Today's flight in 2019

[HXG]

I hope they don’t do an afterburner taxi out. 

[HRM]

2 hours ago, bradp said:

A petrochemical mask and an isopropyl cleanse. 

My gawd is that clean. 

[carusoam]

Brad’s plane on an ordinary day...

-a-

[bonal]

Today's flight actually started yesterday as we flew north to Redmond OR to dig for aggets known as thunder eggs. It's been a long time since we have flown more than a short hop. 375 miles was done in 2h 15min with our gps showing 180mph ground speed. There was lots of clouds below us as we made our way north more than forecasted but as we neared RDM there was lots of breaks allowing us to descend into the area. The flights both yesterday and the return today were as smooth as you can imagine flying at 9500 and 10500 feet each way. Found lots of rocks in fact had just under 50 pounds of them in a five gal bucket in the baggage area. Now I need a rock saw to slice them open to see what's inside. 

[Yooper Rocketman]

Nice Bonal, we don't get to see mountains in the Midwest.  Closest thing we get is awesome clouds.

Flew to Pittsburgh yesterday and a pretty good deviation on the way home in lower Michigan.  Barely made it back before severe thunderstorms hit the U.P.  

It's all about timing.

https://flightaware.com/live/flight/N994PT

Tom

[Awful_Charlie]

Well, we made it! Northern 40 row 523 if anyone wants to come and say hello

[kpaul]

2 hours ago, Awful_Charlie said:

Well, we made it! Northern 40 row 523 if anyone wants to come and say hello

How's the grass holding up?  The Caravan did not make the trip from MSN to OSH because of the weather.

[Awful_Charlie]

22 minutes ago, kpaul said:

How's the grass holding up?  The Caravan did not make the trip from MSN to OSH because of the weather.

The grass is a bit squishy but good enough to taxi on, although it needs 1500-2000 rpm to keep moving over. After the midday deluge there's been the odd shower but the base seems to be soaking it up faster than it is coming down. We didn't bring parking boards, but they might be a wise idea if you have them

[HRM]

5 hours ago, Awful_Charlie said:

The grass is a bit squishy...

Sloshkosh 2019?

[carusoam]

Went to visit the aviation aisle of HD in Madison, while waiting out the rain...

In true CB fashion, There are loose ends of ply-wood available for the right price... some discussion with customer service may be required... and a procedure to follow that isn’t known by everyone... 

We got some nice boards for the tires to rest on...

If we are repeating Sloshkosh, it is good to have the support...

Others have used plastic cutting boards in the past that may be available at Target in KOSH...(?)

PP thoughts only, only parked on squishy grass once... 280hp wasn’t enough to move it...

Best regards,

-a-

[Hank]

When parking in squishy grass, with or without boards, pull the plane forward at least a couple of feet before loading, boarding and cranking the engine. It's polite to pull completely out of line and turn into the aisle so you don't powerwash the plane / tent behind you when you crank up and advance the throttle to move. Had I not done so after heavy rains at Tornado and Fun, I'd have probably stayed until Tue or Wed instead of just Sun (with planned departure date of Sat).

[bradp]

 

[McMooney]

Spent today getting the new IR wet, man can't believe I actually get to do this flying thing.

[Skates97]

A quick weekend trip to Phoenix for my niece's wedding, my nephew's talk in church before leaving on his mission to Sweden, and back to California for the baptism of one of the girls that my wife was the youth leader for, it was a great trip with nice weather.

https://intothesky.us/2019/07/22/made-possible-by-a-mooney/

For good fun, add in a Cessna pilot that was annoyed he was placed behind the faster Mooney coming into Fullerton. The "rest of the story" is in the blog post, but if you don't feel like reading it here's the Reader's Digest version.

I hadn't been kicked to tower yet but was monitoring when I heard:

Cessna: “Fullerton tower, Cessna xxxxx is over the Brea Pass and inbound with Quebec.”
Tower: “Cessna xxxxx, I have a faster plane, a Mooney, inbound, two miles east of the water treatment plant. Fly to the water treatment plant and let me know when you have the Mooney in sight.”

I was just beginning to level off from my descent and my ground speed (into the wind) had just dipped below 150 mph while the Cessna (flying with the wind) was showing 117 mph on my tablet. Right after that I was handed off, called up tower, and was told to make straight in for two-four. Eventually the Cessna said he had us in sight and tower told him to follow us in. I continued to slow to 120 to drop my gear by the 5 mile final mark and then bleed off more speed to get to 100 and put in some flaps. At that point the tower starts getting onto the Cessna pilot because he was overtaking me and he had been told to follow me. The Cessna guy is saying that he's trying to slow down (yeah right) and at one point said he had the power "all the way out." Sure, he's about 4+ miles out and pulled power all the way, guy would have dropped like a rock, not continued to overtake me.

Funniest line I've heard from ATC in awhile.

Tower: "Sir, do you have an instructor on board?"

Tower gave him an s-turn, asked me to keep my speed above 90 until short final, we landed nice and easy and watch the Cessna float down the runway and bounce once before settling down. Good times!

[Yetti]

I flew.   The winds were 9 gusting to 20 landing to the north in freaking July.  We had a cooler front roll in.    NTSB was not called.  No FAA reports.  No NASA reports. No video.  it was a good day. The landings were sporting.

Edited July 25, 2019 by Yetti

[carusoam]

Unfortunately FB didn’t forward correctly for me...

Wondering what Parfo is...?

What would happen if a cement truck came in and accidentally poured a perfect square area for Al? 

Is that an environmental disaster, like it would be in NJ?

Best regards,

-a-

[Davidv]

Took my longest flight yet in the Mooney - FXE to BLM 5:01.  Pretty good flight and landed with 35 gallons to spare.  What the Bravo was meant to do (Besides climb over peaks in the west).

[McMooney]

So today decided to practice the IR with a longer xc, kdwh to kdua.  Have to say everything was going well until the casino took all my money 8(

couple things I learned.

1.  when calling clearance delivery, by phone, never tell them you're in the plane and ready to go.  I think that is code for hey this guy is baking in an airplane lets put him on hold for 15 to 20 mins.

2.  ATC will NEVER EVER, never ever ever, Give you the route filed.  Even when cleared as filed or accepting an ATC preferred route, they will change it, probably before you get to the end of the runway. 

3.  you can get actual IFR in texas during the summer.   so far i'm getting lucky between 9ish and 11am  and late afternoon say after 6pm.

Oh yeah, birdy found a friend today.

Getting much better at holding course and altitude over an extended period

 

 

 

Edited July 29, 2019 by McMooney

[Yetti]

So yesterday.   Went for a quick little triangle trip.   Giddings to Columbus and back.  It's 45 minutes of flight time.   was on the Columbus leg when I realized I was not seeing the ground about 10 miles up ahead.   Put the ADSB weather layer on.   Oh look that is a line of storms and it has some Red in it.

Decided to divert back to brenham.

Flew between some yellows and green that were over represented radar signals.   No rain at all in them.

We need the rain.   The plane got some excercise

 

 

 

Edited July 29, 2019 by Yetti

[DualRatedFlyer]

Flew to Lynchburg VA to visit family and attend my nieces 1st birthday.  A high pressure system parked itself along my route on the way there giving me a 15kt headwind going to Virginia, and then left on my way back giving me another 11kt headwind going home to Dallas.  My goal was to see if I could make the return trip (920nm) non-stop.  Took off around 0800 from KLYH, climbed to 8500 headed southwest bound direct T56.  I decided to use my right tank from startup until it ran out of fuel to see what the climb and cruise burn would roughly be.  Right at 3 hours and 30 minutes my fuel pressure dropped and the engine stumbled.  I already had my fuel tank switching tool inserted, so I hit the fuel pump and flipped it.  Sputtering lasted around 4-5 seconds then was back to normal.   Total time airborne was 6 hours and 30 minutes which is my longest non-stop flight to date.  Had great weather the entire trip with a few puffies once I got to Texas.  

 

 

Edited August 1, 2019 by DualRatedFlyer

[RogueOne]

Kel and I had a family pool party in Racine, WI that is a 4+ hour drive this weekend.  There was a really nice direct tailwind on climbout that saw 130+ knot ground speeds on GPS with 120mph indicated.  Climbed up to 9500 and had 165 knots burning 9.3gph.  Here are a couple screen shots from the flight.  Racine has a deep quarry right off the end of 22 that is impressive...Wouldn’t want to land short there...

Great time visiting family and friends.  Of course a headwind on return, but still managed about 125-130 knots lower on return.  Thank you GA and Mooney for a wonderful time!

[RogueOne]

On 7/14/2019 at 11:27 PM, Skates97 said:

I took a good friend and his 18 yo son flying last Thursday. Here's the "public post" I put on my blog and FB.

https://intothesky.us/2019/07/14/thursday-night-flight/

It was very rewarding to be able to help a young man overcome his fear of flying and find out that it is actually fun. The rest of this post is kind of a long, but I didn't want to post more details on my blog because I didn't want his son to be embarrassed about being so scared. I wrote that he was nervous, but that would be the understatement of the year. Here is the Paul Harvey "Rest of the Story" where none of his friends will see.

As I said in my post, his son had flown once on a commercial flight when he was 4 yo. As I was going through my pre-flight with them and answering questions his son was shaking, as in his whole body shaking because he was so nervous. I did my best to calm him down as I continued telling them about how the plane flies, what keeps it in the air, the safety features, etc... We got through that, got him calmed down enough that at least you couldn't see him shaking anymore, and pulled the plane out of the hangar.

I wanted him in the front seat so hopefully I could get him to take the yoke for a minute later in the flight.

"Ok, Greg you're going to be in the right seat and your dad in back."
"I don't want to be in the front."
"But if you aren't in front you won't be able to fly it at all if you decide you want to."
"I won't want to."
"Well, if we have any problems and have to land on a golf course, in a field, or on a road, the person in the right seat gets out first."
"Ok, I'll sit in the front."

Perfect.

We got in and everyone bucked up, at which point he started breathing a little faster and said "I can't do this."

I didn't want to see him just give up. As I told his dad later in the evening, even if he decided that he didn't want to fly ever again, I wanted to see him face his fear and overcome it because that would benefit him in other aspects of his life. So, I put on my best negotiator hat.

"Ok, so let's do this. I'm going to start the engine to get a little cool air going. Then we're going to taxi down over there and do a run-up to make sure everything is working right, and if it is we'll just fly around the pattern once and land. We'll take off, start climbing up, make a turn to the right, make another turn and level off at 1,000'..."

He cut me off, I did not know that not only was he afraid of flying, he was terrified of heights.

"1,000 feet!!!???"
"It's ok, it won't feel like you are very high."
"But 1,000 feet!!!???"
"I promise, it won't feel like it. It's only going to take about 3 minutes (ok, I know it is a little longer than 3 minutes around the pattern but figured he wouldn't notice) and then we'll be landing. All you have to do is hold on for 3 minutes. When we land you can tell me, 'I never want to do that again," and we'll just come right back to the hangar. You can say 'I want to do that again, but I can't handle it right now,' and that's ok, we'll come back here and go a different time. Or, you might say 'That wasn't so bad, I want to fly a little more,' and we'll go fly around some more and see things. Deal?"
"Ok"

With that we taxied down and after the run-up flew around the pattern once and I thankfully made a beautiful landing at which point he said he wanted to fly some more. On the subsequent flight we just did some flight-seeing he loved it. Over his High School, past their house, down to the coast, and the air was so smooth. At 3,000' I told him how high we were, but that it just doesn't feel like it and he agreed. I told him I'm afraid of heights too, but in the plane it isn't the same because you don't feel like you're going to fall off the edge of something.

Over and over he kept saying how cool it was and he is looking forward to the next time we fly. 

Made my eyes water.  What a beautiful thing you did!  What a beautiful thing HE did.  Tremendous!!!

[McMooney]

13 hours ago, Yetti said:

So yesterday.   Went for a quick little triangle trip.   Giddings to Columbus and back.  It's 45 minutes of flight time.   was on the Columbus leg when I realized I was not seeing the ground about 10 miles up ahead.   Put the ADSB weather layer on.   Oh look that is a line of storms and it has some Red in it.

Decided to divert back to brenham.

Flew between some yellows and green that were over represented radar signals.   No rain at all in them.

We need the rain.   The plane got some excercise

 

 

 

really, you should stop by hooks one day

[xcrmckenna]

Today's flight actually started yesterday as we flew north to Redmond OR to dig for aggets known as thunder eggs. It's been a long time since we have flown more than a short hop. 375 miles was done in 2h 15min with our gps showing 180mph ground speed. There was lots of clouds below us as we made our way north more than forecasted but as we neared RDM there was lots of breaks allowing us to descend into the area. The flights both yesterday and the return today were as smooth as you can imagine flying at 9500 and 10500 feet each way. Found lots of rocks in fact had just under 50 pounds of them in a five gal bucket in the baggage area. Now I need a rock saw to slice them open to see what's inside. 

Looks like you had a great time, you must of known I was on my way to Oshkosh since you were only about thirty minutes from my home... Wait you did know I was on my way to Oshkosh, right:)


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[amillet]

On 7/19/2019 at 6:49 PM, bonal said:

Today's flight actually started yesterday as we flew north to Redmond OR to dig for aggets known as thunder eggs. It's been a long time since we have flown more than a short hop. 375 miles was done in 2h 15min with our gps showing 180mph ground speed. There was lots of clouds below us as we made our way north more than forecasted but as we neared RDM there was lots of breaks allowing us to descend into the area. The flights both yesterday and the return today were as smooth as you can imagine flying at 9500 and 10500 feet each way. Found lots of rocks in fact had just under 50 pounds of them in a five gal bucket in the baggage area. Now I need a rock saw to slice them open to see what's inside. 

I’m waiting for photos of the inside of those thunder eggs