Philip Greenspun’s Weblog

At dinner last night one of the “money guys” at the airport explained why U.S. airfares have been so high recently and planes so full.  “In 2000 when the airlines couldn’t pay their leases, the owners of the planes said ‘There isn’t anybody else we can lease these big jets to, so we’ll renegotiate the terms to whatever you can afford.’  Since 2005, when a U.S. airline stumbles and can’t make its lease payments, G.E. Capital yanks the plane and sends it to China or India.”

We’ve been sending all of our money overseas, presumably in the expectation that folks over there will come back and buy Treasury Bills and other U.S. financial instruments.  Last year we were upset because the Chinese came over and wanted to buy stock in our companies and sometimes the whole company.  Next year, maybe the big story will be how they came and bought anything that wasn’t nailed down, especially airliners.

The one thing those foreigners almost surely won’t want to buy is a $1 million wood-framed house in an ugly exurban golf course development.  So the jet market should get tighter even as real estate continues its slide.

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If you asked me how often I’m able to complete a planned flight in the Cirrus, I would say “almost never”.  It seems that low IMC or icing or horrible turbulence or baking heat interferes.  Today, however, we managed to get four people up to Portland, Maine and back almost as quickly and easily as if we had driven.  The turbulence wasn’t too bad.  The visibility was superb.  Both BED and PWM had cleaned up after the big snow storm and hadn’t yet been hit with tomorrow’s freezing rain and snow storm.  My friend Adam was kind enough to swing by the hangar yesterday and plug the airplane’s heater in so we were able to start it in the 20-degree cold without damaging the engine (about $40,000 to replace).

We started with a sightseeing tour over downtown Boston and then up the shoreline to Cape Ann.  We continued up the beach and landed with a 15-knot wind straight down runway 36 at Portland, turning off into the FBO.  They handed us the keys to an SUV, which we drove to the Duck Fat sandwich/fries/beignet shop.  After that, we visited the art museum (report over on photo.net) and then returned to the airport for a night flight back to BED.

Upon pulling up to the hangar and wondering how I was ever going to get the plane uphill and over a little snowbank, my friend Joris appeared with a car and a snow shovel.

One passenger had never been in a small plane before.  After landing, she said “That was one of the coolest things that I’ve ever done.”

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In the great tradition of pundits, I will put forth a definite prediction for the 2008 Presidential election here.  If the prediction proves true, I will publish a gloating posting in November 2008.  If the prediction proves false, I will never refer to it again 🙂

The Republicans will lose the 2008 election.  People are tired of war.  Churchill was victorious in World War II and nonetheless his party was voted out of power in 1945 because, presumably, Churchill reminded the British of their sufferings against the Germans.  The Administration and the media have characterized what we are doing in Iraq as a war and the press coverage has communicated that we are losing that war.  Thus the Republicans remind Americans not only of war but of losing a war.

That leaves the Democrats.  Listening to Hillary Clinton, people feel that our problems are persistent, serious, and will require vastly higher taxes to address.  Listening to Barack Obama, people feel that our problems are temporary, slight, and can be fixed without raising taxes.  Barack Obama will win the nomination and therefore the election.

How close will the election be?  Both parties have sophisticated methods of making their candidates appeal to voters.  In the absence of spin doctors, Obama would win by a landslide, but the days of landslide victories are probably past.  Obama’s basic message, that the federal government can guarantee everything to everybody without a round of tax increases that would cripple the economy, violates basic laws of economics and common sense.  He will therefore be vulnerable to negative advertising, which will reduce his lead to 5 percentage points over whoever is unfortunate enough to win the Republican nomination.

What will be the net result of this change in government?  In December 2009 we will suffer a massive nationwide psychological depression.  People assume that all of their problems can be blamed on George W. Bush personally.  When the hated King Bush II has been back to Texas for a year and the beloved Obama has been in office for a year, people will look around for a quick status check.  They will still be stuck in horrific traffic.  They will still be paying insane prices for crummy housing in bleak, lonely communities.  Their children will be getting a terrible education at the local public school, perhaps developing to about 15 percent of their potential.  If in a hip urban area, criminals will still be smashing their car windows and taking their GPS.  They will realize that virtually none of the things that are unpleasant about their life have anything to do with the federal government, except for the war in Iraq, which a quick check of the headlines will reveal that we are still losing.

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My friend Arnold called me up today inviting me to fly up to Nashua, New Hampshire (KASH) for lunch in his Piper Meridian.  Taking a jet-powered airplane 20 nautical miles for lunch doesn’t sound like the world’s most efficient plan, but Jet-A fuel is so much cheaper at ASH compared to BED that it makes excellent financial sense.  The flight was a good chance to compare a modern turboprop to the turbojets that I had been flying.

Starting the PT-6 is easy, but nowhere near as easy as starting the FADEC (computer-controlled) engines in the Cessna Citations.  The turboprop has “beta” and “reverse”, which are useful for slowing down on the ground but perhaps no better than the powerful antiskid brakes on the Mustang.  The downside of beta and reverse is that, as Arnold pointed out in flight, “If you pull the throttle back into beta, you’ll kill us both”.  You have to pull the throttle over a detent to get it into beta, but it is not idiot-proof.  Adjusting the power for takeoff requires great care.  The throttle is a stiff mechanical linkage to a fuel controller.  If you push a little too hard you’ll overtorque the engine by 200 ft-lbs.  Otherwise take off was pretty quick, helped by the fact that the wind was blowing 20 gusting 30 knots down the runway.

New England seems to present perennially miserable flying conditions and today was no exception.  Even in an aircraft with a gross weight of 4800 lbs., the bumps were significant.  The Malibu/Mirage/Meridian cabin is not famous for having extra space.  I’m exactly 6′ tall, the seat was all the way down, and my headset was almost brushing the ceiling.  Each bump would whack my head against the hard plastic ceiling, painfully dislodging the headset.  Interior noise was loud, but bearable with noise-canceling headsets.  Another challenge was the fact that the airplane has three airspeed indicators, all indicating different airspeeds.  This is a feature of the Meggitt Magic glass panel that I’ve seen before.  The airspeed tape in front of me was reading about 10 knots slower than the other two, which was unnerving because I always thought that I was flying too slowly.

The Meridian offers much better short-field utility than the Mustang, but otherwise it is hard not to get spoiled by flying a turbojet.  [The Mustang could be operated easily from short fields except that the owner’s manual demands using runways long enough to accelerate to rotation speed, lose one engine, hit the brakes, and stop before the end of the runway.  This does give a comfortable safety margin, but if you were satisfied with the safety of taking off from a short runway in a Piper Malibu you’d be a lot safer depending on both engines in the Mustang continuing to run.]

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In 1998, I wrote a little article advocating that MIT abolish tuition, on the grounds that Harvard would eventually become so rich that they would have to abolish tuition or fight the IRS and explain why they weren’t simply an investment fund that ran a profit-making university on the side as a way to escape paying tax on investment returns.  The consequence of Harvard eliminating tuition would be that M.I.T. would only be able to attract those students who had been rejected by Harvard and the rest of the Ivies.  By eliminating tuition early, M.I.T. would capture the attention of super rich dot-commers and get enough donations to eliminate tuition.

What happened?  M.I.T. raised tuition, Harvard and the Ivies did too, and the rich techies gave their money to Africans.  Then Harvard began to eliminate fees for poor families.  Harvard’s new definition of poor extends up to $180,000/year in income.  A poor family won’t have to pay more than 10 percent of its income to send a proto-snob to Harvard.  Home equity won’t be counted toward family wealth anymore either.

Full story: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/11/education/11harvard.html

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This week marks my first experience flying turbojet-powered aircraft.  I did the takeoff from BED and the climb to 28,000′ in the CJ3, whereupon we had to engage the autopilot under the RVSM rules (now that high-flying airplanes are separated by only 1,000′ instead of 2,000′, the FAA requires the use of autopilots).  As we descended towards ICT four hours later, I clicked off the autopilot to build a little experience on the controls before commencing the approach and landing.  Tony, the captain, piped up from the right seat, “You’re flying by hand now.  Do you want to declare an emergency?”  I did a reasonable hand-flown instrument approach, breaking out of the clouds about 800′ above the runway.  We picked up a trace of rime ice.

The next jet flight was in the new Cessna Mustang, supposedly a very light jet but it looks pretty much the same as the popular CJ-series.  Takeoff, the climb through the clouds, and some maneuvers at 10,000′ (steep turns, stalls) were uneventful.  The instrument landing system approach and touchdown on the slightly snowy/icy runway were reasonably good.

My final jet flight started off very rocky, with the airplane veering off to the right after I brought up the power.  We clipped a couple of runway lights before I got the Mustang back onto the centerline.  One engine failed as we were climbing out, but I was able to get it restarted eventually.  Then the other engine caught on fire.  I followed an emergency checklist to shut down the engine and extinguish the fire.  When nearly ready to land, the control tower said that there were deer on the runway, that the airport was unsafe, and demanded a go-around.  I climbed back up on one engine, retracting the gear for better climb.  I returned for another instrument landing system approach and a touchdown, bounce, touchdown again, veer to the right, and finally brought the plane to a stop on the centerline.

The FlightSafety instructor assured me that “everyone has trouble maintaining directional control with the rudders at lower speeds in the sim.”

A lot of firsts this week:  flying turbojets and flying a full motion flight simulator.

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Wichita, Kansas, even in the depths of an ice storm, has been a reasonably pleasant place to hang out.  The folks at the airport Hilton are much friendlier than any of my friends in Boston.  The price of a room ($94/night) is probably less than what I spend keeping my apartment heated, cooled, Internetted, lighted, insured, taxed, and maintained.  The restaurants have been good.  There are no traffic jams.  We went to the local health club, Genesis, with a fantastic array of machines, an indoor running track, a spacious free weight area, racquetball courts, a 25 yard pool, a huge hot tub, a sauna, a steam room, a pool for water aerobics, and a Swim-Ex treadmill pool.  Unlike the $50 million, $900/year MIT gym, the Genesis club provides soap in the showers.  In fact, the club provides shampoo, shaving cream, deodorant, and a bunch of other items from dispensers.  The cost to enjoy this luxurious retreat?  $40 per month.

All is not rosy in Wichita, however.  One guy in the Cessna sales department told us that the nicest part of the city was just north of downtown.  “I’d like to live there, but no way would I be willing to pay the outrageous price of a house there.”  What does it cost to buy into Wichita’s most happening neighborhood?  “You could be looking at as much as $160,000 for a house there.”

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We had a fun time today giving rides to nearly 50 Harvard students, faculty, and science post-docs (these folks with Ph.D.s reported a salary of $38,000 per year for 70+ hours/week, not exactly great arguments against my women in science article). The weather cooperated as much as you could expect in Massachusetts, with clear skies and winds at 16 knots gusting 22. We landed on some soccer fields behind the Harvard tennis center. The Boston Logan tower was cooperative as always and there were no massive sporting events in open-air stadiums nearby generating flight restrictions. Nobody threw up. The undergraduates at the Harvard Flying Club had everything organized down to the minute and even managed to run a bbq grill.

The Robinson R44 ran like a champ for 4.2 hours, smoothed out the bumpy air, and impressed the audience during shut-down periods.

Off to Kansas tomorrow in a CJ3 and then for a test flight in the Cessna Mustang.

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I gave a talk at Harvard this evening (helicopter aerodynamics, to the flying club, in preparation for giving rides from the athletic fields tomorrow).  The venue was a renovated classroom in a building occupying about $20 million of real estate in Harvard Square.  The university’s $40 billion cash hoard was sufficient to pay for a blackboard, a box of chalk, a video projector, and a fancy A/V panel.  However, they couldn’t come up with another $300 for a permanently installed Dell PC that would be hardwired to the A/V panel and to the Internet.  So a 20-minute harlequinade ensued in which students attempted to hook up a laptop both to the Internet (wireless) and to the projector (wired).  They were never fully successful in getting a large PDF to load.

How many university classes are there in which someone wouldn’t want to project a diagram or something else from a Web server somewhere (see this older posting, for example)?  If the answer is “almost none”, why don’t the schools buy some cheap PCs and nail them down in the classrooms?

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A new Amazon Kindle electronic reader arrived in today’s mail. It took about 15 minutes from the time that I opened the box until I was reading the first book that I purchased, Joshua Ferris’s Then We Came to the End. The $9.99 was seamlessly withdrawn from my credit card. Amazon might make you poor with this device, but they won’t make you miserable.

This would make a great Christmas present for anyone who loves to read and travels enough that light weight is important. The screen is not nearly as bright and attractive as a color LCD, but the battery life is about 100X longer than it would be with a standard LCD display. Books are downloaded over a cell phone network and download time is minimal. The device shows up at your house already configured to know who you are and how to charge you for stuff (keep that in mind if you buy this as a gift; it will truly be the gift that keeps on giving… $9.99 holes in your credit card statement).

This is the kind of thing that the phone companies would have done a long time ago if they had any imagination (consider that you still can’t use your mobile phone in the U.S. to book a hotel room, even though the phone company knows your approximate location, Expedia knows which hotels have rooms, and the hotels are accustomed to paying substantial commissions).

I’m hopping out to Phoenix next week (Citation CJ3 to Kansas and then Cirrus SR22 the rest of the way and back) and will take nothing to read other than the Kindle, then supply a full report.

[Update after reading one book (mostly on an airplane under the reading light): The main issue for me is that turning pages interrupts the flow.  I have to stop and concentrate on the last 5 or 6 words before pressing the Next button, then wait 1 second, then pick up the sentence again.  I am accustomed to reading one sentence at a time, not one word at a time.  It is easier to do that with a book where the pages can both be seen at one time and/or can be flipped very quickly.  The Kindle would be better if there were an option to overlap a line or two between pages.

I still give the Kindle an A+ for user experience and and A- for traveling.  I would give it only a C for replacing books at home or in the office.

I left the Kindle in a backpack with the screen saver on, came back a week or so later, and found the battery 100% dead.  I’m not 100 percent confident that I could travel with this without the charger.  (Wouldn’t it be nice if companies could agree on a way to get power to these little devices and standard hotel rooms had the right interface?)]

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