Archive for the ‘With my son’ Category

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 »

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.

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My Son Steven and I have now logged about 6 flights and I figured it was time to do a bit of writing on the subject. From about the time my son became old enough to hold a toy airplane he has been fascinated with flying. Sometimes I think he is more interested in airplanes than I am. I just hope his interest doesn’t wane as flying becomes more and more “routine” for him. My wife on the other hand has never really caught the flying bug. There was a time when she “unenthusiastically” flew with me almost every weekend but at that time I was a new pilot and her dislike for small planes was confirmed on more than a few bumpy summer afternoons Read the rest of this entry »

My flying club 150th aero flying club had our annual picnic at Andover Aeroflex airport 12N on Saturday 6/12/2009. The weather was bad over most of the state so flying our planes up to the airport was out of the question, but I did get the chance to take some shots of the Piper Cubs making their trips around the pattern using my new Cannon HF s10. If you live in the area and would like to check them out follow this link to the Andover Flight Academy. Read the rest of this entry »