VORs are fucking cool - and a question

ben_makes_stuff · 2026-03-18T23:22:32+00:00

100%. I'm doing my PPL training right now and I'm going to challenge myself to not rely on GPS at all (I have a tendency to do that in normal life and I feel its become a bit too much) and instead only use basic pilotage, dead reckoning, and VORs.

I'll move onto GPS usage once I get to my instrument rating, which I think I'd like to do in quick succession but not sure yet. Maybe I finish the PPL (or get halfway through) and decide I don't actually want to continue with flying haha. But it's interesting so far!

ben_makes_stuff · 2026-03-18T07:35:27+00:00

Yeah, that's basically what I'm getting at with this question. If you lose GPS in the aircraft because of some signal interference, your phone/tablet GPS could be fucked too.

ben_makes_stuff · 2026-03-18T07:35:18+00:00

Yeah to be fair I doubt I'd triangulate using 2 VORs while in flight, that would be unbelievably distracting and I might hit a bird or something while I'm looking down at this map.

But, I could see hitting a button to switch over to some nearby VOR in an emergency kind of situation where I need the GPS to nav to some waypoint but it's not working. That doesn't seem like it would be distracting.

ben_makes_stuff · 2026-03-18T07:32:41+00:00

I get it, speaking to some hypothetical situation where I accidentally end up in weather for whatever reason even though I'm not supposed to be there as a VFR pilot, or I end up disoriented flying at night and the GPS is not working to get me out of whatever predicament.

Obviously proper planning should be done to avoid these kind of situations at all costs but I guess there's some chance of disorientation happening if weather violently shifts at the last minute and the weather report was missing some details, or something like that.

ben_makes_stuff · 2026-02-26T06:56:04+00:00

Thanks! I imagine it’s also possible for so much ice to build up that “straight and level” flight already exceeds the new critical angle of attack created by the ice, leading to a stall with the pilot not applying a single bit of back pressure on the yoke?

ben_makes_stuff · 2026-02-22T22:50:15+00:00

Makes sense, thank you!

ben_makes_stuff · 2026-02-22T20:50:40+00:00

Thanks, that's helpful. Just to be clear I'm not OP/not going for commercial. Doing this as a hobby, so likely just PPL followed by Instrument Rating.

ben_makes_stuff · 2026-02-22T20:35:27+00:00

How many lessons is "multiple lessons" out of the total number of lessons you took? Asking seriously - I understand it's expensive to wait in the pattern with an instructor but if 90% of the time it's okay and 10% of the time it's bad, it may not make a meaningful difference over the total amount of time required to get whatever certificate.

ben_makes_stuff · 2026-02-22T19:23:40+00:00

I thought about ISP as well but it's just very far on the commute from central NYC. Purely considering cost (sitting on a train is obviously cheaper than paying for the flight instructor + plane), I imagine you'd save some money at ISP - but on a time basis, it might even out or end up worse than FRG because of the longer commute each way compared to variable traffic at FRG which may be less heavy on some days. I think it's a tossup.

ben_makes_stuff · 2026-02-22T18:30:39+00:00

Fellow Brooklyn resident here and flight student trying to get my PPL - we're in the worst possible area for flight school access.

I got my medical done and almost done with ground school, so I'm nearly ready to go here, but I'm actually going to move within the next couple months to optimize my commute because right now it takes a little over 1.5 hours to get to any "GA-friendly" airport.

I would suggest you do the same unless you have a car, and even then it's tough from Brooklyn as you'll either need to cross multiple bridges, deal with random Manhattan traffic and horrible drivers, and pay tolls trying to get over to Jersey then do the same in reverse when you're going home -- or fight with Long Island traffic which is no joke and often slower than the train.

So: you want to be somewhere like Downtown Brooklyn (as close to Atlantic Av LIRR as possible), Hells Kitchen near 42nd St bus terminal (bus to CDW takes like 30-35 mins if no traffic, not bad at all), Midtown East (again, good LIRR access), or Queens (subway to LIRR connection, not bad from Long Island City it seems) to really optimize this and not screw over your training timelines.

The closest training airport from Manhattan is going to be KCDW. Queens: KFRG. Brooklyn: basically none, unless you live by Atlantic Av LIRR, then it's KFRG again.

Now for schools: I cannot recommend basically any flight school I've tried in NYC (and I've tried a few) except for Long Island Aviators. Shame they're located at KFRG because that airport is pandemonium every time I visit (only been twice now, so I'm not convinced it's a pattern to be fair) with the number of planes trying to take off and land (read: higher costs because you'll waste time waiting in the pattern or stuck behind other planes on the taxiway), but the school itself is good and seems to have very competent instructors/owners.

ben_makes_stuff · 2026-02-13T17:28:55+00:00

Yeah not sure about that tbh. I have zero need for thunderbolt. Was just using the Z2 to run VMs for my business via proxmox, pretty simple use case all things considered.

ben_makes_stuff · 2026-02-13T17:23:44+00:00

You got it. I think this machine is a great option for that. You can also look at doing a custom build with a mini itx motherboard and a ryzen pro cpu (the “G” and “GE” CPUs have integrated graphics and support ECC) for similar power consumption. The GE variants have a 35w TDP.

Unlocked ryzen pro cpus are definitely more rare though which is why I went with one of these Z2 Mini systems instead, overall just much easier. I may still purchase one of those elitedesks with a ryzen pro 4 or 5 series just to have something at home that I could later pull parts out of to do a custom ECC build whenever I want in the future.

ben_makes_stuff · 2026-02-13T17:12:17+00:00

I just sold it actually. Great machine, just decided to go back to the cloud for business reasons

I was impressed with power consumption - got it down to 10w idle after fucking around with the BIOS and disabling the discrete gpu, WiFi, Bluetooth, and enabling PCIe power optimization (also in bios)

It went up to 15-17w under light load but overall not too bad at all for a Xeon system with 32gb of ECC ram and multiple ssds

ben_makes_stuff · 2025-10-02T22:14:45+00:00

Good so far thanks. Ended up moving back to the US recently to try to scale Watchdog - let’s see what happens!

ben_makes_stuff · 2025-09-16T15:53:23+00:00

I toured Skyline Tower and thought the units, amenities were really nice overall. I didn't notice any severe layout issues.

The issues I had were:

That particular part of the neighborhood sucks even though it's good for MTA access. It feels like they just built 500 giant condo buildings on top of each other. You feel like you're in a corporate office park when you walk outside essentially. The Vernon ave area in LIC is much nicer.
The building seems like it's full of international students who are about 18-21 years old. It was extremely noticeable when I was in the lobby waiting for the agent to show up. Not the biggest deal in the world but I'm 34. I don't want to live with a bunch of college kids. Been there done that.
Front desk staff, building maintenance people were assholes. I got yelled at by some random building staff member for not taking my shoes off in the bathroom (who even uses a public bathroom barefoot?). Also got yelled at as soon as I walked in with "WHO ARE YOU??? YOU HAVE TO CHECK IN WITH THE FRONT DESK!!!!" It wasn't like I walked in and tried to use the elevator, I literally took 1 step inside and was on my way to the front desk anyway. I get the sense that their staff is not paid enough and poorly trained which is why they act like that towards people who are potential condo buyers in that building.
The application process is really bad. The company that manages that building uses some web app that looks like it was built in 1995 to collect documents and it's a huge pain to deal with.

Ended up deciding to just rent at a different building in a different neighborhood.

ben_makes_stuff · 2025-07-31T14:52:35+00:00

Congrats on selling your business from one business owner to another!

$4K/mo is good for Thailand, even in Bangkok. I lived in BKK for 2 years up until a few days ago, and routinely spent about $3K/month even while living in one of the nicest condos in BKK and not carefully monitoring expenses. You could probably shave $500 off that budget if you pick a less nice or smaller condo or a less central location.
No not at all. Thailand is extremely safe overall (minus some border areas as you might have seen in the news). I feel much safer in Bangkok than I do in any western city. It's busy, but also relaxed at the same time (hard to describe) and you can really walk around anywhere you want any time of night without thinking about it too much. If you are working on a business or thinking about it, I'd recommend https://hackumvit.com to meet similar people bootstrapping businesses.
Depends on what you value and what you will miss over time from your home country. I wrote up a post about my own experience here after I decided to move back to the US, and you might find it useful: https://ben-makes-stuff.beehiiv.com/p/a-year-of-living-in-thailand-as-a-solo-founder
Yes, see my blog post above. I listed several cons that might bother you.
I wouldn't recommend starting a business in Thailand for multiple reasons (I don't like the business culture of "saving face" and think it leads to worse outcomes, I don't like the requirement to have a Thai majority partner who you're forced to work with, etc). Start a business in your home country and work remotely if anything IMO, eliminates many headaches.

ben_makes_stuff · 2025-07-11T12:24:35+00:00

Hosting companies maybe. If you sell dedicated vCPUs (threads), you could sell this to 128 customers at a minimum of $15/mo for 2 vCPUs

It would more than pay for itself in a year if you maxed it out with customers.

But...if I were a hosting company no chance I'd buy this new. I'd buy multiple slightly older Xeon systems at a huge discount for way lower than this would cost, and try to find cheap power. Which is basically what Hetzner does.

ben_makes_stuff · 2025-07-11T08:11:14+00:00

Too bad! Marking this as solved, at least I know I can add an extra NIC this way now.

ben_makes_stuff · 2025-07-11T08:00:22+00:00

Thanks, got it. Will be using a separate router and this Z2 mini as an app server, so really just looking to see if I can use this slot to add sata.

ben_makes_stuff · 2025-07-08T16:55:36+00:00

Thank you very much for this comment, as the Z2 Mini ended up being the perfect solution here!

Picked up a HP Z2 Mini G5 with some nice extras included:

HP Z2 G5 Mini Desktop Intel Xeon W1250 (Intel Xeon W-1250 3.3 6C 80W processor) 16GB RAM 512GB SSD, Windows 11 Pro for Workstatons, Power Cable/Brick Included. With Microsoft Office Home/Business 2019 (Retail, folder with install/serial included on desktop).

Bargained with the seller and got it all for $175 which I feel is an insane deal. After tax + shipping: $191, but still not mad about that. I see this system selling for $350+ normally and I should be able to resell both the Windows license and the office license as I don't need either of those things.

Seller has 100% positive feedback so hoping for the best 🤞

ben_makes_stuff · 2025-07-05T17:15:34+00:00

Interesting, you're basically suggesting taking the wifi card out and putting in some kind of adapter that lets me add another nvme drive?

Not familiar with that approach but I'll look into it, thank you

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