August 9
Meghan ignored her first alarm, and after she'd turned it off I asked her why she even set it if she was never going to get up when it went off. Why not set it ten minutes later and get up then?
She said that it was because she wanted that ten minutes to be awake and snuggling with me, and then she kissed my forehead.
I kissed her back and then put my wing across her belly and gave her a little wing-hug and we snuggled together until her alarm went off again.
When she was in the shower I went downstairs and got breakfast ready, then I went back upstairs and picked out clothes for her. She liked what I picked and said I was getting good at choosing her clothes.
I said I still thought it was more sensible to not wear clothes.
After we'd eaten we washed the dishes together and then went out on the porch to wait for her friend. It was a beautiful day out, and I was really looking forward to flying.
Once her friend had arrived, I nuzzled her hip to say goodbye and then took off for home.
I had to fill the birdfeeder, and after I'd done mine I went over to Aric's and filled his up, too. There were just some empty shells on the workbench, so I guess mister mouse had found them. I swept those off with my wingtip and then left him some more.
I thought I'd do medium-length flights today, and relax in between. That way I wouldn't wind up tiring myself out.
Going west first would be easiest, so I filled up my camelback and put on my flight gear and then called Dori and told her that I was planning to fly over Stadium Drive and then along the 94 Highway until I got past Three Rivers, and then turn around and come back.
She told me to have a safe flight and keep under a thousand until I crossed the 131 Highway. I liked it better when I was allowed to climb up early, but I said that was okay, and I dropped off my balcony and under the tree and wires, then up into the sky.
It was a beautiful day for flying—even before I got much above the trees, I could see how blue and open the sky was and it was days like this that I felt like I could fly forever.
I'd made it all the way to where Stadium Drive crosses the 131 Highway and I was just starting to climb when I heard my pocket telephone ringing in my saddlebags.
If I'd been higher, I would have ignored it, but I'd decided to keep even lower over the city, and was only a few hundred feet up, so I wasn't going to lose much by landing to see who had called. So I circled back, and landed in the grass by Costco and got my pocket telephone out.
It was Mister Salvatore and he said that had gotten my navigation watch and portable GPS, and that he could bring them to me or I could come to his office and get them.
Well, I was eager to see what he had gotten, so I called him back and said that I would meet him at his office in about a sixth of an hour, and then I used my airplane radio to call Dori back and tell her that I was going to have to stop my morning flight, and she was a little bit worried so I told her that it wasn't anything bad but I had to pick up some new flight gear that had just come in for me.
When you want directions on the ground, you want to ask an earth pony 'cause they always seem to know where the roads go and what's the best way even if it's not obvious. But in the air you can't beat a pegasus who knows her territory. So I turned around on the lawn until I was pointed almost right at Mister Salvatore's office and I took off, making a little detour around a light post that was inconveniently in my way, and kept my eyes fixed on the sky until I was high enough up that I could see all the way over to where I knew his office was to see how well I'd done at guessing the bearing.
I was pretty close. Humans measure the compass in 360 degrees, and I was only off by one or two from my first, on-the-ground guess.
It was only a trio of miles, so I didn't get very high. There wasn't any point; I would waste just as much effort getting up out of ground turbulence as I would flying through it.
Even though I hadn't planned it, I liked the course I took, 'cause it was mostly over lots of neighborhoods with trees, a park, and by the golf course where I'd gotten yelled at. I thought about making a little low arc over it just to annoy them, but there was already a hawk circling there who might have had the same idea.
I came down around the front of their building, which faces the 94 Highway. I made a big circle to lose altitude and I came a bit closer to the highway than I'd meant to and got a bit of an unplanned sideways boost from the wind blowing off a big truck.
Miss Cherilyn was waiting in the lobby for me and she said that Mister Salvatore was upstairs, playing with the new toys.
She took me up to their office and sure enough, Mister Salvatore had a watch in his hands and he was looking at a big sheet of paper with little tiny writing on it and then pushing buttons on the watch. And he also had another little flat thing that was kind of like my portable telephone.
Well, I thought that Mister Salvatore wasn't just playing but that he had figured out how they worked, 'cause once he looked up and saw me he had me sit down in a chair next to him and he showed me how to use them.
He said that he had also gotten an extended wristband for the watch so that it would fit around my leg, and we tried that first 'cause it was made for pilots. It could tell you your altitude, and you could put in an airport code and it would tell you what direction it was. He showed me with Kalamazoo's airport, and showed how when he turned around it changed what the bearing was. And there were buttons on the side that you could push to show where the airport or waypoint you wanted to visit were, or another button that would show you how to get to the nearest airport, which would be useful if I got lost.
It didn't say how fast I was going, though, and it also didn't have a very good map. It showed a couple of little points but that was all.
Still, it was not as bulky as the altimeter I had on, and it hardly weighed anything.
Mister Salvatore explained how for all the functions to work properly it had to talk to my portable telephone, and he said that we could learn how to use that together, but that it didn't need to talk to my telephone to show my bearing or altitude.
And then we tried out the GPS. It didn't show airports, but it had a good ground map and it also could show altitude, and since it had a bigger picture, it could show more things.
He said that I ought to try both of them out and see which I liked best, so he put the watch on one foreleg, right where I usually wore my altimeter, and the other one on my other leg, where my weather radio usually goes.
I said that I was planning a couple of medium flights for today to get ready for tomorrow. And then I nuzzled him and Miss Cherilyn, too.
I got permission to fly again; staying low was even more important now than it had been before, because I was closer to the airport. So I took off and followed the 94 Highway, about six hundred feet up.
The bigger display on the watch was nice, and since it was lighted it would be easier to see at night.
I had to be careful not to get distracted with my new navigation equipment, because even though it knew where I was, it didn't know who else might be in the air around me.
Well, I couldn't say for sure that it was enough to keep me from being lost—I think the only way to test that would be to get lost and then see if the GPS could find me—but I did find that the watch was very good at knowing where the Kalamazoo airport was, and when I was in Three Rivers and picked the nearest airport it gave me a bearing to the grass runway that was near Mattawan. At least that looked like where it was suggesting.
I kind of wanted to have both with me but I thought for a flight to Chicago, the little watch was going to be more useful 'cause it was so small and light. But I think for storms the GPS might work better.
I circled around with my hoof held out in front of me and watched the bearing numbers change, then I went back along the highway and then home.
Since I was going to go out flying again, I didn't want to eat too big a lunch, so I ate some hay and took a short nap in the papasan, then had a little bit more hay, and read the manual for the watch. It was really long and complicated, because the watch was so smart. It even said that it could keep track of how far I swam, which was a feature I hoped I wasn't going to need.
I experimented with it, to make sure that I could make it do what I wanted it to. It knew if I was flying by how fast I climbed, but I had to change its setting because I didn't think that I could ever manage to climb five hundred fifty feet per minute, unless I dove first to get some speed, or found a really good updraft in a thunderstorm.
Even though I hadn't figured out all the functions, I did want to get flying again before it was too late, so I refilled my camelback, and got dressed in my flight gear again.
This time I went northwest—I thought I'd fly to Allegan and then turn around there. So I told my watch to find the Allegan airport, and then I asked the airplane directors if I could fly to Allegan and they said that I could.
Rather than follow a road directly, I trusted my watch to point me the right way, and tried to pay as little attention to the ground as I could. It wasn't a great test, because it was really hard to avoid the instinct of looking down and finding the landmarks on the ground, especially since I had to always look around me to make sure that there weren't any other airplanes around.
And when I got close, there were other airplanes around. The watch told me when I was ten miles from the airport so I called out my position on my radio and another airplane warned me that there were skydivers in the area.
They were pretty easy to find, when I thought to look down, because their parachutes were big and bright. But I'd thought they'd be higher up, and it turned out it was really hard to spot a falling person in the air. I probably wouldn't have seen any of them if I hadn't heard their airplane and focused in on where the sound was. I guess that they fall down from a high altitude and open their parachutes at a low altitude.
I didn't want to get too close to them, so I circled the opposite way that it was flying, and I told them where I was going so that they would know.
Even from a safe distance, it was neat to see their parachutes balloon open and watch them drift down.
I watched until I didn't see any more parachutes, and the airplane that the people had been jumping out of went back to the airport. Then I turned around and went back towards Kalamazoo.
I followed my watch for a little while, and then I could see Kalamazoo, so I went the rest of the way visually, 'cause I knew that I'd be doing the same tomorrow—I'd set the watch to point me to Chicago, and at some point over the lake, I'd see it, and then I'd be able to fly visually towards the skyscratchers.
Once I got close to Kalamazoo, I started a long descent, making a little bit of a course correction when I found the Kalamazoo College bell tower, and then I skimmed over the tops of the trees in my neighborhood before dropping under the canopy at my backyard. I cut it a little bit too close and got some leaves for my trouble, but at least it was only with my hooves and not my face. Trees looked kind of soft when you were above them but they really weren't.
I cooled down in the shower, even though it was pretty late to be taking a shower, and then I sat on my bed and read the rest of the instructions for the watch, to make sure that I understood everything that it could do, and then when I'd figured it all out I preened my wings.
Before I went to bed, I made sure to put it in its little cradle, so that it would be ready for the morning, and I also put new batteries in my blinking light.
I had a hard time getting to sleep 'cause I was really looking forward to flying tomorrow, and after I'd laid in bed for a while I got back up and went to the kitchen and set out a couple of cans of anchovies for tomorrow and I don't know why that made me feel less restless, but it did, and when I got back in bed I fell asleep pretty quickly.
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The perfect accessory for any pegasus.
Nice to see more of Silver Glow's flights. Only thing is Allegan doesn't have any "airplane directors", since it's untowered (magenta colored on an FAA chart).
7636030 no shit, I was gonna ask what it was. Thanks, I might get one once I grow wings
So she is about a month out from starting school again, maybe. I wonder what trouble she will get in and what classes she will have next quarter?
Choosing your gear depending of the day's condition.
What a luxury!
Sounds like these pro cross country skier that get too choose the pair of ski that will work the best for the race's profile and the snow's quality.
I wouldn't hold my breath for the speed measurement though. Even the best Garmin gear can give you impossible results from time to time. And they're designed for that...
Altough one of my "regular" cyclometer I had a few years ago went crazy in spain and told me I was going at 255 km/h. Yeah right...
7636049
Good to know!
I can't figure out how to read those charts.
I made a little change in the text to get rid of the Allegan airplane directors.
7636072
If you're using SkyVector, you can change the chart to the sectional. The default display is "World VFR" which is a tiling of all of the charts in the US (handy), but it cuts out the legend on every printed chart. If you go to the upper right side of the skyvector.com screen, you'll see a series of buttons, starting with "World Hi" The one you want is the rightmost, which will be the name of the VFR sectional you're on (Chicago if you're near Kalamazoo). Then if you scroll the map up and to the left, you'll eventually find the map legend that explains what all the symbols mean--including the colors for towered and nontowered airports. I very occasionally still have to reference the legend, especially for some of the more esoteric stuff in the airport data block.
Really, the legend is the same for every sectional, so you can just switch to the sectional for whatever point you happen to be on to get the same info.
Silver will be able to make all the money she has spent and then some if she would think to consult with google, garmin, or samsung. Have a device that broadcast in CB, Walkie talkie, or other bands, have gps with maps. When there are more pegasi flying on earth, the devices can triangulate transponder pings and calculate if any pegasi needed to be alerted to danger.
Even in Equestria, the location from the beacons and radio would save a lot of pegasi lives.
If she's planning on using the GPS during a storm, I sure hope it's waterproof.
7636110 I would think that should we make a friendly contact with Equestria, at some point some kind of avalanche beacon would be adapted for weatherponies.
Silver keeping up with the tradition of weird measurements.
Silver Glow is going to be SO spoiled for high-tech gadgetry when she gets back to Equestria. You just know Celestia and Luna will have to install an array of satellites to support GPS.
7636246
Given we use 60 minutes to the hour not actually that strange from our perspective, something like two ninteenth's of an hour really wouldn't fit with our system but Equestria could have nineteen minutes to the hour or twenty eight.
Has it been mentioned how Equestria splits their time up?
The golf course, The SG's thorn in the side.
Aerial creatures unite!
'Trio of miles', 'Sixth of an hour'. Love these, they're such nice touches.
7636342 Luna in charge of the Equestrian version of GPS? She'll be outright worshipped by weather patrol pegasi and sailor ponies. No shortage of love and recognition ever again.
On edit: I just found the perfect hoofwear for The SG: 'Megasus Horserunners'
7636067
What do you mean different skis? They'd use different wax and maybe move the kickzone a couple centimeters depending on the terrain.
Unless they're being lazy and/or can't telemark and herringbone and using randonees.
Lazy SOBs. Skiiers look down on them, much as snowborders look down on skiiers.
I'd like to see snowboarders try to capture Riva Ridge or drive back the Reds from Suomussalmi.
In Facebook or fark there was a photo of 3 military men standing at Ground Zero while a small atomic bomb exploded 10,000 feet above them.
Other people were saying that the radiation must have killed them but I did the math and a sphere with a radius of 10,000 feet has a surface area of 5 quarters of a billion square feet. So that fraction of the bombs radiation and subtracting what ever was absorbed by 2 miles of air and being away from the vaporized Radioactive particles, they should have been okay.
Mr Salvatore is so happy with teh always on tracker, and he got to play with the toys as well. All he needs now is one of those vending machine to desk minature railway trucks and his life might be complete.
Somehow I get this image of Silver as a drop director, resting on top of one of teh parachutes, yelling at the others.
Seagull. when your last meal might just be anchovies?
new toys I love new toys. as I just got a hew ssd hdd I plan on putting in later this mount.
500 gig it is the m.2 hyper drive. it will be my boot drive.
7636072 You just need a teacher. I learned about a lot of this stuff in my teens and have since forgotten all of it. If I can do it you can do it.
I believe in the Biscuit.
7636570 For some conditions, a waxless ski beats a waxable ski to begin with. But mostly, if you change the length and the camber, you can modify the kickzone and the slide zone to perform better uphill or on flat sectin.
Plus they usually have training ski with less camber.
sixth of an hour = 10 min
i can see this becoming a thing in pegasus flight school or for pegasi visiting earth with their special somehuman xD
7637101
I'm glad they warned her about the skydivers. We don't want to make Mister Salvatore have to explain to his bosses how Silver was injured while trying to catch humans who were falling out of an airplane.
Probably not a good idea for Pegasai to skydive.
They might exceed the limits of their flight envelope and not be able to recover.
(The wind not allowing the wings to extend as an example.)
7636342
Just the satellite constellation alone costs around $7.2 billion dollars (Lockheed Martin just signed a contract for $395 million for two satellites, so $200 million/satellite* + $100 million/launch times 24 satellites--and I'm assuming LM won't have a cost overrun). Add in the cost of the ground segment and the thousands of personnel to run the system, and an Equestrian GPS system will depend on how big in terms of population you're assuming Equestria is. There's a reason Europe as a whole went in on a competing system, instead of an individual country.
There's probably also decades of research in front of the construction system, to generate the geodetic ellipsoid required and figure out satellite orbits.
Going in a little closer to the fanon universe we're in, if Admiral Biscuit is still using roughly the same universe as his other stories, the magic on Equestria interferes with radio reception. The power of a GPS signal at the receiver is really small, so it'll be tough to make it work through that.
*Edit: I forgot the GPS satellites also have other sensors on them for the DoD (detecting nuclear detonations). I don't know how much of the build cost is wrapped up in that, so it might be a lot cheaper than I said above.
In the event of a water landing, your pegasus can be used as a flotation device.
7636797
Same here. I learned to read aeronautical charts when I was in AFJROTC in high school, but I've since forgotten most of what I learned.
I like how Meghan still kind of tries to be subtle about it, even though her friend definitely knows.
7636342 So, would Luna be in charge of raising and lowering the GPS satellites, in addition to her namesake "natural" satellite.
7637317
A fair chunk of that is also probably launch cost, which Equestrian magic can probably reduce to near-nothing (Celestia can certainly put something in orbit, if she really wanted to). Of course, on the other hoof, the Equestrian GPS network will have to take into account that the sun and moon don't behave with perfect regularity, and having to replace a GPS satellite because Luna didn't have her coffee that morning would just be embarrassing...
Playing catch-up at the moment, but I feel the need to comment on one particular detail:
I get the feeling that the one time Silver tried to ask a unicorn for directions, she got one who could teleport.
"Well, you hold the location in your mind, invoke Rubber Sheet's Spacial Fold, and you're there!"
"Uh... huh."
7636061
I think it would be kind of fun to have even if you didn't fly, although the price tag is pretty steep if it's just for fun. But I could see it being useful maybe if you were into some extreme sports.
7636062
And, since I'm so late replying, now we're only days out.
Also, Silver Glow's too damn cute to get in trouble.
7636067
Kind of what all the pros do, though. And I'd argue that SG's a pro at flying.
When I was younger, my mom still used proper skis that needed to be waxed, and IIRC there were different kinds of wax depending on the snow conditions.
Yeah, I think that the speed function of the Garmin is going to be somewhat unreliable.
Speaking of unreliable data, my laptop computer sometimes gets confused about what time it is, and I can't figure out why. It won't be off by whole hours, like it thinks it's in a different time zone than it really is, but some random number. Last time I used it, it was off by four hours and some number of minutes.
I've seen speedometers on cars do that before, although it's kind of uncommon. Also I drove one once where whenever you put the car in reverse, the odometer would start counting up like crazy.
7636085
Towered and non-towered is probably the most useful to me, along with the circles that give restricted airspace. I'll have to play with it some and figure out what I need to know.
It's funny, because I know a lot of the basics since my brother is a pilot and I read NTSB reports for fun; at the same time, there are a lot of the important fundamentals I don't know, since I'm not trained in any way.
So I could presumably just save an image of the legend, and that would be all that I need to know for every basic chart?
7636110
Heck, some of that stuff might be useful to real pilots, too. I mean, a commercial airliner presumably has all the nav and safety equipment you could want, but some guy in a powered parachute or a hang glider or whatever might want some useful minimal instrumentation. I'm not sure about building a radio that can transmit on aviation bands and CB/Ham bands; that might be problematic since you need different licenses for different bands. In terms of tech, though, it's probably not that difficult--there are certainly scanners that can receive on multiple bands and I don't think it would be that much more complex to make them able to also transmit on multiple frequencies, although I'm no radio engineer. Optimizing the antenna might be an issue.
Especially in a coastal area like where Silver Glow lives, even something like LORAN or non-directional beacons might be helpful.
7636156
The watch is, according to its technical specs. Although waterproof and supercell proof are probably two very different specs.
7636165
Or the EPRB--Emergency Pegasus Rescue Beacon.
7636246
Why do we use some fractions and not others?
Heck, when I worked flat rate, I got paid by the tenth of an hour.
7636342
And of course she doesn't really understand the technology that goes into making something like GPS work.
I'm imagining the ponies launching some kind of magitech satellites. Maybe that unicorns have to re-power every few days by beaming magic up into the sky. Actually, if unicorns can remote-power things, which Flim and Flam appear to do with their cider machine, the military would probably be very interested into adapting that technology for drones.
7636445
No, but I assume that since the length of day and month and year are all controlled by the Princesses, it would behoove them to arrange it in such a way that it formed neat, ideally highly-composite numbers. Given that in my headcanon they use base 12, I'd think that they'd try to make it all multiples of that, if they could. Or as close as possible to it.
7636495
It's a park that you can't play at. Maybe she should get a set of golf sticks and try playing a round.
I wonder if you could train a bird to steal golf balls? I bet you could. That would be so much fun.
quote]in charge of the Equestrian version of GPS? She'll be outright worshipped by weather patrol pegasi and sailor ponies. No shortage of love and recognition ever again."Celestia, you can have the moon. Hereafter, I'm going to be Princess of GPS satellites."
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Those are just the best things ever.
7636570
I was kinda wondering about that but then I've only ever cross-country skied and it's been decades since I've even done that.
Hell, I'd like to see a snowboarder go ten miles on a trail. On snowy days, my mom skis to the grocery store and tows the groceries back in a sled. Let's see a snowboarder do that.
7636747
I'd be more worried about the blast wave, since there's not going to be much to absorb it between them and the bomb. I doubt from that distance there would be much chance of them picking up an immediately lethal dose, although I wouldn't rule out them getting enough to kill them later.
Fun fact: one of the websites I frequently visit is a debunking site, and there have been discussions of the so-called 'chemtrails.' Someone did the math on how many flights would have to be carrying how much material to have a significant effect on people on the ground, and it's a lot. LIke, an impossibly high a lot. The atmosphere is very big.
7636779
Besides the job perk of occasionally getting to beat people up, he also gets to play with the latest in wearable/carryable flight gear.
Wouldn't that be something? A pegasus parachute instructor.
7636782
Most of my new toys are tools at the shop. And it's funny that some of them that I buy I don't expect to use a lot but I actually do, whereas there are others that I never anticipated how useful they'd be.
7636797
I'm sure that I could pick up a basic how-to-fly book that would tell me how to read the sectional charts, or just piece it together from the key, my knowledge of aviation, and occasional corrections by readers who are also pilots.
7637101
Going skydiving together?
Interesting thought--if they could work things out right, the human could skydive off a cloud.
7637227
Oh, man. Assuming that she didn't know, she'd probably only have time to catch one and bring him down for a safe landing, so how would she choose who to save?
7637231
My own thought is that they can probably use their wings and recover at their slowest terminal velocity (which I would assume would be a belly-first fall). Although now you have me curious about what kind of speeds birds can dive at and still recover from, and more importantly how they do it. IIRC, a Cooper's Hawk can hit something like 200mph in a dive, but it's got to pull out of that dive when it catches the fluffy little bunny that it's trying to eat, so does it slow down before it grabs, or can they pull out of a dive like RD in the sonic rainboom episode?
7637317
Yeah, the radio reception could be an issue, although perhaps not an insurmountable one, depending on whether magic interferes on all frequencies or only some. I would think that it would probably be a bit cheaper to do it a second time around, since much of the R&D cost has already been spent, but maybe not.
7637498
7638631
Maybe not. She probably does, but maybe her mind hasn't gone there.
7642884
I think so. It seems like a natural fit for her.
Maybe in a few decades, some other pony will ascend, and be able to take over space duties.
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7646718
Well, she can put it on the moon anyways. Whether she can put it at some middle point is less certain, but likely.
Can you imagine having to deal with that kind of thing? I mean, on the one hand, their control of things like weather means that as long as you read the weather schedule you never have to worry about your picnic being rained on; on the other, when Celestia has a sick day there just might not be a sunrise.
7651502
Yeah, asking the wrong tribe of pony for directions could be very problematic. Pegasi would presumably give them as the pony flies, and no doubt reference landmarks that look very different from the ground.
It's not very well explored in MLP canon, but how does a unicorn know where to teleport? Can she only go where she's been before, or are there certain magical coordinates that are 'safe' as well, if she needs to teleport somewhere unfamiliar? Is there a saying aspect to the spell, and is it robust enough to not cause splinching?
7716343 There are indeed many type of grip wax for various condition. But that's just half the fun of doing nordic ski; waxing it the morning before the ride...
7716438
The multiverse is so screwed if Pinkie ever becomes an alicorn.
7716902
I just remember that all the different kinds were different colors, I guess so you could tell them apart. I haven't been skiing in over 20 years.
7717609
Screwed, yes, but in a super-fun, endless party kind of way.
7722990
7717609
I do believe Celestia would be doing backflips in the throne room if she heard Pinkie had become an alicorn.
"Guess who just got eternal Gala hostess duties? Not me!!"
8052740
As it happens, I've written two stories where Pinkie Pie pretends to be Princess Celestia.
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Pinkie Pie's Last Nightmare Night
Pinkie Pie Raises the Sun
Wait, Silver can’t climb at better than 550 feet/min? How does she get to 10,000 feet like she’s said a few times? It just takes like an hour?
9574011
If she averages 500 feet/min, she’d hit ten thousand in 20 minutes, not an hour It does take her a while to get to 10k feet altitude, though, and she often doesn’t fly that high unless that’s where a cloud she wants to play with is.
A couple of ways to put it in perspective. I didn’t crunch too many numbers, but the climb rate of a Cessna 172 is only 645 feet/minute, and that’s got 150 horsepower. The little reference card also says it takes 1525 feet (I assume from the start of the takeoff roll) to clear a 50’ obstacle.
Also consider that 10k feet is about two miles, and that’s a fair distance up in 20 minutes. Since there’s a world stair climb record, I learned that the best human performance was about 43,000 feet in 12 hours, or if we’re feeling super generous, we could say 4,000 feet/hour. So a world-record human athlete would take probably almost three hours to hit that 10k feet, and of course would also require a set of stairs since humans can’t fly.
Silver has also mentioned that she doesn’t fly as well on Earth as she does in Equestria. And it’s also worth remembering that she often flies more endurance flights rather than speed flights.
Alaska wants to know your location. And maybe the location of a decent vampire hunter while you're at it.