Steven B. Halls, MD, blog

Miscellaneous topics about hobbies. Nothing about medicine.

 

 

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Offshore email and hosting and banking

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I get email newsletters a few times a week, from websites devoted to spreading out your financial life into other countries. Internationalman.com and Sovereignman.com. From Internationalman.com, which seems to not be selling anything, (as opposed to Sovereignman.com), here are a few useful things I learned.

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History of Found aircraft – video

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On youtube, I found a great video made by Found aviation, showing the history of the various models of Found bushplanes. I was so impressed, I’ve posted a link to it here, AND, I’ve screen-captured a few key photos from it that impressed me about its strength.

You’re naturally going to want to watch the whole video, but these pictures of the big wing, and the landing gear being stress-tested, were very reassuring.
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Airplane Oil Pressure and Fuel cross-connection observations.

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Random Comments about my Expedition E350 airplane. My Oil Pressure reading is interesting. If I add a pint of oil, climb to cruise altitude and cruise a while, my oil pressure will be around 81. Gradually as the flight cruises longer times, the oil pressure will drop to 79 or 78. No problem.

(My picture shows Oil Pressure of 79 PSI. Further discussion ensues…)

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Kayaks

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For my Hudson Island vacation home, I’m bought some Kayaks this past weekend. I’ll edit this post to add a lot more to it, about the flight there- and back-, too. My photos are scattered amongst several cellphones and an iPad, so I don’t have them all handy at the moment, but they’ll come soon.

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Slow flight landing

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I had some free time to enjoy my plane on Canada Day, July 1st, and so I practiced a few things. One thing was a “Slow Flight” landing. The normal approach speed for a landing begins by slowing the airspeed to 80. But I let the airspeed slow to 55 knots, which is the “stall” speed (where airflow over the wing surfaces becomes turbulent and the wings lose lift). But just before it stalls (which is a very gentle altitude drop in this plane), I pull the nose even higher and add power again. Thus entering “slow flight” mode with the nose very high, the stall warning sound continuously buzzing, the airspeed drops further, into the 45 to 50 Knots range. But the strong engine keeps the airplane flying without losing altitude. ( It’s like 2/3 airplane, 1/3 helicopter.) Turning gradually to base leg then final approach, I landed with no trouble whatsoever, at an airspeed of 44 knots over the runway.

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Ram river falls

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Here is a picture of Ram River falls. There is a well-maintained grass runway, (thanks Red Deer Flying club), that is classified as “abandoned” in the Canadian Flight Supplement (CFS) book. It’s not an automatic GPS destination in my aircraft’s avionics (G430s), so to find it, I’ve found that flying along the GPS line from Camrose to Salmon Arm, will be almost perfect to overfly the Ram River Falls airfield.

On Google Earth, you can find it at 52° 05′ 13.03″ N and 115° 51′ 21.81″ W. Google Earth says the altitude of the runway is 5353 feet above sea level. It is in the foothills, just east of the Rocky Mountains.