Slow Moving Cold Fronts

A front is a boundary between two air masses with differing temperatures. The cold front has cold air behind it and warm air in front. A slow moving cold front has a shallower slope than a fast moving cold front, so warm air isn't thrust up as rapidly and as a result, not as violent. Rain and colder weather will remain around longer as the front passes through. It can move so slow that it almost resembles a stationary front.

Uggh, this weather stuff is moving soooooooooooo sloooooooooow. There's so much information that I'm constantly pausing, rewinding, replaying and am up to my eyeballs in notes. The last 6 minute segment I just watched, took me an hour to complete.

Now granted, halfway through my A.D.D. kicked into overdrive and I got bored causing me to wander away for a few or peek on facebook. It's making my brain feel like mush.

I start watching and the lady on the video mentions something or defines some key term. Great, I pause it and write it down. Wait - what did she say again? Rewind, replay, pause, scribble it down. Repeat for the next term given. Now she combines the two terms and relates them together. Wait - what just happened. I pause and rewind so often that I forget what she is talking about and have to go back to watch AGAIN because all the pausing, rewinding and replaying is chopping it up too much.

It gets highly discouraging at this point to look down at the seconds counter and see only 20 seconds of video has passed. lol And then A.D.D. kicks in and I wander off...

I feel the need... the need for SPEED! I loooooooove when things go fast!!! This is c-r-a-w-l-i-n-g by. I'm STILL on Chapter 18 when I shoulda been done by now!!!

I think what I need to do is after I've watched a segment all paused and rewound to pieces is to go back and watch it again a second time without any pauses. Maybe it'll sink in then and I won't feel so held up.... but my brain is rebelling. It says it's tired and it's time for bed. No other warm fronts or cumulus clouds are going to fit in there this evening.

Now what I'm hoping is that it's slow moving while I get all these terms down and figure out what all of them mean. Once we move onto processes and patterns and such, hopefully it'll go MUCH faster because I know all of the basics. I'm hoping, I'm hoping, I'm hoping.

Anyways, my cloud-filled brain and I are off to bed. I think I will join the new CAP group for their SAREX this weekend.

1st EAA Meeting

Just got back from my first EAA meeting. It was like visiting the Warbird camp at Oshkosh - ALLLLLL WWII pilots. Made for some interesting stories and one guy spoke about his A-4 training in the war. He was a Marine, so it reminded me of Grampie alittle and I started missing him.

At first, they left me alone for the first part, but after the talk, a few got curious and came over to talk to me. I dunno why I get so nervous at these things. I mean, I know it's intimidating at first, but my shy meter overflows and I can barely say a "meep".

I met the two guys who are building RV-7's and they said I can definitely help them. They all asked about my flight training and once again, get BIG reactions when I tell them what I'm training in. One guy said that it was a very difficult plane to start training in. Yeah, you are telling me... 

Overall, pretty good... but it just made me miss things more. I miss Grampie, I miss Oshkosh.  I even missed CAP a little, which is good, I guess... I'm halfway convinced I'm still gonna take off one of these days. Regardless, I need to start making big changes in my life, starting now.

I'm sleepy after yesterday, but I have 9 pages to read before I knock off for the night. Getting a scratchy throat, so I definitely can't go past 11pm tonight.

The pilot tube

I studied over my lunch break today, as I often do. I was trying to hurry to finish the page I was on because my lunch was over and we had a meeting right after. So I sped up my reading, finished the page, couldn't understand what I had just read and went back to read it again. Now I was late for the meeting, so I shut my book, ran into my boss's office and plopped into a chair. Much to my surprise, I was the first one there.  He looks over his computer at me and said "You've been sleeping on your break, haven't you?" (which I am known to do, but not this time... and oddly enough, I guess I have the same look from studying as I do after I just wake up? haha)

"Nope, I was studying!"

He always asks why I say that like it's an accomplishment that I was actually NOT sleeping and studying instead. (Because IT IS!)

"Prove it."

So I ran back, got my textbook and brought it to him, "See? Studying."

"Showing me a book doesn't prove you were studying", he says as he opens the book. "What instruments use static pressure?"

I paused and pictured the instruments in front of me. I know the two middle ones - attitude and magnetic heading, and the far left bottom one - turn coordinator, are powered by a gyro so it's the remaining three.

"Airspeed, altitude and vertical speed."

He nods. "What is the only instrument to use both the pilot tube and static pressure?"

I giggled. "First of all, it's PITOT tube! And it's airspeed."  Although my moment of glory was short-lived when I mispronounced "barometric" a few moments later. My boss is into computers and thinks he's pretty smart, which he is... but he doesn't like anyone showing him up. Especially me, since I bounce around and act like a goon.

So next he asks, "What's standard barometric pressure?"

"29.92". Easy Peasy.

"What's it in millibars?"

BLANK. Oh crap. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is that? "You'll need to know this if you want to fly in Europe".

No clue. It's 1013.2 millibars, btw. This was the point where I said "barometeric". LOL He laughed and gave me back the book.

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Odd geeky fact: Did you know that the blood vessels in a bee's wing act as vortex generators and control lift and drag? Pretty cool...

Anyways, on the agenda for tonight:
1) Cleaning - pet sitter comes in 4 days (yikes!) because USS Yorktown trip is 3 weeks from TODAY!!!!
2) At least finish this section in my book that I was working on during lunch and answer some questions
3) Hope to get in some video watching, too. Merlin's giving me some more videos to watch tomorrow.

Flight with Da Vinci on Sunday!!!!!! WHEEEEEEEE!!! She FREAKED out with happiness when I told her!

"A take off excursion through the weeds"

Best quote ever:

"Staying in the center of the runway is an important key to good take offs. That way you have maximum room on either side to allow for wind gusts, blown tires and so on. It's also embarrassing when you have to pick the dandilions out of your landing gear after a take off excursion through the weeds."

No joke - I just heard this in the training video I was watching and just cracked up! I've listened to it three times already and it never gets less funny. The guy says it so seriously, too, like he's speaking from personal experience!! haha

Anyways... So, yes, more studying tonight. Hopefully finishing up the 7th lesson in the videos!! Although, now that I'm getting closer to the end, I have a sinking suspicion that there are more videos that Merlin didn't give me...

Hoping to do some more work in the textbook tonight, as well. Got a call at work today about the trip to USS Yorktown (squee)! We're leaving 3 wks from Friday at 1745 from Dobbins!!! I can't tell you how excited I am. :)

Studying

Just completed 3 more tests for CAP and was studying out of my textbook after I last posted. It just blows me away - I never knew studying could be so addicting!

R2 says I need to update here about my studying, too. If I did that every time I studied, I don't think I'd have time to sleep. ;)

Yesterday, I was doing the second part of FEMA training for a good part of the day. The website said it would take about 3 hours to complete. I got called to school just as I started the first page and had to take a break for lunch after 2 hours. I finally finished 15 minutes before I had to leave to go play laser tag with R2 and Da Vinci. Didn't help that yesterday was absolutely beautiful and it made it harder to stay inside and work on this stuff. So a little longer than 3 hours... but that's okay - the first part was supposed to take 3 hours also and it took me an hour and a 1/2!

Today, I was answering some questions from my textbook before lunch about the instruments in the plane and airspeeds. I once again had to stop for lunch (grr, pesky lunch getting in the way! hehe) and started working on tests for CAP. There were 3 little 10 question, open book tests. Only one was required for Mission Scanner (that's me!) but the others were important too, especially if I ever work on ground crew. I hadn't planned to take them, but I was having an ADD moment and was wondering what other things I could add to my CAP record. I just went to peek at them to see what it was , thought it looked easy enough, so I thought I'd take the first one. Then I noticed that the first one wasn't actually required for my training, but the second one was. When I finished the second one, I guess tests are like potato chips (you can't just have one) and finished the third.

I'm going to take a break for a bit and maybe clean something. You have no idea how strange that is to me - take a break to clean. This afternoon, I plan to watch more ground school videos and hopefully finish all of the ones in lesson 6 (out of 9). Maybe finish up those questions I was working on in the textbook, too.

Btw, here's the music I play while taking tests and studying. Epic conquering music, FTW!