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Flight Resource Management

Posted on September 28, 2006
Filed Under Daily Links, Portable Media Expo |

I guess I should write down a little bit about how I survive the 24 hour bed to bed travel from Edinburgh to Los Angeles. I’ve written previousl about some of the rules of thumb that I use when travelling, so this entry is all about the second topic. Resource Management.

Firstly, a little story about timelines. I booked tis flight late on a Wednesday night. The next morning was when all the knee-jerk restrictions on liquids and carry on were placed (side not, but I’m sure you’re all aware that a successfull liuid bomb was exploded on an aircraft in the mid nineties. Why it took over 12 years to decide to stop liquids I’m not sure. Maybe all the elections were winnable back then). Anyway, the great news (for me) was that the US liquid ban was lifted some 5 hours before I started my journey. Yaay! I didn’t help on the London-New York leg (7 hours), but it meant I could stock up nicely for New York to LA (6 hours).

So resource management. what do I manage. First of all, the aforementioned liquids - lots of liquids, and often. It was nice to see that after the transatlantic cruise was reached and the meals were served, we were told that a ‘drinks stand’ was at the back of the aircraft and we could help ourselves. Very nice, and appreciated. If the airlines had advertised this I proably would have felt more comfortable about travelling.

Sleep is also something to manage, and in this case still sleeping when my body wants to sleep, ut also not sleeping so much that when I reach LA my body thinks it’s still on UK time. When I land, I aim to have about 2-3 hours of oomph left, so I’ll be hitting a bed at midnight for eight hours sleep before my traditional Denny’s breakfast.

Finally, the last resource to watch is electrical power. I carry three main items where this is one to watch. The Minidisc is the easiest, given that on a full charge plus a single strapped on AA battery it will last 25 hours. So charge it the night before, and chuck in a spare attery (in case I feel the need to record anything, which doubles the power requirement). Next up is the Sony PSP, which carries a number of videos and films to watch in flight (like I’m going to trust the airline channels). A full charge on this will give me around 4-5 hours of video playback, but I have a top-up external battery which will recharge the internal battery. Judicious use of this means that the London/New York leg will start as internal 100% and top up 100%, and the New York/LA leg will still have 100% on the internal, but an empty top up battery.

The laptop is also with me, and being pretty new I’ve no idea about how it works on long trips, so I’m assuming that turned down with the tranmitters off it can do two hours. Which is enough to do some reviews for All About Symbian, draft a (this) blog post, and reload the Sony PSP memory stick with the next episodes of Doctor Who, Life on Mars, and Hyperdrive.

So with all the above, when I hit LA after 24 hours on the road, most of the electrics will be almsot empty, I’ll have enough stamina to reach my hotel bed room, plug in the chargers, and send the SMS’s back to Scotland that I have arrived safely.

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