Marc's Flying Experiences

Happy National Aviation Day

Today is National Aviation Day, so get out there and celebrate by aviating. Why today? Well, it's Orville Wright's birthday, of course.

Beautiful Morning

I have a couple of small trips (with passengers) planned in the next few weeks, so I decided to shake the rust off this morning. It was the first flight since (I think) my anniversary trip with Beth last month. For not having flown in a month, it wasn't too bad.

A nice morning to take 5RC up and practice slow flight (seems silly in such a high performance airplane), landings, and to go to the toy store at DPA. I had to get updated Chicago charts and get the "Green Bay" chart that extends all the way up to UP Michigan.

Today:
1.0 Tach/1.2 Hobbes, 2 @ C09, 1 @ KDPA, 1 @ LL10

Upcoming Events:
27 Jun 2004 - Fly-in breakfast with the wife up in Walworth, WI
10 Jul 2004 - Golf (?) trip with Rich and maybe the ladies...

SpaceShip One

So they finally did it. Scaled Composities created the first civillian astronaut this morning with the successful pre X Prize test run.

Boing Boing has a good writeup with links and stuff...

Cool.

Amana, IA

This report is a bit overdue, but I figured that I would throw something quick up... For our anniversary, Beth and I have decided that we should try to fly somewhere new every year. Last year we had planned a camping trip out in Ohio, with a day or two at Cedar Point. Well that turned out to be a bust because I got sick the night before we were going to leave. Dinner and a movie it was.

Well this year, we decided that we would try to keep it to a shorter trip, with the hopes that we could always do it either saturday or sunday in the event one of us wasn't feeling well. Our trip was to be a quick (few hour) lunch jaunt, with some shopping in Amana, IA.

Where the wind blows

I think I am going to try to blog about each time I fly, especially since I am lazy about actually putting my flights in my logbook.

Another windy spring day. Another crappy day at the office (so to speak).

Since I haven't really done crosswind landings in awhile, I decided to give Saturday a go. I figure that by the time I was done, I'd be all set and ready to go back to Naper (LL10).

It all started with the takeoff. I couldn't hold the centerline worth a darn, but unfortunately at that point I was more than halfway down the 2000 ft of asphalt, so I couldn't abort. Well, I said, let's go for it and play at a longer runway. There are options around, worst case, that would allow me to land without much of a crosswind.

I play around down at Morris (C09) and have the worst time of my life. It definately is more difficult doing a right crosswind than a left crosswind. Something psychological about it, I suppose. Anyway, I decide to build my confidence back up over at Lewis (KLOT) since I could play with a left crosswind. There I had one of my better crosswind landings in a long time. Don't know if it was my best, but it certainly had me feeling good. Waited awhile to get back off--it was an oddly busy day--so I decided to go back to Naper. Had a prety good landing in the grass with a right crosswind.

Time: 1.0 tach == 1.2 actual
Landings: 4 @ C09, 1 @ KLOT, 1 @ LL10