Again, just nitpicking, but if you have the right approach speed, and not doing a super short field landing, you need very little wheel brake if any. ;)
> That is to say, at a given speed a heavier airplane will fall out of the air [hyperbole, it will merely stall - significantly reduced lift] before it can rip the wings/elevator off [hyperbole - damage the airframe]
Turbulence, especially generated by thunderstorms, or close to it.
I just can’t resist myself when airplanes come up in discussion.
I completely understand your analogy and you are right. However just to nitpick, it is actually super important to have a weight on the airplane at the right place. You have to make sure that your aeroplane does not become tail heavy or it is not recoverable from a stall. Also a heavier aeroplane, within its gross weight, is actually safer as the safe manoeuverable speed increases with weight.
Freeswitch is more complicated and has a steeper learning curve, but you can pair it with FusionPBX and it will make things a lot more palatable. Asterix is the grand daddy of this stuff. The community is stronger for Asterix. Freeswitch is pretty much infinitely customizable.
SignalWire is the primary sponsor of Freeswitch but is mainly geared towards HUGE installations. BulkVS is cheaper and better in my opinion. You can also look at AnveoDirect, which is more raw than BulkVS, but you can become really really fancy with it. Like, call center fancy.
Yes, get a trunk from someone like BulkVS, SignalWire and run your own freeswitch or asterix. You can set up arbitrary “allowed” lists. Hell you can even get fancy with lookups and decide on the fly to allow a call or not.
There are other comments about providers, but my way is way cheaper and you can run you EPBAX on a pi or even get a pre made VM from Azure, Amazon, etc.
> Bulk of the instrument flight training is "mindgames" anyways - you see nothing other than instruments, your "seat in the pants" is likely to cheat you..
Eh, I guess I can flex a little. Living in the Pacific North West, I do not have to play mind games. I can almost get IMC delivered on demand. :P
> I've turned a few wrenches as a life-long DIY mechanic, a former aircraft mechanic, and a mechanical engineer. I use the Hazard Fraught method of tool purchases: I will buy a tool from Harbor Freight once. If it fulfills my needs great. Job done and it goes into the toolbox. If I use it so hard it gives up the ghost, then it gets chucked into the fuckit-bucket and I go buy it at higher quality.
Now you either have a tool that might be unreliable and can cause you trouble for the next job. Or, you spent money that you didn't have to spend by buying the lower grade tool when you needed to buy something better anyway.
> To be honest, Harbor Freight and other store brands (Husky, Kobalt, etc) have always been reliable enough. As a home-gamer, I certainly couldn't see being able to have a toolbox full of Snap-On, especially before completing my engineering degree.
Here you have a solid point. I am thankful that I am able to afford good tools. But if someone in unable to justify, I would say either work to be able to justify it, rent, or buy the best you can afford if you need the tool right now.
> But, to the point about rounding off a nut, something like that is rarely a function of tool quality and more about technique.
Maybe you are right. But here is an exaggerated example. You have a socket that has more clearance than ideal. You loosen one nut, and that was okay, you loosen the second one, that was a little tighter and that whole setup flexed a bit, but turned out okay. The third one is where things slip. Now, you have a problem. At least that is more or less how I land into trouble.
> DIY makes sense if you either 1) enjoy it or 2) are in a position to need to spend your time to save money (and carefully evaluate tradeoffs about when it would cost you more money to DIY because a professional will have everything they need and you don't and won't need it again).
First hand experience. I have a 2 story house. I was going crazy with people walking upstairs while I was trying to work in my office downstairs. Got hold of a flooring guy who has hundreds of glowing positive reviews, and offered multiple references. He wanted to rip out the carpet and screw the floorboard to the joists, more. Got his work contract and added the clause that he will not get paid unless the sounds stay gone for 3 months after the job. Paid a premium for the clause. The creaking came back in 2 months and the impact noise never went away.
Got hold of another guy and he said, sorry can't do anything about the noise beyond what is already done. The third one said the same as well.
Finally got frustrated enough to do my own research and came up with materials and techniques that I had to "import" from California to Washington. Bought a bunch of tools. Now I have no noise, and as a bonus, ran conduit in the floor to have OS2 fiber everywhere in the house.
DIY is not always about saving money. It is also about getting the job done so it stays done and not doing the bare minimum to make it legal and to get paid.
> So £64 for the lot - about US$ 80. If you're in tech, the value of the time you spend driving to the store will probably be higher than all the tools you'll buy while you're there.
Unless you are billing by the hour (ie in consulting), you are driving to the store during the time you would be parking your butt in the couch and viewing, reading or thinking about something that does not generate cash. At least that is what it is for me. If you literally lose money by driving to the store, your argument holds.
> And if you're thinking "Oh at those prices the tools will be low quality" I can assure you, they'll be good enough for this job.
Maybe they are, maybe they are not. I tinker with cars and motorcycles. Every single piece of my tools is Snap-On or something really comparable. If I use a cheap Chinese brand and round off a nut, that is really going to hurt. It will hurt more than what it hurt to buy a socket set for close to $200.
Also, if you are approaching something the first time, low quality tools will get you bad experience that will resist, maybe prevent you from trying it again. I might be one of those weird ones, but for me, Buy once, cry once.