April 24, 2023
There are a ton of useful videos on landing on Youtube, but here are some of the ones I found more helpful during my own training. I always found Jason Schappert’s videos helpful when working on my landings, and this one is a good place to start. His four tips: 1) “A perfect landing begins […]
April 24, 2023
Learning how to navigate using VOR directional radio beacons can be challenging for a student pilot. I found this series of four short videos, flown on a sim, a good way to get a basic handle on it. Part I introduces how to tune in and head towards a VOR. Part II shows how to […]
April 18, 2023
US industrial production rose +0.4% m/m in March, up +0.5% from a year ago, recovering from a modest drop in 4Q22. For Q1 as a whole, production was flat q/q, up +1.0% from a year before. Total industrial capacity utilization rose slightly to 79.8% in March. US manufacturing output (a subset of industrial production) fell […]
April 18, 2023
US consumer prices (CPI) rose +0.1% m/m in March, up +5.0% from a year ago. This is down steadily from a peak of +9.0% y/y last June. Core CPI (excluding food and energy) rose +0.4% m/m in March, up +5.6% from a year ago. This is down from a peak of +6.7% y/y last September, […]
April 18, 2023
US retail sales fell -1.0% m/m in March, declining for the second month in a row. Sales were up +2.9% from a year ago, but that is not adjusted for inflation. Given that consumer inflation was running at +5.0% y/y in March, this indicates that real sales are actually down. It’s worth noting that sales […]
April 30, 2023
U.S. new homes sales rose +9.6% m/m in March, but were still down -3.4% from a year ago. For Q1 as a whole, sales rose +9.0% q/q, down -16.1% from a year before. US existing home sales fell -2.4% m/m in March, down -22.0% from a year ago. The median sales price of new homes […]
April 18, 2023
At its March 2023 meeting, the Federal Reserve’s FOMC announced it was raising the Fed Funds Rate by 25 bps to a range between 4.75% and 5.00%. This was the latest in a series of rate hikes that began in March 2022. The Fed’s statement can be found here. This chart offers a longer-term perspective on […]
April 30, 2023
The University of Michigan’s US Consumer Sentiment gauge rose +2.4% in April to 63.5, though that is still down -2.6% from a year ago, and well below pre-Covid levels. The Conference Board’s US Consumer Confidence index fell -2.7 points in April to 101.3, “below the level which often signals a recession looming in the short-term,” […]
April 3, 2023
Today in Microsoft Flight Simulator, I’m going to be flying the DHC-4 Caribou, a short-takeoff-and-landing (STOL) cargo plane that played a vital role supporting combat troops and covert operations during the Vietnam War. In 1956, the U.S. Army put out a request for a new airplane that could carry a DC-3’s load of supplies or […]