T. Peterson

Cool video! I enjoyed it.

Holy Smokes, Batman, I didn’t realize you could be that slow on final! Why mess with a runway, just land on your driveway!

Both are cool, and that’s a great picture! Since I don’t have a G5, I vote Mooney!

I never heard of such a thing. Very interesting. I wonder how effectively it works. Assuming the idea is to prevent tires from sinking into the mud, this plastic must be very tough stuff!

I know it’s an old post, but that is very well said!

Very grateful the pilot is okay. A 310 crashed at F41 over the weekend and the pilot perished. Two passengers seriously injured. Aviation is not an activity to take lightly. Shame about the Mooney. Looked like a very nice airplane.

Don’t you have a wife?

Stop spying on me!

Phew! You have some flying to do tomorrow! I checked your route to see if you were going to be anywhere near F41, but you are well south. I’m off tomorrow so was going to try to talk you into lunch, but we are well out of your way. Fly safe and have a wonderful time!

The Red Barn Cafe in Sulphur Springs (KSLR) is a very good place to eat and is an easy 5 minute walk from the FBO. On another note, the Big Bend National Park is beautiful, but I have only been there on my motorcycle. Do any of you have experience flying into any of the local airports? I notice Alpine has a public airport and there are several private ranch airports, but I have no flying experience in that area at all.

Way north!! I also included neighboring states, but that didn’t make it into the title.

….and you must do a remarkable job of packing!! That’s a lot of stuff!!

I don’t know how all that works, but I don’t think controllers go unscathed when they mess up. They probably also have some kind of program to protect them similar to our ASAP program.

Even though you know you are right, it still causes that momentary panic, at least it does for me.

A clearance is a clearance is a clearance. Comply with the clearance. You may have to prove you are flying the assigned clearance but that’s a rare occurrence and radio tapes and radar tracks will prove your adherence. About a month ago LA Center asked me what SID I was flying. I responded with both the SID and the fix to which I was navigating. He responded with a vector to a different fix and a phone number to call for a possible pilot deviation. That gets your attention! Their claim was that I was supposed to have been flying a different departure. Fortunately I had the actual PDC issued by Clearance Delivery. I took a picture of it and sent it in to the folks at the other end of that phone number. I was told I could follow up in a few days and I did. Their finding was that there was no pilot deviation, which I knew anyway. The issue was that TMO had issued a route change to LA tower 3 minutes after our time-stamped PDC. LA tower was supposed to advise us of the change but didn’t do it. The Feds verified all this by listening to the radio tapes and the investigation fellow also acknowledged my picture of the PDC. The moral of the story is that you can get in trouble even when doing everything right, but so far at least if you have done everything right you will be vindicated. I had received a clearance, had complied with that clearance and that was the end of it. It is certainly prudent to check for TFR’s, but if you fly through one while adhering to your ATC clearance, the bust is on them.

Interesting. I didn’t know the national number had gone away, I just realized one day that it wasn’t necessary. There sure have been a lot of changes since my part 135 days when I called FSS from a pay phone at the FBO to file a flight plan. The technology we enjoy today is incredible. I really like ForeFlight. The bummer is I will have to start paying for it myself when I retire later this year!

I know I run the risk of forgetting to go to full rich, but I lean after the run up while doing the phone for clearance thing. So far all is well.

That’s a lot of remembering! Have you ever got all situated, seat adjusted to the perfect spot, seat belt buckled and then realized your keys were in the front pocket of your blue jeans? That’s always special!

Foreflight will give you the phone number for the actual controlling agency of the airspace over your departure airport, thus negating the necessity of the national 800 number. If you have ForeFlight bring up the airport page and tap on the Info block.

They have GCO now which I am sure is the same thing, but I don’t like it. Cell phone is the ticket.

Yessir, it does go that way sometimes! Fortunately your last statement is also my experience in the Mooney. Generally a direct clearance.

Yikes. But you accessed, adapted and overcame! Oorah! I only do that in solid VMC conditions.

If it is VMC and I am comfortable with the airspace I will almost always pick up my clearance airborne, especially from my home airport of Ennis. Just is simpler than shoving my phone into my ear canal while waiting for takeoff!

Very nice! Great music!

That’s a nifty way to do it. I will have to see if I can make that work. I have been taxing to the run-up area and when I am ready to go I call on the phone and emphasize I am ready to go now. The problem with the way I do it is that even though it only takes a couple of minutes, if someone is behind me I hold them up. So far it has only happened once and it was only a minimal delay, but I still felt bad. If I could call from the hangar and get a release time and a void time it would mitigate that problem. Thanks for the tip!