LEB
Apr 8, 01, 10:38 am
BDL-MCO-BDL on Metrojet
A co-worker has been involved in a F.I.R.S.T. (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) project this year with his son. I've been following vicariously through him; from the initial building of the robot (they get a kit of electronics, general guidelines, and a description of this year's rules and playing field with six weeks to build before shipping off their robot), to the regional event in New Jersey where they placed, and the days leading up to the national competition in Florida. It sounded interesting and I finally decided, mostly on a whim (and a cheap ticket), to head down to Orlando to see the Nationals in person. This is the tenth anniversary of F.I.R.S.T., which was started by Dean Kamen, who you've all probably heard of by now via the Ginger/IT media frenzy.
More info on F.I.R.S.T. - http://www.usfirst.org/
First lesson learned: don't procrastinate when purchasing tickets to a popular destination during a high demand week. My initial cheap $160 RT ticket from MHT-MCO disappeared and turned into a >$1k (or 50,000 redeemed miles) ticket. Desperate I started trying alternate days and cities, finally tracking down a BDL-MCO non-stop for $232. It also meant that I would be leaving early Friday morning and returning late Saturday afternoon and missing some of the competition. Next I tried to find a decent hotel for under a hundred. This was my first trip to Orlando and so I was pretty much guessing on everything, including hotels. I stumbled on Hilton Grand Vacation Club, which had a suite for $69 a night if you stayed two nights (normally $149). I checked to see if I could get around the two night minimum and managed to book it for my one night at the reduced rate.
Second lesson learned: look closer at itinerary when flying US. I have only flown one other time on Metrojet for a single leg of a journey so I was not entirely used to this alter ego for US. In fact I didn't realize I had booked on Metrojet until I called to upgrade a few days later. Whoops. I threw my back out a couple of weeks ago and as the day of departure drew closer and my back pains didn't subside I started worrying about being in a cramp 737 for 3 hours. Procrastination and frugality stayed my course, since I knew that it would cost much more to fly another route and that I'd be spending even less time in MCO due to the longer flight times. Frugality is going to cost me on this trip.
Friday morning, 3:30am. Hopped out of bed...ok, slowly eased out of bed...grabbed my overnight pack, jumped in the car (man it's dark!), motored over to Dunkin Donuts, filled up the coffee mug, purchased sugar/fat modules, pointed the car down the interstate towards Hartford, engaged cruise control, and braced for the long morning's drive. Two hours later I'm in a long term parking lot with time to spare and getting on a shuttle to the terminal. Nice surprise number one is that there's a USAir Club at BDL (my main airport, MHT, doesn't have one). What a great way to start off the day; taking care of boarding passes, filling up on coffee, and relaxing with a morning paper. Old habits die hard and I go out when they start boarding, thinking that div miles members will board first. Wrong. Since I'm in 4a I'm the very last to board. Still, the boarding seemed to be relatively smooth and efficient. The middle seat was left open, which meant that with the arm rest up I could stretch out a bit more. Which reminds me, on the previous trip when I was in an empty FC section I couldn't stretch out any more so than usual because of the flimsy and clunky middle armrest. Does anyone know if these are easy to remove? http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif
Not sure if all Metrojets are the same metal, but so far they have all been 737's with the old turbo jet engines, which look like long, metal cigars and the plane is painted red. Retro Metro! Got OJ and a snack box: chewy granola bar, "petit fromage" with crackers, and a mint. It's a toss-up whether there's more packaging than food. After that we still have over two hours of flight left, which seemed to go pretty slow. At one point when the aircraft is over the water (east of Georgia?) I looked down and saw a strange boat wake. The wake seemed to start all of a sudden and then zig-zag up to it's present location. And the boat looked kind of funny, sort of like a submarine. A few minutes later and there's another one, this time I'm almost positive that it's a submarine too. My first time seeing a sub in the water, much less two of them out for surface runs of some sort. There was also a strange feature in the ocean that I couldn't identify: odd as it sounds it looked like a hole. It was circular and maintained it's shape and size for as long as I could see it. Note to self: bring binoculars on all flights.
Good landing in MCO. Off to the right of the runway (north end) there's an odd looking airplane. I got out my airplane id book (which I finally remembered to bring on a flight), but we taxied off the runway before I could get a good make on it. Another US Club right outside the gate so I stopped in for coffee and a snack. Interesting layout, it occupies two floors joined by a large spiral staircase.
Now we get to my third and biggest lesson: Orlando/Disney is much larger than I had imagined and transportation is not at all what I expected. For a big tourist driven town I figured that getting from one place to another would be the easiest thing in the world. Well, it is if you have plenty of money and time. The cheapest choice is Mears and the other shuttles, but most of them run irregularly and you need to reserve from 4 to 24 hours ahead of time, plus they stop at multiple places so times can double. The taxis seemed to be quite expensive, this combined with many of them not having meters, so I had no idea if, strike that, _how much_ I was being taken for. In retrospect I should have rented a car. It probably wouldn't have been much, if any, cheaper than the $100+ I spent the two days I was there, but I would have had more control and not wasted so much time trying to figure out what to do.
The F.I.R.S.T. competition was in a large parking area outside of Epcot in the biggest tent buildings I have ever seen. Not at all what I expected. Someone told me that there were probably over 300 groups competing and each one averaged around 40 people. Each group is made up of mostly high school students with a some adults assisting/chaperoning and of course parents and classmates. The largest tent was "the pit" which is where each group had their own booth for performing maintenance, planning, and marketing. Not only did they construct all of these crazy, wonderful machines, but they also promoted themselves, worked on increasing their visibility and the excitement surrounding the team, and communicating the work involved in putting together their project. The competition was broken down into four divisions, represented by two large tents, connected to the pit by tunnels. These tents housed two playing fields side-by-side, with stadium seating, team viewing, team staging areas, and judge/announcing areas. I can't really properly describe the competition, the web site has lots of documentation, but I will try to describe the atmosphere. Each match takes two minutes, along with three or four minutes of cleanup/setup time between them. It was amazing to watch how fluid the whole operation was choreographed, not a second seemed to be wasted and they cranked through hundreds of matches. Speakers pulsed out a steady flow of driving music, announcers made the introductions and provided an appropriate level of play-by-play, and the groups filled the air with cheers, impromptu band music, clapping, stomping, and whatever else passes for wild exuberance. The match play was really quite straightforward, but I have to hand it to the F.I.R.S.T. coordinators for making it leverage predominately off of team work and not direct competition. Four random teams got placed together into the field at once and the goal was to quickly gauge each other's strengths and weaknesses, formulate a plan, and then in the two minutes allotted try to work together to accumulate as many points as possible. Since each team would play as many as seven to nine matches, all with three totally new and random teams, it really illustrated the complexities and need for quick thinking and unwavering team work. Scores accumulated in each division and by mid-day Saturday they had ranked them and grouped the top 8 teams into four groups, which left room for two more teams per group. The lead team in each group then got to choose these two teams from the remaining teams left, based on the skills that they could bring to the group (so they didn't necessarily pick teams that had high scores). With four groups now, each division had a series of matches until there was only a single groups, which then went on to the finals.
I'd seen photos, heard descriptions, but I think even a TV video clip couldn't capture the shear electricity and non-stop action of the event. It took a few matches until I "got it" but after that I was totally captivated. During one of the matches we were watching outside they took a break so we could watch the Mars Odyssey being launched. They showed it on the big screen and once it reached a certain altitude we could see the rocket rise above the clouds. It really seemed like the launch was another extension of the robotics competition. And judging by all of the bright and energetic young folks I saw, I don't think that's such a far out statement, for many of these will be going on to lead or develop future space missions.
There were some "celebrities" at the competition. Of course Dean Kamen, also Bob Metcalfe (inventor of Ethernet), and even Governor Jeb Bush made a brief appearance and short speech. I thought I saw Ken Burns, but am probably mixing someone else up with him. Also a number of other technology dignitaries, either in the stands watching or contributing their time to the event. But the main focus was on the young folks. It was really a positive and well coordinated event and I am totally impressed.
Unfortunately, due to a clerical error on my part, I left for the airport an hour earlier than I needed to and missed the finals and closing event...which I might have missed anyways. I'll have to get the final results from the web site when they post it. I spent my last time in Orlando wandering around Epcot parking lots trying to figure out where the Mears bus was going to pick me up. It was really warm down there, at least compared to the 40 degree highs here at home, and I think I even managed to get a bit of a sun, anything at this point is coloration compared to my NH pasty white winter look. An hour or so to the airport (two stops on the way, but didn't pick up anyone) and then two hours in the US Club watching the Masters and snacking before jumping onto another Metrojet (4a again).
This time I managed to get a longer look at that odd airplane and, unless my book/eyesight are off, it appears to be an Antonov An-124. The book describes it as:
"The An-124 had bragging rights as the largest plane in the world until the appearance of Antonov's An-225. The An-124 is very similar in layout to the Lockheed C-5, which is flown only as a military cargo jet for the U.S. Air Force. At least two western heavy lift cargo operators are flying the An-124, which has also been employed by the United Nations in relief operations. More than 30 An-124s have been built."
The book also says that it's from the Ukraine, has a 10,250 mile range, 226.6 ft long, 240.4 ft wingspan and a freight capacity of 336,353lb. It was really cool to see it, would have loved to see it fly. I always liked watching the C-5. They used to come up to Bangor and do touch and go's back in the days when I was a Navaids tech for the FAA and could sit at an inner marker or localizer shack and watch it come soaring over, like some fabulously impossible sky whale.
The other interesting part of the flight was watching the eastern coast line in the Georgia, South Carolina area. Worms! Really, the way the land meets the ocean in that area it looks so much like earthworm paths on the sidewalk after a heavy rain. Big worms, medium worms, small worms, and then teeny worms, at least from 30,000 feet. Jeezum, I bet you could lose a boat in them worm tracks.
http://terraserver.homeadvisor.msn.com/image.asp?S=14&T=1&X=158&Y=1104&Z=17&W=1
Speaking of worms and the subterranean world, I remember as a kid in Nebraska that we went to a museum which had a model of a gopher hole. They must have poured plaster down the little critter's hole and then excavated it so that they could mount it in a glass case at the museum. What reminded me of this was the approach route we took into BDL. Maybe it's some late-night noise abatement path, but we wound around and down and around and back and forth until I was wishing that I had a GPS keeping track of all of this so I could plot it out with a 3-D program and share it with y'all like that old gopher hole display.
I had the toughest time finding a sign for the BDL long-term parking shuttle and when I finally did everyone else on my flight was already in line, with no shuttle bus in site. It was going on 15 or 20 minutes with no bus when I approached a nearby cab and tried to bribe him to drive me to the lot. He wanted ten bucks and I didn't want to part with more than five. So he ended up not getting any fare (at least the 20 minutes I was there he didn't go anywhere) and I ended up wandering around until the bus showed up. How we did it I don't know, but somehow we fit everyone on the bus without breaking the suspension or having a tire blowout. The luggage racks were jammed full, the isles were full, and we were kind of jammed in just enough so it appeared that the front line wasn't crossed.
That's it. Boring drive home except for the couple of times I almost inadvertently drove down interstate exits at 70mph. In Massachusetts, at least along 91, the road will bend to the left while the exit goes straight ahead. They don't mark the exit/road demarcation on the road (Vermont has dotted lines) so at night visibility is lower and unless you are paying close attention to the signs (or have your brights on) you tend to want to drive straight down the exit. Strangest thing, I wonder if anyone ever does by accident?
Wow, sorry for the lengthy report. Action packed two days. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif
[This message has been edited by LEB (edited 04-08-2001).]
A co-worker has been involved in a F.I.R.S.T. (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) project this year with his son. I've been following vicariously through him; from the initial building of the robot (they get a kit of electronics, general guidelines, and a description of this year's rules and playing field with six weeks to build before shipping off their robot), to the regional event in New Jersey where they placed, and the days leading up to the national competition in Florida. It sounded interesting and I finally decided, mostly on a whim (and a cheap ticket), to head down to Orlando to see the Nationals in person. This is the tenth anniversary of F.I.R.S.T., which was started by Dean Kamen, who you've all probably heard of by now via the Ginger/IT media frenzy.
More info on F.I.R.S.T. - http://www.usfirst.org/
First lesson learned: don't procrastinate when purchasing tickets to a popular destination during a high demand week. My initial cheap $160 RT ticket from MHT-MCO disappeared and turned into a >$1k (or 50,000 redeemed miles) ticket. Desperate I started trying alternate days and cities, finally tracking down a BDL-MCO non-stop for $232. It also meant that I would be leaving early Friday morning and returning late Saturday afternoon and missing some of the competition. Next I tried to find a decent hotel for under a hundred. This was my first trip to Orlando and so I was pretty much guessing on everything, including hotels. I stumbled on Hilton Grand Vacation Club, which had a suite for $69 a night if you stayed two nights (normally $149). I checked to see if I could get around the two night minimum and managed to book it for my one night at the reduced rate.
Second lesson learned: look closer at itinerary when flying US. I have only flown one other time on Metrojet for a single leg of a journey so I was not entirely used to this alter ego for US. In fact I didn't realize I had booked on Metrojet until I called to upgrade a few days later. Whoops. I threw my back out a couple of weeks ago and as the day of departure drew closer and my back pains didn't subside I started worrying about being in a cramp 737 for 3 hours. Procrastination and frugality stayed my course, since I knew that it would cost much more to fly another route and that I'd be spending even less time in MCO due to the longer flight times. Frugality is going to cost me on this trip.
Friday morning, 3:30am. Hopped out of bed...ok, slowly eased out of bed...grabbed my overnight pack, jumped in the car (man it's dark!), motored over to Dunkin Donuts, filled up the coffee mug, purchased sugar/fat modules, pointed the car down the interstate towards Hartford, engaged cruise control, and braced for the long morning's drive. Two hours later I'm in a long term parking lot with time to spare and getting on a shuttle to the terminal. Nice surprise number one is that there's a USAir Club at BDL (my main airport, MHT, doesn't have one). What a great way to start off the day; taking care of boarding passes, filling up on coffee, and relaxing with a morning paper. Old habits die hard and I go out when they start boarding, thinking that div miles members will board first. Wrong. Since I'm in 4a I'm the very last to board. Still, the boarding seemed to be relatively smooth and efficient. The middle seat was left open, which meant that with the arm rest up I could stretch out a bit more. Which reminds me, on the previous trip when I was in an empty FC section I couldn't stretch out any more so than usual because of the flimsy and clunky middle armrest. Does anyone know if these are easy to remove? http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif
Not sure if all Metrojets are the same metal, but so far they have all been 737's with the old turbo jet engines, which look like long, metal cigars and the plane is painted red. Retro Metro! Got OJ and a snack box: chewy granola bar, "petit fromage" with crackers, and a mint. It's a toss-up whether there's more packaging than food. After that we still have over two hours of flight left, which seemed to go pretty slow. At one point when the aircraft is over the water (east of Georgia?) I looked down and saw a strange boat wake. The wake seemed to start all of a sudden and then zig-zag up to it's present location. And the boat looked kind of funny, sort of like a submarine. A few minutes later and there's another one, this time I'm almost positive that it's a submarine too. My first time seeing a sub in the water, much less two of them out for surface runs of some sort. There was also a strange feature in the ocean that I couldn't identify: odd as it sounds it looked like a hole. It was circular and maintained it's shape and size for as long as I could see it. Note to self: bring binoculars on all flights.
Good landing in MCO. Off to the right of the runway (north end) there's an odd looking airplane. I got out my airplane id book (which I finally remembered to bring on a flight), but we taxied off the runway before I could get a good make on it. Another US Club right outside the gate so I stopped in for coffee and a snack. Interesting layout, it occupies two floors joined by a large spiral staircase.
Now we get to my third and biggest lesson: Orlando/Disney is much larger than I had imagined and transportation is not at all what I expected. For a big tourist driven town I figured that getting from one place to another would be the easiest thing in the world. Well, it is if you have plenty of money and time. The cheapest choice is Mears and the other shuttles, but most of them run irregularly and you need to reserve from 4 to 24 hours ahead of time, plus they stop at multiple places so times can double. The taxis seemed to be quite expensive, this combined with many of them not having meters, so I had no idea if, strike that, _how much_ I was being taken for. In retrospect I should have rented a car. It probably wouldn't have been much, if any, cheaper than the $100+ I spent the two days I was there, but I would have had more control and not wasted so much time trying to figure out what to do.
The F.I.R.S.T. competition was in a large parking area outside of Epcot in the biggest tent buildings I have ever seen. Not at all what I expected. Someone told me that there were probably over 300 groups competing and each one averaged around 40 people. Each group is made up of mostly high school students with a some adults assisting/chaperoning and of course parents and classmates. The largest tent was "the pit" which is where each group had their own booth for performing maintenance, planning, and marketing. Not only did they construct all of these crazy, wonderful machines, but they also promoted themselves, worked on increasing their visibility and the excitement surrounding the team, and communicating the work involved in putting together their project. The competition was broken down into four divisions, represented by two large tents, connected to the pit by tunnels. These tents housed two playing fields side-by-side, with stadium seating, team viewing, team staging areas, and judge/announcing areas. I can't really properly describe the competition, the web site has lots of documentation, but I will try to describe the atmosphere. Each match takes two minutes, along with three or four minutes of cleanup/setup time between them. It was amazing to watch how fluid the whole operation was choreographed, not a second seemed to be wasted and they cranked through hundreds of matches. Speakers pulsed out a steady flow of driving music, announcers made the introductions and provided an appropriate level of play-by-play, and the groups filled the air with cheers, impromptu band music, clapping, stomping, and whatever else passes for wild exuberance. The match play was really quite straightforward, but I have to hand it to the F.I.R.S.T. coordinators for making it leverage predominately off of team work and not direct competition. Four random teams got placed together into the field at once and the goal was to quickly gauge each other's strengths and weaknesses, formulate a plan, and then in the two minutes allotted try to work together to accumulate as many points as possible. Since each team would play as many as seven to nine matches, all with three totally new and random teams, it really illustrated the complexities and need for quick thinking and unwavering team work. Scores accumulated in each division and by mid-day Saturday they had ranked them and grouped the top 8 teams into four groups, which left room for two more teams per group. The lead team in each group then got to choose these two teams from the remaining teams left, based on the skills that they could bring to the group (so they didn't necessarily pick teams that had high scores). With four groups now, each division had a series of matches until there was only a single groups, which then went on to the finals.
I'd seen photos, heard descriptions, but I think even a TV video clip couldn't capture the shear electricity and non-stop action of the event. It took a few matches until I "got it" but after that I was totally captivated. During one of the matches we were watching outside they took a break so we could watch the Mars Odyssey being launched. They showed it on the big screen and once it reached a certain altitude we could see the rocket rise above the clouds. It really seemed like the launch was another extension of the robotics competition. And judging by all of the bright and energetic young folks I saw, I don't think that's such a far out statement, for many of these will be going on to lead or develop future space missions.
There were some "celebrities" at the competition. Of course Dean Kamen, also Bob Metcalfe (inventor of Ethernet), and even Governor Jeb Bush made a brief appearance and short speech. I thought I saw Ken Burns, but am probably mixing someone else up with him. Also a number of other technology dignitaries, either in the stands watching or contributing their time to the event. But the main focus was on the young folks. It was really a positive and well coordinated event and I am totally impressed.
Unfortunately, due to a clerical error on my part, I left for the airport an hour earlier than I needed to and missed the finals and closing event...which I might have missed anyways. I'll have to get the final results from the web site when they post it. I spent my last time in Orlando wandering around Epcot parking lots trying to figure out where the Mears bus was going to pick me up. It was really warm down there, at least compared to the 40 degree highs here at home, and I think I even managed to get a bit of a sun, anything at this point is coloration compared to my NH pasty white winter look. An hour or so to the airport (two stops on the way, but didn't pick up anyone) and then two hours in the US Club watching the Masters and snacking before jumping onto another Metrojet (4a again).
This time I managed to get a longer look at that odd airplane and, unless my book/eyesight are off, it appears to be an Antonov An-124. The book describes it as:
"The An-124 had bragging rights as the largest plane in the world until the appearance of Antonov's An-225. The An-124 is very similar in layout to the Lockheed C-5, which is flown only as a military cargo jet for the U.S. Air Force. At least two western heavy lift cargo operators are flying the An-124, which has also been employed by the United Nations in relief operations. More than 30 An-124s have been built."
The book also says that it's from the Ukraine, has a 10,250 mile range, 226.6 ft long, 240.4 ft wingspan and a freight capacity of 336,353lb. It was really cool to see it, would have loved to see it fly. I always liked watching the C-5. They used to come up to Bangor and do touch and go's back in the days when I was a Navaids tech for the FAA and could sit at an inner marker or localizer shack and watch it come soaring over, like some fabulously impossible sky whale.
The other interesting part of the flight was watching the eastern coast line in the Georgia, South Carolina area. Worms! Really, the way the land meets the ocean in that area it looks so much like earthworm paths on the sidewalk after a heavy rain. Big worms, medium worms, small worms, and then teeny worms, at least from 30,000 feet. Jeezum, I bet you could lose a boat in them worm tracks.
http://terraserver.homeadvisor.msn.com/image.asp?S=14&T=1&X=158&Y=1104&Z=17&W=1
Speaking of worms and the subterranean world, I remember as a kid in Nebraska that we went to a museum which had a model of a gopher hole. They must have poured plaster down the little critter's hole and then excavated it so that they could mount it in a glass case at the museum. What reminded me of this was the approach route we took into BDL. Maybe it's some late-night noise abatement path, but we wound around and down and around and back and forth until I was wishing that I had a GPS keeping track of all of this so I could plot it out with a 3-D program and share it with y'all like that old gopher hole display.
I had the toughest time finding a sign for the BDL long-term parking shuttle and when I finally did everyone else on my flight was already in line, with no shuttle bus in site. It was going on 15 or 20 minutes with no bus when I approached a nearby cab and tried to bribe him to drive me to the lot. He wanted ten bucks and I didn't want to part with more than five. So he ended up not getting any fare (at least the 20 minutes I was there he didn't go anywhere) and I ended up wandering around until the bus showed up. How we did it I don't know, but somehow we fit everyone on the bus without breaking the suspension or having a tire blowout. The luggage racks were jammed full, the isles were full, and we were kind of jammed in just enough so it appeared that the front line wasn't crossed.
That's it. Boring drive home except for the couple of times I almost inadvertently drove down interstate exits at 70mph. In Massachusetts, at least along 91, the road will bend to the left while the exit goes straight ahead. They don't mark the exit/road demarcation on the road (Vermont has dotted lines) so at night visibility is lower and unless you are paying close attention to the signs (or have your brights on) you tend to want to drive straight down the exit. Strangest thing, I wonder if anyone ever does by accident?
Wow, sorry for the lengthy report. Action packed two days. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif
[This message has been edited by LEB (edited 04-08-2001).]