Kindergarten

After last weeks flight, my oldest son regaled the classroom and his teacher about his flying abilities. His teacher then suggests he bring his Dad in for some duel show and tell about flying.

How fun! I've volunteered for classroom before and know most of the boys from coaching in Little League, so I’m familiar with the environment.

I'm still going over in my head about how and what to talk about. We have about 15 minutes or so. My first idea is bring in all the headsets in the house and work with my son on how he wears them and how we speak to the controllers, each other, etc. We can then dump them on the floor and do some hands on with that.

Another idea is to pin a Class B chart on cardboard and stick an aerial picture or two on it for reference (The school and nearby park).

Anyway, trying to keep short, simple, interactive and most of all fun.

Scott Crossfield

After my last post I read news article referencing the death of Scott Crossfield in the crash his 210. I won't speculate about the cause online, but one thing I noticed in comments already was the platitude, "He died doing what he loved"

Knowing what I do from reading about his meticulous flight testing and later his involvement in flight training and awareness I seriously doubt he won't take any joy in adding his name to an FAA accident report.

Condolences to his family, and fly high pilot spirit, show us the way.

Boy's Flight

Last Thursday the sky cleared, it was spring break, and my wife was out town and was holding down the home front with the boys. Time to go flying!

A quick check of the Ahart online schedule and we were off to the airport.

Flying with my sons highlights two reasons for avoiding the pitfalls of sloppy pilot ness. One, it's my job to keep them safe. Two, I want to set a good example.

For this flight both items are checked. I've been able to include my oldest on more of the preflight duties and he takes special pride in the fuel drain duties.

I opted to fly the SP instead of the 182. I like to use the 182 just to keep sharp in it, but with the extra duty of two kids, I figured I’ll just go with the easy bird.

Once we were strapped in and ready to go, no easy feat with one car seat and a booster(Hey aircraft manufacturers, how about adding latch to your seats?), we taxied to the end of 25 right. My youngest was all good to go and smiles to this point so we were go for stage two.

We would start off with an initial short flight from LVK to over fly our house and my oldest son’s school. This would give us the ability to turn back quickly if things went bad with the little guy and give him a good point of reference. I used the line, 'See we’re the plane above out house today!'

Side note on that topic; each time I've been over my house at the appropriate altitude I realize that some of the pilots the over fly our house and really low. Now if you’re the P-51 that buzzed the house I'm all up for that, but the rest of you....

Anyway, things went well so we continued on (little guy opted for nap time shortly after the home over flight) and made out way to Half Moon Bay. A run on the beach, some dinner and a brownie for desert and we headed back.

I switched the little guy to the back and my older son assumed co-pilots duty. I take some perverse amusement that even with all the so called security measures in place a six year was at the controls just over the Golden Gate Bridge.(yes, yes I was still really doing the flying, but chalk it up to video games, he holds a great level course already)

A low pass over the moth ball fleet and a direct over flight of Mt Diablo capped off a great evening.

Doesn't get much better than that, I'm advertising our next adventure as a flight to Columbia.

Spreading my wings

Since I'm traveling back and forth to San Antonio over the next few months, with at least one trip to last several weeks, I decided to see what there is available to rent in the area.

Surprisingly there are very few late model aircraft around on flight lines, and the area seems to have gone through a bit of a slump.(Based on reading a few posts here and there and the disappearance of a couple of schools)

In the end I ran across Wright Flyers. I stopped by on the last trip and filled out the mountain of required paperwork, and I'll schedule a check ride on the next visit.

Of note, they have several late model 172's, one with the G1000. Two Grumman Cougars (!), and pretty amazing modular flight deck simulator. If you’re in the area check them out.