More of old Sana'a:

It was simply fascinating, like stepping back into a medieval city -- all small shops, crowded and twisty streets, little light but the sunlight, and all kinds of work and trade going on.

One of the best was the camel walking in an endless 15-foot circle to make a sesame seed mill grind the seed. The camel had blinkers on, despite the fact that it was pretty dark in the cave-like room where he was working. When asked, the owner said, through a translator, that the camel had to be blindfolded, otherwise he would "go crazy."

"You see," he said, "the camel thinks he is on a journey. If we take the blinders off and he sees where he is, what he is doing, he will die!"

That could be applied to a lot of us, I thought...

February 4, 2010 -- Today I made a trip to the UNESCO-protected city of Old Sana’a. We entered through the Bab al-Yaman gate, amid a crowd of men with daggers in their belts, goods under their arms, and suit jackets over “skirts” of fabric wrapped around their waist. The sights, the smells, the architecture with brown mud bricks and white icing (actually mortar), and the constant sounds of bargaining and prayer calls – it’s a magical experience – walking around in some of the oldest, most artful streets, passing by a mosque built 1,400 years ago and still in use today…
Each shop is tiny, just big enough for one or two people to sit inside the doorway and work on some craft or sell some product. The Souk al-Milh is really a collection of souks or markets, each featuring one or another product line, like silver, or jambiras (daggers), or shoes, or spices, or windows, or door locks, or donkeys…well, you get the idea. It has to be the closest thing you can do to re-create the experience of walking though a city anywhere in the world a thousand years ago. Small, tight, crowded, often dark, sometimes lit by the sunlight, dusty but basically clean, cats scurrying here and there (no dogs seen!), and the most wonderful smells, especially in the spice market.
There are lots of men and boys, both as shoppers and as shopkeepers. As the morning wore on, we saw more women. Mostly they were in the entirely black abaya from head to foot, not even a shoe showing. All you see is the eyes, through a slit. Sometimes you notice wrinkles around the eyes, and sometimes the eyes look very young, but mostly you can’t tell much of anything about who is under the black abaya. In contrast to the men, who shout and gesture as the meet friends and negotiate deals, the women seem to be wordless. In fact, of course, they do speak to the merchants, although softly. So, often you sense a movement beside you, a soundless one, and a black shape floats by. I began to think of them as black ghosts, making no sound, but glancing about observantly.
We spent almost four hours there, and I could have stayed all day. For one thing, the views from the roof of some of the four and five story buildings is a spectacular view over the city, minarets rising over the mosques, wash hanging on some lines on building roof decks, and views down into the narrow streets below.

I did take my camera on the ride from Sheraton this morning and grabbed a couple of photographs through the thick windows of the van. It’s just a snapshot of an old guy standing on the side of the road, but you can see his “jambira” or dagger – every Yemeni man wears one. The streets are kind of dusty, and there is a lot of broken concrete along the side of the street – might have been sidewalks at one time, but not so much now. The streets up here in the northeast part of the city are pretty wide, and there is not too much traffic. There is not, however, a lot of lane discipline. And, it is not unheard of for cars and trucks to drive in the wrong direction down the divided streets. People walk in every direction, and they cross the streets in quick movements with due caution. Clearly, you should look both ways. Women and men are both out and about. It is still a little off-putting to see a woman dressed entirely in black flowing robes with only a little slit over the very alive eyes. Some of my friends claim the call to prayer is waking them up at night, but I never hear anything more than some dog barking.

I’m writing this while flying from Addis Adaba to Sana’a, about an hour and a half flight. The Lufthansa flight is now quite empty, having off-loaded a whole bunch of people in Addis where there is an Organization of African Union meeting this weekend. My seatmate on the way from Frankfurt was one of the U.N representatives, and he must have been pretty senior because several staff kept coming over with documents for him to look at and solicitously checking about his passport and landing card. Some one said that the U.N Secretary General was in first class.

Maybe so, because when we landed in Addis, the plane pulled up to a red carpet and let all the dignitaries out. Then the pilot restarted the engines and pulled over to the terminal to disembark the normal passengers.

Speaking of first class, I got upgraded on the way from Dulles to Frankfurt. The food was about the same as in business, but the seat made into a perfectly flat bed which was quite comfortable. The service was very polite and helpful, but I question if it’s really worth the difference between first and business classes for the amount of money involved?

The flying business is getting to be less and less fun. At Dulles, the United business class check in was hopelessly overwhelmed. You do your own e-ticket check in of course, but then you need an agent to put the baggage tag on your suitcase and hand you your boarding card. There were about three clerks handling at least six podiums. When a clerk finally turned to my machine, there must have been six or seven baggage tags hanging out of the printer. Fortunately, mine was the second.
Security at Dulles, despite the new facilities, was not much better. You look around at all the perfectly normal people who fly all the time, and you wonder whether we could do this better if we passed them through faster and spent the effort on the doubtful ones. Meanwhile, we waste a lot of time of children, the elderly, and people who pose no threat whatsoever.

Frankfurt was cold and snowy, especially because we did not get a jetway. So much for not needing a coat! United must have been saving money because we off-loaded out on the tarmac and were put on a bus to the terminal. Same in reverse when we left on Lufthansa. We noticed the rows of yellow snowplows, wondering what they were for? Inside, reading the paper in the lounge, we learned they had a big storm in Frankfurt Thursday, with 90 delayed flights and runway closures. But, by the time we arrived Friday morning it was all cleaned up.

On our flight from Frankfurt to Addis Ababa, we crossed over the Red Sea and Egypt. I did not look in time to see the pyramids. The day was perfectly clear however and I could see the desert 35,000 feet below – sand dunes, wadis, and other formations. Now, as we jet toward Sana’a, it is dark and we can’t see any lights below.

Instrument Rating Study

I just learned that my Cessna CD-ROM disks and a textbook on instrument flight rules sold on eBay tonight. For a long time there were no bids, so I'm relieved.

We just now packed it up for shipping tomorrow morning. I put in a couple of extras, on the assumption that a pleasantly surprised buyer is always a happy buyer.

I got about what I paid for it a year ago. But, the guy got a good deal too. The course is the same one that King Schools sells for about $350 new, and the material is unchanged.

As I mentioned in my advertising copy, I used these materials to get a 96 on the FAA knowledge test and to pass my IFR checkride with the designated examiner.

Mapmaking

For the longest time I've admired and wanted to make my own map of where I've piloted an airplane. My hope would be that, as time goes on, I can fill in more and more states with color to indicate I've piloted an airplane within the State borders there.

Finally I asked a guy on the Uncontrolled Airspace forum how he did his, and he gave me the secret formula:

You can create your map here: http://www.epgsoft.com/VisitedStatesMap/

Then, you just save as a .jpg file and upload to a photo-sharing site, then you link to it in your signature using the [ img ] [ /img ] tags (no spaces) around the picture URL.

And, of course, it works nicely. Think I'll put the image on Flickr. My deepest thanks to PJ who also goes by Toronado on the UCAP forums.

Flying to Lawrenceville

January 17, 2010 -- Yesterday was a good enough day for a flight south. I met a friend at Leesburg and we were off by about 10:20 am in calm air. Potomac sent us up to STILL as usual, but soon we were turned south to Casanova and then, after we cleared the SFRA, on to Lawrenceville.

Imagine my surprise when I find that no matter what, I can't seem to tune in LVL on the nav radio. It shows up fine on my DME, which according to the GPS is reading
correctly, but there was no signal on the nav. Well, I had it on the GPS and on my VFR chart, so there was no chance of not flying to LVL. Besides, Potomac gave me vectors to go around the MOA in any case.

Once I got home, I looked carefully at the remarks section of the AirNav.com
listing, which says, "VOR PORTION UNUSBL R-090 BYD 20 NM ALL ALTS, R-090 ALL
DSTCS BLO 7000 FT, 091-105 ALL DSTCS & ALTS, R-106 BYD 27 NM ALL ALTS, R-106 ALL
DSTCS BLO 7500 FT, 107-170 ALL DSTCS & ALTS, 171-180 ALL DSDTCS BLO 6000 FT,
201-325 BYD 17 NM BLO 9000 FT, 326-089 ALL DSTCS & ALTS." Okay now I understand
why I got no signal.

But, I guess I'm just wondering why any FAA-maintained navaid is so limited in
its usefulness? This VORTAC is situated in pretty flat terrain, so it's not like there are mountains blocking the reception.

We broke off IFR near LVL and continued VFR to my friend's land. He has two plots and we circled over them at about 2000 feet several times so that he could take pictures. Then we landed at KAVC (Mecklenburg airport) to refuel and use the restrooms.

We flew home VFR, taking this picture of the James River and Mainden's Bridge from about 2000 feet. We tracked up to MANGE, then Flat Rock VOR, then Casanova, then to Linden and JASEN to re-enter the SFRA and land at Leesburg.