I'm working on my last chip in chapter/week 3: the PC chip

[WBahn]

ouverson wrote

Take this implementation of the sel[0] input; I'm not sure I would have "seen it" unless you would have nudged here and hinted there: from my Mux8Way, to my larger canonical expressions, to the sel[1] being a simple OR gate (I should have seen that one!) to this last one which (in my humble opinion) wasn't that obvious.

I think that you'll really like Karnaugh maps. It will help make some of these things much more obvious, particularly if you take the time to really understand how a Karnaugh map works. With that understanding, you start being able to look at plain old truth tables and see the same kind of groupings that the K-map makes readily apparent.

But, as with any field, at first even the "glaringly obvious" things are anything but obvious. Give it some time and, with enough experience, you'll also find those same things "glaringly obvious" and, in many cases, will actively wonder why it was so hard to see the first time around. That's just the nature of learning new things.

You've got the inquisitive type of mind that will let you gain that experience a lot sooner than most.

[ouverson]

I got my pilot's license right out of high school (many moons ago.) I remember sitting in the cockpit of that Cessna 152 for the first time, thinking, "How on earth am I ever going to learn what all these instruments, switches, buttons, etc. mean in order to fly this plane - by myself!"

By G-d's grace, I did learn what all those instruments meant (sufficiently enough to fly the plane safely) and took my first solo flight in less than 10 hours (again, praise be to G-d!)

Lately, when I get discouraged and wonder how I'm ever going to learn what Shimon or Noam is talking about in order to build 'x" (I'll probably have to watch the videos on Machine Leaning 2 or 3 times) I try and remember that cool Autumn morning when I had my first flight lesson, and think, "One instrument at a time, one lesson at a time, one landing at a time."

Sorry, I know this was a bit sappy :)

I'll investigate the Karnaugh maps more thoroughly.

Thank you for the words of encouragement. Oh, if I may say so, you're a good flight instructor!

[WBahn]

ouverson wrote

I got my pilot's license right out of high school (many moons ago.) I remember sitting in the cockpit of that Cessna 152 for the first time, thinking, "How on earth am I ever going to learn what all these instruments, switches, buttons, etc. mean in order to fly this plane - by myself!"

By G-d's grace, I did learn what all those instruments meant (sufficiently enough to fly the plane safely) and took my first solo flight in less than 10 hours (again, praise be to G-d!)

Ah, memory lane.

For me the biggie was crosswind landings -- I was absolutely convinced that I would never learn how to do crosswind landings (and that I would kill both me and my instructor in the process!). I would ask the instructors how much rudder or aileron to use and the answer was always, "Enough to keep the plane aligned with the runway without drifting to either side." Not very useful -- I couldn't get them to tell me if I was using too much or too little. Then one day it just clicked and I've never had a bad crosswind landing since even though, that same day, I started using a side slip and kicking out into a forward slip just before touchdown. Looking back, I can't understand why it was such a huge problem -- and if asked how much rudder or aileron to use, the best answer I can give is, "Enough to keep the plane aligned with the runway without drifting to either side." Actually, I think I can do a bit better than that, but not much. I point out that there are actually a lot of combinations that will work -- the more rudder you use the more aileron you will need to compensate. In general you want to use the least amount of both that will work and to just try setting one and only using the other to adjust -- trying to fiddle with both at the same time is confusing until you get a feel for it. Since I'm not an instructor pilot I don't know if that amount of advice has ever actually proven useful to anyone or not.

[ouverson]

It wasn't until I had 70 or so hours before I truly understood the relationship between angle-of-attack/trim, throttle, distance to the runway and airspeed; I was an intuitive flyer; had to add the intellectual part later.

Ironically, I was having coffee with a retired airline pilot couple months back (he recommended "Stick and Rudder" by Langewiesche) and we got talking about the dynamics of landing a plane and he corrected what I thought I had "learning" about trim and throttle. What I gathered from our conversation was that it was both: what I learned in flight school, flying by the seat of my pants; and what I had learned later about setting trim for speed and throttle for distance.

[WBahn]

I think I have a copy of Stick and Rudder around here, but never got around to reading it.

What my instructors emphasized from very early on is that your trim controls your airspeed and your throttle controls your altitude. Like most students, that just didn't seem reasonable, but my first instructor was really good and she convinced me of it very quickly and constantly had me do tasks that required I use them that way. Since the effect is a bit delayed, this has the secondary effect (which I suspect was very much part of the intended lesson) of forcing you to think ahead to what you want the airplane to do in the near future and not just what you want it to do right now, which fosters the ability to stay ahead of the airplane.

My flying "career" has had several multi-year gaps and whenever I would go up after a long absence it was amazing to see the impact of this one aspect of piloting. The skills usually came back almost immediately -- I could control the airplane and do all the maneuvers just fine, but I always felt like I was behind the plane and was reacting to what it was doing instead of leading it along. The result is that after a one hour flight I would be physically and mentally exhausted, even though each time I managed to get signed off after a single flight.

I really miss flying -- unfortunately I think my days of flying pilot-in-command are behind me. I doubt I will ever be able to get my medical reinstated.