Today's flight for 2017

[tigers2007]

What in the h*ll is that King Air doing in the background? Looks like its about to tip over.

[xcrmckenna]

What in the h*ll is that King Air doing in the background? Looks like its about to tip over.

Last winter they had a lot of snow, and they zigged, when they should have zagged while they were taxiing. Hit a hidden snow bank and collapsed the nose gear. I'm sure they'll sell it cheap if you're interested...


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[PMcClure]

Had some business on Hoopers Island, MD. It was too long of a flight to do an up and back in one day and there are not too many hotel options in that area either. So I decided to stop in TN/NC mountains. Flew from Pell City (KPLR) to Mountain City (6A4) on Wednesday in perfect weather. It is a challenging little field at 2200' elevation and 4500' runway and elevated terrain all around. I came in fast and high and had to go around on the first try.  Dave meet me on the ramp, helped me tie down and gave me the crew car for the day. I grabbed my suit case and fly rod and headed over to the Red Tail Lodge. Lyle and Kendal are great there too. Lyle has a TTX at 6A4. They said next time to call ahead and they will meet me and carry me over to the lodge (about 10 minutes away). They have a beautiful golf course in a mountain setting and hiking, fishing on site.  Went fishing on the property before dinner and caught thee little trout then had a nice dinner. Woke up early and went fishing until about 9:30 before heading back to the airport. Dave gassed me up and sent me on the way to MD (landed at KCGE). The air space around Cambridge is complicated but approach helped me navigate around restricted areas and multiple targets. I got the first order from the customer and stopped in to say hello to an existing customer. Took off about 6:00pm and had a beautiful flight home, chasing the sunset with a harvest moon shining down on my tail feathers. 

I highly recommend the Red Tail (https://www.redtailmountain.com) and 6A4 (https://www.airnav.com/airport/6A4) for easy access to the mountains with an aviation friendly lodge owner and airport manager. 

 

[Browncbr1]

Had a good flight last thursday from east TN to west Michigan, then flew up the shoreline about an hour on Sunday. Awesome views.    Today, went from N Michigan to NE Ohio.   Severe clear until getting close.  Areas of IFR/LIFR...   Shot a VOR approach and learned that sometimes fooling around with the gps to get information that isn't really necessary rather than just flying the dang approach can cause more distraction than I care to have when in imc.     

[bonal]

Can't believe it's been three weeks since we last had Snoopy out for a flight. Well things around here are pretty sad and almost unbearable with the amount of destruction we have seen. And it's far from over these fires have been so draining. We flew down the RHV to attend the international quilt show in Santa Clara my wife loves to make quilts and it's something we both enjoy. I can't begin to describe the artistry that we saw today the quality and creativity of these pieces is way beyond words. The flight was very nice and really helped me with the stress of the current situation but with the massive headers off to our west and with a flight plan that required avoidance of the TFR's for the air attack was a constant reminder. Was our first trip to RHV coming in high and fast over the mountains we did an extended down wind to get down but on final I knew we were still high so requested a right 360 and after the turn came out with 2 red and 2 white the FBO had a rental car ready and waiting for the ground portion of the day.  On the flight home while under flight following we were connected to Travis approach and we could here the comm's between them and the air tankers. 

 

[bonal]

Thought I would post a few examples of the hundreds that were there to see

These are not paintings but made from pieced fabric

[Yooper Rocketman]

Flew my little cancer buddy down to Grand Rapids MI from up in the U.P. for  more chemo treatments.  The Airlifeline Bonanza was down for Avionics maintenance and my Lancair is down for a final bodywork push before going to my painter.  Caleb was disappointed we weren't taking the prop-jet but was still happy they didn't have to drive.  

Tom

 

Edited October 19, 2017 by Yooper Rocketman
Fixed picture orientation

[Cyril Gibb]

Flew from Taos to Las Vegas via the Dragon corridor today.  Thanks @gsxrpilot for the suggestion.  That route takes you over the Colorado 4 times.  Spectacular, BUT I’ve done that now. I’m sure that the engine sounded a little off each time we flew over the edge, similar to when we fly over lake Michigan in the winter.  The mind plays tricks....

[N201MKTurbo]

40 minutes ago, Cyril Gibb said:

Flew from Taos to Las Vegas via the Dragon corridor today.  Thanks @gsxrpilot for the suggestion.  That route takes you over the Colorado 4 times.  Spectacular, BUT I’ve done that now. I’m sure that the engine sounded a little off each time we flew over the edge, similar to when we fly over lake Michigan in the winter.  The mind plays tricks....

Don't worry about it. If your engine quits just coast on down and ditch in the river. A river rafter will come by and pick you up in the spring....

[amillet]

We flew to AZ for a mini-vacation on Sunday 10/9 and returned 10/14-15.  Visited our grandson & stayed with our good friends Dave & Colette who own an M20E.  My usual route is V165 thru Reno & past Vegas.  Decided to try the more direct route & stopped in Winnemuca for fuel.  Central NV is EMPTY.  Had decent tail winds most of the way but even at 15,000 had some waves that had ground speed varying from 199 to 100 and approaching stall speed a couple of times with the autopilot maintaining altitude. I requested a block of 15 - 14K and rode the waves up and down. It made Brenda much happier.  Always smooth though.  New route only saved about 50 KM. We had booked a flight on SWA but I was able to convince Brenda to fly the Mooney when the weather forecast was so good.  I hate the commercial airline/ TSA routine   Love the Mooney.  6.5 total flying time.

[carusoam]

MS geography lessons are the best!

Thanks for sharing!

Best regards,

-a-

[amillet]

Return route:  Tonapah, NV for fuel; overnight at Klamath Falls, OR.  Tonapah was WWII P-39  training base.  FBO owner who fueled us said the Russians still hate us for sending them all those Airacobras.  Flew right over Crater Lake.

[carusoam]

Engine in the back, shaft beneath the seat, through the legs.... one, with the machine....

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_P-39_Airacobra

Best regards,

-a-

[BradB]

It was a beautiful weekend in the Great Lakes area.  My daughter was visiting for the weekend.   I dropped her off in Buffalo to catch a commercial flight today.  We had a little time, so we took a little detour on the visual to runway 14.  

 

I appreciate Buffalo approach for making this so easy.  I was IFR and just asked for a vector that would take us over the falls on the way in.  It wasn’t exactly on the way coming from Erie (KERI).  I was given a decent to 4000ft and once near the falls was cleared to maneuver at will and  traffic was pointed out to me. There were a couple of VFR aircraft in the falls circuit at 3500ft.   They said just give a call when I was direct Buffalo again.  We didn’t have that much time to hang out there, but it was a great day for  a few pictures.

Brad

 

 

 

Edited October 23, 2017 by BradB

[Skates97]

Yesterday flew down to Palomar with my wife for breakfast. About a month ago they cut back the number of transient spaces to just five, so we had to park at Western and paid their $20 ramp fee. Food was good and the flying was nice.

Full write-up here: Palomar for Breakfast

@Raptor05121 was asking if ATC ever gets my tail number wrong a couple days ago. I think you sent that out to the universe Alex because they did again on this trip. Even with the pause I throw in they messed it up. I pulled the tower tape to get the actual conversation.

Me: "Palomar Tower, Mooney 78-878."
Tower: "Mooney 78378, Palomar Tower, enter right base runway 24, ident."
Me: "It's 78-878 and ident, we are 8 miles north, north-east of the field."
Tower: "November 378, number 3."

I didn't bother correcting him because I knew he had my location on radar. However one minute later, moving along at a good clip in our descent, the Tower called us back up. He had been talking to other aircraft and with him calling the wrong tail number again I wanted to make sure that he was talking to me.

Tower: "November 378, verify you have the airport in sight.
Me: "If you are calling the Mooney it is tail number 78-878, yes we do have the airport in sight."
Tower: "November 878, roger, fly direct to the numbers, runway 24, cleared to land."
Me: "Direct 24 cleared to land, 878."

 

[xcrmckenna]

Return route:  Tonapah, NV for fuel; overnight at Klamath Falls, OR.  Tonapah was WWII P-39  training base.  FBO owner who fueled us said the Russians still hate us for sending them all those Airacobras.  Flew right over Crater Lake.

I tried to fly down to Crater Lake last weekend but my schedule didn't work. It's on my short term bucket list. I've lived in Oregon my whole life and have never been to it even in a car. Great pics!


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[Steve W]

This is Sunday's flight. But finally got the hangar at my home airport KONP so had to move the plane KCVO to KONP. Saturday was gusting to 45kts, so I did Sunday instead.

Luckily it was a nice day on Sunday: 

201710221955 METAR KONP 221955Z AUTO 21011G15KT 2SM BR OVC004 13/13 A3034 RMK AO2=

And since there wasn't much to see on the flight here's the new hangar. Yes, that's water on the floor... working on mitigation efforts before the next rain.

[rbridges]

The annual that doesn't end.  LOL.  Noticed oil on the windscreen last weekend.  Flew to Cole Aviation to get a seal replaced.  Dalton is near the southern starting point of the Appalachian mountains.  

[Hank]

Rob, you're having quite the year! Let me know if you need a ride back, I used to live in Dalton and took my first few lessons there back in the day.

We went up to KPLR to meet @Oldguy for a really good barbecue lunch. Smooth, quick flight up, above and below the layer 4000-5000 msl. Quite the crosswind at altitude, 5 knots pretty well down the runway for landing. Came home at 3000 msl under the clouds, stopped at KALX for fuel. Trip up was 58 nm, the legs coming back were short, but all of 115 knots into the wind. Still 4-5 knots at ground level, though. 

A great day to fly!!

[rbridges]

3 hours ago, Hank said:

Rob, you're having quite the year! Let me know if you need a ride back, I used to live in Dalton and took my first few lessons there back in the day.

We went up to KPLR to meet @Oldguy for a really good barbecue lunch. Smooth, quick flight up, above and below the layer 4000-5000 msl. Quite the crosswind at altitude, 5 knots pretty well down the runway for landing. Came home at 3000 msl under the clouds, stopped at KALX for fuel. Trip up was 58 nm, the legs coming back were short, but all of 115 knots into the wind. Still 4-5 knots at ground level, though. 

A great day to fly!!

haha, it's all good.  Joey worked with me and let me fly in early and wait while they did it.  It's a great group of guys.  They gave me a chance to look at some engine parts.  Showed me some worn out cams and corroded tappets.  Flew back home and landed with a dry windshield!

[Yetti]

Sunset

[Steve W]

So I went for a quick sightseeing flight today from KONP to KCVO to KEUG and back to KONP... And by sightseeing I mean instrument currency. 1.6 hours, 3 approaches, 3 airports, all well above minimums. I did manage to get this lovely photo of the Newport airport as I was headed to intercept the RNAV 34 approach. If you can't make out the airport it's on the left side(I think... maybe)

[Yetti]

Flew over to east Texas to give a buddy  a ride.   He was very excited to try and find his house...  It is safe from the Blackhawks.  we could not spot it.   There are some high antennas around Cherokee County Airport. He got this shot.

 

[bradp]

Did my couple of shakedown flights with a new set of self-installed avionics and then off to Florida for a short trip to Disney with the family (I thought GA was expensive but I was wrong).  Flew from IGX (Chapel Hill, NC) where we spoke for a while with the Airport manager about the history of the Airport, it’s current challenges (owned by the UNC and everyone and their brother trying to close it down or choke it). I live about a mile off the end of the runway, but he’s not allowed to take new customers for tie downs and the hangars are all but gone.  There are something like 14 holdouts and the odd medevac flight keeping the airport open now.  Sad situation- the original benefactor was Horace Williams who donated the land for use as the Airport in perpetuity, but the University seems to have gotten around that.  It was a WWII training facility and has had some famous fliers / visitors including JFK (visited) and Dubya (flew).  Overall like a slow SMO.  AOPA has been of little help in saving this Airport. 

 

Flew down with a few reroutes routes along the way.  Flightstream started to pay for itself in convenience and workload with the flight plan transfer.  Aural alerts through the new audio panel and a fuller traffic picture was great SA.  Got some movies piped through with an iPhone suction cupped to the top of the windshield so the whole family could watch.  Best part about the PS engineering audio panel was that the muting mode muted it for me but kept piping entertainment audio for the passengers.  Felt fancy.  This was kind of fancy because prior to this setup my daughter could do about 2.5 hrs before she pretty much would start to lose it and needed a break.  Now we are limited by our bladdders.  This trip was about 5 (:-0) hours and the whole family did not need a stop, which surprised me. 

First time flying into FL for me.  Nice airport at Winter Haven.  They had a rental car (thanks AOPA discount - but don’t forget to save airports instead of partnering with Insurance and rental car companies). Fantastic city run FBO at GIF.  If / when I go back this will be the go to for the region.   Seems like it would be a great place for Sun N Fun parking.  Had a great seafood dinner at a place called Harry’s Old Place I think (grouper mmmm) and headed towards Orlando.  

I’ll skip the middle bits suffice to say that we had a great time with the little one.  Epcot was fun for adults and had booze. I don’t know how the princesses do their thing - job seems exhausting.  All in all a cool trip.  

Way back was also non stop with great weather.  Headed up to FYJ (eastern VA) to visit with my brother and sister in law who were kind enough to watch our dog while we were gone.  Another 5+ hour trip - landed with 20 gal (2+) hr reserve For the 800 or so nm that we flew.  Amazing mooney. Simply amazing. 

Home the next day with our dog , and that’s the end of that story.  

[rbridges]

14 hours ago, bradp said:

Did my couple of shakedown flights with a new set of self-installed avionics and then off to Florida for a short trip to Disney with the family (I thought GA was expensive but I was wrong).  Flew from IGX (Chapel Hill, NC) where we spoke for a while with the Airport manager about the history of the Airport, it’s current challenges (owned by the UNC and everyone and their brother trying to close it down or choke it). I live about a mile off the end of the runway, but he’s not allowed to take new customers for tie downs and the hangars are all but gone.  There are something like 14 holdouts and the odd medevac flight keeping the airport open now.  Sad situation- the original benefactor was Horace Williams who donated the land for use as the Airport in perpetuity, but the University seems to have gotten around that.  It was a WWII training facility and has had some famous fliers / visitors including JFK (visited) and Dubya (flew).  Overall like a slow SMO.  AOPA has been of little help in saving this Airport. 

 

Flew down with a few reroutes routes along the way.  Flightstream started to pay for itself in convenience and workload with the flight plan transfer.  Aural alerts through the new audio panel and a fuller traffic picture was great SA.  Got some movies piped through with an iPhone suction cupped to the top of the windshield so the whole family could watch.  Best part about the PS engineering audio panel was that the muting mode muted it for me but kept piping entertainment audio for the passengers.  Felt fancy.  This was kind of fancy because prior to this setup my daughter could do about 2.5 hrs before she pretty much would start to lose it and needed a break.  Now we are limited by our bladdders.  This trip was about 5 (:-0) hours and the whole family did not need a stop, which surprised me. 

First time flying into FL for me.  Nice airport at Winter Haven.  They had a rental car (thanks AOPA discount - but don’t forget to save airports instead of partnering with Insurance and rental car companies). Fantastic city run FBO at GIF.  If / when I go back this will be the go to for the region.   Seems like it would be a great place for Sun N Fun parking.  Had a great seafood dinner at a place called Harry’s Old Place I think (grouper mmmm) and headed towards Orlando.  

I’ll skip the middle bits suffice to say that we had a great time with the little one.  Epcot was fun for adults and had booze. I don’t know how the princesses do their thing - job seems exhausting.  All in all a cool trip.  

Way back was also non stop with great weather.  Headed up to FYJ (eastern VA) to visit with my brother and sister in law who were kind enough to watch our dog while we were gone.  Another 5+ hour trip - landed with 20 gal (2+) hr reserve For the 800 or so nm that we flew.  Amazing mooney. Simply amazing. 

Home the next day with our dog , and that’s the end of that story.  

 

 

 

We were flying pretty close.  Flew back to Orlando Exec to see my son at the University of Central Florida.  We ended up staying at a Hilton off of Universal Blvd.  Gotta love that I-4 traffic!  Don't know about Winter Haven, but Orlando Exec has special 100LL.  That's the only thing that explains their gas prices. lol.