That reminds a bit of my first solo "cross country" navigation exercise as a student. It was depart Monmouth Airfield, get to 1000 ft and the Atlantic coast will be clearly in sight. Follow it until you see Atlantic City Airport and land there. Get logbook signed and then fly home.

At Atlantic City on the rather long walk to the buildings there was a Lear with the door open and the steps down -- so I poke my head in. Pilot is doing the Jepps, must be bored and invites me in. Even talking to a random stude has to be more fun, right?

I'd arrived in a PA28 and the only other thing I'd flown was a Schweizer 2-33 so sitting in the front of a Lear was a WOW moment. We chatted for quite a while and having a current instructor's ticket he signed my logbook without me having to go to the terminal buildings.


I got lost on the way home though

 

No Dunkin’ in Seattle.

 

That could be one hell of a sequel….

 

Yeah I guess Charbucks has the clout to keep the competition out.

 

In such a fair and equitable city??

 

A long time from now.

R22s and autorotations are almost oxymoronic, there's just so little energy in those blades when an autorotation begins. Joking, of course, there will be autorotations, but unlikely all the way to the ground.

 

I've had a lot of fun looking at my flight paths after discovering that aircraft transponder data are archived in The Cloud. Here's part of my flight path from yesterday's lesson (Instruction Flight No. 11). We flew from KBUR to a different little airport called Whiteman (located by a second, blue pin) to do some hovering and taxiing work. Then we did my very first session of pattern work., doing the helicopter equivalent of touch-and-go landings. It's pretty crowded airspace even at low altitudes -- lots of police and news helicopters, little planes utilizing Whiteman, so you need to keep your head swively and listen to what ATC has to say. I've learned to follow my instructor's example of NOT wearing sunglasses while in this airspace, because it really does improve my distant vision and makes it easier to find those moving specks in the sky.



You can see how the circuits are of varying length, showing how we had to wait on other aircraft before going on final approach. You can even see an orbit loop we did in order to let a police helicopter get a little further ahead of us.

Fun fact: the terrain feature at the end of the red arrow is a deep rock quarry that I have been doing the engineering on for the last 22+ years; it's kinda cool to see your handiwork written large on the landscape (my instructor was impressed the first time we flew over it).

 

Another airport, another dollar

 

My office view today. In one hour I drive to Barcelona for tapas and home tomorrow for three days and then Bulgaria for four days.

 

Three pilots are walking through the forest when they come upon a set of tracks.
The Air Force pilot says, "Those are deer tracks."
The Army pilot says, "No, those are elk tracks."
The Navy pilot says, "You're both wrong! Those are moose tracks."
The pilots were still arguing when the train hit them...

 

Fixed it for you lololol

 

Feeding the little beastie after today's training flight, No. 12 for me. I'm guessing we gobbled up about 9 gallons of 100LL Avgas at $8.99/gal.



This is the second consecutive training session I've deliberately scheduled for the early morning, in order to avoid the gusty convection-driven winds of the mid- to late-afternoon. Leveling the playing field a bit has increased the quality of my tarmac-level training time. The taxiing and hovering I did today was a dramatic improvement over what I did just a few flight-hours ago. But next week I go back to afternoon training, and wind (this was of my choosing).

I thought fellow aviation enthusiasts would enjoy a photo of this magnificent machine, which I saw it parked inside the hangar last week at the FBO I fly out of at KBUR. I'm prohibited from snapping photos inside the hangar (is that a post-9/11 thing?) so I grabbed this photo from the NASA web site. It's probably here because of the proximity of JPL -- just 18km (11 miles) away from KBUR as the crow flies.

 

That's interesting. I wonder what use does NASA have for something that flies that slow

 

Came.to Florida to pick up this beauty. Check out that panel

 

I have been harvesting from this baby to feed our fleet for about a year now. I expect to finally cut her up in August. Killing one to keep six flying is cheaper than purchasing individual spare parts.

 

But I can’t quite make out the brand/type of clock, other than possibly Clock 8Day.

 

Its probably branded Beechcraft and made by Wakmann.

 

Beech King Air?
Interesting how the co-pilot gets an analog instrument panel and the pilot in command gets glass.

 

I guess rank does have its privileges,