I didn’t know I had connivance. I’ll have to get those inserts for my shoes, which I think takes care of that. Axel was a great passenger. He loved the entire ride and he pointed out all sorts of interesting nature events and talked about the recently published study about the effectiveness of...

Axel Meyer, a professor of evolutionary biology from Germany, was in town for a few days. He likes to fly and I had not seen him for a while so, with Colin’s connivance, we hooked up for a morning of flying to Santa Barbara. Axel was due in SB for a seminar so he and I met at the crack of dawn at...

Adam thinks that the plane has been in the shop more than it should, given that it is a new plane. I'll admit that a few of the times I would like to have taken Nell and the boys on a weekend trip we haven't been able to go because the plane was having some work done, but here's a list so far of...

I stopped writing on this blog because it was made crashingly clear to me that not only was it a public forum, but that some people regarded it as non-fiction. I was appalled at first, indignant that a writing exercise could be read as an unbiased view of events. I wrote here to satisfy an inner...

The LA basin is a wonderful place to fly. Losing an engine more than 10 miles from an airport is really hard to do and the low level flying provides striking images. What I like best about it (aside from being in the air) is the radio chatter. The controllers in LA are the best in the country. They...

Oh, I wish I were a better student. Here are the things I need to do before I take my Instrument Rating check ride with an FAA examiner, and my progress on them as of March 17 2006. Written Test I’m using a set of DVDs from the King School of Aviation. I’m fifteen percent of the way through them....

I haven’t flown that many planes. In fact, my online logbook says that I’ve only flown nine different types and only three of those are more than four hours. One is less than an hour. But having spent over sixty hours in the DiamondStar DA40, it is everything I want a small plane to be.

So Adam and I have carefully planned our flight to Ryan Field, Arizona. We have an oxygen system, plotted flight plan, information about the airport we’re headed to, and information about airports along the way. We have snacks packed, liters and liters of water, and even a bunch of “Brief Relief”...

I made it into the FAA database! Oh. Maybe that’s not a good thing. Okay, the longer story: I’ve been making as many trips to Las Vegas in a DiamondStar as the US Aero representative will fly along on. So Robert Stewart (the representative) said he would meet Adam at the Long Beach Airport and fly...

Oh dear, Adam has written so much more in the blog than I have. I tend to get caught behind because I have a story I want to tell and I’m bad at telling stories out of order. So I’ve wanted to tell the story of our departure from Paso Robles since the end of November. I have at least half a dozen...