Tuesday, October 27, 2009

My New Toy, The iPhone 3GS


























I bought this iphone a few weeks back. It is unlocked set and I jailbroke it my self so that I can use third party applications, not only from the itune store. A lot of application can be downloaded for free and some with a small amount of money. What I am writing here is about the aviation applications that can be used by the iPhone. If the left photo is enlarged, can be seen there a few applications for aviator such as FlightPlan, PilotLog,Pilot ToolBox, Aeroweather and Winter320. iQuran and Qibla Direction application also available. The right picture can be assess by touching the FlightPlann icon and from there a lot of aviation stuff can be done especially the calculation.
Click on the photo to enlarge.




This is the AeroWeather which I downloaded before the flight simply by connecting to wifi and dictate the required airports. It is in standard aviation meteorology code but if unsure of the code, just touch the encode button.

click on the photo to enlarge.


































I tried out the Navigation part by putting in the wind speed,direction, the course or the line on the earth surface that you suppose to fly and the true airspeed. The result, heading to fly is 130 deg, as shown by the yellow line on the Navigational Display on the right picture and the ground speed is569 kts, shown GS 568 kts on the ND top lefthand corner. Close enough? Make sense isn't it becouse the wind is from the right and behind of the plane, so pushing it forward to have a faster ground speed and the plane has to fly heading to the right to compensate for the wind..correction by 3 deg.. cool. So without the plane's computer, I can calculate my own now.












And, another use of the iPhone, favourite youtube can be downloaded and saved for viewing at 39000 feet. Michael Bubley Save The Last Dance For Me is really sweet ,come with Nescafe Tongkat Ali Ginseng.







































Monday, October 26, 2009

Flying To Melbourne





This was my second flight of the month after a long one month vacation. Was enjoying my Ramadan and Syawal with family in my home sweet home country. It is F1 fever in Abu Dhabi and I got the chance of flying this A340-600 F1 livery to Melbourne recently. Almost straight route following the great circle as shown on the google Earth map above.







In flight, I occasionally have a look at the camera screen, enjoying the beauty of cloud over Australia. The lower ECAM screen will show the images from the upper camera situated at the tail pointing downward and also the nose camera pointing forward located under the belly forward belly.















After landing, the Captain's PFD when selected to taxi camera, will show the image of the plane and the nosewheel in relation to the ground. That is called TACS or Taxi Aid Camera System which really help the Captain to maneouver while on ground taxiing toward the parking bay or to the runway for take off. So far, this 340-600 is still the longest plane in the world.







From this picture, we can see the nosewheel is exactly on the line and the plane is centred on the taxiway. See how accurate my handling is, hehe.













Reaching the parking stand. Phew, it was 13 hours flight !!

We took off at 11 pm at night and landed at sunset the next day.

The whole day gone in the air.