Aircraft Antennas for ILS
0 commentsThe localizer system works in the same frequency range as VOR, therefore the two systems can, and often do, share the same antenna. This is the horizontally mounted "V" shaped antenna you will see atop the fuselage, or vertical stabilizer. The localizer antenna should be installed along the aircraft's centreline.
The glidescope antenna (pictured) is also a horizontally polarized antenna, but is considerably smaller than the localizer, due to the higher frequency of operation. The ideal location is in the nose/radome area, where the antenna can clearly "see" the transmitter during final approach.
The marker beacon antenna should always be mounted on the belly of the aircraft, for greatest effectiveness.
Labels: airplanes tmyk
Controlling Interruptions with Verne Harnish
Notes from the VHS tape Controlling Interruptions - How to Free up an Hour a Day, with Verne Harnish. Nick's note -- I classify interruptions as emails, phone calls, requests from coworkers, etc - anything reactive that prohibits me from being proactive at the office.
- 168 = Number of hours per week
- Interruptions make us feel important and busy. They can also bring us good news.
- But interruptions are poorly timed and they ruin our workday concentration.
- Don't let power and ego get in the way of your goal to eliminate interruptions.
How to control interruptions - List, Eliminate,
Anticipate, Delegate
- List - What people? What events?
- Eliminate - Ask yourself, What would happen if this task wasn't handled at all?
- Anticipate - It is much easier to handle 10 questions at one time, compared to being interrupted 10 different times throughout the day.
- Delegate - For more information on delegation, check out the book The One Minute Manager Meets The Monkey. (ed note - I am not making that title up.)
More on the Anticipate step...
- Batch similar interruptions together.
- Balance between being hard to reach and being available. Reward people for waiting. There is a big difference between an open door policy and an open mind. An open door policy tends towards half-baked responses when you are not focused.
Physicians have a pretty good schedule. When they arrive at the hospital, they have a series of back-to-back 5 or 10 minute patient meetings. Then they have surgery. Would you want your doctor interrupted while he was permorning surgery? Also, physicians perform their surgeries in the morning when they are most alert.
To help control rambling telephone conversations, use a person's name followed by a pointed question to regain control. When ending a conversation, come to a specific conclusion.
Small Business Domain Name Scam
I was the attempted victim of an interesting domain name scam at work last week. An international caller told me that he worked in the Security division of a London-based domain name registrar. They had received a domain registration for several variants of our company name. The purported registrant was from somewhere in Georgia - possibly a competitor!
Was this a competitor of ours, and would we be harmed if he registered these domain names? I played along and said yes, it would harm us, and please do not release these domain names to the fraud. Immediately the caller confirmed that this was probably a competitor who was trying to capitalize on our company name. The supposed registrant had already paid to register six domain names for ten years at the price of $1200 (about a $700 premium). If my company wanted to stop the infringement, all we had to do was give our credit card information and we could buy him out of these domain names.
I could see how this would be a rather convincing scam to the average small business owner. The caller tricked a senior-level person at our office into believing that it was a real marketing threat. I should have gotten the company name of the registrar so that we could file a report (or at least bad-mouth him here on my blog).
Two years ago on my blog, I talked about how inexpensive domain name registrations made GoDaddy successful. Read the article here.
Random Personal Notes - Tuesday's State of the Union edition
- Waffle House cooks mark orders with condiments on your plate. I will have a very exclusive Americana post about this soon. Suffice to say it is a very interesting code.
- For Christmas, my mom gifted me Seasons 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 of The West Wing. So our family has been watching at least an episode a day after work - it rocks.
- Saw Children of Men with Greg on Saturday night. Loved how there were multiple orange-peeling scenes. They were subtle but the orange really sticks out.
- January has been my month of citrus. I am averaging one orange per day. And a grapefruit on weekends.
- My favorite part of the day is when I turn on some reggae music and peel an orange with my hands.
- There's a new customer who comes in early to my Waffle House. Every day he plays some songs on the jukebox. Remember it is about 6am. Here is the start of yesterday's playlist - Treat Her Like a Lady, by The Tempations. Sitting on the Dock of the Bay, by Otis Redding. If I Ain't Got You, by Alicia Keys.
Random Facts About Bass Fishing
These are a few things I learned about bass fishing from a stranger at Waffle House.
- Use a big bait in the summer, and a small bait in the winter.
- Do this because fish are cold-blooded, and their metabolism changes with water temperature.
- The lake turns over twice per year.
- There is something called a thermal zone. Fish stay below it during the summer, and above it during the winter.
- It was the commenter's opinion that bass fishing should be off-season during the spring, just like deer hunting.
My 2007 Resolutions
Here are my two public New Year's Resolutions for 2007:
- Eat more fish.
- Listen to more bluegrass music.
My Favorite Professors at Wake Forest University
I graduated from WFU and from the Wayne Calloway School of Business in the year 2004. These are the professors that come to mind when I think about my life as a college student. In no particular order,
- Page West
- Clay Hipp
- Arun Dewasthali
- Gordon McCray
Diet, Supplement, and Vitamin Update
This is a follow-up to my post about My Hot New Diet of Whey Protein and Steel Cut Oats. The goal was to stop any fat gain while adding only muscle weight.
I have not gained any weight in two months. I still weigh about 177 lbs. This confused me because I started a creatine supplement (CellMass) and religiously drank whey protein milk shakes while working out with a personal trainer for three hours per week. Still, no gains.
Based on some internet research, I need to eat more calories and increase my protein intake. My new goal will be to consume 3,500 calories and 360 grams of protein per day.
Here is a list of the dietary supplements that I am currently taking:
- Generic daily multi-vitamin (1 per day)
- Fish oil gel tablet (2 per day)
- Cyto-Gainer, includes 700 calories, 54g protein, 3g creatine monohydrate and 2g glutamine per serving (1.5 servings per day)
- Whey protein (3 servings per day)
I am still eating my steel cut oats two times per day (total 1 cup). I plan to start adding total 1/2 pound of chicken from the grocery deli to my lunch and dinner sandwiches. And I eat a grilled chicken breast and steamed hashbrowns at Waffle House every weekday morning.
Regarding exercise, my personal trainer has decided to start a new career as a fireman. So I have a new training partner and things look promising there. We will focus on less reps and higher weights. I still do not have any cardiovascular activity in my gym routine, but I hope to add some soon. Reference Ricky's 24 with 24 diet strategy.
In summary, you may have noticed that I have gotten fat. I think I know what I am doing here and I am still in control. I will continue to try to gain weight until May, when I will start a new diet to slim down and cut up for summer.
Ralph asked me if my goal in gaining weight was just for looks, or for purpose (to get stronger). My primary goal in getting bigger is vanity. But on Thursday, I had to help someone push their car to a gas station. It felt good to use my new muscles for purpose.
Congratulations to my sister Emily
Yesterday, my little sister Emily Gray accepted her bid to the Delta Delta Delta sorority at Southern Methodist University. It was her first choice.
Emily, pictured right, can be seen in her famous Forklift Rodeo video
Notes from Day 2 and 3 of CES 2007
Here are some random thoughts from my final two days at CES 2007. I will update this post soon with video clips and pictures.
- I saw tons of 12-in-1 digital cameras but no Works with YouTube signs. Any digital camera that makes movies works with YouTube. It would have been an easy marketing trick but nobody did it.
- Saw some cool stuff at the DivX booth, like digital cameras that record in DivX video. I am going to give Stage6 a try soon - it offers beautiful HDTV-quality video sharing for free. My Canon digital camera can record video at 640x480.
- CES is one of the only places in Las Vegas where the men's bathroom line is much longer than the women's. The show is very male-orientated.
- I despise rolling suitcases on crowded trade show floors.
- I had a funny experience in the IBM Emerging Technologies booth. IBM decided to bring in programmers and engineers of these new technologies to demo their wares at CES. Usually it is only sales, marketing, and customer support people. But not IBM - they were keeping it real with the geeks. Unfortunately the sales pitches were not going well. So IBM had a PR lady flying around their booth to eavesdrop on the conversations. As soon as a potential customer stepped away from the IBM geek kiosk, the nice young PR woman would rush up and begin scolding the engineer. For example, my engineer doing a Linux security demo asked if I wanted to give him my email address so that "IBM can bombard you with email messages for the rest of your life."
Notes from Day 1 of CES 2007
- CES stands for Consumer Electronics Show. It is the biggest electronics show in the entire world.
- This is the first year that I have seriously brought my own snacks. Today I packed peanuts, a chicken sandwich, two bananas, a 1 liter bottle of water, and 20oz of milk.
- To see a video clip of me flailing around on stage at the Intel booth, click here. I was trying to win some software.
- I met my friend Amit Gupta here (Zach Klein introduced us about a year ago). Amit and I walked around for the better part of the day together. Microsoft flew him to CES and put him up in a very nice hotel - how cool is that!
- If you have never been to CES before, I think it is easy to look around and think about how cheesy some presentations are. For example, many companies will have salsa dancers or some exotic scantily-clad women dancing on stage between presentation topics. But these things are differentiators to get people to relax and sit down and enjoy the sales propaganda. Otherwise it is a long day of numbers and tech specs.
- I love it. CES features some of the best technology marketing that I see all year. Watching the corny presentations and sales pitches is fun for me.
- Some of the coolest things we saw today include a 27-inch Sony OLED screen that was about 1/8th inch thick. A 6-minute exclusive HD preview scene from Spiderman 3. An easy-to-watch from 5 meters away 3D television screen. A free 2GB USB thumb drive (thanks Amit and thanks Microsoft!). Quad-core Intel gaming workstation.