Are there any "pilot" watches that are actually helpful for pilots?

Marty Shapiro wrote in
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Bertie the Bunyip wrote in
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Marty Shapiro wrote in
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Bertie the Bunyip wrote in
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Marty Shapiro wrote in
:

Bertie the Bunyip wrote in
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WJRFlyBoy wrote in
:

On Sun, 18 Nov 2007 00:32:04 +0000 (UTC), Bertie the Bunyip
wrote:

I'm just getting invovled in instructing in lightplanes again.
My mission? To get the guys in my flying club and turn them
into luddites. First thing they're going to learn is to fly
without anything but their oil pressure and alitimeter..

Gosh, can't you give them an engine?

Ideally, we'd get a glider to start them off with, but this will
do in lieu.
I'm not kidding about this, BTW. They'e going to learn to fly
this airplane from minute one with no airspeed indicator.It has
no gyros anyway. It has a comm and an encoding xponder alright,
which we kind of need (Citabria, BTW) They can have the ASI back
when they don't need it anymore and they can start carrying a GPS
when they don't need that either.


Bertie



Where are you instructing? This would be a great course
for any BFR
or Wings phase.

Far far away in a distant universe!
That's kind of the idea, but it's only for guys in my club and
there aren't going to be too many of them willing to go old timey.
Good job too, because I'm away a lot with work and have only
limited time to see to them. One of them will eventualy be an
instructor, I hope and he can carry on with these rapidly vanishing
techniques, I hope. There are guys who do this around the place,
though. Where are you?


Bertie




Palo Alto. My airplane is based at RHV (more convenient
for all the
partners). It's a Rallye 235E, all steam guage with a loran that
went tango uniform.


OK. I've flown them a bit. Only the 100hp version, which don't climb
so good. Beleive it or not I was talking to the current holder of the
Franklin engine type certificates just last week!
Your's is probably a lycoming variant, though, eh? Slow as molasss,
but good fun!


Bertie



Yes, the 235 has the Lycoming 0-540 B4B5. Much better than
the 100hp
with the RR engines. I also have 4 seats. Once you get to the
Franklin 220 and the 235 (C is a tail dragger, E a trike) you also get
the "heavy" airframe with 2 hard points on each wing. Some neat
pictures on the web of these in South America used as light
fighter/bombers. On the down side, the heavy airframes only came with
yokes.


Oh, I never knew they made a tailwheel version. That'd be good!


With the 235 hp engine, speed is 132 knots flat out, about
like the
Arrow, but at a cost of 3 gph. Much, much better climb and short
field performance. With just me and half tanks at about 60F and 10 kt
headwind, I can get airborne in 300' and stop in about 400' with light
breaking. If you really wanted to, you could get your night currency
in one pass down a 12,000' runway with room to spare.


He heh..


As you said, slow but loads of fun. Very stable, great
visibility,
fantastic slow speed handling characteristics, nice precise handling,
and being able to fly with the canopy open. I had one passenger on an
Angel Flight who was nervous about flying in a small plane. But she
so much enjoyed the smoothness and the view, especially as we flew
passed a snow capped Mt. Shasta, that she told me how wonderful small
airplane were before we landed. Later, the relay pilot who took her
to her final destination told me that she wasn't nervous at all about
being in a small plane, but had remarked that the visibility from his
Bonanza wasn't that good!

Horses for courses, really. If you're going somewhere, the Bonanza would
probably be a better choice, but those Rallyes are pretty unique. I flew
a 100ST a few times. Not a dazzling aerobatic mount, but it did them al
the same. You don't see many of those early ones around today. Most of
them self destructed with corrosion...

Bertie

Kind geting off topic - but does the count down timer have a count down /
repeat mode?

I don't understand the question. What do you mean by "repeat mode"?
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Looks like a decent watch, but the price has gone up. (US$70 now)

I just bought mine a few days ago at a local mall "Watch Factory"
kiosk....
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

That said, the altimeter watch is not really very practical. When the
Suunto finally dies, I'll be replacing it with a watch that will show zulu
time. Preferably an analog/digital combo, so you can see both timezones
without having to push any buttons. A friend of mine has a Timex Ironman
Triathalon that looks like it would fit the bill.

All of the Timex analog/digital combos make the date change based on
the digital, rather than analog, time. This means that your date will
be wrong unless you program the digital time to be local and use the
analog hands to show Zulu time.

Since this is precisely backwards of what I want (the digital window
is tiny on these watches), the dual display models were eliminated
from my seach, sadly.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Jay Honeck wrote in
:

That said, the altimeter watch is not really very practical. When
the
Suunto finally dies, I'll be replacing it with a watch that will show
zulu time. Preferably an analog/digital combo, so you can see both
timezones without having to push any buttons. A friend of mine has a
Timex Ironman Triathalon that looks like it would fit the bill.

All of the Timex analog/digital combos make the date change based on
the digital, rather than analog, time. This means that your date will
be wrong unless you program the digital time to be local and use the
analog hands to show Zulu time.

Since this is precisely backwards of what I want (the digital window
is tiny on these watches), the dual display models were eliminated
from my seach, sadly.

aww.

Bertie

Bertie the Bunyip wrote in
:

Horses for courses, really. If you're going somewhere, the Bonanza would
probably be a better choice, but those Rallyes are pretty unique. I flew
a 100ST a few times. Not a dazzling aerobatic mount, but it did them al
the same. You don't see many of those early ones around today. Most of
them self destructed with corrosion...

Bertie

Unfortunately. There are only 21 of the 235E models left in the U.S.
Luckily ours has been a California plane almost all its life and we spray a
very generous amount of Corrosion-X inside it at every annual.

I've never seen the 100ST. I have seen the 150 and the Koliber copy,
along with the 180 and 220. IIRC, they also had some other models between
100 and 150 hp. You really need the 180 hp at a minimum. Once you get into
the 220's and 235's, you get a noticeable performance improvement. Even
the "heavy" airframe 235E is light. Our empty weight is 1,535 lbs, with a
max take off weight of 2,645 lbs (and a landing weight of 2,513 lbs).

One other feature is that the 235's (don't know about the 220's) have
a glider tow kit option.

--
Marty Shapiro
Silicon Rallye Inc.

(remove SPAMNOT to email me)

Marty Shapiro wrote in
:



I've never seen the 100ST. I have seen the 150 and the
Koliber copy,
along with the 180 and 220. IIRC, they also had some other models
between 100 and 150 hp. You really need the 180 hp at a minimum. Once
you get into the 220's and 235's, you get a noticeable performance
improvement. Even the "heavy" airframe 235E is light. Our empty
weight is 1,535 lbs, with a max take off weight of 2,645 lbs (and a
landing weight of 2,513 lbs).

One other feature is that the 235's (don't know about the
220's) have
a glider tow kit option.

The 100 hp ones went OK, the gradient was good but the rate wasn't so good.
The field where I checked out in them used 200' agl as the pattern altitude
so theh students could get more landings in!

Bertie

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
...
Kind geting off topic - but does the count down timer have a count down /
repeat mode?

I don't understand the question. What do you mean by "repeat mode"?

That is when you set it to alarm at 45 minutes, or whatever you set, and
when you cancel it, the time is available to count down again when you start
it again.
--
Jim in NC

On Sun, 18 Nov 2007 05:49:52 -0800 (PST), Jay Honeck
wrote:

Kind geting off topic - but does the count down timer have a count down /
repeat mode?

I don't understand the question. What do you mean by "repeat mode"?

I used to have a Timex Datalink. When its countdown timer finished,
after I turned off the alarm I could press start and it would put the
previous amount of time into the watch. I could see this being very
valuable for making standard rate turns as I could have :30 in there
by default. 1 countdown unit per 90°.

Check this : "A Pilot's Impressions of the Omega X-33"http://www.timezone.com/library/comarticles/comarticles63168153010742...- Hide quoted text -

That boy must have been paid by the word for that article...
sheeeshh...