Archive for the ‘$100 Hamburger flights’ Category

Flight log 9/11/2011
Yet another great flight that I am just getting around to logging; I am starting to feel like I need a staff writer.

This was my second trip to the falls and as mentioned in my previous post I really wanted to take my son along, but this time Steven had a birthday party to attend to so yet again he was going to miss this flight. Ya never know, third time may be the trick! Read the rest of this entry »

Not a perfect flight but still worth watching and learning from. Shows what happens when you are used to flying out of fields with 4000 + long runways. It didn’t help that 20 + members of the flying club were watching from the picnic area to the east of the runway. Read the rest of this entry »

Flight log 5/22/2011 I am quite a bit behind on my write-ups lately. Work and family life has been beyond crazy lately. I assure you I have been flying

This weekend’s mission was a visit to the Air and Space Museum at Dulles airport in Chantilly, Virginia with the Princeton Flying Tigers. Stephen T, his friend Nadeem and I would be flying our Cessna 172sp during this trip. 0TH isn’t the fastest bird in the fleet but she is the best equipped with a moving map MFD an HSI and two-axis Autopilot the only thing we are missing is on-board weather. Read the rest of this entry »

Write-up in progress.. Here are some pictures from the trip. Read the rest of this entry »

Flight log 2/17/2011: The forecast was right! Winter was going to take a day off on Thursday so I decided to book my old friend 4757t for some flying time. Now what to do and where to go? Due to the weather in the Northeast I haven’t flown much so I decided to request a Safety pilot from the flying club for some IFR work. Mike D responded first so after a few emails we were scheduled for a flight at 4:30PM.

I filed KMMU to KMGJ on fltplan.com printed my nav-log and grabbed the iPad. The winds were favoring 21 but it would be late enough to fit in for a practice ILS3 approach to what traffic might be around, if not we could always break it off and circle to land.

Read the rest of this entry »

Flight log 10/8/2010 Niagara Falls:
11/29/2010 Sorry for the late post on this one:
As of late I have been very busy getting ready for our new baby due in November. This has led to less time flying and for the website; at least I had this flight to look forward to.

Back in August one of my fellow flying club members Mike D had asked if I would like to plan a trip to Niagara Falls in our Cessna 182RG. Needless to say I decided to go. Read the rest of this entry »

Back in September of 2009 I “followed” a fellow pilot and aviation blogger on Twitter not really thinking much of it. Soon after, Todd from www.myflightblog.com responded with a message that his wife’s family lived near my airport and was wondering if I would like to go flying someday. As with just about any pilot, I agreed.

Fast forward to November of 2010. Todd sent me another message, he mentioned that he would be in the area visiting family and was wondering if we could go flying. Read the rest of this entry »

Flight log 8/21/2010

I had originally planned to take a trip to Martha’s Vineyard this weekend but when I started receiving emails from the FAA regarding upcoming TFRs for President Obama’s planned vacation I figured I should make other plans.

Earlier in the week Gary from the Northeast Flyers had invited me to his lunch run at Georgetown DE. As always it would give me one more chance to meet some fellow pilots and explore a new airport so I made the call to go for it. All I had to do now was figure out who I was going to take. My wife isn’t much of a flyer, so unless we were going on a real trip I wasn’t even going to try. Her friend expressed interest but at the time I was still waiting on responses from some of my fellow pilot friends. As I got the answers back it started to look more and more like this trip was going to be with my son. After all Steven loves to fly with his daddy so all in all not a bad deal. Read the rest of this entry »

Yet another chance to meet-up with my fellow pilot friend Gary http://gmflightlog.blogspot.com of the Northeast Flyers and also get some more IFR experience along the way. I had originally planned to fly our Cessna 182RG since I had just earned my complex / high performance endorsements and logged the required 10 hours in the aircraft, but due to a failure of the gear warning system the aircraft was grounded so we took our trusty friend N159SP. Read the rest of this entry »

Flight log 6/25/2010

This was our second attempt at our dinner flight to Hamilton NY. During the last flight we made the call to divert to Lincoln Park due ATC routing and a wicked headwind. This time things would go more smoothly, well at least we hoped it would. Read the rest of this entry »

On Monday 6/7 my friend and fellow flying club member Stephen asked if I would like to fly to Hamilton NY for dinner on Friday night. As I am always looking for a chance to fly under the hood and check out new places I agreed.

The original plan was to leave work and head directly to the airport but since I left my camera and change of clothes at home I stopped by the house on the way. As soon as I got in I saw my son. I was hoping to avoid running into him since he always makes me feel bad about flying without him. What can I say, he loves spending time with his daddy and his daddy loves spending time with him. Sure enough, after checking with Stephen to make sure it would be ok to take my son I quickly got him ready and ran to the car just in time for rush hour traffic!

On our way to the airport I called Stephen and asked him to get the airplane ready. I wanted to fly IFR on the first leg since there was an overcast layer at about 4000 feet. As I pulled into the airport Stephen informed me that he was still waiting on fuel and on top of that my overcast layer was quickly breaking up. Read the rest of this entry »

(UPDATE 5/15/2010) During the days leading up to this trip I had been working on my planned flight to London Ontario Canada for the Diamond Aircraft Factory tour with the Republic Flyers. I had even canceled this flight at one point so I could stay an additional day in Toronto.  Unfortunately due to a strong low to our north witch was bringing with it 40+ knot headwinds, low IFR conditions and embedded thunderstorms I had to scrap that flight (see flight to Canada not to be for more information).

The night before, a cold front came through which cleared the air of the thunderstorms but also brought with it stronger surface winds. As the flight neared it became obvious that I would have to contend with some wicked winds at least during our return trip, so the day before I called Ed and asked his comfort level with flying with his niece on a windy day. He assured me that she was a veteran flyer and bumps have never been an issue. I also knew that my son responds well to bumpy air (he falls asleep) hopefully he breaks this little habit before becoming a pilot himself.

Read the rest of this entry »

Well I hate this but as they say “it is better to stand on the ground wishing you were in the air then to be in the air wishing you were on the ground”
After spending way to much time and money getting ready for my flight to Canada for the (Diamond Aircraft Factory Tour with the Republic Flyers) I have decided to pull the plug. The final nail in the coffin was when my estimated time in route (ete) went from 3:30 to over 4 hours due to a strong headwind thereby requiring an en-route stop in hard IFR conditions. Read the rest of this entry »

While in route to Martha’s Vineyard my friend and fellow flying club member Stephen and I experienced an alternator controller failure (basically a voltage regulator). It wasn’t a big deal since we were in day visual conditions and the engine does not require electrical power to operate. I have learned a few things from watching the video.. Read the rest of this entry »

Ocean City MD
One of the most common questions I am asked as a pilot is “what is the furthest place you have flown to?” If you are a pilot you know what I mean and after being a pilot for 9 years you would think I would have some really cool answer but actually I didn’t. During the years I had made a few flights to locations such as Nashua NH, Manassas VA, and Providence RI with other pilots but since they did the flight planning and most of the flying I considered myself more of a passenger than a crew member. Read the rest of this entry »