, why does he/she/ze/they need to worry about a minor bug such as SARS-CoV-2? Note also the trans-enhanced rainbow flag on the front door.

Speaking of rainbow flags, nearly every merchant had one, but only some featured Black Lives Matters or Trans People Belong signs.

Note the tattoos behind the Sign of Justice:

The University of Vermont featured both indoor and outdoor maskers of the young/healthy/slender variety, but unfortunately I was too slow to get good photos. Even more upsetting: the “intentional intersectional space” was closed.

Shout-out to Heritage Aviation at KBTV for the usual awesome service. Also to U.S. Customs at Burlington for hassle-free clearance inbound from the Land of Blackface and Political Unity.

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Why are women lumped in with the nonbinary?

by philg

Happy Women’s Equality Day.

Universities have substantial full-time credentialed bureaucracies to deal with gender issues and certainly MIT’s is second to none. Here’s an article from back in April 2023 about an MIT facility that was formerly exclusive to those who identified as “women”… “A home away from home”:

The Margaret Cheney Room remains indispensable after nearly 140 years.

The Cheney Room has been an oasis for MIT women ever since the original one opened on the Boston campus in 1884, when women at the Institute were scarce. Today’s enrollment numbers are much more balanced than in early days, with women making up 48% of the undergraduate and 39% of the graduate student body. But there’s still a need for dedicated spaces on campus where women and nonbinary students can gather, says Lauryn McNair, assistant dean of LBGTQ+ and Women and Gender Services at MIT.

“Women’s centers and spaces are still important, even in a changing landscape of gender,” says McNair, explaining that the space today is a haven for both women and nonbinary people. “At its foundation, a women’s space is built upon the core concepts of community through safety and support, access, affirmation and recognition, and intersectionality. I hope for students to feel at home in the Cheney Room and that this is a space for them that celebrates and affirms who they are so they can thrive at MIT.”

Updates include reconfiguring old rooms to create new, more useful spaces and adding new furniture, fresh paint, and contemporary art that was created by female and nonbinary artists. After getting input from students, McNair chose the artworks to reflect how they see themselves in the world today.

Why do the experts force “women” to share with 72 additional gender IDs recognized by Science? Instead of one room that excludes “men” but admits people identifying with every other gender, why not 73 rooms that exclude men, each of the 73 rooms devoted to a single gender ID? How are women “equal” on Women’s Equality Day if they are lumped together with 72 other gender IDs while “men” are considered a special class (admittedly for the purpose of exclusion)

Here’s Lauren McNair’s bio page:

Related:

  • Real World Divorce (sometimes “equality” before the law means winning 97-98 percent of family court lawsuits; see the Massachusetts and New Hampshire chapters, for example, and associated Census Bureau data on the gender IDs of those who’ve won custody of cash-yielding children)
  • Title IX, which “prohibits sex-based discrimination in any school or any other education program that receives funding from the federal government” (but, apparently, federally-funded MIT can have facilities exclusively for some gender IDs without having any separate-but-equal facility for those who identify as “men”)
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Who watched the Republican debate?

by philg

How did my favorite Nikki Haley do in the Republican debate a couple of nights ago? And, in a matter of local interest, what about the hated fascist tyrant of Florida, Ron DeSantis (who continues to oppress Latinx migrants such as Lionel Messi)?

I happened to be at my mom’s retirement apartment building on the night of the debate. The elderly Democrats there (DC suburbs, remember, so all of these folks made their money from bigger government) were intensely interested. I asked “If Joe Biden were a mental vegetable, would you still vote for him?” The answer was “yes”. I followed up with “What if Joe Biden were dead. What you vote for his corpse to serve as president rather than a Republican?” The answer was again “yes”. I never figured out why people who would never consider voting for a Republican would bother to watch. (They also expressed intense fear that Trump would return, though none can cite any example of personal suffering or even suffering of an acquaintance that they attribute to Trump’s first administration.)

There are a fair number of Jews in the building and they have followed recent political events in Israel in U.S. media. Their impression is that “everyone in Israel is out protesting.” (I didn’t have a chance to ask whether the victims of tyranny in Israel will seek asylum in Syria or if Lebanon is the preferred destination for refugees.) A couple of young visitors who had just returned from two weeks in Israel said, “We didn’t see anyone protesting,” but this wasn’t persuasive.

Based on consumption of U.S. media, another prevalent belief among the older crowd was that most of Hawaii had been torched. They’d checked in with anyone they knew who might have been on Oahu, for example.

I’m not sure what it matters what Yellow Dog Democrats at the NYT think about candidates in a primary that they’d be ashamed to vote in, but Nikki Haley was chosen as the best of the worst:

(Winning “most levelheaded person onstage” is like being a dwarf among midgets?)

Readers who watched: What did you learn?

From an aviation group, regarding the candidate who wasn’t there….

Note that the jet-fuel-pumping FBO chain Signature is substantially owned by climate charge activist Bill Gates.

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A visit to BETA Technologies in Burlington, Vermont (eVTOL aircraft)

by philg

Earlier this month, I stopped into BETA Technologies, a $1 billion (financing) electric aircraft baby that has been growing in the unlikely crib of the Green Mountains. With offices and labs in Burlington (KBTV) and flight tests across the lake at Plattsburgh (KPBG), the company is pushing ahead on making all aspects of battery-electric aviation practical.

Much of the company’s effort seems to have gone into making better electric motors. Cooling is a challenge for a motor that puts out 200+ hp continuously and there have been multiple iterations of design. The 3D printers were all running when I visited while mechanical engineers labored at desktop PCs.

Does it fly? Yes! In fact, a test pilot told me about going more than 300 nm on one charge. The company is working on two aircraft at the same time:

The CTOL version on the left (“conventional takeoff and landing”) might be more interesting for the general aviation crowd. Why pay $1 million for a new piston-powered airplane that is trying to shake itself and you apart with vibration and deafen you and your passengers with noise when you can cruise in smooth quiet electric comfort? BETA is hoping for certification in 2025 (which means 2027?) and is also working on the ground support infrastructure to make these aircraft practical transportation solutions. Charging will supposedly take about one hour, which is inferior to refueling time, but my host posted out that electric aircraft don’t waste any time in startup/runup/shutdown. The company has a Pipistrel electric two-seater and he demonstrated that it is up and running within a few seconds after flipping four switches.

One area where BETA might have less certification challenges than competitors is that they’re not trying to create a fully autonomous aircraft. In the VTOL version, one of the four seats is for a pilot with a powered-lift type rating on his/her/zir/their certificate (maybe the CTOL version can be flown by a pilot with a single-engine land rating?). On the other hand, if a commercial operator orders 100 of these, the operating will have to fight United Airlines for 100 pilots.

Just outside their engineering hangar is an example of what the ground support station would look like. The left cube is a GPU that can be hooked up to run cabin heat or A/C. The center is for a massive charging cable to top up the 800V battery. The right cube is for cooling the battery (during charging).

The company has a “study hall” where local kids can come in to learn about how battery packs, inverters, and three-phase AC motors work.

There is also a non-motion sim right by the front door:

I came away impressed with the company’s spirit and cooperative energy.

What’s the competition? Boeing-owned Wisk had a booth and a demonstration flight at Oshkosh this year:

Considering that it has the same seating capacity as a Cessna 172, the Wisk machine is enormous. It the electric future is more efficient, why does the efficient vehicle take up four parking spaces? And dare anyone ask how much it will cost to put together this much carbon fiber and plastic?

The BETA eVTOL works like a DJI drone. The rotors are fixed, but may spin at different speeds. A pusher propeller at the rear can then push the machine to cruise at 120 knots or more. Wisk takes a leaf from the Boeing V-22 Osprey, which cost $30 billion in pre-Biden money to develop, and tilts the motors as necessary.

If Wisk can achieve its engineering, certification, and production goals, the customers won’t have to worry about hiring pilots: the tilt-rotor is fully autonomous.

Related:

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What we learned at Oshkosh (the talks)

by philg

The best talk that we attended at Oshkosh (EAA AirVenture) was by Mike Stevens, a Cirrus test pilot, on a verification flight for the parachute system in the Vision Jet. The FAA did not demand this test, but Cirrus decided to do it anyway. Landing under the parachute carries a risk of back injury and destroys the airframe, so the idea was to cut the deployed ‘chute away, as had been done on a Cirrus SR20 test flight two decades earlier, and then fly the airplane to a runway. Stevens showed us video of the SR20 flipping over after the cut-away and said “that’s a little sporty to do in a jet.” It was impressive to see what had to go into the planning of the operation, including, for example, nets to protect the engine inlet from sucking in fragments of the cords.

“Tumbleweed” gave us a good talk on the Burning Man Airport, including the prep, the surface maintenance, and the new-since-a-few-years-ago air traffic control facility (some of the same controllers who handle EAA AirVenture go out to deal with what in some ways is a bigger challenge). She has been the airport manager in various years so could speak to a variety of aspects of the operation. See also my article Burning Man for turboprop pilots.

The worst talk, by far, was by a federal government worker regarding a four-year struggle (or five?) to create a mobile-friendly version of www.aviationweather.gov. We lasted about 30 minutes and hadn’t heard anything about what the site could do for pilots. The entire talk was about the struggles of insiders, e.g., moving hosting providers. (Pilots still don’t have any simple source for a cloud tops forecast, which was formerly part of the “area forecast” that was discontinued in favor of these unusable web sites. If you can climb over the tops of clouds you’ll be ice-free in the Northeast and bump-free in Florida, so it is important to know in advance. (Elites in pressurized aircraft don’t care because they can always keep climbing.))

Russell Klingaman, a lawyer, gave a talk about the Wright brothers and their patent litigation (“the aileron wars”). For Klingaman, the Wright brothers are villains who held back aviation in the U.S. by 10-20 years. They had wanted to produce as few airplanes as possible and make as much money as possible via patent litigation.

Timothy Ravich, an aviation attorney at a big firm in Chicago, gave an overview talk on eVTOL. It was light on the practical and legal barriers these folks are going to face in getting their products FAA certified and heavy on the social injustice suffered by Americans who identify as “women”. In the slide below, we learn that women spend twice as much time taking transportation as men, pay twice as much when they do need transportation, and are more likely to die in a car crash. As Bill Burr points out, a lot of women do the hardest job in the world of being a mother and therefore shouldn’t have to incur much risk or cost of transportation (since staying home in pajamas is always an option). Nobody in the audience challenged any of these statistics. (AAA says that men spend more time driving than women; IIHS says that men are more likely to be killed in car accidents.)

Seth Washburne opened up about trying to transition from a Cessna 172 into a DC-3 restoration project that went off the rails and cost $2 million in pre-Biden money.

We didn’t make it to even half of the talks that sounded interesting. I’m especially sorry that I didn’t get to meet Zara Rutherford, who flew around the world VFR recently. There was also a talk on rebuilding a Boeing B-17. That’s what next year is for!

Let’s also not forget after hours. A few images from the SOS Brothers Beer Tent, across from our Walmart tent:

I’m sure that a lot of learning happens at SOS University!

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