UAS Registration Deadline

~ cjois

For all those Model Aircraft hobbyists out there, this is a reminder. If you haven’t already noted, the FAA UAS registration is coming up soon in February. An early registration deadline is January 21, although I had read somewhere that it was Jan 19. The FAA will refund the $5 registration fee if the registration is completed by the Jan 21 date.

The Academy of Model Aeronautics (AMA) is still working with the FAA to figure out the modalities of the ruling. Personally, I find it redundant that AMA members who are committed to a safety code, and have to abide by AMA regulations, have to follow another registration process; but that is just my opinion. For now, the ruling holds and registration is required by the deadline.

Just a reminder to all of us RC Modelers to note the dates and complete registration.

CPJ

Technology Transformations

~ cjois

The subject of technology transformations has been on my mind the past few months. It is absolutely evident that the rate of change of technology has increased multifold. With that, the frequency of technology transforms has also increased. There used to be a time when major changes to tech stacks would be an event – a not so frequent event. However that no more is the case. Innovation occurs a lot more than it ever used to – and in unexpected forms. disruption is not a rare thing anymore. Yes, if technology stacks were built for agility (see my prior post on architectural constructs here) then when ideation leads to disruption, a plug and play architecture should handle it really well. But is rarely the case, yet. 
In this scenario, technology transformations are the still the only answer. There are major reasons for such transformations today. One of ten is when an enterprise is transforming it tech stack to achieve readiness for the SMAC revolution. Another is where an already nimble enterprise is transforming its stack to push the envelope.
In either case, these are not for the faint hearted. There is as much of the culture element involved in this as there is technology. These are long journeys and must never be embarke upon without a medium to long term trajectory first being established. As an avid aviator, I liken it to taking off without a plan of some kind – a plan for a destination, a plan for diversion, a plan for worsening weather, or higher then expected headwinds thereby increasing fuel burn, or arriving at an airport where the winds are not favorable for the available runways. Note that I have not even mentioned encountering other problems such as equipment failures, lost communications or navies not working, to name a few.

Clearly, tenacity is key. Staying the course is important. Deviating for weather is fine, however turning back on course is critical. Staying focused on key measures and more importantly, metrics is absolutely essential. Remediating as soon as practical is necessary. Sounds like common sense – easy? Indeed, IF only we were to follow these principles. All I will say is – not many do.

My sincere recommendation to anyone who cares to listen to me is ‘don’t start a technology transformations’ if there is even the slightest doubt about some of being able to comply with the above principles. A botched transformation is worse than putting with current state, as poor as it may be. 

CPJ

Moved by a movie

~ cjois

I am not much of a movie person. I am too much of a ‘do something’ person to be able to sit in one place for 90 minutes and watch a movie – unless of course, its something that pertains to planes, airports, flight – aviation in general.

AviatorCast – a podcast on aviation – recently interviewed Brian Terwilliger, a documentary movie maker. The podcast was focused on Brian’s latest production “Living in the Age of Airplanes”. I had heard about the movie back in April, but the movie is only distributed to science centers, museums, IMAX theaters to name a few. Hence it is not generally available in the regular theaters. I waited for it to come to a location in my city.

Today, I headed out to watch the movie. Words cannot describe the various emotions that one goes through upon viewing the movie – and there are too many to even describe. Brian passion for telling a story comes through. His passion for aviation also comes through. Most importantly his ability to conceptualize big ideas comes through. Breathtaking is one way to describe the movie. Its 50 minutes of exhilaration. Well researched and succinctly put together.

In 50 minutes, Brian transports the viewer from beginning of humankind to present-day transportation capability. The movie humbles the viewer.

The script focuses on the machine – more than anything else – and attempts to keep the focus on the significance of the airport.

If you haven’t watched it, please do. Brian has crafted a beautiful message through the movie.The movie’s website is www.theairplanesmovie.com

I am confident that you will enjoy it as much as I did.

CPJ

FAA’s NextGen Program

~ cjois

FAA’s NextGen is a program with a lot of promise. But like every large transformation program, success results out of flawless execution of the plan. Vision is important and it plays an important role. However, history is rife with many examples of great vision and flawed execution. 

FAA’s NextGen definitely has its critics, many of them are in Congress itself. The scale, size and complexity of program leads to high cost. On the other hand, the very same traits make the program hard to qualify and quantify. The measures are hard to define and the metrics are hard even more difficult to communicate. The FAA’s site is increasingly driven to show videos, animations and other material that can tell the taxpayer and/or flyer the implications and benefits of NextGen. The benefits are beginning to accrue (United joins NextGen Data Communications”, 2013). Clearly, current day criticisms are indicative that they are not doing enough to convince the stakeholders (Ashley, 2015; Pianin, 2014). The NextGen program would have been better off being handled as specific initiatives focused on specific benefits. Bundling too much into one program leads to the issues that NextGen is facing. 

The move from traditional Radar-based to air traffic management to GPS-reliance is inevitable. However, the implications for pilots, airlines, flyers, and taxpayers are not small. Prior studies of the USNAS and air traffic related issues in the US have adequately indicated the need for transformation (FAA, 2004; 2007; 2011). In my mind, this transformation is not an option. The criticism that its waste of money is not true. It is much needed and eventually the US will benefit from such a transformation. As to whether the FAA should do a better task of earning value on money spent and fast tracking the program to success is another question. The FAA can, and should, absolutely doing a better job of keeping the program on track and communicating the benefits to relevant stakeholders. 

References – 

Denver International Airport starts new arrival-departures for NextGen. (2013, May 28). Retrieved March 28, 2015 from http://www.denverpost.com/ci_23333350/denver-international-airport-starts-new-arrival-departures-nextgenLinks to an external site.

Federal Aviation Administration. (2004). Capacity Needs in the National Airspace System: An Analysis of Airports and Metropolitan Area Demand and Operational Capacity in the Future. Retrieved from http://www.faa.gov/airports/resources/publications/reports/media/NAS_needs.pdfLinks to an external site.

Federal Aviation Administration. (2007). Capacity Needs in the National Airspace System: An Analysis of Airports and Metropolitan Area Demand and Operational Capacity in 2015 and 2025. Retrieved from http://www.faa.gov/airports/resources/publications/reports/media/fact_2.pdfLinks to an external site.

Federal Aviation Administration. (2011). National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems Report. Retrieved from http://www.faa.gov/airports/planning_capacity/npias/reports/Links to an external site.

Federal Aviation Administration. (2014). NextGen Implementation Plan 2014. Retrieved from https://www.faa.gov/nextgen/library/media/NextGen_Implementation_Plan_2014.pdfLinks to an external site.

Harris: United airlines joins FAA NextGen data communications avionics equipage program. (2013). Travel & Leisure Close – Up, Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.libproxy.db.erau.edu/docview/1444529303?accountid=27203Links to an external site.

Halsey, A. (2015, May 1). Scathing report: FAA isn’t delivering what was promised in $40 billion project. Retrieved December 18, 2015, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/report-says-faa-isnt-delivering-what-was-promised-in-40-billion-project/2015/05/01/81676e6a-eff4-11e4-a55f-38924fca94f9_story.html

Long-Term Market. (n.d.). Retrieved March 21, 2015, from http://www.boeing.com/boeing/commercial/cmo/index.pageLinks to an external site.?

Pianin, E. (2014, November 19). Congress Enraged by the FAA’s $40B White Elephant. Retrieved December 18, 2015, from http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2014/11/19/NextGen-Congress-Enraged-FAA-s-40B-White-ElephantLinks to an external site.

United Airlines Starts NextGen Flight Procedures in Houston. (2014, June 10). Retrieved March 28, 2015, from http://www.aviationtoday.com/av/topstories/United-Airlines-Starts-NextGen-Flight-Procedures-in-Houston_82359.html#.VRbYOikQwhF

Machine Learning & IT Operations

~ cjois

Machine Learning is a much spoken topic nowadays – perhaps more spoken about than available capabilities allow for. There is nothing new about machine learning, neural networks, or artificial intelligence. These concepts have existed for a while with early discoveries in the 1700s. Even recently, there was a huge push in research in AI/ML in 70s and 80s.

The last 5-7 years have witnessed an upsurge in activity in this realm. The reason for this increase in discussion and action is primarily the rapid decrease in compute costs, increase in compute efficiencies and tool that allow for simple, relatively non-programmatic approaches to get these insights.

Insights have driven operations for a long time now. At one point, such action was purely reactive. Then it slowly moved towards being pre-emptive. And now it trending towards being predictive. Not every situation requires or will benefit from predictive insights. While insights must be actionable, not all need predictive traits. And even when predictive, how far predictive is another question all together. While technology groups are being asked to play a role in the move to predictive insights, the percentage of technology organizations that apply such philosophies to their own operations is not all that high. There are few who believe that an organization needs to be of a certain size for it to use prediction capabilities. Others believe that its unaffordable. The reality is that organizations of any size, operations of any scale will benefit for being able to use predictive capabilities.

Technology operations can leverage machine learning techniques generate predictive insights in a variety areas. From predicting where the next alert on their server farm will come to predicting the code from where the next software fault will arise to predicting the set of test cases to use in regression test cycle, technology operations can leverage prediction capabilities. The pre-requisite is that heuristics exist, can be funneled to a data container where insights can be distilled from. Of course, an important element is that the organization carries data science skills in its human resource base. The lack today is more around the skills area than any other. The lack is also around leaders and managers having the vision to stretch themselves and their employees to think differently than in the past.

For those of us to remember, it took years for our software developers (formerly generally called programmers) to move from procedural code to object oriented thinking. For decades, we would find procedural code being written inside of object methods. I wont say that this has gone away completely. I still see literally 100s of lines of code written inside of methods which by the very nature of object oriented thinking were meant to be short and sweet, focused and dedicated. Likewise, our leaders and managers mostly still manage operations like we did 20 years ago, despite the availability of tools that can help us do it differently. We still run 100s of test cases just because they are in the suite, even though we know that the likelihood of many of them in finding a defect is low to none. We still suffer what is known as ‘alert fatigue’ – which then leads to a real alert actually being missed. We still wait for the problem to occur before we can even begin to prepare for it.

Machine learning is a compelling tool. If leveraged in simple and effective ways, it can lead to cost optimization, effort optimization, focus optimization and in the end make for happier technology employees… and of course happier customers.

CP Jois

Analytics

~ cjois

The topic of analytics is all over the industry today somewhat bordering on overuse. It no more surprises me to hear of organizations wanting to be in the analytics realm when, quite honestly, they can’t even keep their databases up and running. Having lofty goals or aspiring for value additive outcomes is not a bad thing. However, to believe that one can run a marathon when a mile seems to much to keep up with is no more a question of being unrealistic, it is far beyond that.
There are many simple prerequisites to this aspiration.
Firstly, data is only valuable when it can be transformed to information. Information that is meaningful; that can lead to intelligence; taking that further, actionable intelligence.
Analytics only becomes a factor of discussion when actionable intelligence can be leveraged to preempt action. Seeking more about what we know can lead to preemptive action – predictive analytics. On the other hand, mining for patterns in volumes of information leads to Pattern based analytics – this leads to knowing more what didn’t know could have even been found.
Data when put through the stages of acquisition, aggregation, curation and dissemination leads to very compelling decision capabilities.
However getting there takes a series of ‘readiness’ activities – steps that many seeking this value are not willing to invest their time or effort into. In my mind there is short cut to this process. It is the price of reliable action-worthy intelligence – it has to be paid.

CP Jois

Electric flight becoming reality

~ cjois

Each day we see new advances being made in electric flight. Improvements are seen in scale, size and endurance.

Today, we have another milestone with the electric Cri-Cri project crossing the English Channel. This comes one day in advance of Airbus’ e-fan flight. Pilot Hughues Duval flew the Cri-Cri across the English Channel from Dover,UK to Calais,France at 81 knots and covered the distance in 36 minutes.

electric-planes-fly-over-english-channel

More about the electric plane here

CPJ

Fokker D VII

~ cjois

Here is an ARF built Fokker D VII. Really well built. Nicely detailed. Equipped with a decently sized engine, the model flew real nice. First introduced around the April of 1918, 800+ aircraft were built.

IMG_4652

Here is a nice page on role of Fokker aircraft during World War I – http://www.wwiaviation.com/fokker.html

CPJ

Piper Cub

~ cjois

The Piper Cubs are a common sight at the RC field. They are also a part of the model inventory of most RC modelers. Here is a picture of a well built Cub at the field this morning. The owner of this model also flies real-world Cubs and flew this model real scale.

CPJ

Model warbirds at the field…

~ cjois

There were many warbirds at the RC field this morning. Some of them are featured in the picture below. Spitfires, Mustangs, P-51… and more. The level of detail in some of these scale aircraft is striking. The pilot figures, gauges… even the rivets are detailed out. Its a joy just looking at these models. The effort put into building them shows on them. Not to mention the gasoline engines that power these war era favorites.

IMG_4542-2

CP Jois

The G1000 experience

~ cjois

Last week, I had the opportunity to fly the Diamond DA-40 airplane. The plane was similar and different from the airplane I fly regularly – the Piper Archer II. Most different was the move from steam gauges to a glass cockpit. This is more of a mindset shift. The Garmin 1000, G1000 as it is typically called, is a fabulous innovation. I have used it before on simulators but this was the first time I had used it in real-world aviation.

Being a technologist, I am throughly impressed by what it offers. I also think that in a typical flight, one perhaps uses a tenth of what the G1000 can do. The increase in situational awareness is tenfold. Between cohesive situational awareness, traffic warnings, NexRad radar, NAV overlays…and a lot more, the AHRS is a superior form of addressing safety in the 3 dimensional space of aviation.
IMG_4507

All this said, G1000 is also not for someone to simply get into one day and go out flying while learning it on the fly. The G1000 is not another set of gauges. Its a mindset shift. You read and absorb information differently. You assimilate and act differently. It is NOT merely a set of traditional gauges put on a glass interface. It can be cause overwhelm if not treated with respect. Its easy to get caught up in using the knobs and trying to skim through the various pages on the G1000 while in flight. Training for using it is important. The instrumentation is very different. It is easy to see the impact such technology bears on human factors.

IMG_4526

All that said, one does goes through a set of mixed feelings when making this shift to glass interfaces. Flying the Diamond, I somewhat missed the old fashioned 6-pack gauges that essentially inspired my love for airplanes. I worry that some day all airplanes will be fitted with these glass displays and the old gauges will be gone forever. Those gauges speak a story – the story describing the historic evolution of aviation. Would never want to lose them….

CPJ