IFR Training – Filing and Flying IFR
Flights 7 and 8 took place the evenings of March 17th and 19th. It is time to take the next step and actually file an IFR plan, pick up the clearance, and fly it. The plan Wednesday evening was to file and fly to San Bernardino and land instead of flying the missed approach. After […]
IFR Training – Small Improvements
I had flights scheduled for Wednesday and Friday evenings but In conversations with my CFII we scrubbed both of them for weather. That may sound strange, cancelling Instrument Flight Rules training because of weather, but let me explain. Wednesday there were storms off and on throughout the day. There was a convective outlook which means […]
IFR Training – “Great kid. Don’t Get Cocky.”
My recollection is that the first movie I ever saw in a theater was the first Star Wars. Not the terrible prequel with too much CGI and one of the most annoying characters brought into the Sci-Fi universe, but the one released in 1977, where Mark Hamill plays a young Luke Skywalker who goes from […]
IFR Training – Approach to LPV Minimums
Most of Wednesday was rainy and overcast, but the day to actually fly through the clouds was not to be yet. I met up with my CFII after work for another evening training flight. By the time we met the ceilings in the area were between 4,500-5,000′. He said that he had considered filing an […]
IFR Training – Flights 2 & 3
Flight Two – Wednesday 02/24/2021 Wednesday after work I met my CFII at the airport again for round two of my training. I had spent the past days since my last flight reviewing all the things that I did wrong. The biggest one was fixating on one instrument or in the case of the top […]
IFR Training – Chasing the Plane
IFR, Instrument Flight Rules, flying solely by reference to instruments, is most often associated with flying in the clouds but could also be flying at night over water or over sparsely populated areas where you have no ground reference. I have wanted to obtain my instrument rating for awhile but was waiting until I had […]
A Sunday Afternoon
My last flight was a week ago, just over to Riverside to get some fuel and some time in the air. My wonderful wife was game to come along even though it would just be about 15 minutes each way. It was late afternoon, the air was smooth, and westbound on the way back to […]
Negative Ghostrider, the Pattern is Full
The Friday after Thanksgiving was windy. It wasn’t “terrible” and was definitely flyable. I have flown in much stronger winds, and if I was planning to go somewhere like Arizona or Utah to see family I would have flown, it just would have been bumpy until we got above probably around 5-6,000 feet. However, to […]
You Fly, We’ll Buy
It goes without saying, 2020 has been a crazy year. “Mostly” caught up on things at work I took Wednesday off for I think 5th day off this year. We caught up on some things at the house and headed to the airport to fly somewhere for lunch. As we pulled through the gate I […]
Chasing the Sun
In 1979 I was seven years old when the Muppet Movie came out and I loved it. Among all the songs there was “Movin’ Right Along” that they sang as they launched out on their road trip and towards the end of the song Fozzie Bear sings “Hey, I’ve never seen the sun come up […]
Phoenix and back in a day… It’s for the dogs.
I know what you are thinking. Who would fly to Phoenix, actually Chandler (KCHD), from SoCal and back in a day, and why? Well, it was literally for the dogs, two of them to be precise. Keep reading, and by the end, just like a Paul Harvey broadcast, you will know “the rest of the […]
West Coast Mooney Club 2020 Summer Conference and Retreat
Back in February 2018 we were trying to organize a fly-in for the California Mooney owners. After a fun fly-in to Harris Ranch in May 2017 there was a long dry spell. Enter Phil Corman and Michael Rodgers. Phil offered to host a fly-in for “a few” Mooney’s in Paso Robles which turned into a […]
