Vectors To Final

Today was a special day in my flying experience: I performed aerobatics for the first time. I have wanted to experience airborne acro for quite a while, in fact, that was the original reason I went on a bi-plane ride a few years ago , but the acro didn't work out for that flight. However, today was an entirely different story. I had picked up a flier for aerobatic rides in the flight school a month or so ago and knew I had to do it. There is an Air Force A-10 pilot, Jim Varden, that has his personal plane based at Williamsburg: a Pitts Special . He flies various air shows around the country in the A-10 and his plane. Check out his site to see the details. I showed up at the airport just before 10 this morning and found Jim's hangar. He was busy working on a new video recorder system to see how it might work out for our flight. We had some trouble with getting it setup, so unfortunately we were not able to take it with us. Additionally, my camera turned out to be too big...

So with my IFR rating obtained, I am starting to look a little more closely at how I fly, when, and why. Of course, I enjoy the challenge of flying, even on the severe-clear days - I enjoy working toward becoming a more professional airman. But seeing the same sights on each flight starts to get a little old for me after a few dozen hours of airtime, so my primary goal - long term - is to be able to use general aviation for travel and to fly at least 3-4 hours of practice (and photo) time a month (non-travel). I do include the occasional $100 hamburger trip in the travel category, but those trips typically take about 3 hours to pull off. What I am more interested in being able to do is take weekend long trips. With the flight school I rent from, this essentially means I have to buy my own plane (or part of one) - they just don't have enough planes to rent for one to be (economically) taken on a multi-day trip. So I started looking into buying a 1/6 fraction of the SR-22 I recen...