Aviation BS and Photo Thread

What is the shutdown for?

 

what did they shut down for?

 

The airport I fly into to visit my parents has been closed for over a month with an open date of Feb 15 for LED lights. LIGHTS!

 

Rumor is a deep clean due to a COVID outbreak.

 

What he said. I guess someone tested positive in the workstation so everybody had to get out to have the place cleaned.



In other news, this year I have flown 314.5 hours for my full-time job, 89 hours in my own airplane, and 14.6 hours picking up contract trips on my days off. Those are pretty good numbers given the global pandemic! I am lucky and very thankful to have held on to my job all year without the "F" word being tossed around among the pilot group even once. Over the course of the year, I only experienced one AOG activity that caused me to spend the night with the airplane when we were supposed to return home (we got stuck in Eagle, Colorado for one night in the fall so it wasn't all bad ). This year marks one of the lowest hour generating years for my own airplane since I've had it. With this year not even cracking 100 hours, my yearly average for the Cardinal has dropped to 130 hours. One goal of mine for next year is to try to fly more contract trips on my days off. Scheduling those can be difficult but the extra money sure is nice! How did the rest of you fair for 2020?

 

I’m at 355 to date with about 5 hours for today. Would’ve easily broken 400 if the pandemic hadn’t slowed us to a near stop back in the spring.
Long Island the other night on the Bouno

 

I’m finishing the year at 72 hours. Lot of canceled trips this year, mostly due to weather and maintenance. Plan to add a seaplane rating in 2021 and at least break 100 hours.

 

Did 180 hours this year, honestly pretty good for the military.

 

I want to add a seaplane rating as well. A couple of my friends went to Jack Brown's this year and did it and it looked so fun

 

Yeah, that seems a pretty popular place to do it. Since our club plans to put amphibs on a Husky, I’m going to Alabama to do it in an amphib husky for less than the usual Florida places.

 

Where in Alabama? Jack Brown's is surprisingly affordable given the location.

 

I'll hopefully be going to get Sea and Tail next year - after finishing up Instrument early '21, Commercial, CFI and CFII, Ideally with MEI. The Sea and Tail will be extra-curricular. Thinking Traverse City for Sea...May look into a nice southerly location.

 

You lucky guys. Last time I flown was 96.

 

Been putting some hours on the simulator when I have time trying to learn everything that I can and remember all that I can from flying with Dad.
I wasted some time tonight fooling around with the old style garmin and steam gauges, the steam gauges aren’t bad but trying to configure AP on the 530 is different enough that I wasted digital fuel and time between KBPT and KGPT.
I do have to say I like the digital fuel readout and calculator.

 

I spent all too long (fortunately just 2-3 minutes wondering why you would have removed the left yoke. SMH...Sim graphics are too good! lol

 

It’s crazy how good the graphics are! Unfortunately my PC can’t run MSFS on much higher than “medium” settings so while the cockpit looks amazing the exterior view isn’t quite as real looking.

 

Happy New Year!!

My flight time dropped quite a bit this year due to obvious reasons, but also because I had my 2nd son in April and I took 101 days off of flying to be home during peak pandemic months. I was fortunate that SWA had a program available to allow me to stay home for a bit. I got back to full time flying on July 1.

Total flight time this year was 466 hours, compared with 810 hours in 2019. Here are the legs I flew this year (repeated legs are not shown).

 

Was happy to get 30 hours/month. Flew 100+ hours/month during Desert Storm.

 

188 hours this year for me... I'm usually at 225+ but:

1. I started an aviation business
2. I bought 2 planes (and leased a third)
3. I hired 4 pilots and 4 airborne sensor operators
4. My crews flew over 1,000 hours of low level aerial survey in every major class B and C airspace in the lower 48.
5. I'm still grinning every day.

6. Oh, and of those 188 hours, I finally crossed over 1,000 hours

 

I passed my written IFR exam...then limped through two approaches. Saturation killed me. Brain needs more power! Can't wait to post big routes and such!! Maybe even break 100 hrs by March!