Vectors To Final

I stumbled on this set of testimonials for Softie Parachutes today. They are probably worth a read in your spare time - amazing stories.

The family was in town this weekend so my Dad and I went up for 1.0 hours. We flew out of Newport News and decided to just head out to the southwest for a bit to do a few maneuvers. We needed to meet back up with the rest of the family after a bit so we kept it short. We did some slow flight, a power-off and power-on stall, some steep turns and then flew over my house for some sightseeing. From there we headed back to PHF. We were cleared for a left-hand downwind to runway 2. Abeam the numbers I pulled power to idle to practice a simulated engine-out landing. My dad videoed that as well: This was my first flight in more than a month. I was happy to find that I got in "the groove" of aviating fairly quickly. We ended the day by getting some more film of a few jets taxiing in and a nice chopper that was parked on the ramp:

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...

Krista and I went up today (for 1.7hrs total time) with the hopes of punching through a few clouds. We got the chance to do just that, with clouds at 2500' and a scattered layer in places at 1500'. Today added about 0.2 hours of actual instrument time to my logbook, and one of the approaches was ~70% in the clouds (once we came down the glideslope we broke out of the soup fairly quickly). I re-learned how easy it is to get your head turned around with respect to the attitude of the airplane when in the clouds. But my training must have worked because focusing on the instruments and keeping a good scan going kept me feeling on top of things. This was also the first time I have flown out of a towered airport solo since taking up flying again last year. My radio work was fine, though I mumbled once or twice. :) Here is a video of us entering a cloud on the way to KORF:

I was browsing Justin's NoticeToAirmen forums today and came across a link to a movie, One Six Right , posted by Todd . The movie describes some of the history of a CA airport and the trailer had a few scenes of a Piper Cub. This reminded me of my first time flying a tail wheel airplane back around 1994 (it was also a Cub). This Cub was owned by my high school friend's Dad, who was (probably still is) a professional ATP pilot. My friend (also a pilot) used to take me up in the plane once a month or so, and we'd have a great time exploring the local area. Then one day his Dad (also an instructor) asked if I'd like to actually learn how to fly it (I already had my private license at that point). Of course I jumped at the chance and we got the airplane started up. He showed me how S-turns are needed when taxiing since you can't see in front all that well with the tail almost on the tarmac. Setting up on runway 20, he had me advance power and told me to go easy on...

Today I took a friend and co-worker named Doug up for 1.4 hours. We had a simple flight plan - go to KMFV , do a touch-and-go, and return to JGG. Since that plan involves crossing the Chesapeake bay, I plotted the shortest distance across the water, which turned out to be the CCV VOR 290 radial giving us about 13NM over open water. I decided to use 6500' of altitude so that we could glide back to shore even if we lost the engine in the middle of the bay. The interesting part was calculating where the "middle" was, based on the winds aloft. Going to KMFV we crossed the bay in about 4:15 (132 kts ground speed) but coming back it took about 7 minutes (~90 kts ground speed). I watched the engine instruments closely during that part of the flight. :) We had a good flight with a few winds making things interesting close to the ground. There was some chop in the air at 2000' and we had a nice crosswind at KMFV (my landing was a bit off there, didn't work the rudd...