A Man and His Airplane

This past Friday, the weather was nice enough to go flying. As my company has been giving us Friday afternoons off, I could have gone. However, I was feeling somewhat tired, and I examine what my motivation would have been had I gone. One of the aspects of owning and maintaining an airplane of that vintage is that you want to run the engine on a fairly regular basis. If you let it sit too long, moisture can make its way into the cylinders and cause some corrosion. Over the long term, it reduces the lifetime of the cylinders, and even the entire engine. So, something I've tried to do is fly the plane every couple of weeks or so. Friday, I realized that my main motivation was the obligation I felt to run the plane as often as I could. But I determined that it wasn't really enough of a reason to go absent any others. So I decided to stay home. I figured I'd fly it again in the next couple of weeks and that would be plenty soon enough. Yesterday, my wife became ill. We don'...

I took Monday and Tuesday of this week off from work. I was going to do so regardless of the weather but it turned out to be absolutely gorgeous both days. So, I did what you would expect if you're reading this and I went flying both days. Monday's flight was a planned cross-country to Orcas Island. As with my flight to Friday Harbor the previous weekend, I wanted to scout out the route, so to speak, because I'd like to fly there with my wife someday soon for a visit. The airport is located in the town of Eastsound. It doesn't appear that there any hotels there, so it might be difficult to stay overnight without a car. If nothing else, however, we could fly out in the morning and spend the day there walking through town and enjoying the shops and restaurants. After activating my flight plan, I took off and climbed to my cruise altitude of 4500 feet. My route stayed over the mainland until I reached Chuckanut, at which point I turned east and headed toward Lummi Island. ...

One very positive aspect of being a pilot in the Puget Sound region is the existence of the San Juan Islands, as well as the other islands and coastal areas that make up the region. There are many airports, large and small, scattered throughout the islands and they make for fantastic flying opportunities. Today, I took advantage of that and made a flight out to Friday Harbor. The town of Friday Harbor is a picturesque community on San Juan Island, after which the archipelago is named. Friday Harbor Airport is a small, one runway airport located on the south side of the town. I flew out there for a few reasons. I'm hoping to take my wife out there, hopefully later this year, and stay a few nights. We took the ferry to Friday Harbor a few years ago and had a nice time. Flying there would, I think, make for a wonderful vacation. I wanted to scout out the route, so to speak, and see what the airport was like. I wanted to practice talking with ATC and using flight following. I wanted to...

Here in Washington State, everyone will become eligible for the Covid vaccine beginning April 15. Up to now, I haven't been eligible under state guidelines even though I'm over 50 years old. I don't meet any of the other requirements such as working in an environment where I might be exposed, taking care of someone who is more susceptible, and so on. At some point in the next couple days I'll try to set up an appointment. My preference is for one of the vaccines that require two doses (e.g. the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines) but, if it came down to it, I'd take the Johnson&Johnson one-dose vaccine despite it's lower (but still impressive) effectiveness. Which brings us to flying. The FAA has said that pilots should not fly for 48 hours after receiving any Covid vaccine injection. So, for the two-dose vaccines, this means no flying for two days after the first dose, and again after the second dose. When I get an appointment, I'm going to try for one early in...

When the human malware situation hit last March, my company told us all to go home and to work from home until further notice. When it became apparent that "two weeks to flatten the curve" was going to last a lot longer than that, they instituted a policy where Friday's would be devoted to learning new information and skills, that the workday would end at 1:00, and that we were to take the afternoon for ourselves. The weather yesterday morning was marginal, but it improved as the day went on and, by the time 1:00 rolled around, it was actually pretty nice. So I did what you might expect if you're reading this and I took Ariel up for a couple of hours. The first thing I did was to go around the pattern a couple of times. After the porpoise incident during my previous flight, I posted about it to the Beech Aero Club forum. I received some good advice on how to improve my landings in this plane and I wanted to put it to use. I'd been thinking about just what I did wr...