Details
Hits: 2643

If you are reading this, the move to the new web host worked. I made the move a couple of days ago, but had a few hiccups to sort out.  It seemed to work OK during my testing before switching the domain from the old host to the new one, but changing the site from an IP address to a domain two days ago somehow fouled up the fragile balance in the forces of the web, and the site stopped working correctly.  I finally found the Rescue function in Geeklog, and it immediately pointed out the problem - it was an easy fix once I knew what was screwed up.

There is a risk of issues with user log in, especially with the Safari browser. It was screwed up earlier, but it looks to be working now.  However, I'm far from certain that I've seen the last of this problem. I did a clean up of the user list, as the old site had collected many tens of thousands of users who had registered in the hope of creating comment spam.  There is a chance that I may have deleted a few valid accounts in that clean up.  If anyone finds that they cannot log in, please inform me - I have a backup copy of the old user info, and I should be able to manually copy it back.

The file downloads that were on the old site aren't up and runnign on the new one yet.  That will be be coming soon.  Same thing with the image galleries.

Details
Hits: 4147

I had a quick business trip to the Portland, OR area this week. Flew down on Wednesday, one day of meetings, and flew back home on Friday. After the trip came to light, I took a look at the map, and saw that the meeting site was only about 15 minutes drive from Van’s Aircraft.

Van's Aircraft I grabbed a 6 AM flight out of Ottawa on Wednesday, so I would arrive in Portland by mid-day. I drove down to Van’s after lunch, and did a factory tour.

Details
Hits: 2896

The website was down for a few days this week, and I have no idea why. I hadn’t changed anything since the last time I know it was working, and tech support wouldn’t admit to making any changes on their end. After two days of complaints from me, it suddenly started working again.

By the time they got it working again, I’d already signed up for hosting services at SiteGround. SiteGround gets much better reviews than my current site host, and it’ll be a bit cheaper. I’ve got the site mostly working on the new host, but I plan to update to the latest Geeklog software before I switch the site over. If I started over today, I’d probably choose a different solution than Geeklog, but it is easier to stick with it than move all the content to a new platform.

There may be some turbulence during this changeover, so keep your seat belt fastened.

Details
Hits: 3200
Saturday I did some maintenance on the aircraft, then got a short flight off in the afternoon. I had hoped to do some more testing of an experimental technique to determine stall speed using GPS data, but I didn't get airborne early enough in the day. We had an overcast ceiling by the time I finished the maintenance, and it was bumpy below the cloud, so there was no point wasting time doing the tests, as I knew that the data quality would be poor. Maybe next weekend.

Details
Hits: 2828

The weather today was much better than I expected, so I took advantage with a short flight. The winds at altitude were lower than a week ago, so I did some more stall speed testing, using GPS data. The results seem to make sense, but I need to get data from a couple of more flights to see how consistent a result I get. I’d compare to the results from last week, but I forgot to bring that analysis home from work, and I won’t be back into the office until Friday.

Details
Hits: 2993

We had clear skies today, so I went flying in the afternoon. I trialled an experimental technique to measure stall speed using GPS that we have been discussing at work. Unfortunately, the air was too bumpy at low altitude, and the winds were over 40 kt at higher altitudes, so the data is probably not very useful. I’ll crunch it at work on Monday to see what it tells us.