The Hiatus is Over

N172DR - C172R - 1.0 hours

As of today, I’m back in the air and can legally go off on my own, exercising the privileges of a private pilot. I went up this morning with Tim (the instructor who helped me get checked out in the DA40 back in March) to complete my BFR. We were supposed to go up last week, but scheduling got in the way of that flight.

Today’s flight was nice and simple. The wind was calm, and the clouds were pretty high. The only detractors were that I needed to spray the plane down with glycol (de-icing fluid), and add two quarts of oil (ruining my shirt in the process). After all of the ground items were taken care of, we were off.

I’m always surprised by how easily flying comes back to me after long breaks. After clearing the ridge and getting out to the practice area, Tim had me demonstrate slow flight. After that came the rest of the typical PPL maneuvers: power on stalls, power off stalls, steep turns, and engine out procedures. In my never-ending drive to get more instrument time, I also asked if I could throw the blinders on to fly the approach back into Leesburg (JYO). The approach went well, though the glideslope wasn’t providing us an indication. Luckily, the approach is an ILS/LOC approach using cross radials to identify the fixes, so I just put the Frederick VOR (FDK) in the NAV2 spot and identified step down fixes that way. Despite some hunting of the LOC, I ended up on altitude and centerline in the end, which was a nice way to end a flight after a four month absence.

Given the nature of the flight I didn’t end up recording it, or even snapping a picture (got distracted with the glycol and oil before the flight), so this post is atypically light on visuals. The next flight should have more of that. Speaking of the next flight, I need to get my passenger currency back for a flight later this month, so expect another post sooner rather than later.

Hours:
Pilot in Command Cross Country (PIC XC): 0.0 - 86.5 (of 50)
Actual/Simulated Instrument (Act/Sim): 0.3 - 14.0 (of 40)

CloudAhoy to Charge for Debrief

Back in March, I wrote a review of CloudAhoy, giving it a shining review.  As far as apps go, it’s rather simple, and the debrief feature offers a ton of data for analyzing flights after you’re done.  It’s useful for debriefing yourself, or it could also be used as an impartial observer to debrief a student as a CFI.

 

If any of you have an account with CloudAhoy, I’m sure you got their email last night.  For those of you who did not receive it, I’ll recap it here.

 

In order to continue debrief your flights, you will now have to pay a subscription fee.

 

First, I have to be fair and address some things that I know others will not address:

• The fact that they are now charging for the service is reasonable, given the benefits it provides.  This move does not surprise me in the least.
• Servers cost money – either to purchase and maintain yourself, or have someone else host
• Domains cost money – either to host yourself, or have someone else host
• Bandwidth costs money – either through you managing this yourself through an ISP, or indirectly in a fee to whoever hosts your site and data server
• Additional employees cost money
• Being an Apple developer costs money

I say that to admit that charging for the service is not uncalled for.  The best things in life are not free, and to be honest, I was surprised that it was free for this long.  My issue rests with the price of the subscription.

 

I’m really trying to approach this from a rational, balanced point of view.  I appreciate that the developer wants to recoup costs, and probably make a little money on the side.  As someone who pays to be an Apple developer, and manages web services for a company, I understand these costs well.  At the same time, I also understand how expensive aviation truly is, and how it’s already difficult enough to justify everything in aviation – particularly to significant others and concerned family members in general.  Most people don’t give me too much trouble when I tell them that the necessary charts for flying are about $75 per year through ForeFlight.  If I said I was spending $70 per year to analyze data that I’m collecting personally, on my personal iPad, using my own personal GPS, I’d get funny looks.  I do understand that CloudAhoy’s servers are doing the number crunching and eventual data storage, but I feel like the business model is all wrong here.

 

I’m sure there are some economies of scale at play, but I don’t believe that it is really driving the price point as much as one might believe.  I understand that the aviation community is a lot smaller than the target audience of other products and services, but it is not a small one in and of itself.  I understand that data storage, data calls, data transfers, data processing, and other tasks can also cost money.  I’m just having a very difficult time accepting that $70 is an acceptable price point to meet the costs of business, or even operate at a modest profit.  As the email states itself, the user base is rapidly growing and spans all continents with the exception of Antarctica.

 

Since I don’t know the costs that they’re operating with, I won’t attempt to make cost arguments based on notional numbers, as they may be misleading.  I really want to stress that this is just my opinion rather than anything else.

 

My arguments are as follows:

• The email states that their data storage is in the cloud.  Cloud storage can get particularly expensive, depending on the provider, and the way in which they price their data storage.  This could drive the cost up significantly if not structured properly for the service provided.
• The profit driver of today’s age is data.  Why is it that Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and the like are all free?  They have to pay for servers and other similar costs, too.  The answer is data.  Your information, interests, and habits are all sold to those wanting the data.  Imagine the amazing amount of information that CloudAhoy servers now contain from all of the tracked flights.  FlightAware provides data to those who request it for many different purposes.  From my understanding of their privacy policy, I do not think that they are taking advantage of this.
• As much as trying to make a living off of something you enjoy would be great, some endeavors require time and clever number crunching to make work.  As the definition of “make a living” can be highly personal, I’ll end my point here.

I’d honestly love to see CloudAhoy succeed, but I don't think that the current model is the best avenue for that success – personally.  I may be completely wrong in that assessment, but I find $70 to be way too expensive for what is provided in return.

 

As a data guy, I know that the data can then be sold to other people.  I’m sure the likes of AOPA, GAMA, manufacturers, and many others would love to see the data.  Based on their answer regarding the privacy policy, I do not believe this is being taken advantage of.  This could significantly increase their revenues, and affect the price point.  All of this would come without directly affecting customer privacy, too.  As an example, CloudAhoy detects airports that you fly to and from.  On an aggregate level, route pairs, airport activity and so on could be sold to people requesting the data, and provided the flights are not referenced to individual users in the data, I would not consider privacy to be compromised.

 

Again, as much as I think they have a great product on their hands, and as much as I like to see success in aviation, I won’t be springing for the service unless something changes.

Here is the full text of the email for those who are interested:

Allow me to interrupt your flight debriefs for a news flash.

 

There is a significant change coming. In December 2013 we will start charging a subscription fee for debriefing flights.  I am very excited about this; let me tell you why.

 

On May 2011, the first version of CloudAhoy landed at Apple’s app store. In the two and a half years since, CloudAhoy became an important tool for a rapidly growing community of pilots.  It spread by word of mouth - first in flight training, then in GA, military and commercial aviation.  It is being used in every continent except Antarctica.

 

CloudAhoy started as a hobby of mine, and the first CloudAhoy server ran from my house.  It soon became my day job (OK, also my night job) as well as that of other people, and our servers are now hosted securely in the cloud.

 

We have grown, and plan to keep growing our team.  Your subscription will let us continue to provide you with the same level of dedicated and fast response to questions, feedback and feature requests, large and small. Our road-map for the next year is full of exciting developments - I think you will be delighted.  Oh, and BTW your subscription will also allow us CloudAhoyians to pay the mortgage, and occasionally indulge in consuming $100 hamburgers.  We do this work both because we are passionately in love with it, and because we want to make a living off it. 

We will transition your account as follows:

• On December 2nd you will get a free and unlimited use of CloudAhoy, expiring 35 days after your next fight (flown after December 2nd).
• 12-month subscription with unlimited use: introductory price of $45 if bought before May 2014, $70 afterwards.
• 3-month subscription: $20, all of which can be used later towards buying an upgrade to 12-months.
• As an existing user you will receive a special appreciation bonus days equal to 10% of the time since you’ve signed up. It will be awarded when you purchase a 3 or 12 months subscription. Thank you!
• If your free use or the subscription expires, you will still have full debrief access to all your flights (plus flights shared with you) prior to the expiration.  You will also be able to log new flights and have them listed in your flight list, but you will need to renew your subscription in order to debrief them.

 

So I Almost Ran Out of Fuel

Granted, I almost ran out of said fuel in a sim – where you can print your own money and fix planes with free mouse clicks – but the lesson I learned was an important one.

It's a situation you really don't ever want to be in.  Well before you're handed the keys to an airplane, an instructor is supposed to have drilled the idea of proper planning for just about anything into your head.  That's all nice information for your average fly-by-day weekend warrior, but it becomes even more important to your instrument flight rules fliers: running out of fuel and not being able to see the ground doesn’t quite give you a fighting chance to set down somewhere forgiving.

I, of course, strapped into a plane, knowing the weather was low even at the departure airport, and set off for an airport buried in mountains.  The only thought in my mind when planning fuel was "the flight takes about 50 minutes, so two hours of fuel looks good."  Why?  That’s the value I generally always use to get there.  I didn’t give any thought to hold fuel, alternate fuel, or contingency fuel, which ended up getting me close to trouble.

Here’s how it all shook out:

One of my favorite routes is Dulles (IAD) to Roanoke (ROA) and back.  It’s short, and when the weather isn’t ideal – read as “less than nice, but not terrible” – you often have to shoot a somewhat challenging LDA approach that brings you down a valley.  Even at the departure airport, though, things weren’t particularly nice.

KIAD 170152Z 00000KT 2SM -DZ BR OVC005 11/10 A3027 RMK AO2 SLP250 P0000 T01060100

For the non-pilots reading this, that's a wonderful combination of low clouds and low visibility, due to drizzle and mist.  This makes approaching and landing at an airport more difficult than normal.

Of course, I paid little attention to the fact that bad weather at IAD often means worse weather down near ROA.  Sadly, that’s something I should know all too well, having spent four years near ROA while at Virginia Tech.  Moreover, one of those years included a trip back to Tech in this same month of November where Interstate 81 got shut down due to an accident caused by poor weather.   I chose the Blue Ridge Parkway as an alternate route, assuming it was something others wouldn’t think of, and would choose Route 11 instead.  Unfortunately, the November weather was all too similar, and I ended up crawling along the Parkway in heavy fog.  My assumption that nobody would be driving on it proved correct, however.

That lesson was apparently forgotten.  Had I bothered to check the weather, I would’ve seen this:
KROA 170254Z 14003KT 1/2SM FG VV002 11/11 A3025 RMK AO2 SLP244 60001 T01110111 56004 $

Again, for the non-pilots, that’s worse visibility than at IAD, because of fog.  Beyond that, I would’ve also checked a few alternates around ROA to be sure I could land there if the weather at ROA was too bad.  Alas, I did not.


Everything was normal until I got closer to ROA and finally decided to check the weather.  Even then I didn’t really put the weather together with the minimums on the charted approaches (the weather was below the minimums for all of the approaches at ROA).  As I got closer to the airspace controlled by ROA Approach, the controller restated the weather and asked my intentions.  My response was what most pilots say while still in denial: “we’ll give it a shot and head to an alternate if we can’t make it in.”

At that point, I reduced my thrust to slow the aircraft down in hopes that arriving later would mean the weather would clear up some.  This move ended up costing me extra fuel though that I really didn't have, as I didn’t add any contingency fuel.  Of course, had I actually looked at the forecast I would’ve seen that the move was futile, as weather wasn’t supposed to improve until the following morning.

Getting closer to ROA, I started looking at the weather at other fields:

KBCB 170255Z AUTO 00000KT 1 3/4SM BR OVC016 11/11 A3025 RMK AO2
KPSK 170255Z AUTO 00000KT 10SM OVC013 11/11 A3024 RMK AO2


Since Blacksburg (BCB) was a little closer, I chose to try an approach there, despite the lower visibility.  I flew the LOC/DME Runway 12 approach, which is an approach I’ve flown before outside of the sim, one snowy February day in a Cessna 207.  I flew it down to the minimums twice before deciding to try somewhere else, making nervous glances at my fuel on the second approach.  Having looked at Pulaski (PSK) before, I decided to try an approach there.

The ILS Z Runway 6 approach into PSK was nice and easy.  With the glideslope and increased visibility, I was able to spot the approach lights while still pretty far out with no issue.

By the time I’d landed, I had about 45 minutes of fuel left, so I ended up landing with a reasonable amount.  The issue, however, is that it all came down to chance.  I got lucky that the weather at PSK was as good as it was.  Had it not been that good, 45 minutes of fuel may not have been enough to get to another destination, make an approach, and land.  Had I properly planned, I would have planned better for the weather by adding fuel to accommodate any issues it might have caused.

While the sim doesn’t have the same dire consequences as the real world, the stress I was feeling in the situation will hopefully stick with me.  I’m hoping it’s memorable enough to push me to plan all my flights such that I won’t find myself in a similar real world situation.

Actual/Simulated Instrument (Act/Sim): 0.0 - 13.7 (of 40)
Despite all of this happening in a sim, it wasn't in a sim approved by the FAA for logging time.