Vectors To Final

I went out to the airport today hoping to get some flying in, but with a heavy fog settled in and not going anywhere fast, I decided to just test out a battery powered tug, the Redline Sidewinder . I've always had a hard time pushing the airplane back into the shadeport, especially after a long tiring flight. The plane weighs nearly 3,000 lbs so even though the slope into the parking spot is only 1-2 degrees, it's quite a tough bird to push. Add in slipping feet, no great place to push against, bad angles for applying force, and a squirrelly castering nose wheel (doesn't like to go backwards) and it's a great recipe to hurt my back. Thankfully the Redline did a great job with the task. It's designed to have minimal weight, yet still be strong. It is powered by a heavy duty drill that drives gears and chains to apply rolling force to the nose wheel, moving the airplane at a nice slow pace. Hooking it up to the airplane is not much harder than hooking up the basic ...

This weekend I made my longest airplane trip to date - from KUZA in SC out to KCFD in TX - about 850 miles. The trip was for our quarterly ForeFlight strategy meeting, where the company gets together to plan out the next 3 months of work. Leaving KUZA I took off and picked up my IFR clearance in the air. Sometimes, like this time, the Charlotte controller knows what I wanted before I can even ask. After I called in with my tail number he just automatically gave me a transponder code and told me to standby for the clearance. Very nice, makes you feel almost welcomed. :) I made a fuel stop at KMEI in Meridian, MS. It's a great little towered airport with plenty of young navy pilots stopping in for a break from various practice missions in the area. My stop was a short one - I got the tanks topped off, grabbed a free hot dog and drink, filed my next leg on the iPad via ForeFlight Mobile, and went out to the airplane to blast off again. The next leg was also uneventful, and aft...

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...

Today my Dad and I took a mid-day flight to grab lunch at 57 Alpha, the cafe at Rutherford Co airport, KFQD. We made a detour on the way there to overfly KCEU, Clemson, SC. We both went to school there so it was nice to take a quick peek. After landing at KFQD we found the place fairly deserted, no doubt due to some cloudiness in the area. We enjoyed a nice lunch at the cafe: I had a chicken burrito with banana pudding (their specialty - very good) and my dad had a hamburger. After that we just walked around the airport a bit to enjoy the scenery. It's in the foothills of the mountains, so the skyline was nice to look at. For the crank up to leave FQD, I was a little worried the engine might be tough to start. It had been turned off for about 45 minutes, and I wasn't sure if priming the engine a bit would be bad or good. Normally if I've shut down for just 15-30 minutes I don't prime, so that's what I did this time. It actually started quite quickly with no ...

Today I grabbed a ride from my co-worker to get back down to KFLD for the trip home. When we arrived my airplane was tied up right in front of the FBO. Most of the hundreds of other planes were already gone. A pair of guys cranked up a DA-20 while I preflighted, and what I think was a C-210 took off just before I did. I filed IFR from KFLD to the Chicago VOR (ORD) to KUZA. When I called up approach they told me I couldn't pick up IFR within 100nm of OSH. That surprised me a bit because I had read that Sunday was the last day of unusual rules, but I guess I missed that one. After thinking a second I realized that going VFR for a while would actually be really great. So I pointed my nose at Chicago and climbed out to 11,500' to get over their airspace. I used the autopilot to follow the shoreline of Lake Michigan and worked my way south. Plugging in the iPhone to the intercom gave me a good soundtrack for the trip. Once I cleared Chicago's airspace I was plenty far...