Vectors To Final

K and I had our 11th anniversary this weekend so we celebrated with a flight over the Appalachian mountains. The goal was the see the Fall colors and just have some fun. For this flight I tried out a new iPad knee strap - the MyClip Thigh. It worked really well - I used the iPad in both landscape and portrait orientations and the clip worked perfectly. I like how minimalist it is - doesn't get in your way at all and is easy to transport to the plane and home again. It is designed for an iPad without a case, so it won't work with the Apple case, but would likely work with less-bulky cases and certainly with a simple screen protector setup (as in my case). Here's the MyClip helping us use ForeFlight Mobile to navigate to Mountain Air airport: On the way to the mountains I tried something I have never done before: an in-flight magneto check. I learned details about this from an article by Mike Busch - a source of great knowledge when it comes to piston aircraft. We leve...

Today I met up with another local aviation guy, Scott Dennstaedt, for lunch. Not only is he an accomplished CFI, he's an aviation weather expert. His company, AvWx Workshops provides all sorts of education on aviation weather topics. It was obvious just a few minutes into our conversation that's he's a bright, experienced guy that also has the ability to teach clearly - quite a combo. I plan to get his help on flights in the future when I need an expert's knowledge for better preflight planning. Weather has always felt like a grey area in the flight training I've received, so working with Scott will no doubt help me become a better, and safer, pilot.

We took a long weekend to visit my co-workers and our friends up in Williamsburg. My flying buddy John not only loaned us a vehicle for the weekend, but also room & board! We fought a slight headwind heading up to VA, but like the typical October weather in the south east the skies were gorgeous and clear. We brought along our younger son Grady for this trip, equipped with orange ear plugs for noise reduction. For my ears I tried out a brand new Lightspeed Zulu headset. At first I thought it was going to be uncomfortable after the 1.7 hours of flying, but it turned out not to be. They are not as easy on the head as the Bose X's are, but they reduce the noise levels a good bit better. The bluetooth audio input was also handy when the XM radio stopped working on the return flight (my airplane partner had to give XM a series of frustrating phone calls to get that sorted out). The only other hit I have against the Zulu's is that they are wider than the Bose (which is pa...