Lessons learned

Well, yesterday's "dry run" gave me a few data points on the technical front for the blog. I had a 20 knot tailwind at 7500 feet, so I decided to stay there. When I am flying above 7500 ft, apparently I'm invisible to my tracking system. I am using an iPhone with some GPS software which uploads my current coordinates to Instamapper. Technically, I shouldn't be using a cell phone in flight, even in my own private plane, but it is only sending out a data point every 30 seconds. Gotta love justifications. Anyway, at 7500 ft, while the line of sight signal strength is probably great, the phone is either beyond the digital radius prescribed by the cell site or is just seeing too many sites and therefore can't send data.

So, in addition to me trying to track myself, air traffic control is also tracking me by tail number, at least when I'm using their services. I usually do avail myself of their services either for IFR flights or for VFR flight following, where they are giving me advisories concerning other traffic in the area. When they are tracking me, oftentimes you can track my airplane using their data which can be viewed in realtime (5 minute delay?) at Flightaware.com. It's a very useful site because it is tracking general aviation and commercial aviation, so you can track your commercial flights here as well. I may add this map to the blog page as well as backup.

The other technical glitch from yesterday was that I uploaded a blog entry from my phone just before I left and somehow it didn't make it on the blog. This is the entry regarding my takeoff from Rensselaer County airport. I had to resend it later. So, despite the fact that it appeared to upload properly, I guess I need to double-check that it actually made it.

T minus 36 days and counting.