Not much to type here, really… The video speaks for itself.

Early in my flight training, I’d often grab one of the video cameras we have here at work and take it to the flight school. I’d give it to a passenger or my instructor or stick it up on the dash in the window of the Cessna 172. I found a tape I’d shot late last year and threw together some of the better shots of the hour long flight. It’s certainly nothing amazing, but it does show you a little of how pretty flying around Savannah and the Coastal Islands of the low country can be — especially at twilight. Yeah, yeah… for those pro aviators out there, the landing leaves a bit to be desired, but, “Hey!,” it was only a little over a month into my training. And, as the infamous aviation saying goes:

Any landing that you can walk away from is a good landing.

Needless to say, after eight more months, my recent landings are straight down the runway center-line and a lot more coordinated.

You can click on the above image or link to check out the video… I’ll see what other video(s) I can dig out of the archives over the next few months and post more when time permits. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this short segment.

I’m not too sure whose idea it was to allow VFR (Visual Flight Rules) pilots — meaning you have to be able to see outside to avoid hitting things — to fly at night. Don’t get me wrong… It’s nice to not be grounded by the absence of the sun. For instance, it is great that you can take a flight in the late afternoon knowing that it will terminate well into night and be able to do so legally having only your VFR rating. It’s great that you can fly at dark, in darkness if you want. But, night is a little more than contradictory to the “visual flight rules.”

At night, there are plenty of times where you can’t see anything at all — no horizon, no lights, nothing. Times like these leave you having to rely on your instruments only. That’s not a bad thing and it’s not crazy scary or anything, but to me it is a little more than contradictory to what the VFRs constantly pound into your brain. Such was the case light night over open ocean (You can see last night’s flight in the above pic. Clicking it will take you to ‘Flight Watch’ where you can track all kinds of flights. Cool site… But, I’m wandering here…). So, yeah… last night’s night flight… I took off from Savannah and headed to open ocean, enroute to Charleston. When over water, you couldn’t tell the difference from a star versus the light on a buoy. If banked, turning 30 degrees (which is a lot), you can’t see the turn and you can’t feel it. (see JFK Jr.) You have to have total reliance on your instruments. VFR prohibits you from flying into clouds. Well guess what? At night you can’t see clouds until you’re in them. Then, when you are, you have this nice dimmly lit gray fog surrounding you that lights up with the strobes on your wingtips every second. It makes the propeller do that cool, disco strobe freezing thing. So, you have to fight your way back to ‘legal’ and get out of the clouds. That’s fun when they’re low and there’s lot of them. Then, you have to find your airport, which most incidentally have no runways lit for you. You need to turn on the lights yourself. (You do this with your radios by clicking the mic in succession.) Then, you have to land. You get some landing light from the plane cast on the runway when you’re about 50 feet from it.

All in all, night is quite an experience in an airplane. And, experience is something you’ll definitely want when you fly at night. Me… other than the flights that intentionally take me into nighttime, I’ll wait for those perfectly clear, full moon lit nights once I get my license.

So… Anyone want to go night flying?

(It only took 2 months for me to post this… I’ve been a bit slow as of late. But then, the last post being eight months ago should have made that fairly obvious.)

In March, the powers that be saw fit to allow me to fly an airplane solo. On March 10th, I soloed a Cessna 172SP through 3 full stop landings in Statesboro, GA (KTBR). At 21 hrs. I didn’t do a half bad job, especially considering that I had just come off a business trip from Mexico, was half sick (ears popping, coughing… you know… general funk), and hadn’t flown in quite some time. It wasn’t anywhere near as intimidating as I thought it might be. And, in many ways, it was actually a relief to have the cockpit all to myself. Instructors can actually be a distraction sometime — if you can believe that. I got a chance to make my own decisions; no one was there to tell me what to do. And, in a strange way, this made managing the cockpit much easier in my opinion. The whole experience was more tactile, more conscious, and well, “it’s all you or you’re dead.” I guess that’s just about enough reason right there to make sure you probe down deep in those brain cells, pay attention, and from the depths, grab the knowledge you’ve learned to date and put it to use. All in all, at the end of the solo flight, I had executed all the pattern flight and maneuvers within tolerance, did a fairly decent job on my radio communication, and had a nice, leisurely flight back to Savannah’s Class C airport (KSAV).

Since my solo flight I’ve put another 12 hours of solo time in the logbook and completed my cross country flights. I need a minimum of 10 hours of solo (and more dual, with an instructor) before I can take my written and get my FAA check ride — the final test to getting my private pilot’s license.

A few of these solo flights were quite routine — go to an outlying airport, run the traffic pattern, make 10 landings/take-offs or so in different configurations, and fly back to the home airport.

The last flight I took, however, I decided to make something a bit different. The weather was perfect. I grabbed my camera, some latitude/longitude coordinates, and hit the skies to take some aerial photos — photos of a couple of friend’s houses. One place (7 or so miles SW the airport) sits a 1/2 mile from a 1500 ft. tower with guy wires running out an 1/8th of mile, borders a very active Military Operations Area (Fort Stewart’s MOA) about a mile to the Northwest, has a 500 ft. tower in the back yard, and off to the West has a “tower farm” consisting of three, 1700 ft. transmission towers. I, personally, didn’t even think I’d get clearance from ATC to even head towards all this “madness” at the low altitudes I was requesting (1000 ft.), but to my amazement, I said everything they wanted to hear and they gave me clearance — even though I did get the old, “So… Where do you want to go?!? And what do you want to do there?!” thing — twice. But, after responding again, I guess I told them exactly what they wanted to hear. They nicely cleared me. I headed off, made my way around the antennas (looking over 2000 ft. at the first and seeing 500+ ft. of tower above the plane was reminding me to exercise the caution this area deserved), orbited the property and started snapping pictures. I had to circle the 1500 ft. tower to get a good angle out of the window — and fly the plane at the same time. I circled a few times in order to get some decent photos of the property. ATC was nice enough to vector other traffic away from me once I reported that I was on station. I hung out for 10-15 minutes and headed off North — to the next station (aka. my friend Eric’s place). Overall, a great time and a great flight. Flights are much more fun and interesting when you have a goal or destination in mind — that is, in contrast to just flying around and practicing things all the time.

This flying “stuff,” for lack of a better word right now, has giving me a new reason to actually add more entires to this “blog.” (Yes, I still hate that term and thankfully the general public is slowly killing it without me having to do anything. Yeah! Soon I’ll be able to just type the word “write.”) Ironic that I ‘write’ this at 35 thousand feet; I’m on my way back from another business trip that I had to take — this one to Bogotá, Columbia. Considering I had some hours to kill, it seemed as good a time as any to finally make a flying entry. It’s something I’ve thought about doing for a while now. I’ve just not had the time. But, following the last entry (a long time ago), it seemed appropriate…

There’s quite the flying community out there and there’s lots I can learn from all of them. I hope to take my VFR Private’s to IFR as soon as I complete my ticket. I want to continue flying as often as I can throughout the rest of my life. Being able to fly (especially IFR) will open the “world of adventure” I’ve always so desired more than ever. Meg (the wife) and I can hop in an aircraft and hit all kinds of places in the States and the Bahamas.

I’ve added a new heading to the top menu where I’ll be attempting to start document my flights and progress… as time allows, of course… which, based on the recent past, won’t be too often. I also have a ton of pictures that I need to post. I guess I need to find the time to post them as well… Soon… Soon…

Over and out.