My skydiving school opens this Friday and having not made a jump in five months I’m really ready to grab some air.
Comin’ Home by Dave Adams and The Warrior Song Project – YouTube
Chinook’s Rock!
Chinook helicopters a vital supply line to soldiers.
I spent twelve years in the Minnesota Army National Guard as a UH-1H “Huey” crew chief getting out just as the Blackhawks were coming on line. And while the Hawks get all the press and look really sexy the Chinooks are the real work horse of Army aviation and don’t get the respect they deserve. I love the “ROUGN’N REDDY” nose art on the Australian Chook. Can’t have anything like that on US. aircraft, might offend somebody.
Ferry Flight Pic of The Day
On the taxi ride from the airport to the hotel in Guyana was thirty minutes of scenery and people watching that had to be seen to be believed. The rasta man on the BMX bike getting a pull from the horse drawn wagon yelled “Look at dem white boys in dat cab!” to his friends as we went by. Too funny.
The Deadwood Gang
My weekend out with the boys started with a nerve wracking night IFR flight through low clouds, ice, hail and the occasional dragon thrown in to make things interesting. At least that’s what the professional weather guessers at Lockheed Martin told me to expect on our first leg from Minneapolis to Watertown South Dakota. What we got was one of the nicest nights for flying I’ve had in a long time with nary a cloud in the sky, I wish I could that wrong and still keep my job. Our two passengers were suitably impressed when we turned the runway lights by remote control but slightly less impressed by my co-pilot’s Sea World landing. You know, he touched down nose wheel first causing a series of bounces down the runway called porpoising…….like dolphins……..And Sea World has a dolphin show……………it sounded better in my head.
Made it to the Black hills airport the next morning, myself fifty five dollars richer from a rare winning session of blackjack and all of us a little less fresh from the effort. The Black Hills airport had a pilots lounge that was exactly like you’d expect to find out west. Elk heads, a bear skin rug and black and white pictures of the old days adorned the walls while and instructor poured over maps with his student. It was just the kind airport I’d love to hang out in.
I won’t bore you with the details of our day and evening in Deadwood. Suffice i to say that money was gambled, steaks eaten and brain cells lost, not that we had any to spare. On the way home we took a spin around Mt. Rushmore and flew over the Badlands National Park.
The new Garmin 796 I used on the trip was defiantly impressive. The touch screen made scrolling through maps fast and easy and I really like the smaller size and weight. The improved screen was supposed to be one of the big improvements but I could hardly tell the difference between the 696 and the 796. The 796 is a great GPS and if I didn’t already have a 696 I would buy one in a heartbeat but I don’t think it’s worth the $700 bucks I’d have to shell out to make the switch.
It was a great weekend out with the guys and being able to fly really made it an adventure for my two non-pilot friends but I’m sure one of them was wishing we’d taken the Queen Air with it’s relief tube as he was filling the juice bottle on the way home.
Plane Porn
Yeovilton Air Day 2011 « Fast Air Photography.
More great shots from across the pond.
Ferry Flight Pic of The Day
This is some random island off the coast of Pakistan. This was also about the point in the day that Stu, my co-pilot for that trip, realized that the rumbling in his nether regions he’d felt just before takeoff was turning into a full blown case of food poisoning. We couldn’t go back to Pakistan, and although Iran was just off our right wing I sure as hell wasn’t going to stop there for a potty break. So Stu didn’t have any choice but to do his best and try to keep his precious bodily fluids to himself. For four hours Stu kept the faith and arrived in the United Arab Emirates with his dignity intact. For that I awarded him the golden butt clench award, with oak leaf clusters.
The Ties That Bind (II): Remembering Ned Geiger
Flightdeck Friday — The Ties That Bind (II): Remembering Ned Geiger | Steeljaw Scribe.
Another good man gone, far too soon.
Going To England To See A Baron
Weekend Flight To Deadwood
Heading west tonight with three old high school friends to the fabled city of Deadwood South Dakota for classic male bonding, you know drinking and cards. We are taking a Cessna 182 instead of my Queen Air Black Betty because the annual isn’t quite finished. The difference in flight time is almost an hour, bad enough, but the 182 will require a fuel stop as well. These inconveniences alone would be bad enough but loosing the all important relief tube, no that’s not an intercom, will seriously effect on the beer consumption going on in the back seats, at least I hope so. The 182 isn’t a bad aircraft, I’ve owned two of them and have about a million hours flying skydivers in them. It can haul a reasonable load, necessary for this trip, and it’s fast enough, I guess.
On this trip I’ve got the opportunity to compare my three year old Garmin 696 to the new 796. The 796 has a few new bells and whistles like a touch screen and some sort of synthetic vision on it. I’ve been extremely happy with my 696 having flown around the world with it and will have to be really blown away to spend the money and make the change. I’ll let you all know my impressions when I get back.