(Again, as I post this in March 2024, please forgive the tardiness! Life has been busy (and Typepad annoying), but rest assured the flying and the fun hasn’t abated! In fact, besides a number of adventures I’ll cover in the next few posts (including OSHKOSH 2023), I’m starting a new flying adventure that I’ll update soon, and in a more timely fashion!)
With the weather not cooperating much in January of the new year, the only flying related time was a few hours in the AATD flight simulator at Three Wing, shooting multiple approaches in some of the worst weather conditions I could throw into the machine—thunderstorms with lightning, pouring rain, gusty variable winds, 200’ minimums for clouds—oh, and all at night! It was good practice despite the fact that I am way to cautious to be caught in almost ANY of those conditions!
In early February, I had a fun flight to help Dan celebrate his 10th anniversary of becoming a flight instructor! I picked up Milton at Brookhaven and then we flew the southern shore of Long Island westward to meet up with 4 other planes in NYC Harbor, south of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge (a waypoint called TICKL). Once we’d all arrived and flew a couple of counter-clockwise circles to space out, we started north and flew the VFR (visual) flight corridor up the Hudson River before then breaking off to have a fun brunch together at Lincoln Park Airport (N07) in New Jersey. Liz even drove out from the city to join us and had apparently taken some photos of all of us as we passed up the river.
I landed a new job in February, and with a start date at the end of March, Michiko and I wanted to have a fun day out ahead of time, so in mid-March, we flew out to Jimmy Stewart Airport (KIDI) in Indiana, PA. Unfortunately, we had horrible headwinds on the way out AND the electric trim on the autopilot decided to fail as we reached our cruise altitude, so I had to handfly the 2.8 hours instrument flight westbound. It’s a good thing I stay in practice with my simulator flying and hand-flying some of my approaches! (I will say though that the tailwind we had coming home kept us over 170kts the whole way!)
We had a fantastic time at the airport (really nice folks who lent us the crew car to run into the town itself to visit the Jimmy Stewart Museum) where there are a number of Jimmy Stewart exhibits and memorabilia and a mural. In addition, one of his old Cessna 310s has been refurbished and sits on a pedestal outside the airport—it rotates in the wind and the strobe and navigation lights light up as well! (www.jimmy.org/jimmys-personal-airplane/
The Museum in town is amazing!! Located on the third floor of the Indiana Free Library, the museum has rooms/exhibits dedicated to his hometown/childhood life (including his boyhood bedroom), his military service and flying career, his Hollywood career, and a recreation of his Los Angeles home office. The various tidbits and artifacts, movie costumes, props, posters, etc. are terrific. There’s also a movie theater showing a daily matinee that changes weekly—we unfortunately couldn’t stay for that, but we’ll definitely be back! (www.jimmy.org)
Between the new job and weather, the spring was a tough month to fly. One piece of evidence was in mid-May when I went out to pre-flight and ended up spending a couple hours removing the tail cone of the airplane to dig out a bird’s next and then carefully re-attach the cone. It’s really just a lot of screws, but there are a LOT of screws!!!
In early May, I had to head out to Illinois to see Bruce for my medical certification exam. Michiko decided to come with me, so we made a short trip out of it for us, allowing me to also go into the Chicago office to visit. On the way out (and back), our fuel stop was Carroll County Airport (KTSO) in Carrollton, OH (eastern OH not too far from the PA border) where we found cheap fuel and delicious pie—each day, they have something like 15+ varieties of pie available! Out in IL, our destination was actually Gary, Indiana (KGYY) again and as usual, we had fantastic service—they were kind enough to load our bags quickly into an SUV and drop us off at the whistle-stop train stop just south of the field with a couple minutes to spare for a Chicago-bound train. Similarly, when we came back out from the city a couple days later, they graciously picked us up for the hop back to the airport.
Comments