fouldsy.com

Yesterday we drove back up from Homer to Anchorage, and then today was a shopping day for Kat + I whilst my parents wandered around downtown and relaxed a little. We got a bunch of stuff shipped back from Walmart including a bunch of dog food for Mia, and also mailed back about 15 bags of cereal in a couple of rubbermade boxes via USPS to keep us stocked up for a little while! It was a lot of stop + starting around town all day, but productive. As we were packing up the cereal and dried foods at Carrs, we were right under the approach path for the general aviation traffic coming in to Merrill Field which was pretty cool under the blue skies we’ve been experiencing (temperature in the 70’s all day today ):

Tomorrow we’re driving up to just outside Denali NP where we have a log cabin for three nights, including the full day Kantishna wilderness bus tour through the park on Saturday. Given the current weather, it should be great as it’s due to stay clear until Sunday/Monday, and staying in a log cabin in the area should be an experience too. Coming back down to Anchorage on Monday we’re stopping off in Talkeetna for the Sun Dog Iditarod kennel tour which Kat is really looking forward to!

Now that I can steal Kat’s camera (she’s asleep, will never know ), I can put together some shots of a ‘little’ project I’ve been working the past month or so…

As I spend quite a bit of time playing flight simulator on the PC, using the mouse to click buttons to change radio frequencies, control the GPS, or even just flick switches to turn on or off navigation lights doesn’t quite cut it compared to sitting in the cockpit of a real airplane. This realisation materialised long before I actually took the intro flight in the Cessna 152 last month There are people who literally spend thousands of dollars and hundreds (if not thousands) of hours rebuilding complete Boeing 737 or Airbus A319 flight decks which look amazing, though a little difficult to accomplish out here. Plus, you’re pretty much pigeon-ed into flying that one particular type of aircraft. The in-between are companies like GoFlight or SimKits which build + sell individual panel components to connect together allowing to utilise them as you see fit and for controlling any aircraft you wish to load up in flight simulator. Again, fantastic units, but still more than a little pricey at $110 plus shipping for a basic 8-button or switch panel.

Since I can’t complain about not having time to build something similar myself and being able to pick + choose the various electrical components myself from various suppliers online, I er, did:

It still needs a couple of sheets of balsa wood for the top parts of each panel which I’ll get in Anchorage next month, but everything is functional and otherwise complete. Some of the labels aren’t perfectly straight and I could do with adjusting some of the push buttons on the autopilot panel so they are all aligned, but it wasn’t built to score any style points! It runs off four USB to 20 button interface modules produced by Desktop Aviator which provide the core controls. These were a great find, even if the articles on flightsim.com which explain how to use toggle switches, push buttons and rocker switches were slightly biased in recommending them given the author of the articles is the founder of the Desktop Aviator But, I liked the way I could buy just one or two and add in functionality over time (which is exactly what I did to make sure I could do what I wanted to do with them in the first place before).

The first completed section was based just off rocker switches and push buttons. The rotary switches for the autopilot panel were added later:

The electronics behind were not all that complicated - the push buttons connect straight to the input pins on the USB interface controller, whereas the toggle or rocker switches require a simple circuit built around an optoisolator to generate a ‘pulse’ as the switch is flicked to allow the computer to recognise the input. The flightsim.com article and instructions on the Desktop Aviator website explain it all in detail and isn’t hard, just time consuming, as this part of the panel required 20 of these small circuits to be soldered. But, figuring on about a $1 for a rocker/toggle switch, $1 for the optoislator, and maybe another $1 total for a capacitor, two resistors and diode, factoring in the USB controller being $29 for 20 inputs, you’re still looking at less than $5 per input. The fantastic plastic panels at 75c each also from Steve at Desktop Aviator were great too as it meant I could drill them however I wanted to group the buttons and switches to my liking.

The radio panel was the main section I wanted to build, as all available solutions are either complicated, expensive, or both. Dual rotary push button switches aren’t easy to find and pricey when you can, and also require either a separate interface controller (usually the more expensive kind used in high-end simulators where you have 80+ inputs per controller) or meant you have to program your own microcontroller to interpret rotating clockwise or anti-clockwise. For the hardcore who won’t accept anything less, they’ll pay quite a price for these kind of inputs, but me, I’ll take a little less!

Taking a basic single-pole 12-position rotary switch (one of the most commonly available at about $2.50) and wiring up pins 1-5-9 and then 3-7-11, it creates the equivalent of a standard toggle switch. To switch between Mhz and Khz when adjusting radio frequencies, after connecting the output of the rotary switch to the standard pulse circuit, the output of this pulse circuit normally going straight to the USB interface controller instead connects to what would be the output of a SPDT toggle switch. The upper terminal can then connect to an input pin on the controller, and the lower terminal to another input pin. Now, when you flip the toggle switch, the rotary controller’s output is sends a different event to the PC. Here’s the circuit to explain a bit better (yes, pretty much just what’s on the Desktop Aviator site):

With the way the rotary switch is wired, you only get a pulse sent on every second ‘click’ as we have a break between our contacts. In practice, this actually works nicely, as with FSUPIC which is used to pass the controls to flight sim, it needs a 1/4 second pause (I believe) between inputs otherwise it won’t recognise it, so if you were rotating very quickly, it wouldn’t register anyways. If you had a rotary switch that had a slightly smoother contact point on the rear (as oppose to mine which has quite a large ball which makes a definitive click and clunk), you probably wouldn’t notice it really. Still, our drawback (for the moment…) is that rotating either clockwise or counter-clockwise, we can’t make a difference in whether we’re increasing or decreasing our radio frequency. This is where the more complicated solutions involving a dedicated microcontroller would read in a binary output from the rotary switch (if we wired up our other contacts in the same manner) to calculate what position the switch is being moved to/from and thus whether it’s going up or down. In contact with Desktop Aviator, they are actually producing a pre-programmed chip to do just this, but no word on pricing. Anyway, my simple solution is to use a modifier key within FSUIPC.

In FSUIPC, I mapped each rotary switch to send a key command rather than an action in flight simulator. For example, rotating the rotary switch for COM 1 will map to Ctrl-C by FSUIPC, and then you can set Ctrl-C to represent COM RADIO WHOLE INC. Fairly straightfoward. Then, add another key mapping for Ctrl-Shift-C to represent COM RADIO WHOLE DEC. Hold down shift whilst rotating the rotary switch and now the frequency will decrease. Technically, you can continue rotating the rotary switch clockwise and it will decrease so long as you’re holding down the Shift key but that’s no fun As I use the CH Yoke, the left rear button on the yoke is set as the Shift key, so I simply hold my finger down on the button whilst rotating the rotary switch counter-clockwise to decrease the frequency; release the button and turn clockwise to increase the frequency. Repeat this key-mapping process where Shift acts as the modifier key to decrease the frequency for the other COM and NAV functions, and with the toggle switch on both Mhz and Khz.

Sounds like a clunky process, but in practice it’s all pretty natural. When leaning over to adjust the radios, you’d keep your left hand on the yoke anyway, so it’s no problem to press you finger on the button at the rear of the yoke. Flicking between the Mhz and Khz positions is no harder than moving your fingers between the inner and outer knobs on a dual-rotary switch. I also put in two push buttons for each control - one to enable the COM or NAV channel and another to switch standby frequency. Really, the only thing missing is an LED screen showing the frequency and your adjustments, but that’s getting back into substantially increasing cost + complexity. With this setup, each rotary switch requires 2 inputs on the USB interface controller, plus one each for selecting the channel and standby frequency. To do both COM 1 + 2 and NAV 1 + 2, it works out to about $50 including the cost of the USB interface controller. A 3rd of the price of the GoFlight unit, though admitedly requiring a little more work to get going and not providing exact functionality of those in a real airplane by having. Still, for those on budget and with the time and patience to build the controls themselves, very worthwhile.

Other cool features I included was a GPS panel which happily recreates the Garmin GNS 430’s found in the EagleSoft Cirrus SR-22 and the default Garmin 500 model within FS2004. The rotary controls work in the same way as the radio controls. I also used another rotary switch to represent the ignition switch of a GA aircraft, and then a selection of buttons and a toggle switch for sending the transponder code and going between standby + on. There’s no direct controls available for FSUIPC to do things like IDENT but you won’t get that unless you fly online with something like VATSIM, with clients providing that functionality anyways.

Whilst building these avionics panels, I also came a lightweight, quick, and free voice recognition utility called Shoot which allows you to speak commands and have the computer respond. This is my way of ‘talking’ to ATC without $50 on VoxATC or similar. Again, it’s not going to perfectly replicate talking to ATC with the correct phrases, but in conjunction with Peter Wilding’s control set and adding in a bunch of other commands, I can say “Ready for taxi for north departure” even though all Shoot sends to flight sim is ‘4′ (or whatever) to select from the text-based prompt in the ATC window. Makes things a lot more realistic, and after a few flights of adding in commands on the fly (no pun intended!) as I came across a new ATC command to set, I very fairly have to just say the numbers to move through menus.

All in all, pretty happy with the setup now, as it certainly gives me a lot more to do when flying, and kept me entertained for a good while figuring out how to do it all and then building up the circuits and wiring the controls. An awful lot cheaper than buying pre-built modules, and let me build it exactly how I wanted, such as for the GPS panel. If you have no interest in flight sim, all this has probably made no sense, but will at least give you something to read to help you sleep! And if anyone is trying to do something similar, let me know in the comments to share your ideas + suggestions or if you have any problems.

Made it back to Tunt from Anchorage with only a 5 hour wait hanging around in Bethel at Hageland… Pretty tired as was a lot of darting around from store to store getting things together or mailing back, but at least the weather was good, and I managed to get an intro pilot lesson with Take Flight out of Merrill Field too which was good and cleared up a lot of things in my mind:

I got to the aviation museum on Lake Hood, munched away on Subways, Pizza Hut, Wendys, Taco Bell and McDonalds (along with some very nice salmon, prawns + halibut at one of Damond’s friend’s birthdays), and spent more time shopping than is good for a bloke really!

Being able to hang out with Damond in Anchorage, and make the use of one of his cars (a great big Suburban - way bigger than anything else I’ve driven before, and certainly not *quite* as economical as the Prius last summer given gas is at $4/gallon now), was cool, and overall it was a good trip. The snow has pretty much gone in Tunt now and the river broke a day or two ago, although the Kuskokwim itself hasn’t started flowing yet, but with the joy of Walmart I bought two big cans of bug spray so I’m prepared for being out here this summer!

Having fun with the waiting game of ‘will my bush plane turn up?’, but the weather isn’t too bad so should be okay. In Anchorage until Friday lunchtime, and already got my shopping lists from Kat She’s just mad I get to eat takeaway for every meal, even though someone is going away herself in two weeks time…

But, Lake Hood opened up on Friday which will be fun to see the float planes moving around again, and I’m also planning on getting my pilot medical done along with a couple of intro flying lessons, all being well. No idea when I’ll have internet as I’m staying at a friend’s house, so might be Friday lunchtime back at Anchorage airport before I can get any photos online or get my e-mail.

Well, the warm weather at the start of last week was just a teaser. It cooled down again the middle of the week and froze over, and then the last couple of days there’s been some gentle blowing snow most of the time covering the ice. The tundra is still very bare + exposed so it’s kinda a mixed look outside, and still staying down around 15F (-10C) with windchill. Haven’t been out on the snowmobile anyway as the tundra is all exposed around the houses, and don’t really have anywhere to go on it with the weather swinging around!

A few more locals have been getting boats ready though - one of them by the river had a big pile of broken ice next to it which looked like someone had lost control of their sled after being ice chipping, but then the inside of the boat was thick with ice and it’s owner had been breaking it out! I’ve seen a couple getting towed along the river too, again, probably to get out seal hunting along the coast:

Isn’t quite as gruesome as some of the photos recently published out of Canada though, honest.

On the plus side (segue from clubbing seals…?!), GTA IV arrived through the mail this afternoon - about time, as I pre-ordered it last summer, even though it’s final release date wasn’t until this past Tuesday Pretty cool though, so can’t wait to get to stuck into it later on this evening

I’m also heading into Anchorage on May 12th for a few days, partly just to get out the village for a bit! I’m meeting up with a friend who lives there, and hoping to get an introductory flying lesson (TSA approval required for anything more) and pilot medical done whilst I’m there. Slowly moving forward I guess. Should be good, and Damond used to work in Denali National Park and has lived around the Anchorage area all his life, so I can pick his brains for when we head out at the end of July when my parents fly over Can get some shopping done and mail stuff back to keep us going over the summer as well - think I’ll have one box just of mosquito repellant!

On Monday evening I uploaded the first of some files I’ve been working on with flight sim to a couple of the major flight sim sites that provide file libraries to collect resources like that together. The first was a complete package for Grant Aviation including repaints of the Cessna 207 and 208’s that fly in + out of the village, along with AI flight plans I’d worked out so that you get the planes flying around in flight simulator as you would do in real life. This area of Alaska is pretty much devoid of anything in flight sim (not unlike in real life I guess!), but the addition of some traffic makes such a difference and is pretty cool seeing them moving around Bethel and out to the villages. I wasn’t expecting many people to pay much attention to them, but there’s been over 1000 downloads within the first 72 hours Probably taper off after they move out the latest uploads pages, but nice to see. I’ve already got planes and flight plans pretty much worked out for Hageland Aviation and good ol’ Yute Air (just wish I could figure out a ‘randomness’ factor so sometimes the planes simply don’t turn up…) which I’ll be uploading in the new few days too. The files are available from my flight sim section, and here’s an idea of what some of the Grant planes look like:

Yesterday afternoon I went out for a while jigging (short retirement, I know…) on the Galic River. Got three hooks ripped off whilst trying to haul fish in as the hole wasn’t cut properly at the bottom and was catching the line so headed home, but did have a bit of fun riding out there - this is Pam bundled up in the sled behind Nick + Dana, Mott leading us, then a couple of guys obviously nervous the river was liable to break up

I’d guess they were just moving downriver to be able to get out seal hunting shortly, but was still funny seeing a boat being towed along the frozen river by a snowmobile!

This afternoon, moose foot and me wandered along to the airport and saw a Hageland 207 struggling to come in to land with the wind. Even the pilots have been joking on the radio about how windy it is when coming in to land. Barely seems like they’ve moving sometimes as they’re on final to land.

Least this guy took a little more time on his takeoff run-up - look at how much movement he got out the airplane whilst checking the elevator:

Kat’s feeling a lot better now, I’m blaming it on the broccoli she had on the Sunday evening with dinner The snow does seem to be slowly melting away, and there’s a lot of standing water and cracks forming on the rivers. Riding out to the Galic river yesterday the area looked so different to just a couple of weeks ago with patches of exposed tundra, so the ice may well start to break up in the next couple of weeks. Seems unlikely given how much snow and ice there’s still down (well over 5 foot thick ice yesterday), but the temperature has been slowly rising and due to carry on over the next week up to 40F. Maybe spring is here!

On Saturday morning, Carl McIntyre called to let me know he was going jigging way up on the Johnston River if I wanted to join him. Sounded like fun, and although the day was a little overcast, it was around 25F so not too cold to be standing around for hours. The ride up there was pretty good, even for Carl’s sister bundled in the back of the sled, and when we stopped along the trail at the Kuskokwim to stretch our legs Carl said he’d been going slow as he had precious cargo in the back - if the auger fell out and broke then we couldn’t fish He also joked that he was going to leave some bait in the sled with his sister so she could throw it at the bears as we rode up giving him time to unhook the sled and make a speedy getaway! On Friday night some people had gone out around the village after what turned out to be a musk ox - some kids had seen it and thought it was a bear from a distance, but pretty sure no-one shot it as they’re just trying to build up the numbers of musk ox round this area so hunting is off-limits.

Anyway, other than Carl pretending he was a grizzly bear himself by sticking his hand into the water and grabbing a pike out that squirmed off Carie’s hook within minutes of starting fishing, there wasn’t much more excitement! There were stacks of people fishing round there, but no-one was really pulling out any great numbers, and I still came home with nowt At least it kept Carl happy as he joked there was someone worse than him this time as he’s not a big fisherman, highlighted by the two or three naps he took in the back of the sled through the afternoon, after which he’d calmly walk over to check his holes and find fish on the end of the line!

Coming back was a bit dodgy as the weather started closing in around 4.30p.m and by the time we left around 5.15p.m it was a whiteout all the way back to Tunt. Given that everything is so flat and devoid of anything out here, it was pretty hairy, though thankfully Carl knew exactly where he was going. Looking all around you and seeing nothing, or even being able to tell the ground from the sky in front of you, was a little different and made for slow going (around 2 hours) but we all got back okay. Once off the Kuskokwim river at least the trail markers every couple of hundred yards made it a little easier once you could see them, but I wouldn’t want to try it again in a hurry!

But, Kat was up in the middle of the night being sick so is off work today which isn’t too good. I made a run to the store to get some stuff for her and took a (little…) detour by the airport to see a plane come in. Since the weather was so overcast whilst fishing it wasn’t worth taking photos, but by chance that’s Carl winging his way up to Bethel just after taking off with a Grant 207 on the ramp:

The last few days have been a little annoying. TCSA have strung out a bunch of excuses as to why they’ve simply dropped their service of emptying the sewer tanks when they were due to run it until April 18th, most of them being centered around not having staff to work for them as they’re off doing other things or simply not showing up. Frank + Mark have been trying to negotiate with them to borrow their pumping equipment for a day or two but they want none of it, and when I went down on Monday offering to start working for them right away they wouldn’t bite. The Tribal Council currently has an opening for a custodian to work 4 hours a week cleaning the offices and stuff but I’d get the same reaction even though I’m more than willing to put up with $32 a week and just get on with - I’m not Yup’ik, so no chance of being employed, even though most of the people in the village are too lazy to apply for it or hold it down so the position joins the other jobs on the board that date back to 2006. Pretty much all the sewer tanks in the village are full and everyone’s complaining, but as usual no-one’s willing to suck it up and and do what needs doing. Hopefully they’ll get their act together and either the Tribal Council or Quinarmuit Corporation will take over the services soon as it really can’t be healthy to have raw sewage overflowing around all the houses…

But, now that things have frozen over again from last week’s warm weather, I headed out for a ride on the snowmobile yesterday evening for a good hour or so. Was a beautiful evening without a cloud in the sky and very little wind even though it was around 5F (-15C), and I kept stopping just to admire the peace + quiet (once I turned the engine off…) as it really was quite magical. With the fresh snow, the usually bumpy or packed-down tundra was pretty smooth and soft allowing the snowmobile to just glide over it without needing to slow down much Crossing streams was a bit dicey as the edges had softened, lifted, and then frozen again, meaning I had to get off a couple of times and walk the route first to make sure I could ride where I wanted to, especially when coming back onto the main river.

This afternoon Mia and I had wandered round to the airport just after a plane had come in to land, and it was a completely new one - a Cessna 206 rather than the usual 207’s, and belonging to Vanderpool Air. I’d never heard of them so had to look them up online - they’re a small outfit way up river from Bethel based out of Red Devil I think (pretty cool name!), so guess he was flying a charter for workers at the airport to be this far south.

As it’s getting light pretty early in the morning and staying light until 10.30p.m or so, Kat + Marie have decided to get up on a morning and take the dogs for a walk again like they were before the weather became too cold before Christmas. More concerned about Mia getting up at 7.30a.m than Kat, but sure they’ll have fun! Marie’s really excited at the moment as she was accepted by the Wycliffe Foundation a few days ago to spend two years in Africa doing missionary/teaching work and will find out exactly where she’ll be going in the next week or so. Has to raise quite a bit of funding as the training starts at the of June before flying out to Africa over the summer, but it’s something she’s been planning + preparing for a while, and although Kat + I will be sad to see here leave Tunt, we’re glad it’s to do something like that

Over the weekend I got Kat to watch Trainspotting as it was on one of the movie channels, hence the (not very) inspired title This past weekend we were completely weathered in with soft wet snow falling from Friday evening until late Sunday evening, and then warm weather up around 30-35F has caused quite a lot of snow to melt making walking across the tundra a challenge as you don’t know if the top layer is solid or you’re going to sink to your knees in soft snow! Keeps Mia entertained though.

But, this afternoon I got up to the airport as couple of planes came in after being on weather hold most of the morning. First up, Grant Aviation just as I was getting to the airport:

I was pretty happy (in a sad + anorak-y way…) as I thought it was a plane I’d seen a few months ago but turned out to be grey + blue, not white + blue Gives me another plane I can repaint in flight simulator (more on that later).

Just as the Grant plane had taken off, I let Mia run down on the river and heard another plane coming in so I was already down on the bank as it came in to land:

This time it was Yute Air, who had remarkably been on weather hold in Bethel. Guess it must have been *really* bad to keep Yute grounded Anyway, it was another plane I hadn’t seen before so was pretty happy as I’d wanted to catch the yellow peril for a while!

I hung around whilst the pilot hauled out a stack of boxes for the store and then loaded up five passengers and got a video of him taxing and taking off (these guys don’t exactly follow all taxi and pre-takeoff checks, or at least gloss over them very quickly!):

But, I got the new graphics card for my desktop PC a couple of days ago and it’s fantastic. I’ve already mailed in the rebate forms which will bring it down to $65, and having used pretty poor graphics cards in the past and then a 6 year old laptop the past 15 months, the jump to the 256Mb nVidia GEForce 8600GT is massive! I’ve got all graphics and scenery details to maximum in Flight Simulator 2004 and it looks a world apart to flying previously. I’m also pretty sure it will run the newer Flight Simulator X, so I might pick that up over the summer.

The past few weeks I’ve also slowly been repainting the Cessna 207 and 208 aircraft for Yute Air, Grant Aviation and Hageland Aviation along with working out their schedules to put into flight sim. It’s pretty cool seeing Bethel airport come alive with the small airlines and having planes flying into the villages around here, just wish there was a way I could add a random element to reflect that their schedules just show *where* they’re flying on any given day, and the times don’t mean a thing!

I’d gone for a walk along the river with Mia this afternoon, and when I got to the airport Arctic Transportation Services had just flown in so I spent a while checking out their plane I’d never been there to see what ATS fly and I was curious after catching Arctic Circle’s Skyvan last year - the pilot said ATS mainly use the Casa C212’s, this one being the C212-200:

The guys were friendly as they were unloading, mainly as Mia did her usual trick of acting cute until people gave her attention. Nice plane though, and about the same kinda size and cargo capacity as the Skyvan’s.

It uses the same engine as the Skyvan’s so also has reverse thrust (as with most large prop-driven aircraft) which makes for pretty cool maneuvering on the ground. The Cessna 207’s have to give it a bunch of power whilst left or right wheel braking to easily turn the aircraft on the ground - the Casa 212 can engage reverse thrust by changing the angle of the propeller to allow the aircraft to reverse like a car.

It was pretty warm down on the river and around the airport at 5F (-15C), but a strong wind brought the windchill to -15F (-26C) as I walked back home which wasn’t much fun. We hurried back as there were a couple of Amazon boxes being dropped off for me at home - I ordered a PC case after resigning myself to the fact I’d be spending $70 shipping on a $30 case But, it looks really good, has a quiet PSU (which I’m not convinced will do the job as with most cheap PSU’s included with a case like this), and means I don’t have to rely on my dying Medion laptop from 2002 for flight sim anymore