flyguy241

There are two kinds of retract pilots; those that have landed wheels up and those that will.

Sometimes I miss my old Cherokee 140, usually around annual time and insurance premium time. But when I consider that now I can load my family up with baggage, fly about 50 knots faster on about the same fuel burn as the Cherokee (~10 gph). Our 201 works pretty well for what we need. However, if we are dreaming, I would take a Citabria (in addition to the Mooney). Last weekend, I took a buddy of mine from Amarillo to Granbury, TX (267 km) to pick up his 182. We had a nice tailwind going out and averaged 185 knots. The GPS indicated 203 knots at one point decending into Granbury. The return trip was a different story (135-140 knots), but I smoked that 182 by about 25-30 knots and probably did it on ~10-12 fewer gallons of avgas.

"Off field intentional gear up landing in 1998 due to failure of magneto." That would do it for me.

I flew to Kansas City on Sept 10th, the day before the awful attacks in NYC. I was not IFR certified at the time, so my airplane sat on that field for a month. I had to hire a flight instructor to sit in the right seat to fly out of Class B airspace after they finally allowed training flights in Class B. I guess the government had to punish somebody, but private VFR aviation was the furthest from the culprits as they could get. Go figure.

Somthing similar happened to my uncle and I as we flew into Chandler in the Phoenix area a few years back. He was in contact with Phoenix approach (VFR) when they handed him off to the tower, upon landing at Chandler, the Chandler tower informed him he had violated class D airspace (I believe Phoenix Mesa Gateway). They asked who cleared him across that airspace and he indicated Phoenix approach and they dropped the issue. I just wonder if you ask approach the question "am I cleared into class delta airspace" and they indicate "yes" are you then absolved of any discrepancies between the two controling entities?