Posted by admin in Flying
It was a fine plane and it outlasted nearly every other radio control craft I have yet owned, but today the T-34 sucumbed to less than skillful flying by yours truly and met its end upon high tension power lines.
The World Models T-34 Mentor would never win any beauty awards for scale looks or accurate renditions of the original airplane, but it was a hardy, reliable and very easy to fly craft. If not for some poor covering material that was shedding after years of faithful service it could have been one of the best planes ever built.
While it will never More >
Posted by mstroud in Flying
I decided to push the limits a bit for my birthday this year and see just how much airplane I could handle. What I learned is that while I can probably fly a bigger, faster, more complicated airplane just fine it isn’t a walk in the park by any means.
This trip included a flight in a rare (for renters) bird indeed: the Beech Mentor T-34A/B. The flying club happens to have one and my CFI is checked out in it so we took it for an hour around the Half Moon Bay area. What makes it tricky for me is More >
Posted by mstroud in Flying
Just over a week has passed since I was RIF’d from my most recent job at AMD. It is taking some getting used to waking up in the morning with no structured day or firm place to go. On the plus side, I am using substantially less fuel than I was just a few weeks ago, so that must be good I guess. In the meantime I continue to look around for what my next gig will be.
Next on the list of things to be worried about is my flying or lack thereof. I’m at a point in my training More >
Posted by mstroud in Flying
If my calculations are correct after this past weekends cross country flight I now have 133.6 flight hours, 6.5 night hours, 19.4 PIC hours and 3.2 hours of simulated instrument training with all of my required flying done ahead of the written and flight test for the Private Pilot Certificate. This is good news, of a sort, since it means that the first major phase of flight training is nearing an end. And with AvGas at nearly $5.90 a gallon it couldn’t happen soon enough.
I now have to do a few more brush up flights to stay frosty, start figuring More >
Posted by mstroud in Flying
I have now completed two-thirds (or 2 out of 3) of the FAA required cross country flights and am closing in on my private pilot’s license (properly known as a Private Ticket). This flight was a bit more difficult than the previous in one in that I had to fly somewhere I’d never been; I had to deal with a very busy flight corridor around SJC airport; I had light and variable chop coming over the mountain ridges; The crosswinds at the airports were very challenging; And it was over 90 F in the cockpit the entire time. I did however More >
Posted by mstroud in Flying
This weekend I completed another milestone in the flight training regimen: a cross country (50+ miles from the home airport) flight with only me at the controls of the aircraft. I chose an airport that I had visited previously, Modesto (KMOD), and it was a pretty uneventful flight. I didn’t get lost and I didn’t use the GPS (mostly) to find my way there. All in all it was very straightforward.
One down, two more and a bunch of little procedural stuff to go before that private ticket is mine.
Posted by mstroud in Flying
I took one of the last flights home last night from Austin. As is AA’s custom, they placed two rows of children around me on this journey. Normally I just put in the headphones and deal with the problem, however on this flight some of the children decided they needed to be rowdy and play up and down the aisles during most of the flight. This left me and most of the passengers near the front of the plane (no business class for me) to be forever vigilant about our arms, elbows, and any items we had on our trays.
What really More >
Posted by mstroud in Flying
I’ve recently flown a version of the Citabria with nearly 180 horsepower. The standard version I fly is down around 115. The extra bump doesn’t seem like much on paper, but man, it really gets the plane moving in a hurry. I can climb far faster than I’m used to, stay at altitude, and cruise at max speed no matter what. And before you ask, no it doesn’t burn much more avgas than the standard version.
The downsides of this new plane are: it’s more expensive to rent and I am now “behind the airplane” a lot more than I used More >
Posted by mstroud in Flying
That’s my sad slug for flying under simulated instrument conditions, night time flying, and doing recoveries from unusual attitudes. When combined, these three activities equal some serious fright (yes, it’s a sad pun, but deal with it).
Simulated instrument flying is flying around with a “hood” or view limiting device on your head so that you can only see the instruments in the cockpit. That leaves me with no idea where I am and following the directions barked out by the CFI behind me. It is a bit disorienting to fly this way as I feel lost and a bit off More >
Posted by mstroud in Flying
It’s true, I’m sorta, kinda, afraid of solo flying. Not the “normal” flying stuff, but anything new. This poses a bit of a problem, since at this point in my learning to fly I need to be doing the flying all by myself virtually all of the time.
On Saturday and Sunday this week I flew solo. Saturday was just laps around the pattern, landing, takeoffs, taxi backs, the normal stuff. That is fine and I’m comfortable doing it for the most part. Sunday my CFI pushed me to fly out to the coast and do some “air work.” This is More >
