I'm often asked about the costs of flying.  Adding up the receipts, the total fuel cost for last week's round-trip from Toronto to Logan was $1422.08 ( Read more... )

One of the most important skills a pilot can have is good decision making.  It's not the split-second reflexes that really count, but choices made on a time scale of minutes.  Obviously nothing went too badly wrong on this adventure, but there are still things that I could have done better.
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Last Friday, together with my intrepid navigator probabilistic, I set out to fly to a conference in Logan Utah.  Our outbound route was:

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The cooling towers of the Didcot A Power Station were demolished last night.  YouTube videos of the controlled explosions abound ( Read more... )

I love the thinking behind hitchBOT, and wish it well on its journey to the west coast.  It occurs to me that this is the same trust in the kindness of Canadian strangers that we were taught as children by Paddle-to-the-Sea.

Just one, if you're willing to wait 2 months.

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I have, inspired by VY, finished reading the original novel of Peter Pan.  It is a strange, strange book and nothing Disney has produced will prepare you for it.

I don't believe I can chronicle all of the weirdness in it.  It makes it pretty clear, for example, that Captain Hook attended Eton College.  I have to wonder if he went to my prep school

I suffered my first actual in-flight aircraft failure yesterday. ( Read more... )

In Whatcom County, Washington State there is a VORTAC beacon called "Whatcom".  Like all VORTACs it broadcasts a three letter Morse code identifier.  Its special code is "HUH". 

Freedom looks like many different things to many different people.  Here is mine.  I now have a folding bike to fit in the back of the plane.
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