Brianflys – A Pilot’s Blog

Two days before the official start of EAA Airventure 2011, but it’s already pretty busy here.

Today was the mass arrival of the Bonanzas to Oshkosh, B2OSH. I understand there were 109 planes, Bonanzas and Barons. I’ve been flying with the Northern California Bonanzas for formation training, so I took the opportunity to shoot some photos of the B2OSH arrival.

Here a sample below. Good job guys (and gals)!  The crowd was impressed!

Recently purchased an HP Slate 500 tablet PC to use in my plane with the AnywhereMap Pro GPS navigation system.  This tablet was developed by HP for commercial use (although I hear that it is now available at some retail locations).

The tablet has an 8.9″ screen, so it will fit nicely on the yoke in my plane.  Unfortunately, there does not seem to be a commercial supplier of a tablet mounting plate for the HP Slate 500, including the biggest suppliers of such things, RAM Mounts.  The mounts available from RAM either are generic “tabletop” plates that are far too big or plates for the iPAD that do not fit the HP slate.  So I made my own yoke mount plate.  Pictures below.

HP Slate 500 yoke mount plate, 0.040" 2024 aluminum

HP Slate 500 yoke mount plate, 0.040" 2024 aluminum

The mounting plate is made from aviation grade 2024 Aluminum, 0.040″ thick.  This is stiff enough to hold the tablet well while thin enough to work with the cutting, bending, and finishing tools in my hangar.  It’s a simple design, basically a cruciform shape with double horizontal members.  This leaves space for all of the ports and controls while providing arms that securely hold the tablet on the yoke.  The bottom arm has an additional vertical surface to hold the tablet bottom in place and the other arms secure it laterally.

To hold the tablet securely on the plate, I fabricated a U-shaped top bracket that velcros to the top side of the top arm to hold the tablet within the 6 arms of the plate (there is very little force against this U bracket, a design I used successfully in a previous tablet plate.  Primed and painted grey.  The tablet inserts easily onto the plate and then held securely with the U bracket.

This tablet plate bolts to a standard circular RAM 1″ ball mount, connecting arm, and adjustable yoke mounting arm.   This general design should work for most tablets, with the securing arms sized and located as needed to avoid ports and ventilation holes.

Cheers!

Sailing on San Diego Bay, on a cool, bright, breezy day in January 2011.

Where winter means…a sweater.

Sailing on San Diego Bay, Winter 2011

Sailing on San Diego Bay, Winter 2011

Flying formation in Grumman aircraft is a great way to spend a weekend. Good company, good flying, and you really get to sharpen your stick and rudder (particularly rudder) skills. We had about 10 people and 9 aircraft there over Halloween weekend. All treats, no tricks!

Formation flying over Madera, CA

Thanks to James Flynn for the photos of me in a two-ship element.

If your a Grumman Pilot in California or the neighboring states and interested in formation flying, do a search for “West Coast Hepcats” or get me your contact info and I’ll forward it to one of our leads for the next training event.

Ok, that was groundspeed on the return flight yesterday returning from Mojave Airport/Spaceport back to San Diego at 11,500 feet. No record or anything, just a “personal best” for me and my Tiger. One of those many little things that make flying so much fun.

And I guess the strong tailwinds get most of the credit since I normally max out at 135 TAS. But hey, it still was fun watching the groundspeed spool up on the GPS, especially after slogging up to Mojave earlier in the day into the teeth of stong headwinds.