Imagine that you can't even go once around the pattern at your local airport without a flight plan, calling your local TRACON, getting a squawk code, and then a release time. That could be you.

Now imagine that it's a holiday, the skies are blue, the weather is fabulous, and you're sitting on the ground in a sun baked airplane hitting redial for the umpteenth time and not getting through to pick up your clearance. Half an Hour of engine runtime later, you finally pick up a squawk code and departure frequency.

That was me on Labor Day. My kids were with me and we intended to meet friends for a picnic lunch at First Flight Airport (Kitty Hawk, NC). People sigh and say, well, Homeland Security comes first.

And I'd agree --except that the ADIZ and FRZ in DC do not impede a terrorist one bit. What most do not understand is that you can't wall off a piece of sky. The airspaces we have assigned around the country are there for SAFETY reasons, not defense.

In other words, if someone is launching a rocket, shining a laser, or firing live ammunition in to the air for testing purposes, then they can reserve the airspace above them and advise pilots that they are there. This prevents accidents.

However, when some Federal Muckety Muck wants a Temporary Flight Restriction around them and their activities, they must not fool themselves in to thinking that it prevents aircraft from flying over. It doesn't do that any more than a traffic light prevents people from entering the intersection when it is red. Just ask that idiot from Smoketown PA who flew his trainer aircraft over DC a few months ago.

All it could do is help identify a strange aircraft which doesn't belong --or does it? What's to keep some twit from lying on his flight plan form? Tell the Feds that you're flying a small Cessna and instead fly slow in a jet.

So, how close can you get? Well, when coming back from Kitty Hawk, I entered the ADIZ at the South East side WHINO fix and proceeded north toward my home base at FME. During that time I heard Potomac Approach giving Vectors to Air Force 1. Meanwhile the flight path I was given was right on the edge of the FRZ: I was shaving by with less than a half a mile to spare. I was so disconcerted that I pushed my flight path eastward to stay > 1 nm away from the edge. It would not have been hard to get in AF-1's way.

Now the FAA wants to make the ADIZ and FRZ permenant. They used all sorts of smoke and mirror analysis. This must be the kind of analysis that they teach in MBA school. Very careful reasoning, but the assumptions were all nonsense.

These folks must think that naked emperors are ordinary, everyday occurences. I don't understand why so many think this nonsense is a good idea. If Joe Terrorist wants to bust in to the airspace, nobody, Not Even the Air Force, can stop him. Oh, and if, by some chance he does get intercepted and shot down, what happens to the ammunition and flaming wreckage? Why, pretty much what Joe Terrorist wanted in the first place!

Let's get real: Terrorists have lots of ways to terrorize. Using airliners worked once. It has been tried since. It doesn't work. Passengers won't put up with it. Just ask Richard Reed (who is very lucky to be alive right now).

Furthermore, General Aviation aircraft are too small to make a terrific amount of damage. Al Qaida did research the use of small aircraft and they discarded the whole idea --though that hasn't stopped the FAA and DHS pukes from trying to act as though it might be dangerous.

General Aviation has never been a threat. I'm tired of swiping a security card to get my car in to an airfield. I'm tired of filing flight plans for every silly little thing. I'm just plain disgusted with all these idiotic temporary flight restrictions that follow the President and Vice President wherever they go.

Couldn't we just try some sanity for a change? I promise not to wear my boogieman outfit...

I finally couldn't stand it. The Katrina coverage on Boing-Boing has been ridiculously biased and for the most part, unhelpful. I wrote the following to one of the very worst perpetrators.

You know, Boing Boing was supposed to be "A Directory of Wonderful Things" --yet your articles are nearly uniform about Katrina, the awfulness and how it must be a right wing racist conspiracy. Believe me, the right wing isn't that smart.

FEMA is damaged goods because of many factors. However, even in their heyday, they weren't anything wonderful to write about, and this disaster is on a level unknown to the US economy for several generations.

I'm not saying everything is wonderful and light. But please, let's stick to the "Directory of Wonderful Things" mantra. Katrina's aftermath is not a racial conspiracy. Nobody who thinks like that could be so clever. It's nothing less than incompetence at many levels. Get off your high horse and try spreading some helpful observations instead of pointing out the hideous and obvious failings.

I would appreciate comments from those who may have read the Katrina coverage on BoingBoing.

I promise that I'll be good about this. I find religion interesting. I also think that a respectful discussion of religion, or the lack thereof, ought to be possible. I could be wrong about that.

The key is insightful, understanding comments, and strength to read those ideas which may appear quite toxic to you. Sadly, not many can discuss such issues dispassionately. But this is Slashdot and We're supposed to be nerds.

I am hoping we can do this without being reduced to a flame war.

So, without stepping on any other toes, do you feel religion is a necessary component to a modern society, or is it as useless as an old buggy whip in a modern sports car?

This is one very funny example of how we are doomed to repeat the deeds of our parents.

I discovered similar things recently when I visited my brother. It's amazing what traits his wife has which are similar to our parents. Unfortunately, many of these traits are not from their better side.

Anyhow, after a week of living with them, I'm glad I'm not my brother. I'll bet he's glad he's not me. And I hope they like that suburban house with the Plastic Xanadu (tm)...

--My room is in the office on the side of our barn. I can step out and pee on a tree any time I want to... :-)

I used to watch slashdot for interesting and timely news stories. And sometimes it's still there. Sure, they dupe (and dupe and dupe and dupe some stories to death), but I'm a former usenet newsgroup veteran, so it's not hard to mentally filter that stuff out.

But lately I've noticed that they are merely copying from other such forum sites. And it isn't even timely. I posted this to Technocrat and it showed up almost immediately. I thought it would be out of date, since Mark Russinovich's Blog was already a couple days old. Then, several days later here it shows up on Slashdot.

You know, news is only news if it's timely and not well known. I think Slashdot is sliding a bit here...

This link became the start of an interesting thread. Clearly we all know when there are "do-gooders" and "busybodies" who try to legislate everyone's life style according to what they think should be "Good for us." However, just as relevant, there are those who will not lift a finger to save someone from themselves.

I'm curious: at what point do you decide to give up and let someone have a full blown learning experience? Should it be done as a society or on an individual basis? If it's a mix, what determines that mix?

In that thread there were an extreme case of polar opposite views. I'll confess, my views tend to match those of Ayn Rand than Hillary Clinton's --though I still believe Rand's views assume a certain altruism in a vacuum of moral direction, and she assumes a certain competence with most of her hero characters that most of us just don't see in daily life.

Generally, I have a hard time with deceptive, misleading, or ignorant posturing. And many troubled people often exhibit exactly those character flaws to create excuses for their behavior or misdeeds. Thus, I have to ask:

When is an explanation not an excuse and where do you draw the line.

Terrorist movements get started when bunch of malcontents get disatisfied with the political system and resort instead to random violence. So, exactly whom or what is Al-Qaida disatisfied with? What are they trying to accomplish?

The IRA never left any doubt as to what they were about. The terrorism against the state of Israel has always had some statement of combating evil Zionism. The terrorism against Apartheid South Africa was about civil rights. The Basque Seperatists are trying to establish an independent state. Regardless of whether you think their political aims legitimate or not, all seek a fairly a political goal of some sort.

What amazes me is the complete lack of anything political from Al Qaida. They have no clear manifesto, no political apologists, and a very quiet recruiting and fund-raising scheme. And because they do not have any of these features, the violence appears to be even more random and inexplicable.

They hate the West because we have "control" and they do not. Its as if they would have us believe that all our leaders would have to do is issue a command and all foreign militaries would leave, The house of Saud would depart (leaving their money of course), and every Jew in Israel would die.

What I think they're missing is that while western societies have much influence, that it is not a centralized form of control. In other words, nobody has the kind of political control which can give them what they seek, even if it were possible.

I think this is a cultural gap between the West and the mostly Arab Middle East. Arab Culture has not known democracy in most of it's history. It has known many great and wise leaders --but not democracy. We don't elect Kings, we elect presidents, representatives, parlimentarians, and prime ministers. This point is what I believe has lead to an awful lot of hate and discontent with the West.

Our leaders don't have this power Al Qaida seems to think they have. Thus, the utter pointlessness of their terror attacks.

On the other hand, our leaders seem to believe that a terror attack requires a military response. It's like trying to swat an egg laying fly with a sledge hammer. We might even be able to get the fly, but the damage will be severe, and the buzzing will continue...

The long term answer lies in something else: Journalism: Target the ultrareligious Islamists and do what they always do: document. Publish the money trails. Publish the information about who these people are, what they want you to believe, what they really do, and why Western people don't think the same way.

This should be honest Journalism, not propaganda. We're talking about a fairly closed society here, so their work will be cut out for them. Not only that, but these journalists will be risking their lives when they start getting too close to these ultra religious cult leaders.

Please understand, I have nothing against Islam. I have everything against power hungry religious zealots. Ultimately, we won't see the end of them until every one of them fears for their career should they spend money on the wrong charity or should they attempt to justify outrageous violence. We scrutinize our own religious leaders. The Bakers, the Swaggarts, and even the Catholic Church is not immune from the inquisitive eyes of Journalists.

So: What has your Imam been doing lately?

It may not be magic to most of you, but we have to maintain a time server in our very isolated intranet. So I gathered these "floor sweepings" (pieces and parts of PC gear that was too obsolete to use in production) and a case. I downloaded a recent FreeBSD distro, downloaded an up to date copy of NTP and compiled it (after a few minor edits to the source because of system calls which had been updated).

Then I stationed this pile of "floor sweepings" next to an old GPS based Frequency and Time reference. It's actually an old HP piece (from before the Agilent days) and it's very accurate even when it uses the hold-over oscillator. We use it to calibrate most of our spectrum analyzers, signal generators, and frequency counter references.

The IRIG-B output didn't play well in the sound card. I tried a few different combinations and then gave up in disgust. I don't know what was wrong, and I didn't have the time to puzzle it out. However, I did have a PPS output, so I rigged up a connection to the parallel port.

FreeBSD has a good PPS clock driver for NTP. In fact, it's not just good, it's very good. All I had to do was to get the computer within 500 milliseconds of the current time. I set my watch to a WWV receiver from a brain dead heath GR-1000 clock we used to use many years ago (we never throw anything out if it has an asset sticker on it). Then I set the time on the NTP box. And then I started ntpd. That got me within about 20 mS of the real time.

Then I waited. About an hour later, I checked up on it. Yeah, it was homing in on the time. It was about 5 mS off. Next morning I looked in on it. It was about 8 uS slow. A look at the statistics shows that I can routinely expect this thing to be within about 10 uS accurate.

This is on a crunchy old Celeron MOBO at 350 MHz. It's that PPS driver. It doesn't just work at the user level, it synchronizes kernel. Is that cool or what?

No, we don't need this kind of accuracy. We only need to maintain an accuracy of a second or two of across our network. But it is pretty cool to be able to say that we're routinely within about 10 uS of actual time.

All the other nodes are accurate within less than 10 milliseconds. I think the the jitter introduced by our WAN latency and activity causes most of this. However, I don't think anyone cares but me. As long as the other nodes are within a couple seconds of each other, nobody will notice.

I'm still amazed by this sort of accuracy. I know, it doesn't take much to amuse me...

Our workplace defense against stupid web surfers is Websense. It blocks all sorts of legitimate things. First and foremost, it blocks access to all FTP sites. The silly thing is that most FTP sites now offer HTTP file transfer. So this block is mostly ineffective.

Mind you, this is a work place that still uses NT 4.0 and Internet Exploder. --We don't use state of the art anything here.

Meanwhile, I thought I'd try out the NTP nanokernel software. So after banging my head against the firewalls and Websense, I called our IT "Help" desk. Call the IT security person, they said. I did that. He asked me to fill out an online form and someone would download it for me. Oh joy. My response? Gosh. I could take my laptop to the local library and download it there before you guys get your act together. But I'll humor you.

So I filled out the form. It's been three hours now. This ain't rocket science. I'm beginning to wonder if I'd have been better served had I driven to UDel and asked them to burn me a CD.

This "security" thing is nuts. On the one hand, these idiots keep using a brain dead OS with little support and a browser with more holes in it than swiss cheese. Then they patch things up with a product they don't understand how to use.

Wow. I feel like that proverbial one eyed man in the villiage of the blind. Only problem is that they still think they know better. Welcome to my world...

Take it from someone who actually knows something of both: Embedded computer instrumentation displays in aircraft scare me.

There is a certain degree of comfort in the traditional "steam-gauge" panel of an aircraft. We have de-facto standard arrangements for most aircraft built since the 1960's. You can get out of Cessna 182 and in to a Cherokee 6 --and the flight instruments are pretty much where they were before.

In contrast, if you're used to flying Meggitt's panel, you'll find Avidyne's panel to be substantially different. Next step: IFR certification for each. More money to spend on training, less on actually flying.

We've already seen several safety seminars about the tower of babel resulting from many different ideas for GPS displays. I can't wait to see what they'll look like when these flat panel instrument displays become more common.

"Steam-Gauges" have another advantage: Redundant supplies of energy for the instruments. I have a vacuum supply for the artificial horizon and the Heading Indicator. I have the electrical supply for the turn and bank coordinator and the avionics. I also intend to purchase a portable aviation radio and navigation receiver soon.

Thus, no one failure can bring me down. But these new aircraft are just one lightning strike away from serious doo-doo.

For those of you who aren't pilots, lightning strikes on aircraft are more common than you might first think. In fact, lightning strikes are part of the certification tests aircraft must endure to prove they can still be somewhat airworthy after a strike.

You don't have to be in an electrical storm to get hit. You only have to be near one. You could be trying to circumnavigate some build-ups and get struck from a bolt out of the side. It happens hundreds of times every year.

Anyhow, the combination of new composite airframes, and all digital instrumentation is something that leaves me cold. It's not that I don't like them. I drool over the functionality these displays provide and the performance these new airframes offer. What scares me is the possibility that all those wonderful electronics could get zapped with one dirty ground connection.

These new airframes aren't inherently shielded. They're carbon fiber composite. Sure, they're sleek, light-weight, and durable. But conductivity just isn't what it is in that lovely Faraday shield I fly now.

Anyway, I envision a new Airworthiness directive for all composite aircraft (Cirrus, Lancair, et al) in the not too distant future to test certain key ground connections for minumum conductivity before every flight. Don't be surprised when it happens.

For those of you who didn't know, an aircraft is not legally airworthy unless it is inspected at least annually. Our 1970 Cessna Cardinal is in the shop for just that.

Every annual inspection usually costs more than we expect it to. Some things we expect. A lot of niggling details get dealt with. For example, it's time to do the corrosion proofing. The easiest time to do it is when the airplane is all apart for the annual inspection anyway.

We noticed that the flaps weren't going all the way down. Our mechanic checked the rigging on the flaps and discovered that after many years, the cables had slackened. After tightening the cables to specified tension, the flaps extended fully. The detents at the 10 and 20 degree settings were adjusted so that the flaps really stopped at 10 and 20 degrees.

I'm going to have to pay closer attention to the attitude and airspeed for the next few landings because I know the airplane will feel different.

The stabilator bearings and bushings were worn. We're having those replaced. The door hinge pins are worn. We hope that replacing those things will take care of most of the play in the doors.

I cleaned up some corrosion on a ground connection for a wingtip light.

While removing the center console cover for better inspection of the rigging, I got a chance to get a really good look behind the instrument and radio panel. The SCAT air tubing for cooling the radio gear was just hanging in space. It had detriorated so much that it was easier to simply replace it. Now we have hope that the GPS will stay reasonably reliable whenever we go cruising in the goo.

Our lower engine cowling had some cracks. We sent it out to a fiberglass shop for repairs. Our seats are going to get recovered. They are worn.

The engine magnetos had airworthiness directive mandating an inspection. That was taken care of. Other ADs were checked and dealt with.

One unexpected discovery was the tires. They were worn on one side but almost not at all on the other. Our tires are usually sitting in wheel pants so we don't usually get to see much of them unless we have to pull the wheel pants off for some reason. The shop mechanic suggested we align the main gear with shims as suggested in the aircraft maintainance manual.

We had been flying our airplane off of a grass airfield for many years. It's entirely possible that we might never have noticed a problem of this sort if we hadn't chosen to base at a paved field a few years ago.

In general our airplane has some minor corrosion after 35 years of flying, and some wear and tear. But overall, she's a nice old bird.

Knowing what we have found, I see the wisdom in annual inspections. However, I wish it didn't have to cost us as much as it does. Still, it's cheaper than an accident...

Sigh. This "violation" is actually not a ridiculous as it sounds. But to hear the media stories about it, you'd think someone had nearly started World War III.

From preliminary reports it appears the aircraft was struck by lightning. The pilot then decided to deviate off course to stay away from the weather. A wise move, in my humble opinion. That deviation took him into the ADIZ --without an electrical system.

Naturally, you're not supposed to be in the ADIZ without a working transponder, a flight plan, and contact with ATC. However, in this case, one could legitimately say the pilot had an inflight emergency and did what he had to do to stay alive.

There is a regulation in 14CFR91.3:

(b) In an in-flight emergency requiring immediate action, the pilot in command may deviate from any rule of this part to the extent required to meet that emergency.

Basically, it says that in the event of an emergency, the pilot in command can do whatever deemed necessary to stay alive. If those self styled security maggots in DHS don't like it, too bad. Would they rather see a wreckage and dead people?

A little sense of perspective would be appropriate here. The feds ought to give him a pat on the back, a few papers to fill out, and a good night's rest. I don't think he has done anything wrong.

As a pilot who has flown in the Lancaster PA area many dozens of times, allow me some observations regarding the two guys who flew in to the Restricted Area in DC last tuesday.

First, there is a bunch of bogus information in the news media. See AOPA's website for details. They ought to know better than anyone since the airplane was forced to land at Frederick airport. AOPA is based at Frederick airport.

Second, even if only half of what the media reports say are true, the pilot in command of this airplane deserves to lose his license. I've flown with out of date charts, and yes, I've been slightly lost at times too. However, this breaks new ground for in-flight stupidity.

The normal route for most pilots from his area is to fly south to the Susquehanna River. It's big --over a mile wide. You can't possibly miss it. Then fly down the river toward the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay. Then, all he had to do was to continue flying south toward Salsbury MD. None of this is difficult, even with pilotage.

How he got "lost" over DC with out of date charts is a mystery to me.

Third, this is the first I've ever heard of a pilot refusing to follow intercept procedures. The fact that he's alive at all tells me that he's the luckiest bastard on earth. I want him standing next to me when I buy my next lottery ticket. All the same, I don't want to be anywhere near him should he ever be allowed to fly an airplane again.

Fourth, given what we know about the capitol police and others, the decision to evacuate was silly. A Cessna 150 has about as much payload capacity as a motorcycle. Do we evacuate government buildings any time an unauthorized motorcycle approaches?

Frankly, the whole ADIZ, and FRZ nonsense is just that. Nonsense. To date, most airspace designations were there to help pilots stay safe. This one does nothing for anyone's safety. They have drawn arbitrary lines on a chart and then told pilots not to go there. So we don't. But that won't stop a determined Cessna 150 pilot from doing it anyway. Nor will it do anything to stop another 9/11 hijacking.

Now, if the folks running this show want to, they could establish a 15 mile Class A airspace around DCA. That would cause all pilots to file flight plans before entering that airspace, and it would ensure that nothing but IFR traffic would be allowed. That's what they want, isn't it? To be able to identify those aircraft which aren't supposed to be there?

As for the rest of aviation, I'd like to see airports like College Park opened back up again. I'd happily file IFR to get there. But I do not want to play 20 questions with harried air traffic controllers and suffer a full security background check just to be allowed the privilige to land at a public airfield.

I think the TSA needs a lesson on what air traffic control is and is not, and what military intercepts can and can not do...

For the last several years, my wife and I have been holding a kite party at our place every spring. We invite a bunch of friends, tell them to bring kites and we fly them on our hay field.

I supply home brew beer, a main dish or some such, and even a few spare kites. If the wind dies down we play with the potato gun.

We've had interesting parties in past years. One year we go strafed by a helicopter, and this year we had our first party crasher. Frankly, I don't mind. She brought her own kite and she certainly was nice enough. However, this crasher brought something else: Her business cards and flyers all over my guest's cars.

Yeah, she was in to real-estate. I graciously waited until she was alone and then approached her and explained I'm flattered that she chose to crash my party. We must be doing something right. Gosh, if she wanted to crash the party next year, I wouldn't object. "However," I asked, "please leave the cards and flyers at home." Using my private party to scout for new business ranks pretty high up on my list of rude behavior.

Then she began prattling about how she knew of a widow who lived on an eight acre farm in a 105 year old farm house whose husband had just died and she sold out for only $600k. She would have tried for $1.4M. Uh huh. Interesting numbers. They're not far off from what my house and farm might be worth. Thing is, it's all academic. My wife and I have no plans to sell out any time in the near future. This bitch had been snooping on me too. She got nowhere.

The moment our party crasher left, everything got in to high gear. Our guests were all laughing and joking about her. We killed one keg of home brew pilsner and did more damage to the next keg of pale ale. Oh, I should mention, this ain't no sissy beer either. I measured alcohol content at about 7% by volume.

Had our crasher stayed, she might have been good for target practice --using rotten potatos...

One thing I've noticed about government regulation: It starts off as a bunch of good ideas and then, while nobody was looking, turns in to a major pain in the ass. I ran in to one of those pains-in-the-ass recently.

The engine monitor on our airplane crapped out. For those who aren't up on this stuff, it monitors the exhaust gas and cylinder head temperatures for each of the four cylinders in our airplane's engine.

So I pointed out to my partners that we could replace the existing engine monitor with one that records all this data and makes available for download and analysis later. It's a handy feature because it enables me to show this sort of thing to a mechanic and say THAT happened to the engine while climbing through 4000' last Sunday. Then he can diagnose the problem: mixture, fouled plug, sticky valve, Induction air leak, whatever...

We sprang for it. Now I come to discover that this is a piece of ten year old technology with ten year old software and ten year old hardware. That's right! I need an HP Palmtop with an infra-red interface to download these data files. And the only media it will write to is a flash card on PCMCIA. Sheesh.

Why did this happen? Because this is a certified device. The FAA doesn't let just anyone build stuff for airplanes --especially not instruments. This instrument has to survive high altitudes, heat, cold, vibration, lightning strikes, and maintain accuracy and fail-safe behavior. All this was a good idea. I don't like stuff breaking in flight.

However, the software and the protocols are way out of date. Thus, I have to ask: does anyone out there have an HP-200LX Palmtop they'd be willing to let go of for cheap? I have an airplane that needs one...