Daily deal – Garmin Forerunner 301 wrist mounted GPS unit with heart rate monitor

by Scott Carmichael on

Yeah, I know what you are thinking – “oh please not another GPS unit”. This product is different though; it is a wrist mounted GPS unit with a built in heart rate monitor.

With the Garmin Forerunner 301, you can track your performance at a very detailed level. The Forerunner captures your heart rate (when you wear the included waistband), plus it stores your GPS location. The GPS location can be used to calculate your lap time, lap speed, distance and even how many calories you burned. Think of it as a super accurate pedometer. Once you are done working out, you can connect the unit to your PC and download your performance, plus it can display a “breadcrumb” track, showing where you ran.

The Garmin Forerunner contains a rechargeable battery, with enough juice to keep the device powered for 14 hours. It is also waterproof, so you’ll be able to take it out for a jog in bad weather. If you regularly jog in the dark, then you can even use the built in backlight to keep an eye on your progress.

The Forerunner 301 is perfect for fast paced jogs, but also if you just want an idea how far you have walked on your sightseeing trip. Included in the package is the Forerunner, the heart rate waistband, an AC charger, USB cable for connecting the device to your computer, a CD-ROM with the Forerunner software and of course a selection of user manuals.

The Garmin Forerunner used to retail for $227, but it can be yours for just $99.99 from Amazon.com, and since it is over $25, it ships for free with “super saver shipping”.

To avoid confusion; this device is NOT capable of directing you through traffic, or navigating you. It does not contain any maps, and the GPS is only used to track your performance. Do not purchase this device if you are looking for a portable product that can help guide you home when you are lost.

Cockpit Chronicles: How pilots stay proficient

by Kent Wien on

Last week I accomplished something every pilot dreads. Every nine months we have to go down to Dallas for recurrent training. The FAA lays out its mandates for airline recurrent training and the specific airlines design their courses around these requirements. It seems like every year they’re adding more and more subjects that need to be covered. Whether it’s in the classroom or in the simulator, there’s a lot of information packed into the four days.

Fortunately I was scheduled to fly down the day before which makes it easier to get a good nights sleep. This extra sleep helps me stay awake during some of the required classroom training which isn’t that exhilarating. There’s just no way to jazz up a course on hazardous materials paperwork or the proper use of a halon fire extinguisher.

The hotel was very basic and included a view of the roller coasters from the Six Flags over Texas amusement park. I think they’re shut down during the winter, though. The free continental breakfast and WiFi made it easy to overlook any other shortcomings of the hotel.

The training lasts four days and includes two days of ground school and two days of simulator training.

Day 1 – International School

There were only six of us in a classroom that seats 30 people on the first day, in which we covered international flying for 4 1/2 hours. The instructor reviewed the procedural differences in flying across the Atlantic versus the Pacific and touched on some of the requirements for flying over the North Pole, even though it’s unlikely the airplane I fly will ever go in that direction. The class also covered flying in South America which we’ll hopefully see more of from our Boston base. After class it was time to go back to the hotel and study some more for the next day.
Day 2 – Ground School

The next day there were eight of us in a different classroom listening to an instructor go over some of the 757 and 767 specifics. It was a good review that included a look into the hydraulic system, electrical system, flight instruments, air conditioning and pressurization, among other topics. Our cockpits are being retrofitted with large LCD type screens that will include a number of advancements. As you can imagine, I love gadgets, so I’m looking forward to flying an airplane with these displays installed in them.

While walking back from the cabin simulators where we operated the main cabin and emergency exit doors, I saw a group of flight attendants getting ready to go down the emergency exit slides. Pilots have to go down these slides as well when they’re first hired. When our new-hire class made the leap, our instructor wasn’t as versed in the operation of this ‘slide simulator’ and we all went sailing down the chutes. It wasn’t until the last person finished that a flight attendant instructor, who happened to be walking by, told us that the slide needed to be inflated. No wonder it felt like we were falling straight to the ground!

After lunch we went to a class on security that both pilots and flight attendants attend, and then we finished the day off with human factors training. This is an interesting class where we look at some of the mistakes other pilots have made based on their safety debriefs. These reports help us find better procedures and training to avoid getting into a similar situation. The situations are often recreated and filmed in a simulator to highlight the message. The goal is to recognize the mistakes that happen and to learn how to stay out of that kind of situation in the first place. It’s a serious class and the messages aren’t soon forgotten.

Day 3 – Simulator Training

When I was 15, my dad was an instructor pilot for another airline. Thanks to him, I had the rare opportunity to fly a full motion 737 simulator two different times. Both events were the highlight of my life to that point. When there’s absolutely no pressure to perform, these things can be great fun.

A Sim-P, or simulator pilot, who’s usually a retired military or other airline pilot, conducts the simulator training. We have a number of former Braniff pilots in this position and they’re absolutely fantastic instructors. These instructors run you through some maneuvers, approaches and any new procedures in preparation for your checkride the next day.

After a two hour briefing on some of the maneuvers we’d be doing, including low visibility landings, engine failures and fires, single engine approaches and go-arounds, we finally went into the simulator.

You need to be a bit of an actor in a simulator. There are lines to memorize and actions to perform, and you need to know these seldom used litanies without fail. Combine this with a look at your aircraft systems and procedures knowledge and it’s easy to see why it’s not exactly a video game for airline pilots.

The most common maneuver we practice is called the “V1 Cut.” It’s an engine failure at the worst possible moment, just as the airplane is ready to lift off from the runway. After liftoff, the jet tends to pull toward the failed engine which requires a significant–40 pounds maybe–amount of foot pressure on the rudder toward the side of the good engine. While you’re trying to keep the airplane straight and level, the non flying pilot needs to contact ATC to declare an emergency and let them know where you want to go. The airplane climbs nicely to about 600 feet before we accelerate and bring the flaps up. The flying pilot then makes their callouts (the acting part) which are “continuous power, flight level change, set speed, let’s have the engine fire, severe damage, separation emergency checklist,” and then climbs to a safe altitude.

The non-flying pilot accomplishes the checklist which takes at least five minutes to get through. The flying pilot talks to air traffic control and works their way back to the runway. A fantastic video of a 757 in this situation was taken last year in Manchester, England.

For both the training and the simulator checkride, I was paired up with a Captain from L.A. named Mike who really knew his stuff. He was relaxed, yet professional and he was never in a hurry. This is the perfect kind of guy to fly with when everything falls apart (as often happens in a simulator). Apparently Mike and I put on a good enough show during the 4-hour training session to be signed off for our ‘checkride’ the next day.

Day 4 – The Checkride

The
checkride also starts out with a 2-hour briefing followed by 4 hours in the simulator. After questions about some of the limitations and immediate action items we’re required to know, we talked about some new procedures. The check-airman spent a good portion of this time discussing a new GPS based approach we’re flying into Quito, Ecuador.

After a short break we went into the simulator and got everything ready as if it were a normal flight. The sounds and feel inside are very similar to the actual airplane. We wear our seat belts, not only to get the full effect, but because the box tends to move around quite a bit in a realistic way during these maneuvers.

Mike flew first, accomplishing an automatic landing, aborted takeoff, engine failure on takeoff followed by an engine out approach. I went next with a flaps up landing, an engine failure on takeoff and one on landing, a couple of different types of approaches to landings and a ground evacuation. I’m sure I’m leaving some things out, but they all tend to blend together after a few hours.

We took turns flying a recovery from a microburst and also a very aggressive terrain avoidance maneuver. Two skills you hope to never find yourself needing. We then flew two GPS approaches–one in each direction–into Quito.

At the end of the session we usually get a few maneuvers that are as close to having fun as we’ll ever get in the simulator. Often the instructor will fail both engines (almost always, for some reason, in Salt Lake City) and expect us to make it to the runway. There are bonus points given if you can coast to the gate. Or we might get to land in a 30-knot crosswind with the runway reported as having nil braking action. Something we’d never attempt in a real airplane. It’s often a sign that things went well during the checkride when the check-airman gives you some of these scenarios.

It’s a great feeling to ride home, even in the back of an MD-80, knowing that you’re good to go for another nine months.

I’m on reserve this month, so I’m not sure when and where I’ll be flying next. Stay tuned to the Cockpit Chronicles to find out.

Cockpit Chronicles takes you along on each of Kent’s trips as a co-pilot on the Boeing 757 and 767 out of Boston.

A Canadian In Beijing: A Shu-in for Language Training

by Ember Swift on

School is… school. It’s hard, but it’s helpful. It’s work, but it’s bringing pleasure. It’s a commitment, but it’s enabling a freedom that I couldn’t have predicted.

I am a part-time student at the “Beijing Yuyan Daxue,” or Beijing Language and Culture University in Wudaokou, a suburb of Beijing. Above is a picture of the southern campus gates.

Every day, I wake up at about 7:15 in the morning, shower, get dressed, make tea and then take my bag and leave my dorm. I have to walk about ten minutes from my building to the classroom and I grab my breakfast en route. There are kiosks between here and there. One sells fresh fruits and I buy two bananas everyday, which costs me 3 kuai. The other sells hot buns and various other non-vegan items. I buy “su baozi” or vegetable dumplings, which are more like thin rolls filled with vegetables and the occasional chunk of egg that I pick out and leave for the birds. They cost me 5 mao each but I usually get two, which amounts to 1 kuai. All in all, my breakfast costs me 4 kuai, or just under $0.60 Canadian.

With my bananas in my bag, my tea in my travel cup in one hand and my warm “su baozi” in the other, I enter the classroom building and mount four flights to my classroom. Everyday, we greet each other with “ni hao” and smiles and we’re all getting to know one another as we move forward with this language.

I haven’t been a student for nine years. I mean, an “officially enrolled” student. Of course, I’ve been learning constantly and that includes lots of reading and research and discussion about lots of different topics. I’d consider myself a student by nature even without an official student card. Our student cards actually look more like mini passports. They have photos and covers and are very formal-looking.

In some ways, being enrolled somewhere is an experience that has been hard to get re-accustomed to. Having to wake up early, for example, has been tough for my nocturnal self. I have taken to afternoon naps to recover from late-nights and I have been a slave to the caffeine in my morning green tea. I’d also say that the studying outside of class has been hard to be disciplined about, too. After I’ve gone to school and napped, I always want to explore this city and not sit over my books for a few more hours. I’m having to push myself to get the homework done and I haven’t always been successful.

My classes begin at 8:00 am everyday, five days a week, and they go until noon. They consist of two hours of grammar and textual understanding and then two hours of conversation classes, which rotate between a listening and pronunciation class that happens twice a week. We have breaks every hour for about ten minutes and then a longer break at ten a.m. for about twenty minutes.

Everything is in Chinese. All instructions and all descriptions of meaning and all definitions of words are in Chinese. Everyone in the class comes with their dictionaries in case a word is introduced and the definition makes no more sense than the word itself. Sometimes looking up a word and finding the translation in one’s native language is the easiest way to understand it and I am often flipping through my dictionary to catch up with the teacher.

There are about eight levels here and I am in about the fifth level — pretty much right in the middle. I have been slotted in an intermediate class as a result of my previous foundation for this language. I share a class with nineteen other students who also have prior background of varying degrees. Some have studied Mandarin before in their home countries (like I have) and others have taken lower level courses here at this university or at privately owned smaller schools here in Beijing.

One student is a Chinese woman who was raised in Switzerland and whose main language is French. She spoke Mandarin with her parents at home but never learned to read or write. As a result, she is quick to understand what’s going on verbally but slow to understand what has been written in the texts or on the blackboard. It is this student who I regularly access if I have questions about something the teacher has said. She and I speak French together in those moments. My second language has truly come in handy here.

Otherwise, I am the only student in the class whose mother tongue is English. If I need help understanding something, the best I can do is speak with that one student in French. Otherwise, I have to resort to speaking in Chinese with everyone else. Sometimes we have lunch together and it is a lunch of choppy, remedial Chinese but a chance to help one another be understood.

Here are the cultures represented by my class: Nine students are from Korea, three are from Indonesia, two are from Japan, two are from Italy, two are from Thailand, one is from Switzerland and one is from Canada – me! (Not all of the students were present when the above picture was taken.)

For the most part, I’m really enjoying it. I have already started using the new vocabulary in my non-school life. For instance, I had to look into some train tickets for the upcoming May holiday (hoping to get to Shanghai!) and I utilized most of the words we were taught in a previous chapter about “holidays.” It was fun to put those words to use and to know that they were the right expressions before I launched into guessing and gestures – a dangerous miming game that often leads to more confusion in Chinese. (This is the kind of language where guessing at words is often a dismal failure. Trust me, I’ve tried it.)

I’ve also had a good time with my fellow students and teachers. After class, I helped one of my teachers with some of her writing in English, for instance, which was rewarding because it had felt like forever since I was considered an “expert” in a language! We are also doing a big class meal this week that is being prepared by the Korean students at one of their apartments. They are excited to introduce me to Korean vegetarian food.

Finally, I think I’m learning how to be funny in Chinese.

Many of the words in this language are the same sound, just different tones. For instance, the word “brother-in-law” is “shu(1) shu(1)” (tones are marked in parentheses); the verb “to count” is “shu(3)”; a way of saying “several” or “a few” is “shu(4)”; and “book” is “shu(1)” (again, another first tone but a different character than the one for “brother-in-law.”) Side note: In English, the words “shoo” and “shoe” sound the same but are very different, so context is everything in both languages!

So a few days ago, I asked the pronunciation teacher (in Chinese, of course) if the following was a grammatically correct sentence: “the brother-in-law counted up the books.” In Chinese, the sentence sounds like: “shu shu shu shu shu” (but I did pronounce the tones!) There was a pause in the classroom and then everyone laughed. When the laughter trailed off, the teacher told me that it technically did work as a sentence but was not exactly a common one! And then she smiled.

Well, I guess not. Otherwise, things could get confusing very quickly!