The sun was rising, the juvenile rays fighting with the myriads of colorful glowing stars in the crimson sky. The smell of freshly roasted coffee woke me up from dreams of lonely, golden beaches near Santo Hempo, of laughing, happy and free people celebrating their life in the narrow streets of Eternal Peace, dreams of the smells of Quelzacha soup, or the resinous golden tips of the Archipelago afterburner plants... With a few winks of the eye lids, the dreams were gone - and with them, the smell of freshly roasted coffee...
Say, would you judge this as a good omen for a flight in the UFO?
Well, there was not much choice. After my recent and rather short visit to the station, I was observing your all reactions, and decided there was obviously not that much enthusiasm to try the UFO ride yourself. I can understand you, really, I do. But There's these days, when your dreams don't entirely go away when you wake up. And there are these sitations when there ain't no real choice.
Today was one of these days and we are currently in one of the mentioned situations... So, there is not really a decision to be done. Someone needs to jump in and try to save the future. I mean, there is no coffee available anyway, so why don't I go out and jump into that sheepishly grinning UFO. (Look at it. It grins, I'm sure!)
At around 08:44, I entered the UFO and prepared for my second visit to the "high in the sky station". There ought to be something important up there.The weather played well, and I got a pretty early morning scenery as a reward for leaving the bed so early... Clouds scattered around FL70, vis. 20+, wind 290 @ 2-5 kts. After take off, I flew a couple 360° turns to get the feeling for the gravity vectoring system. Every time I handle the throttle or the vector handle, my lost tooth begins to ache...
The UFO flies ok, until you enter a certain combination of z-vector, speed and AOA. But the past 20 minutes of flights made me confident enough in my skills, so I gave the approach a try. I came in a bit high, but this was meant to be that way. In my experience, the best way is to Approach the platform 300-500 ft high, then get into stable hoovering, and begin to circle down with slight banking of the UFO. Don't overreact with the throttle! A tip or two too much, and you are beamed up...
Here's the pic from the last 10 seconds before touch down. The 21 kts may seem to be high speed, but quickly turning the UFO does drop the speed very quickly. without gaining or loosing altitude. The only thing that made be shiver was the pillar in the middle of the gate. If I slip towards it, I might crash the ship and wreck the whole station. No good thing if you are scheduled to be on trial...
The next picture was taken by a security camera from the station security personel. However, I was prepared to be filmed, so I brought with me a nifty little device: a wireless data grabber laptop, which lets you collect any electromagnetic signal in the vicinity. The analysis and image processing of this data camture session showed me passing in hoover mode a huge tank, labeled "Alcohol" in green letters.
Another part of the captured datastream showed a film sequence from the opposite side. There, I detected two more tanks, but the first raw processing of the data did not reveal the labels on the tanks properly. Maybe someone else could give the station another visit, just step by and get better pictures of the tank label. In the mean time I will work a bit more on the raw data. Maybe I can get the texts reconstructed...
But one more of these stream capture sessions would provide me with more raw data, and then we could easily read the labels. Anyone feels like doing that trip?Gentlemen. It would be of a great help, if someone could do one more trip to the station up there. I think there is something important about these tanks. And, btw, I also saw something like a Pub... do you think they serve "Aviator beer" up there? One more reason for a visit, no? :-)
Clear sky!
Hak