Friday, June 26, 2009

FlyingBlogFeed goes Live!! Cheerleader


After a lot of work and a tortuous learning curve (details on request) I am proud to offer FlyingBlogFeed.

I've built a website that aggregates the best of aviation blogs, sorted by category. I hope to keep the list fairly short - no more than 12 in each category that meet my 3 criteria:
  • Aviation related
  • Interesting
  • Regularly updated

This SHOULD be your "one stop shop" for the best of aviation blogs. Please visit and submit any comments (particularly in reference to the organizational structure or new feed recommendations) using the form on the website.

www.flyingblogfeed.com (or click the picture)

Our thanks to Sir Jacob .D. Fredrickson Esq, billionaire creator of the Zeppelin GPS dash mount, for taking time out from his Zeppelin world tour to design the FBF logo.

Saturday, June 20, 2009

Lake Hood Beaver Crash



Link to you tube video of crash

No one was injured.

The accident report sanguinely states: "AIRCRAFT ON TAKEOFF STRUCK A FENCE AND CRASHED, ANCHORAGE, AK", so I'll be interested to see what the NTSB final says. Probably just pilot error, but maybe it was heavy, too.

I'm not going to second guess - it's bad enough what happened. Obviously SOME mistake was made... lol. Poor guy - bad luck having the videographer there (unlesss they were together?).

What ever happened, it's a real shame to mess up a beautiful bird like that...

Monday, June 8, 2009

Bird Strike... Close to Home

You thought I was going to go on about US Airways Flight 1549 like every other pilot with internet access... lol

One of my employer's three-sevens flew into a few ducks climbing out of Fairbanks in late May. I wasn't on the plane.






Sunday, May 31, 2009

First Movie

This is a video I made a couple years (my first and last to this point, lol). Next time I won't let it focus on the raindrops... And I'll edit out that skidding turn to downwind, lol.

Saturday, May 23, 2009

Instrument Progress One

Let's see... so far I have an instructor I really like. Our temperaments are a good match and she rides a pretty good line between telling me what to do and letting me make my own mistakes. I CAN get pretty confused... and she seems to enjoy saying "I don't know..." when I ask "where are we?" a little sadistically if the truth be told, lol.

She's not the anal checklist type, but IS very professional and so far seems more 'learn-by-doing' than lecture which suits me fine too.

My steep turns under the hood were so bad I made myself sick, but I got them semi-tamed finally. We only have a little over 6 simulated hours and our last flight was partial panel radial intercepts... which REALLY confused me, but I'll get it :-) It's hard to imagine that visualizing ones position relative to a NDB or VOR (now which side is that radial on exactly?) becomes intuitive but I'm sure it'll come. My MS Flight Simulator is a big help actually.

It's going slower, is harder and will end up costing more than I thought it would be, and I have to lay off a few weeks because of work, but I can still have it wrapped up this summer. I'm beginning to doubt I can finish the commercial this summer too, though.

I passed the written by studying with the Sportys DVD course and the online 'Study Buddy' to get the endorsement thinking it would save me money, but now I'm not so sure... I'm in a 141 program so I have to log 30 hours of ground time regardless. I also took the written a little too early I think - If I'd have waited longer more of it would makes sense. Oh well... it's out of the way at least.