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Telemarketers getting entirely out of hand!

Over the past week it seems the number of illegal telemarketing calls we are getting has increased dramatically.  We’re now getting several calls per day.  The new ones are mostly live people, calling and asking for me by name, with some bogus crap about filling out an on line survey and winning some discount package or some crap.  Bullshit.  I don’t fill out online surveys, for one thing.  Certainly nothing with a phone number, and I’ve also told them to stop calling.

The latest batch has been guys with heavy Indian accents calling with Florida caller ID.  OK, first… Don’t call me if you don’t speak English, asshole.  Second…  I don’t know anyone in FL, and I’m sure as hell not answering your call if the CID just says the name of some shitty little town in Florida.

I’m going to move out land line to the Asterisk box and let the blacklisting and privacy extension features start weeding these slimy little bastards out.  In the mean time I’m filing FCC No-Not-Call complaints for each and every call.  It’s probably a waste of time and effort, but you never know.  The last time I did that, people went to jail.

In Florida.

 

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Touch and Go

I just got back from another hour or so just doing TnGs. By the time we called it a day I thought I was doing pretty well.  On the second-to-last one the instructor said he’d gotten on the controls only for the last couple of seconds, because he thought we were going to be short.  I told him, politely, that I had it and we’d have landed on the numbers…  which we would have had he not added power, which gave us a nice little float.  I’m getting to the point where it irritates me a little if he gets on the controls.  I’ve got it, if there’s a correction to be made I’ll make it.  Keep yer mitts off the yoke and pedals.

Anyway, the way he wants it done is WAY different than I have done it before, but it works.  Abeam the numbers reduce power, first notch of flaps… and from there on it’s all airspeed.  90 MPH on downwind, 85 on base, 80 on final.  Today we added 5 MPH to all three due to gusty winds.  As with Jerome (CFI #2), I ended up just managing position and airspeed.  This guy likes to come in steep, we are well above the VASI slope until we’re well over the fence and on very short final.  No problem, with full flaps the Cherokee will sink like a rock if you want it to.  I finally got the hang of “power for altitude/glide slope, pitch for airspeed”.  John (CFI #1) and Jerome both had the attitude of “set the throttle at xxx RPM and don’t touch it again until you’re over the runway”.  Today I used the throttle several times… and I finally quit trying to flare too early.  Over the threshold I’d level off and just let it sink, bleeding off airspeed until we were just above the surface, then use the yoke to set off the stall buzzer just as we touched down.  There’s a lot happening in about five seconds, but the mains set down nicely and the nose follows just a touch later.  Off the yoke, flaps up, check mixture and carb heat, line it up, full throttle and do it again.

Overall, despite the winds (15G23, I think it was) I feel like it was a pretty good day.  I know having that much variation in the wind on final gave me a lot of very valuable practice in managing speed and sink rate.  The wind was slightly off the runway centerline as well, so there was some crosswind component to deal with.  I still managed to keep the centerline at least between the mains… for the most part.

 

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Conventional wisdom is not always right

Let’s take a quick look at 401(k) loans.  Some people are not aware of this, but if you have a 401(k) retirement account you can borrow money from yourself.  You can take out a loan from your own retirement account for pretty much any reason.  The rules about how much you can borrow and how soon it needs to be paid back are a little different for mortgages on your primary residence, but let’s stick with the more usual case for now.

You can borrow up to half of the value of your 401(k), or a maximum of $50,000.  Interest rates are fixed and generally pretty low, and the loan term cannot exceed five years.  The loan must be repaid by payroll deduction, and this leads to the first potential  “gotcha”…  if you leave your job or get laid off, the entire loan balance is due and payable within 90 days.  If you can’t pay it off in 90 days, it’s treated as an early withdrawal from your 401(k) and there are some pretty unpleasant tax implications — not to mention the money doesn’t go back into your retirement account as it should.  So, in general you really only want to consider a 401(k) loan if your employment situation is stable, and/or if you have the cash reserve or other assets (like a stock brokerage account) you could liquidate to pay the loan off within a couple of months if you have to.  If you decide to change jobs while you have an outstanding 401(k) loan, you’ll need to figure out how to take care of that because loan repayments have to be deducted from your current employer’s payroll.

So, the convention wisdom, the advice you will usually hear, is that 401(k) loans are a bad, bad idea.  All kinds of analysis and predictions of financial doom are easy to find, and all seem to make some basic assumptions.  The most consistent assumptions seem to be that you’re desperate for the money, and that while repaying the loan you’re not going to be contributing to your retirement plan.  That of course means you lose any employer matching funds.  A lot of the advice I’ve read also assumes you’re making some kind of mad return on your 401(k) investments — something which just has not held true lately, though the days of 10%-plus returns may return before long.  If you don’t meet those assumptions, though, you can make it into a pretty good deal.

Let’s assume you have a couple of car loans, which you’re paying on schedule.  Let’s also assume that you have about $40K between the two, and are paying around 5.99% as seems to be about average now.  Your two car payments add up to a little over $900 per month, and all the interest is of course going to your lender.  Now let’s assume you could:

  • Drop $300 a month off your payments
  • Get a lower interest rate
  • Get the car loan balances off your credit report
  • Show both loans as paid in full
  • Have clear title to your vehicles
  • Give yourself all of the interest on the loans from now on

Sounds pretty good, right?  Enter the 401(k) loan.  This can work out very well, assuming you don’t stop contributing to your retirement plan while you’re paying off the loan.  Keep contributing what you have been; certainly enough to at least get your employer’s full matching contributions.  All of the monthly principle and interest on your loan goes directly back into your 401(k).  The interest rate is usually lower that what you’re already paying on your car loans — and what do you care what the interest rate is, anyway?  In fact, a higher interest rate can work in your favor!  It’s all going into your own retirement account.

If your 401(k) investments are doing significantly better than the interest rate on your loan then, yes, you’re losing a little bit of investment income that you might otherwise have.  It may or may not equal or exceed the money you’re paying your lender in the form of interest.  Your individual rate of return can tell you that; if it’s more than the rate you’re paying on your car loan and what you’d pay on the 401(k) loan, you may want to think about whether the other aspects make it worthwhile or not.  And, yes, there is a little risk of things going south if you lose your job and can’t pay off the full amount of the loan.  Even that’s not a crushing blow, though — you still have unencumbered title to your vehicle(s), and there is no adverse credit report information, no collection agency.  You simply pay the tax penalty on an early withdrawal from your 401(k).

So the next time you’re looking at financing a car or other major purchase, you might want to do a little research.  See if a 401(k) loan is a good idea for you or not.  Don’t blindly take anyone’s advice — mine included — without doing your own research and running the numbers.

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Exhausted!

Yesterday I flew with Tyler for the second time.  When we finally landed back at Millard I was worn out, sweaty, and felt great!  We covered a lot of ground in an hour and a half — literally and figuratively.

After flying to the west practice area, we started with slow flight.  At 65 MPH he had me do turns — more than I had done before; we did 360 degree turns to the left and right.  The airplane is wallowing and barely flying at that speed, and getting it to do what you want is a real balancing act.  I’ve got a much better fell for it than I did before.

After slow flight we did power-off and power-on stalls.  I greatly improved my power-off stalls to the point where we lost very little altitude and stayed on heading, even after letting the stall break.  Power-on stalls are really a non-event.  Wait til you feel the buffet, then drop the nose…  duh.

Then it was on to steep turns; 360 degree turns left and right at 45 degree bank angles.  Again, not bad, after the first one I was able to hold altitude plus or minus 50 feet.  Then it was down to 2000′ MSL for ground reference maneuvers.  We started at 4500, so he had me do a forward slip to dump altitude.  NO problem there, John had me do a slip on every crosswind landing…  which is to say, every landing we ever did.  Full aileron, full opposite rudder, hold heading and sink like a rock.  Ground reference was not a problem with the very light wind, in fact it felt a little like cheating.  I want to practice in higher winds, but I hope it’s that calm for my checkride.

After turns around a point, rectangular course and S-turns, he told me to head back to Millard.  As we were climbing back to 3000 he reached over and pulled the throttle back to idle…  engine failure.  I didn’t need the checklist, but I could have picked a much better field (like one on our side of the river, and where I could land into what little wind there was).  Then it was back to the field for some pattern work and touch & gos.

All in all…  a lot of work, but a good flight.  I’m certain that if I had been able to fly with ONE instructor since I started, I’d have soloed by now.  Other than having a much better than average grasp on ATC communication, picking FNG as my flight school turned out to be a really bad idea.

 

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A re-adjustment and re-start

Last week I showed up for my scheduled flying lesson with Flight! Nebraska Group.  My CFI wasn’t there, and I found out after making the drive down to Eppley that he wasn’t going to be able to make it that day – wasn’t feeling well.  Then the admin told me the really great news — the school was going bankrupt and closing its doors, as of the next day.  And of course I had only recently written them a check for a block of hours, so they still owe me several hundred dollars.

I’m now flying out of Millard with Pro-Flite.  My new CFI, Tyler , seems pretty good; we flew on Friday and I have more training time scheduled for this week.  I’m going to try to accelerate the training to finish up as soon as I can.  It was pretty windy and gusting the other day, which dind’t make for the best landings — but takeoffs were pretty good, and once I get used to the trim and throttle in the new plane I think I’ll be fine.

 

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Experiences with the Gigaset S675IP

A few months ago I replaced out old Uniden phones with a Gigaset S675IP and all new DECT 6.0 handsets.  I liked the S675IP because it offered something I couldn’t find anywhere else — VOIP service with automatic failover to a POTS line backup.  After using it for a few months, the result has been half rewarding, half frustrating.  The Gigaset product is pretty impressive when it works.  Sadly, the software seems to have been written as a freshman project and support from Gigaset is completely useless.

The handsets are sleek, very nice, and work well.  Battery life has been great; they will last for days off the charger, and I don’t think we’ve ever managed to kill a battery yet.  It’s also nice being able to have two simultaneous phone calls going at the same time.  The ability to set up a dialing plan to route local calls via the POTS line and anything long distance via the VOIP server has saved us money in long distance charges — we went from .05 per minute for long distance, to .0098.  Intercom voice quality is excellent, as is voice quality during calls.  I’d like a little better volume with a call on speaker.

The software has been a horror show.  While the dial plan feature is nice, what they don’t tell you is that if your dial plan specifies that a call goes out via VOIP connection, and that VOIP connection is down, your call just simply doesn’t work.  The dial plan also allows for only one destination for a call — you can’t have backup routes.  My solution will eventually be to just route everything via VOIP and let a real dial plan handle it, but it’s certainly a disappointment.

I’ve also had more than one occasion where a corrupted voicemail is stored in the internal answering machine memory.  Once there it can’t be deleted or managed in any way…  the only solution is, apparently, a complete wipe of the base unit.  ALL settings are lost.  There is NO way to back up the setitngs, so you have to start completely from scratch and set up the system.  VOIP accounts, dial plans, all settings — everything.  Again, Gigaset support has been completely useless.  They tell me the settings can be backed up, but apparently are talking about the directory stored in each handset.  Gigaset has stopped releasing new firmware for this product, and after a couple of emails they simply stop responding to help requests.  It is the poorest support I have ever gotten from a vendor, bar none.

I honestly cannot recommend this product.  It’s a really cool idea, with the crappiest implementation I have seen in a long, long time.  Add to that the fact that their support is effectively nil, and you have a product that looks nice but just simply doesn’t work as it should.  It looks like the newer model might be better — but apparently they have abandoned the US market, which is probably not a bad idea.  Maybe the EU customers will tolerate this kid of junk.

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More landings (some happy)

Well, I managed to get through a lesson with the aircraft intact.  On Friday morning Jerome and I took my old reliable friend, N5533F, up to visit its sick sister at Blair.  We did several touch-n-gos.  I tried Jerome’s advice for flying the pattern…  100 MPH on downwind.  Abeam the touchdown point reduce power to 1800 RPM, one notch of flaps, one crank of up trim, 500 FPM descent, 90 MPH.  After the base turn, one notch of flaps, one more crank of up trim.  After the final turn, drop the last notch of flaps if needed, one more crank of trim, get on slope, cross the numbers at 85 and pull power back to idle.  It worked.  Landings were improving, but my TnG takeoffs were pretty gnarly.

This is where I really wish I had video in the cockpit.  As soon as the wheels touch my mind is trying to process the landing — but I’ve got only a couple of seconds to clean p the airplane (flaps UP, carb heat OFF, check gauges, fuel pump ON) then full throttle for the takeoff.  It would be nice to completely ignore the landing and focus on the takeoff.

Anyway, visibility was getting worse when we headed back to Eppley.  Jerome wasn’t sure if we’d even have a VFR approach, but as it turns out we did.  We got a left downwind for 32R, Tower cleared us to land, and I did a dead-on approach and a very nice landing — best of the day by far.  Either I figured something out or just got lucky, I don’t know, but it seems I usually land better at OMA than BTA.  Don’t know why.  I’ll have to explore that some.

So I’m working on brushing up my knowledge test stuff so i can get that out of the way.  I had hoped to have it done while John was out of town, but there are just too many other things to deal with.  I should be back up to speed before long, though.  And I’m approaching a tiny little milestone…  two more flights, and I get to total up and sign my first full logbook page.

 

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I keep breaking airplanes…

Well, someone does anyway.  Today I flew with Jerome.  I preflighted N698FL, we had the tanks topped off and took off from Eppley headed for Blair.  I handled all of the radio calls, the only mis-step was when Departure told me “Own navigation, at or above 3500” and I responded “Own navigation, at or above three thousand five hundred, 8FL, good day”.  That last was a little premature, since he hadn’t told me radar service terminated, frequency change approved.  Not a big deal, he called a minute later to see if I was still on the frequency.  I was, having not switched to the Blair AWOS frequency yet – since he hadn’t told me I could yet.  Minor procedure thing, no biggie.

We did a T&G at Blair.  My pattern was “just OK”, not great, but I got it in.  I didn’t get the nose up enough in the flare and landed fairly smoothly but flat.  John would probably have been on the controls, but Jerome let me muff it so I knew what it would do.  Flaps up, full throttle, around again.  Second approach was too high and too fast, I did a go-around.  The third time I was long on the downwind and too low when I turned final, so I added power and basically flew it flat until I was in the right spot, then dropped some power and flaps.  I landed a little longer than I planned and was a little slow making the decision, so I didn’t think I had enough runway left to suit me.  No problem, taxi back and take off.  Well, on the way back — a 4200′ taxi — the nose wheel started to shimmy, badly.  Jerome tried a takeoff run but it was almost immediately apparent it was a no-go.  We parked, called the office and tied down the plane.  The front office girl was nice enough to come out and pick us up (thanks, Unique!) and get us back to Eppley.  From there I met Lisa at Stella’s for an incredible burger; if you haven’t eaten at Stella’s, you really need to.  It would be like living in Chicago and never eating at Portillo’s.  Then it was off  to Bellevue West for an AOPA safety seminar.

This makes three times I’ve left there with an airplane INOP for various reasons.  N698FL with nose gear issues all three times, plus N5533F with a broken pilot side yoke once – I found that on preflight.  I like the school, I like the people, but the maintenance issues are starting to wear a little.  Only .9 in the log book today.  On the bright side, we did have some time to talk while waiting on our ride back.  I think I have a better approach to try — no pun intended.  Jerome’s suggestion was to trim for a 500 FPM descent as soon as I reduce power and drop the first notch of flaps, and keep trimmed.  I’ve been needing a LOT of back pressure to flare.  I keep hearing that it shouldn’t take a lot of effort, but by the time I’m flaring I’m having to damn near lean back to get enough back pressure.  Next time I’m going to try doing a lot more trimming and see where that gets me.  Maybe I can reduce the workload in the pattern and concentrate more on watching the airspeed and turns.

 

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Unusual attitudes

Today we covered a lot of new ground.  Working in the practice area west of Blair, we started out with emergency procedures and engine failure.  We had some good discussions about the flow of trying an engine restart and picking out a good field when there’s no flat spot within range.  I felt like I was well prepared.

After a few of simulated engine-out emergency landings (down to about 500′ AGL) we moved on to flight by reference to instruments.  John had me under the hood with my head down while he did some maneuvers, which got me closer to motion sickness than I’ve been in a long time.  I did some turns and level flight by instrument reference only…  and I have to admit, it was much more difficult than I expected it to be. Then we did a couple of unusual attitude recoveries, which pushed me closer to rendering the airplane incapable of ever being flown again (you DO NOT want to be anywhere near if I ever actually do puke, it’s a seismic event).  I’m going to have to be more prepared for the vertigo and motion sickness next time.

We ended up further north than we planned, and got a call from Omaha tower asking where we planned to go since we were getting close to the nuke plant…  not a good idea.  We headed back and did the x-wind landing, which was certainly not perfect but I’m getting closer to finding the groove.

We had fun taxiing both departing and arriving.  On the departure Ground cleared us to taxi via L2 and L, then cleared a Bonanza that had just landed to taxi to the FBO via…  L2.  I believe it was the second time I have been nose to nose with the same Bonanza, thankfully neither time were my fault.  Anyway, we both recognized what was going on, he held up, we made our turn and all was well.  On the return we were taxiing toward our tiedown spot, and realized that the Centurion parked up ahead — wasn’t parked, he had just stopped there for some reason.  He moved, I did a nice tight 270 turn to pull into a spot my CFI didn’t think I could make.

So my primary CFI is going to be gone again for 15 days, and I’ll be flying with another instructor.  I have every intention of being able to grease a crosswind  landing consistently by the time John returns, as well as having the PP knowledge test out of the way and the pre-solo written done.  My only complaint about John is that I feel like he gets on the controls a little too early and too often when he thinks I’m about to fluff a landing.  OK, I understand his desire to be able to fly the plane again…  but.  Today I began my transition later than usual, and I think I nailed that part pretty well.  In hindsight, yes, I stopped my xwind correction a little too early and we drifted left — but the flippin’ runway is 150′ wide!  And, yes, we did start to balloon a LITTLE bit.  Nowhere near as badly as we have before, and I saw it coming and lowered the nose…  but by then John was on the yoke and rudder pedals and had half a bushel of throttle in.  I honestly feel if I’d been left on my own we would have touched down more smoothly.  It wasn’t pretty, but I had it.

All in all, it was a lot of work today, a TON of learning, and a good end to the week.

 

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More takeoffs and landings, yay!

Another day, another flight. Found a cracked control yoke on the first plane during preflight, so we took the other one. I’m either getting good at breaking stuff, or just getting good at finding broken stuff during preflight.

We did cross-wind takeoffs and landings and traffic pattern work. Lots of traffic pattern work, and I did all of the radio work with ATC and in the pattern at the uncontrolled field where we were practicing. My landings generally sucked… BUT… I still feel like I accomplished some things.

  • I recognized that I was way too close in on the first one, having made my 45 into the downwind leg a little late. Made a downwind-final 180, managed to get us lined up and landed. The landing was nothing to brag about, but salvaging the approach got me an “attaboy”.
  • I recognized, in plenty of time, that one was beyond saving. I was too high and too slow. Did a go-around… now if I can just remember not to pull those flaps ALL the way up in one shot. Oops. Lesson learned.
  • Figured out, I think, where and why my final was a little shallow. The last one was pretty good, right up to the flare (which still wasn’t horrible).
  • Got a LOT more comfortable with ATC and managing the frequencies. It’s nice to have two flip-flop COM radios, reduces the knob twisting somewhat.

I’m on the schedule again for tomorrow afternoon. We’ll see if I can slip out of work and do it or if I’ll have to reschedule. Right now my poor old brain feels like mush.  And a Cherokee does get bloody hot on the ground. But, we’ll be doing more stalls and doing emergency procedures, since I’ll need to cover that before solo. Oh, and I got my medical this morning — so I’m officially a “real” student pilot.