A Man and His Airplane

After I went flying with the instructor yesterday, I checked the weather forecast and it looked like today and tomorrow were going to be rather crappy. Though I wanted to go for a solo flight in Ariel as soon as I could, I resigned myself to the fact that good flying days are not as common as we would like in the part of country, and at this time of year. So, when I looked out the window at about 2:00pm this afternoon, I was surprised to find that it wasn't raining and, while it was overcast, the ceiling appeared to be plenty high for VFR. I double-checked the conditions at Paine Field, which is near Harvey, and the ceiling there was almost 4000'. I decided I was going to take the opportunity to fly if I could so I told my wife I was heading to the airport, got my stuff together, and drove out there. When I got there, it did indeed look like the conditions were sufficiently good. There were several aircraft in the air already, some flying the pattern, others heading out away fr...

 The weather cooperated this afternoon and it actually turned out to be a pretty nice day for flying, at least relative to the normal weather around here this time of year. The instructor I was originally scheduled to do this with became unavailable so I was assigned a different instructor. This instructor didn't have any experience in a Musketeer, but he does own a mid-60s V-tail Bonanza so he at least has experience with Beechcraft aircraft. Because this was a plane he'd never flown before, I was asked to bring the maintenance logs for the plane. The previous owner had organized all of the paperwork for the plane into a set of binders which he gave me in a duffel bag along with the logbooks. So I brought the entire bag because I knew from weighing it that it weighed 27 lbs. If you remember from my last post, I was probably going to need some weight in the baggage compartment to balance the plane and, as it turned out, this bag, along with my regular flight bag, fit the bill n...

At least some of you are probably aware of an activity called wakeboarding. It's like water skiing, except you are on a single, wide board and the idea is to use the wake of the boat to launch you into the air and do various tricks. It's a lot like snowboarding on the water. Something I discovered today is that there's a technique for adjusting the wake that the boat makes by changing the weight distribution of the boat. This is done by adding weight in the form of ballast to the boat in a particular location so it moves the overall center of gravity forward or backward. There are products available to make this easy. Some are containers for water. Some of those are even shaped to fit more easily into the various locations of the boat, such as the bow. Others are containers for solid material, such as bags of steel shot. I bring this up because the Beechcraft Musketeer has one very critical difference from a Cessna 172. It has a markedly more narrow C.G. envelope. For examp...

Now that I own my own airplane, and am on my way to becoming a more "serious" pilot, I've been picking up some additional gear to enhance my flying experience. When I began my pilot training, I did what many student pilots do and purchased the least expensive headset the FBO sold in the pilot shop. The ASA headset worked perfectly well, though, and I kept it through my training and beyond. When I became current again late last year, I pulled it out and, although the cushions had been indented from sitting in their case for all those years, it still fit fine, and still worked fine. It's reasonably comfortable and I have no issues with it. For Christmas, my wife gave me a David Clark H10-13.4 headset. While the ASA headset is fine, the DC is far superior in terms of comfort. Back in the day, the standard was that the microphone boom was basically a metal framework that had a hinge in the middle. Now, flexible booms are the standard and they're much easier to adjust,...

I've owned my airplane for a week, but I haven't flown it yet. As I noted earlier, my insurance company requires that I receive an hour of dual instruction in the plane before I fly it as pilot in command, either solo or with one or more passengers, and this is currently scheduled for this Friday afternoon. Weather permitting, of course. In the meantime, I've been doing some homework. First thing is to go through the Pilot Operating Handbook for the plane. For those not familiar with pilot-speak, the POH is basically the user manual for the airplane, much like the one that comes with a new car. With a car, you can get in and drive it after some familiarization with its operation provided by the dealer or the person you bought it from. Or just sitting in it and noting where the controls are. With an airplane, doing that would be foolhardy if you've never flown that model of airplane before. Since I've flown only Cessnas, this is the situation I'm in. In addition ...

And here she is, parked in her hangar. I've decided to name her "Ariel". No, she's not named after Disney's version of The Little Mermaid. Rather, she is named after the title character of the book "Ariel" by author Steven Boyett. The book tells the story of a world where magic has returned, and advanced technology no longer works. As another consequence of The Change, as it's called, mythical and magical creatures have also returned, including unicorns. Ariel is a unicorn who befriends the main character, and they have various adventures together. My airplane has a decal of a unicorn on either side of the tail, which was put there by the person who owned the plane before the person I bought it from. I'm certainly going to leave the decals there because this plane is, metaphorically, somewhat of a unicorn, considering its unique qualities. And that is what gave the inspiration for her name. It also hasn't escaped my notice that "Ariel...

Back in 2002 I started training for my private pilot's license. It took the better part of a year but I completed my training in 2003, passed my check ride, and obtained my license. I flew several times after that, but then life intervened. For the next fourteen years, I stayed on the ground, unless I was in a plane with a lot of either people that was piloted by someone else. Various events, such as getting married, buying a home, dealing with periods of unemployment, and so on forced me to keep flying on the back burner, so to speak. During that time, and especially in the last couple of years, I pondered what kind of flying I really wanted to do. I was considering trying a simpler form, such as a powered parachute or an ultralight. Not only would it be less complicated, but it would also be considerably less expensive to own such an aircraft. But time went by and I continued to do nothing. I had played around with flight simulator software since the early 80s. My first computer ...