Today's flight in the year 2020

[MooneyMitch]

Los Angeles area......the stunning surrounding mountains in conjunction with the beautiful Pacific Ocean........incredibly gorgeous today !  And my beloved Dodger stadium...... how I miss it so.    LAX...a ghost town   Beautiful shot for KFUL 26. 

Minimal air traffic I’ll bet. Thanks for the tour.  

[aviatoreb]

20 hours ago, Skates97 said:

A very smooth flight after work through the LA Special Flight Rules, over KSMO, past the Hollywood sign, Griffith Park Observatory, Dodger Stadium, and a lap aroun

Clear air and empty highways.  What has happened to LA?!

[Nick Pilotte]

35 minutes ago, aviatoreb said:

Clear air and empty highways.  What has happened to LA?!

The dirty Prius’ (Priuses, Priai? I don’t know what you call a flock of those) are all sitting at home!  

[cferr59]

Took a social distancing flight.

[Skates97]

1 hour ago, aviatoreb said:

Clear air and empty highways.  What has happened to LA?!

The majority of them are home and unemployed... 

[Warren]

Did and Angel Flight with medical supplies today.  It was great to have a good excuse to go flying.  And, I got some unplanned exercise.  Apparently they don't bother to plow the snow in all the areas of the airport during a shutdown -- this is at KBJC, a class D airport!  I had to move some drifted snow and clear about a 50' path to thinner snow that I could taxi over.

Beautiful blue skies with a little wind and few bumps.

More snow in the Denver area than in Gunnision.

Flew home near Leadville (Lake County) airport.  It is about 25 miles up the valley from image 1958 (pretty close to center of picture).  I have already checked that one off the bucket list so continued home.

[Hank]

1 hour ago, Yetti said:

 

That won't do much good unless they fill up before leaving the field to go into town (not always the way I do things).

[carusoam]

Passport requirement?

-a-

[bonal]

On a much lighter note my wife and I took our pup Magneto for a flight to pick up some essential supplies from Petsmart down at the Nut Tree. Snoopy flew nicely as always such a joy to fly. AV gas was 3.70 a gallon there at VCB so I filled it to the brim which was only 18 gallons oh well. We bought Magneto some mutt muffs a while back and finally got to try them out he didn't like them much. The parking lot at the Nut tree usually completely full was almost empty only a couple stores open, very sad. High pressure made for a bit of haze in the sky and the winds blowing over the hills made for some pretty bumpy air but was very uplifting both figuratively and literally to be out flying. I hope ALL of you are well I hope and pray that these difficult times defy the experts and we get through this sooner rather than later. 

God Bless

[McMooney]

man nice little jog over to KGTU 17gallons@$2.60, it's almost like flying for free as compared to $4.59 i've been paying.

KLBX was only $2.55 but think they are tired of seeing me there every week

Edited April 27, 2020 by McMooney
wanted to?

[carusoam]

McM,

Nice pic.  How did you get that? 

Best regards,

-a-

[McMooney]

3 minutes ago, carusoam said:

McM,

Nice pic.  How did you get that? 

Best regards,

-a-

someone sent it to me, i always forget to take pics.

plus it's kinda hard to get outta the plane while it's still moving

[Yooper Rocketman]

I got to fly for the first time in 3 weeks, way too long to stay current in my Lancair.  I dropped my daughter off in Green Bay on Sunday, then headed to Chicago for some business.  Picking up my clearance on the ground at GRB, my final altitude was 13,000'.  I queried the controller and he said a LOA was in place for MSP and CHI ATC for that altitude going into CHi-town from GRB.  He asked if I needed higher for some reason and I noted yes, fuel burn.  He made a couple calls and got me 17,000', but I knew that would be short lived going south.  Before I reached Milwaukee they had me down to 13,000', .......... and stuffed me out over Lake Michigan.  Man I hate that!!!  I was cleared to land at KMDW (Midway) from 5 miles out, without another plane talking to the tower.  That felt weird.  

I departed just before sunset, and took some photos of a beautiful sunset over central Wisconsin.  I had forgot to file coming home, and got a surprise when the ground controller at Midway said he had nothing in the system.  I went to my Fltplan.com and submitted it (it was ready to submit, other than adjusting the departure time).  I set the departure time for 3 minutes from current, and the controller called me in less than 2 minutes with my clearance (nice to know).  I just avoided a Southwest push of departures (for these days anyway) of about 6 planes in sequence by 5 minutes.  I was glad I didn't have to deal with the wake turbulence of those boys.  WIsh I could have shot some Chicago Skyline photos along the lake.  I'm not a big city fan, but that view is pretty spectacular.

Sure was nice to get flying again!

Tom

 

[Nick Pilotte]

Tom, I flew with a friend in his Citation a couple weeks ago from GRB to PWK (just north of ORD) and they kept us at 13k’ until just south of MKE. 10k’, then 7k’, then descend to 4K’ and dodge the Archers in training.......   it sure kills the benefit of going up there to top the tanks off when your fuel burn doubled but it’s still a fun trip. 

[ohdub]

One of my favourite "local" flights is flying over Long Point in Lake Erie.

[Nick Pilotte]

In order to help with the lack of Chicago skyline pictures in a recent post, I’ll add some.  First time in a helicopter (R44) for my son’s birthday.  Edit: guess I’ll need to hire a hangar fairy.   I thought I had this right   

Edited April 27, 2020 by Nick Pilotte

[Danb]

6 minutes ago, ohdub said:

One of my favourite "local" flights is flying over Long Point in Lake Erie.

I love the views flying sw of long point over pelee island and the other smaller islands, I used to go from philly direct to Detroit over Erie, the view of long point sweet, I changed my to to lessen flight over water, therefore I go S west of Cleveland direct Pelee direct Detroit City, beautiful from 3000 ft, especially if your lucky enough to get East of DET over Windsor, lots of wineries and windmills, the flight from DET to Niagara Falls is gorgeous 

[carusoam]

Just spinning the wheels tonight...

First flights in helicopters are memorable.... the people on the ground look like ants to a four year old....

Best regards,

-a-

[aviatoreb]

6 hours ago, carusoam said:

Just spinning the wheels tonight...

First flights in helicopters are memorable.... the people on the ground look like ants to a four year old....

Best regards,

-a-

Cool!  What kind of helicopter is that?  Do say more of how this came to be.  Are you taking lessons?

[Nick Pilotte]

Thanks @carusoam for fixing my blunder......

To give details, this was an R44 that flew down to KPWK from KENW (about 15 min trip....). I am NOT a rotary wing student.  A little background.  My kids flew for spring break last year the first time and my son is a little timid.  He didn't want to sit by the window at all on that trip.  So we have a friend who has a C510...... He wanted to help my son get over his fear of heights, so for his birthday he found a helicopter school and an instructor that we scheduled to come down on his birthday (fortunately it was clear skies and low winds).  This was all a surprise to my son.  We went to the airport for him to climb around the plane a little, then surprised him with a helicopter landing at the FBO we were at.  So he watched it, and the pilot shut down, got out, and walked up to my son.  "Hey there buddy, I hear it's your birthday, would you like to come see my helicopter?"  So of course, he said he did, and we walked over.  The pilot showed off his craft, let the kids climb all over in it, and then he asked Gage if he wanted to sit in it while he started it.  I said, "OF COURSE I DO!!!!!"  well, he was talking to my son.  But I got to jump in too.  He helped strap the kids in, gave them headsets, and started it up.  Gage liked it so the pilot asked if he would like to hover a little, so with approval from the birthday boy, he did.  Then he asked Gage if we could go for a little flight, and reluctantly Gage cleared him for departure (or was that the tower giving clearance????).  We took a short flight around the city,  south from Wrigley, to Soldier Field, then up the lakefront to the zoo, and back west.  All in, it was 30 minutes airborne but he LOVED it.  

Then, below that are the requisite fixed wing pictures.  I'm not able qualified yet o sit left seat in that, but I am getting decent at right seat.  His look of fear was actually because he thought he got caught messing with the tray table, not my hand flying..... I wasn't really inverted.

 

 

And I'm guessing my attempts at getting pictures straight were futile. 

Edited April 28, 2020 by Nick Pilotte

[carusoam]

You get the dad of the week for that!

 

[amillet]

Today I flew my friend to Seattle in his J model so he could  catch a commercial flight at SeaTac. Landed at Boeing Field and used Kenmore Flight Service’s crew car to shuttle him over. 

[Nick Pilotte]

It seems this weekend was beautiful all over for flying.  Both days there was a lot of activity at KDPA where I’m flying out of, and the smaller field where I was practicing CTAF radio call outs and pattern work.  

[gsxrpilot]

So this isn't my flight... but it is my Mooney. And for some reason, I think it's cool to see MY airplane out there flying. This is @Denver98 taking off in N252AD on an early Colorado morning.

And here is the return flight... look at those numbers in the climb! It's not a Rocket, but it's not bad.

 

 

[bonal]

It looks shinier even from that distance