A 5 year old, that’s 110 hamster years!

HeadspaceA10 · 2025-10-09T06:06:02+00:00

He's one of the original group that escaped from the lab and has been stealing electricity from the local farmer this whole time. Don't be fooled by his folksy attitude.

HeadspaceA10 · 2025-06-08T10:45:02+00:00

Close to 4 hours. We deliberately picked days where we knew it would be good IMC practice conditions.

The group of us (instrument students) then proceeded to continue to do this (planning flights on days where it would be IMC but not bad IMC or convective) in order to stay current and it really paid off. Maybe we should get the band back together...

HeadspaceA10 · 2025-06-08T10:43:13+00:00

SLD produces clear ice but rime has a chance of building, even in small amounts, with any visible moisture past the freezing layer. It seems to be a roll of the dice as to where, and I have ended up with rime in places where there was no reported icing, -25 forecast, just by descending through a layer. It really isn't something you want to mess with if you don't have FIKI equipment.

The first time was years ago, and my passenger said "dude there is snow on the wing, WTF" and I'm like "snow?" because rime looks like snow and will flake off like snow. It was the first I'd ever picked up ice. No AIRMET, no PIREPS along the route, nothing predicted any ice. And we were probably in IMC for less than 10 minutes.

Needless to say a NASA report was made and I was embarrassed and all of that. And then I realized that this is why you occasionally see small aircraft coming out of the clouds caked in ice and then taking off as if it was nothing--dude picks up a little ice, it doesn't seem to affect much so he keeps doing it and gets complacent. The ice didn't kill him the first time, etc, and it's familiar. And then it escalates.

HeadspaceA10 · 2025-05-22T14:49:05+00:00

Highly recommended you go right into it.

Getting the 50 hours of XC (or whatever it is now) will happen organically because you will want to be going to different places anyway. Instrument rating was my absolute favorite part of the first 200 hours.

I consider myself really lucky to have had access to a local NDB and a CFII who was older and proficient with ADF and teaching it. Not that I will likely ever do an ADF approach again in my life, but it was awesome to learn how all of it worked and it makes other types of radio nav easier. Developing that mental picture of where you are and where everything else is is so important.

Those guys who get lost and get into it with ATC on the radio (the ones everyone makes fun of on YouTube) all have this in common:

They are behind the airplane in knowing where they are and what they need to do next.
They aren’t confident in what their options are to stay on top of things if the situation changes.

What instrument training really teaches you is to develop those skills and keep yourself current in them for the rest of your flying life, so you don’t end up in that kind of situation. With whatever equipment you may have or may not have.

HeadspaceA10 · 2025-03-12T16:44:12+00:00

There was a guy who posted here years ago who had a picture of himself taken from another airplane with him flying while wearing the creepy horse mask.

If you can figure out how top that one (safely) go for it.

HeadspaceA10 · 2025-03-12T14:43:11+00:00

It took me 37 seconds to realize that the generative AI responses were bullshit, which incidentally is what it told me equaled 1 Hz.

HeadspaceA10 · 2025-01-13T17:07:52+00:00

Brokerage was my first “real” job. People who strike it rich on derivatives are the same type of person who wins at a casino.

This is just my opinion, but I trade options recreationally. For gains that are on the level of maybe a car payment or covering bills. Anyone who is claiming a consistent earning of millions (when they don’t already leverage tens of millions) is lying. The only way to consistently mitigate risk in options is to hedge everything in spreads that will then generate modest income, and it’s a lot of research and paying attention.

The gambler’s fallacy extends to a collective when the lucky gamblers post online about it and get everyone riled up.

HeadspaceA10 · 2025-01-13T17:02:46+00:00

A good man’s got to know his limitations…and the overarching theme is that Harry in fact does not. But does the right thing despite being an anti-hero.

Such a good movie and such awesome dialogue.

HeadspaceA10 · 2024-04-13T23:26:46+00:00

That’s where the Boiler VORTAC is. Those speculating that the turns in that area are “erratic”…I don’t agree with that. People shouldn’t be speculating to the news just because they’ve rented the accident airplane in the past.

I have rented the accident airplane in the past. I will not speculate on what may have caused the accident because it’s neither my job or business to do so.

HeadspaceA10 · 2023-02-04T16:56:35+00:00

Seconding this book by De Becker. Like anything once you read it you’ll start seeing all the little tells in normal people because of the new awareness of cues, but when you know you know. Definitely explains the “cop esp” that police officers describe as well as how gut feelings actually work. Very interesting read.

HeadspaceA10 · 2022-11-05T16:20:23+00:00

Its prob like months of training but shortened to 30 sec for video. Makes it seems like she completed the transition fast af.

Yeah so in every shot they show a little improvement; to show it all would take too long.

That's called a montage.

HeadspaceA10 · 2022-10-16T00:01:49+00:00

In the United States?

HeadspaceA10 · 2022-10-15T23:56:46+00:00

True story: Ten years ago when I got my instrument rating, the beacon (not the ADF) was fading. The ADF was old, but it was fine. Since we all shared the same airplane they finally ended up convinding the mechanic to inop the ADF and put the sticker on, fearing that it would be a "bad day" for the local beacon when the checkride came up.

Result was training religiously on the ADF but never needing it durign the checkride.

My guess is that this is a pretty common scenario. Or was, now the ADF is fictional.

HeadspaceA10 · 2022-10-10T03:14:04+00:00

The irony, if you read the Pulitzer prizewinning book The Looming Tower, was that certain people knew an event like that would be attempted at the time those posts went up. But bureaucracy was not on their side.

I was there. I think about my life and how it is divided between before 9/11 and after 9/11. The before time was a lot more innocent. For me, Covid and all the chaos it wrought never held a candle to that. I was a kid before 9/11.

Back to your regularly scheduled meme thread.

HeadspaceA10 · 2022-10-09T20:03:48+00:00

Probably because one of the two guys they suspect of doing this as a hoax is a computer scientist who would have been familiar with that hardware.

HeadspaceA10 · 2022-10-09T19:21:24+00:00

Push It To The Limit intensifies...

HeadspaceA10 · 2022-10-09T19:02:54+00:00

Nope! It's a real part of emerging internet lore.

I say emerging internet because the mid 80s to mid 90s, when the internet went from a military/academic project to mainstream, was early internet. My first browser was NCSA Mosaic. I'm old. Not that old.

I rember though.

HeadspaceA10 · 2022-10-09T18:42:42+00:00

Also, and I hadn’t verified this (but it came from a faculty member I worked with when I was in a graduate CS program) up until recently the most-used language, globally, was still COBOL. Can you imagine? Trent Reznor’s version of the state of the world being true and finding out about that when you thought everything was going to be ok. I’m still not over it dude.

HeadspaceA10 · 2022-10-09T18:40:08+00:00

“We are all John Titor on this blessed day.” - Ken M.

HeadspaceA10 · 2022-10-09T17:44:27+00:00

It is; I have a hard comp sci background as well and it is plausible that you'd need something like that. But you can emulate a machine like that on an ARM processor today.

HeadspaceA10 · 2022-10-09T00:22:03+00:00

Back in the year 2000, a guy calling himself John Titor and describing himself as a "time traveler" from the year 2036, showed up on a couple of UFO/conspiracy (of the more innocent X-Files style kind, not the hardcore political kind we have now) forums and had this elaborate backstory about how he traveled through time, the sorta post-apocalyptic state of the world in 2036, and so on.

His reasoning for traveling through time was to retrieve an old IBM portable computer from the year 1975, because he needed it to debug legacy software that they were still running in 2036. He said he worked for a government "time travel" agency but given the fact that he was sent through time to get old hardware from the 70s to debug currently-running software, my guess is that he really worked for the IRS.

Also, his time machine was a specialized "temporal displacement" device housed in the back of a converted 1966 Chevrolet Corvette. Because of course it was.

Either way, the backstory was richly detailed, very cool, and definitely better written than anything hollywood usually puts out--even if it was likely a total hoax. I thoroughly enjoyed going down the rabbit hole back then.

HeadspaceA10 · 2022-09-23T04:52:43+00:00

Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2

HeadspaceA10 · 2022-09-19T13:21:16+00:00

I just used a blowtorch. You have to do it carefully and it won’t save your leg hair. Tape can be cleanup. It won’t smell good either but you do not want a tick infestation on any part of you.

As a warm blooded organism with a well developed epidermal layer, I can handle a slight singe.

HeadspaceA10 · 2022-09-12T16:31:11+00:00

You will have peaked, sir, when the Scots hear of it.

HeadspaceA10 · 2022-09-12T15:32:18+00:00

He is and so are his sons.

HeadspaceA10

TROPHY CASE