Tag Archives: Flying Friday

The saying goes that “you can never have too much fuel unless it’s on fire.” I have always been a believer in that truism, so I always fill the tanks before I go anywhere… except on a recent trip, which just confirmed the wisdom of whomever came up with the old chestnut.

I was flying DCU-IGX, which I flight planned as 394nm, just under 3:00 of flying time, and about 48 gallons of fuel. Sure enough, when I arrived, I’d drained one main tank, one tip tank, and about half of the other tip tank. The CGR-30p engine monitor, my analog gauges, and my eyeball inspection all agreed.

Fuel at IGX was $5.28/gallon. Fuel at my home airport is $4.80/gallon. “Hey,” I thought. “I have enough fuel to get home if I just fill the tip— that will give me 59gal on board, which still gives me a VFR reserve.” Visions of dollar signs dancing in my head, I filled out the fuel ticket and went into town to lift all the weights with Alex. When I returned, I verified the fill, sumped the tanks, and headed to the departure end of the runway with 59 gal on board.

Once airborne, the problems started. ATC wanted to vector me well north of where I wanted to go because of weather, and to keep me out of the RDU arrival corridor. They also gave me a higher altitude, so I burned more fuel in the climb than I’d expected. Once I got past the first waypoint, I had to divert around more weather… see where this is going? About 40 minutes into the flight it became clear that I didn’t have enough fuel to get home without a stop.

I’m not talking “had enough fuel if I ate into my reserve,” I’m talking “engine monitor shows negative fuel remaining on landing.” Noooope.

A little head scratching ensued, and I determined that I had plenty of fuel to make Winchester, where fuel is only $4.09/gallon. When I landed, I took on 71 gallons out of the 82-gallon usable capacity— within my 45-min reserve requirement, but just barely.

Lesson learned: by not filling that tank in Chapel Hill, I saved (25 gal * $0.48/gal)… a whopping $12. Then I cost myself another 30-40 minutes of diverting to Winchester, landing, fueling, and returning home. In this specific case, I was lucky because Winchester is open 24/7 and is easy to get into and out of, and their fuel is cheap. I probably netted a few dollars of savings filling up there as opposed to filling all 4 tanks in Decatur— but that unpleasant feeling of not having enough fuel aboard is one I don’t care to repeat.

Fill ‘er up!

As some of you may have noticed, I am planning to run a triathlon in a couple of days. This of course requires me to get to where the triathlon is, which in this case happens to be Vermont— several hundred nautical miles away from where I live. Luckily I had a solution for that problem. I took off from Decatur, stopped briefly at Winchester to fuel up, and headed north. Why Winchester? Fuel there is about $1/gal cheaper than it is at Decatur, and that makes a big difference when you’re buying 50+ gallons. Plus the staff there are super friendly and their facility is nearly brand-new: great, well-marked runway with a nice building. I saw an AgCat there filling his spray tanks and met Zachary, who just bought a Piper Lance a couple of months ago. We had a nice visit while I waited for my starter to cool down; I am still getting the hang of hot-starting the engine in this plane. The best technique seems to be to prime it just a tiny bit, then open the throttle full, set mixture to idle, and crank. You just have to be aggressive about enriching the mixture and closing the throttle when it does catch.

My flight northwards could not have gone better. I set up the autopilot, climbed to 7500’, and spent an hour or so dodging built-up clouds before settling on a steady course. During that time, I learned that the floor air vents can be opened or closed; when you open them, they work great at cooling down the cabin. This was handy because it was super hot on the ground— hot enough to melt my stash of protein bars inside my flight bag. I brought a cooler along so I could enjoy diet Coke on demand, which was a wonderful bonus.

On the first leg, I spent some of my time in flight reading the manual for my ancient panel-mounted GPS, which was installed in 2001, and I was surprised to find how capable it actually is; it just isn’t very user-friendly, so I still have a lot to learn, but I did get the time zone set, figure out how the altitude alerting function works, and learn how to set up complex flight plans instead of just using the “direct to” button. Originally I’d planned to stop at Rostraver (just outside Monongahela; try saying “Rostraver Monongahela” five times fast) but I noticed in flight that they close before I would have gotten there, so I decided to divert to Allegheny County instead. Fuel is a little more expensive, but that was offset by the fact that the airport was still open when I arrived. I parked the plane, hopped across the street to the Holiday Inn, and enjoyed a delicious calzone delivery from Mama Pepino’s. Then I hit the sack, intending to leave early this morning. The weather was not great when I awoke, so I did a bit of work and headed to the airport about 0900.

706 on the ground at Allegheny County on Thursday morning

You can’t see it in the picture above, but the keys are on the dashboard, as shown below. This serves the extremely useful purpose of making it easy for everyone around to visually confirm that the keys aren’t in the ignition and that the airplane is therefore not startable. No one wants to tangle with an 84” propeller. This keychain has sentimental value, too; it came from Custer State Park on our 2005 trip to Sturgis. It was a Christmas present for Matt that year and he gave it back to me for the plane. The attached buffalo is named Pappy, after Pappy Boyington, not to mention Grandfather Buffalo, a family favorite book. Pappy is not quite as famous as The Lego Pilot but maybe he’ll get there someday.

Corporate Air had taken good care of the plane overnight, so after a thorough preflight I launched with the intent to go direct to Montpelier, with Rome as an intermediate stop if the weather further north was still iffy. Pittsburgh limited me to 3000’ until I got further to the east, then I got 5500’, which was comfortably above the tops of the scattered clouds in that area. I went up to 7500’ about 50nm to the northeast and even then ended up having to dodge some higher buildups, but the clouds were gorgeous and by the time I got to Ticonderoga (see below) they were widely scattered.

Overhead Ticonderoga, NY; that’s Lake George 

My flight into Montpelier was completely uneventful (except that I got to talk to Boston Center, which was kinda cool). Julie and her boys were waiting for me, and I had a great time giving them a tour of the plane while we unloaded. Then it was back to her house for a nap, the Montpelier Mile, and the town’s fireworks.

Interestingly, I had a ton of different female air traffic controllers along my route. I’ve never had that happen before; I’m not sure why, but Nashville approach, Indianapolis Center, Pittsburgh Approach, and a couple of smaller approach control centers en route all had women working the tower cab.

Bonus picture: I saw this crop-dusting plane (an AirTractor AT802) when I refueled at Winchester. That might be my ideal job…

Well, I finally went and did it: I bought an airplane.

in Salt Lake City prior to the flight homeward

I’d been considering buying a plane pretty much nonstop since starting work on my pilot’s license, and even looked at a few while I was still in California. My initial plan was to buy something that could hold me and all 3 boys, plus luggage, and still have a reasonable fuel load. This left out most airplanes, including the Cessna 172, the Piper Arrow family, and the Cirrus. I really liked the Piper Cherokee Six and its derivatives, the Lance, Saratoga, and 6X. They combined decent performance with a huge payload: 6 seats and full tanks meant that I could easily haul the whole herd, with baggage, a good 700 nautical miles from home without stopping. After I moved, I put aside my plane search for a while; I found that the rented 182 I was flying from Redstone could, barely, hold me plus the boys plus full fuel, but with no baggage and sluggish climb performance in warm weather. Worse, we were squashed, and as the boys grew (or, more accurately, gained weight), we’d be in danger of going over gross takeoff weight unless I took fuel or people out… so I started looking again, but I couldn’t see a good way to afford a Cherokee Six, so it was sort of a desultory search.

Then I had an epiphany: I was buying more airplane than I needed. “After all,” I reasoned, “now that David is off at college, he won’t be flying with me much, and in a couple of years Tom will be at college too. So a 182 will work; we can just squeeze into it for a little longer until David is fully out of the nest.” So I started looking for an affordable 182, put a deposit down, and promptly had the deal fall through (a story for another time). Back to the drawing board.

Then I offhandedly mentioned to my financial advisor that I was looking for an airplane. “Oh, my husband’s a pilot,” she said. “Would you be interested in a partnership?” Yes. Yes, I would.

Long story short, Derek (my new partner, and a hell of a guy) scoured the market for Cherokee Sixes. We found one that we really liked and it was sold out from under us. Then we found another one that we really liked, and when I called the seller, he said “oh, that ad shouldn’t still be up there, because the plane was sold months ago.” Third time was the charm: we found N32706 for sale in Salt Lake City, had the prebuy done there (another long and boring story that I’ll eventually post about), and closed the deal on May 15.

John Blevins, one of my flight instructors, flew out to Salt Lake on Delta to pick it up. After dinner at In-N-Out (who knew they were in SLC?) and an overnight at the local Marriott, we departed KSLC about 730am. Our planned route was to go to Los Alamos (KLAM), thence Muskogee, Oklahoma (KMKO) and then back to Huntsville. It looked like that would take about 10 hours total flying time.

The airplane started right up, and we got VFR flight following at 11500’ south past Provo. Right after takeoff, we noticed some oil spray on the windshield, but the oil temperature and pressure remained good, , then flew to the Carbon, Canyonlands, and Cortez VORs before descending into Los Alamos. Along the way we were treated to some gorgeous scenery.

random mountain off the pilot’s side, about 2000’ below us

interesting rock formations; I wonder what causes the striations?

We’d thought it would be a fun place to stop for lunch, and fuel appeared to be relatively cheap. Neither of these things proved to be true. While refueling the airplane, I found heavy grease all over the front of the cowling. The constant-speed propeller on this airplane has inner workings that are lubricated with heavy grease; the good news is that there was no engine oil anywhere it shouldn’t be. John and I conferred for a bit, then started walking into town to the local AutoZone. Our plan: get a screwdriver, take off the propeller spinner, and locate the source of the grease. Why did we walk? Well, the airport was unattended (even though we got there between 7a and 1p, the hours when it was supposed to be attended), and the one taxi company in Los Alamos didn’t answer our phone calls. About halfway there, a fellow pilot whom I’d waved at while fueling the plane drove by, recognized us, and asked if we needed a ride— we hitched with him to AutoZone, bought the stuff we needed, and rode back to the airfield, whereupon he got the mechanic he uses to come over and have a look. (Thank you very much, Gary and JP! Side note for another time: the camaraderie and helpful spirit that is generally present in the aviation community is wonderful.)

We removed the spinner and found that it contained a big streak of grease, almost like someone had smeared it in there like frosting– but only on one side. There was no grease leaking from the Zerk fittings on the prop hub, so we degreased the prop, hub, spinner, cowling, and windshield, put everything back together, and determined that we’d take off as planned, but land at the first sign of any more gunk on the windscreen. Our first alternate was Santa Fe, which is nearby; then Tucumcari, then Amarillo. (I should mention at this point that Los Alamos has some interesting departure and arrival restrictions, and it is right next to a large chunk of restricted airspace, courtesy of LANL. Also, we never did get lunch there).

The best part of the Los Alamos airport

Takeoff was normal and we had a completely uneventful flight to our next planned stop. Originally we were going to stop in Muskogee but decided instead to stop at Sundance Airpark, just outside of Oklahoma City. The crew at Sundance Aviation could not have been any more friendly; they fueled the plane, loaned us a car, and suggested an area where we’d find some restaurants. After a solid Mexican dinner at Abuelita’s, we took off headed for Huntsville. There was a weird rectangular line of storms lying astride our planned route, so we ended up flying direct to the Little Rock VOR, then direct to Huntsville. 

Turns out it’s hard to find archived NEXRAD images but this one shows the funny line of storms

The final leg took us about 3.5 hours, 2.4 of which I logged as night time and 1.5 of which I logged as actual instrument. We started off flying at 9000’, but moved to 7000’ for more favorable winds. That put us in between two cloud layers, which was great because a) it was beautiful and b) the air was super smooth. We discovered that the intercom system had a music input jack, which was great, except that I made the mistake of letting John pick the music. Let’s just say that I don’t want to hear any more Colbie Caillat songs in the next two or three years.

between the layers over Arkansas

We arrived at Huntsville International about 1030p, after 10.5 hours of flying time. Our duty day was lengthened by our two fuel stops, and I was pretty tired by that point so I was happy to have a 12,000’ runway waiting for me. Signature hangared the plane, John filled out my logbook, and I got home just in time for that rectangle of storms to unleash a large, and relaxing, thunderstorm. I slept like a baby that night!

A couple of days later, Derek and I moved the plane from Huntsville to its new home, North Alabama Aviation in Decatur. This weekend, I plan to take it out for some sightseeing, in the first of what I hope will be many trips with, and  without, the boys. So when you hear a propeller airplane, look up; it might be me! (Or Derek.)

Yesterday the boys and I were headed to the Huntsville Museum of Art, which from our house requires taking I-565 eastbound. As we approached the onramp, our progress was slowed by a large volume of backed-up traffic, interrupted by a convoy of fire engines and an ambulance. They headed west, and we eventually got on the road headed east, but not before craning our necks trying to see what the fuss was about. This sort of reaction to an accident or unusual event nearby is quite human. We are very much driven by spectacle, and often our reaction is based out of an unhealthy curiosity.

I say that because one thing I’ve consciously tried to do as a pilot is ask myself “what could I learn from that?” when reviewing aviation accident results. The aviation world has no shortage of well-documented accidents, ranging from the very large to the very small. Let’s leave out big-iron accidents, which are almost vanishingly rare; in the general aviation corner, we have several sources that analyze accidents or near-misses, including the annual Nall Report,the long-running “I Learned About Flying From That” and “Aftermath” columns in Flying, the NTSB accident database, and plenty more besides. So with that in mind, when I saw the headline “2013 F/A-18 crash: Out of fuel, out of time and one chance to land” in Stars and Stripes, my first thought wasn’t “cool! a jet crash!” but rather “Hmm. I wonder if there’s anything in common between flying an F-18 off a carrier and a Cessna off a 7500’ runway.”

It turns out that the answer is “yes, quite a bit.”

The article covers the chronology of an F-18 crash involving an aircraft from VF-103 operating off EISENHOWER. During mid-air refueling (which is frequent but by no means less complex or dangerous for being frequently practiced), the aerial refueling hose became entangled and broke off. This damaged the refueling probe on the Super Hornet. This was serious but not immediately an emergency; the pilot was within easy diversion range to Kandahar, but elected to return to the ship because he thought that’s what the air wing commander wanted them to do. A series of issues then arose— I won’t recount them all here except to say that some of them were due to what appear to this layman to be poor systems knowledge on the part of the pilot, while others involve simple physics and aerodynamics. The article is worth reading for a complete explanation of what happened.

The jet ended up in the water; both pilot and NFO ejected safely.

What did I learn from this? Several things, which I’ll helpfully summarize:

• The problems all started due to a mechanical failure caused by unexpected turbulence. Takeaway: no matter how good a pilot you are, you aren’t in control of the weather, the air, or the terrain around you.
• Diverting to Kandahar would have been easy, but the pilot chose not to because he made an assumption about what his CO wanted. Two problems here: what happens when you assume and the pressures we often put on ourselves to get somewhere even when conditions call for a divert or no-go. Could I be subject to the same pressures and make a poor decision because of get-there-itis?
• “The pilot had been staring at that probe and the attached basket for more than an hour but failed to realize its effect on the fuel pumps.” You can’t ever stop paying attention. The pilot flew for 400 miles without noticing that his fuel state wasn’t what it should have been. Could I be lulled into missing an early indication of a fuel or engine problem during a long, seemingly routine flight?
• The aircraft was 11 miles from EISENHOWER and was ordered to divert to Masirah, 280NM away, then had to turn back to the ship 24 minutes later. The pilot didn’t decide this, a rear admiral on the ship did. The article didn’t say whether the pilot questioned or argued with that decision. In the civil aviation world, the pilot in command of an aircraft “is directly responsible for, and is the final authority as to, the operation of that aircraft.”  I imagine there’s something similar in military aviation; even if not I’d rather be arguing with the admiral on the deck than having him meet my plane guard after they fish me out of the water. Would I have the courage to make a similar decision against the advice of ATC or some other authority?
• In at least two instances the pilot made critical decisions— including to eject the crew— without communicating them to his NFO. NASA and the FAA lean very heavily on the importance of crew resource management, in part of situations like Asiana 211, United 173, and American 965. (Look ‘em up if you need to). When I fly am I seeking appropriate input from other pilots and ATC? Do I give their input proper consideration?

Earlier this week I suffered an indignity common to all VFR pilots who fly cross-country: I got stuck someplace by weather.

I’d flown into Houston on Saturday evening, planning to hop down to Corpus Christi the next day and then back to Alexandria Sunday night. The weather Saturday night when I arrived (after a loooong flight featuring a steady 40kt headwind) was marginal VFR, with ceilings of just under 3000’, but the weather cleared a good bit Sunday afternoon to the west. I wasn’t able to get to Corpus, but I had hopes that the weather would clean up Monday morning so I could make it to Alex to surprise Julie before she arrived.

Long story short: not only did the weather not improve, it got quite a bit worse and stayed that way until midmorning Wednesday.

This picture from Tuesday morning sums it up nicely. In the foreground on the left, you see N1298M, my trusty steed. Pretty much everywhere else, you see clouds. The weather at the time I took this was 600’ ceilings with visibility of 3/4 statute miles. Needless to say, that is not legal weather for flying under visual flight rules. Later that day, it started to rain, and rain, and RAIN. I wasn’t the only plane stuck on the ground, but at least the FBO operated by Gill Aviation had a good restaurant (try the pecan-crusted catfish!) and free cookies.

Wednesday morning the weather cleared a bit; it was 2800’ broken and 7SM visibility when I took off. I had to pick my way around a bit; instead of going direct I first went north to Conroe/Lone Star Executive, thence more or less direct to Bastrop (which has an almost deserted airport with a super helpful attendant), thence direct to Redstone. The flight home was perfectly uneventful, with weather steadily clearing as I got further to the east. But being pinned on the ground was aggravating, and it’s clear that I need to work on getting my instrument rating sooner rather than later. Luckily I have a plan…

BLUF: this was one of the most difficult written exams I’ve ever taken, far harder than any IT certification exam I’ve done,

Back in December I wrote about the instrument written, widely alleged to be the most difficult of the FAA’s written exams.

There’s a lot of disagreement over the “right” way to earn a new rating or pilot certificate. What works for me is to study the knowledge base that I have to demonstrate mastery of while I’m working on the airmanship portion. Some folks advocate completing the written before any flight training starts, while others prefer to put the written off until right before the check ride. I guess my approach is somewhere in between. At the time of my December post, I had envisioned taking the test sometime in the first quarter; right after Christmas, I had the opportunity to sign up at a reduced rate for the Aviation Ground Schools program, so I signed up and set a goal of taking the exam on 10 February, the day after the school ended.

My path to the exam involved several different sources of information. The FAA doesn’t publicly post its pool of test questions, but the exam has been around long enough, and the knowledge areas are well-enough known, that all of the major test prep products have more or less the same questions. Each provider has a different approach to how they teach the material; some prefer Gleim, some swear by ASA, and so on. I spent a lot of time with Sporty’s Study Buddy app, which is a pretty faithful simulation of the test, and I read everything about IFR I could get my hands on, including the excellent AskACFI web site and the forums at the Cessna Pilots’ Association web site. Caroline, one of my two flight instructors, gave me a list of stuff to read that was very helpful, and I started working my way through both the FAA Instrument Procedures Handbook and the FAA Instrument Flying Handbook. It’s fair to say that I was stuffing my head with a lot of somewhat disconnected facts and factoids, so I was a little concerned when I headed off for my test prep seminar last weekend.

The seminar I chose is run by Don Berman, who started flying the year I was born and started instructing before I was housebroken.  Online registration was simple and quick, and I got ample preflight notification of everything I needed: what to bring, where the class would be held, what the cancellation policy was, and so on. The seminar I attended was held at the Comfort Inn near Houston Hobby: not a fancy hotel, but adequate for what we needed. When I arrived, Don introduced himself, gave me a fat stack of material, and got us started right on time. He’s an extremely lively presenter and his long experience as a pilot, flight instructor, and classroom teacher shines through, both in his delivery and in the quality of his presentation and visual aids. He’s also clearly got a lot of experience with classroom management; he started and ended on time, gave us adequate breaks, and kept everyone on task. He handed out optional quizzes at lunch both days and Saturday at the end of class, along with a final exam (again optional) on Sunday. The questions were hand-selected by him from the pool of questions in the ASA book; he said that if we could handle them, we should have no trouble with the actual exam.

In fairness, I should point out that Don bills his seminars as test preparation seminars— that’s exactly what they deliver. There were a few areas (like how to interpret an HSI, a navigation instrument that I’ve never flown with) where I came into the seminar with weak skills. Don taught me what I needed to know to dissect and answer test questions about HSIs, but I’m still not ready to jump in an HSI-equipped airplane and use it for a cross-country flight. Which is fine— the test covers all sorts of other things that I will probably never use, including automatic direction finding (ADF) equipment. With the test out of the way, I can now focus on building skills with the equipment I do fly with.

One of my biggest customers asked that I be in Raleigh on the 10th, so I flew there straightaway and stayed there Monday and Tuesday (escaping just in time to avoid their snowmageddon). Today was my first window of time to schedule the test. I was a little concerned that I would forget some of the more esoteric material, and I did. However, my basic knowledge was pretty solid, and I think the random selection of test questions was feeling friendly since I only got a handful of questions on my weaker topics. One interesting aspect of the test is that a new set of questions, with associated diagrams, was just added to the test pool on Monday, so there were some question types that were new to me.

I passed the exam with an 87%, a score I am delighted with. That said, I have a few problems areas that I need to work on as I continue my training, and I realize that passing the written doesn’t mean that I know anywhere close to all that I need to pass my check ride… but I’m getting there!

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post about piston aircraft engines (tl;dr: ancient and expensive technology but generally very reliable). The fact that the general aviation fleet is still powered almost exclusively by these engines may have surprised you, and I wish I could say that it’s getting better right away.. but it’s not. There are some encouraging signs on the horizon, though.

One alternative is to just replace the engine (or its components). This can be done through a process known as supplemental type certification (STC), an existing airframe/engine combination can be changed, often in significant ways, provided you can prove to the FAA’s satisfaction that the changes are not unsafe. For example, there is a well-known STC for many models of Cessna 182 that allows you to run plain auto gas in the engine. There are others covering all sorts of engine upgrades and replacements: Electroair makes an electronic ignition system, Peterson, Texas Skyways, and P.Ponk make kits to replace the 182’s engine with larger and more powerful versions, and there’s even an STC to put an SMA diesel engine up front. At the high end, O & N Aircraft will happily sell you a turbine engine that will turn your Cessna 210 into a real beast (and set you back several hundred thousand dollars, too.)

The problem with STCs is that they tend to be expensive (since the manufacturer has to run the entire FAA approval gauntlet) and very specific (the STC allows you to make the specified changes only to the exact make and model specified in the STC). The expense of STC engine swaps raises the question of how much sense it makes to put an expensive engine into an inexpensive airframe, e.g. Peterson quoted me more than $80,000 to put a new engine into a 1969 182 with a market value of just under $50,000. That didn’t seem to make a lot of sense to me. Less expensive STCs, such as the Electroair electronic ignition, may have reliability or efficiency benefits that make sense, but it’s hard to see that happening for an entire engine.

A few manufacturers have made other attempts to give us better engines. One that I remember well was the Mooney PFM, a collaboration between Porsche and Mooney that put an air-cooled Porsche flat-six into the Mooney M20. The PFM had a single-lever throttle (with no manual mixture or prop adjustment), was fuel-injected, and could optionally be turbocharged. However, it wasn’t very successful in the marketplace despite its advantages.

My longtime friend Phil asked a great question in a comment to the previous post: what about turbine and diesel engines? Why don’t manufacturers just use them instead? Well, they do in new aircraft. For example, Piper will happily sell you a Meridian (with a Pratt and Whitney PT6 turbine, the gold standard in turboprop engines) starting at about $2.2 million dollars or a Mirage, which is about 40 knots slower, uses a piston engine, and costs roughly half as much. Turbine engines, of course, are mechanically and operationally simple and very robust, but they are expensive to acquire and maintain, which pretty much rules them out for the class of airplanes that most GA pilots have access to. Diesels are starting to make inroads too; the only model of Cessna 182 you can now buy is the Cessna 182 JT-A, which replaces the old-school piston engine with a 227-hp SR305 diesel (the same as the one available via STC for older 182s). The history of diesel engines for general aviation is long and complicated; suffice to say that Cessna and Diamond are the only two manufacturers I can think of who are currently selling diesel-powered aircraft despite their efficiency advantages. However, the idea of a drop-in diesel STC replacement for the O-470, IO-540, and other popular engines is gaining traction in the market, with both Continental and Lycoming developing products.

More interestingly, Redbird’s RedHawk project is converting Cessna 172s by putting diesel engines and improved avionics in them; I suspect that Redbird will be very successful in selling these refurbished aircraft as primary trainers, and that may serve as an effective tipping point both for generating demand and demonstrating the potential market for diesel STCs for other lower-cost/older aircraft. We can only hope…