I went flying over Niagara Falls yesterday with WMAP.  Here is a shot of the falls from 4,500' ASL.

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With great regret I have canceled my annual pilgrimage to the Utah desert to help students safely launch big rockets.  None of the usual suspects will be there this year, and I can't face the idea of five lonely nights in a motel right now.  I wasn't really looking forward to the 20 hours of flying, or the logistics of getting a rental vehicle to ( Read more... )

Here's another interesting waypoint.  Just south of Iqaluit is OTAKU ( Read more... )

I'm presently studying towards the instrument rating to add to my existing pilot's license.  That will let me fly in cloud, which is key to being able to reliably go in a straight line to where I want to be ( Read more... )

LJ albums seem to have come back (where did they go?) so here are a few snaps from my week in Majorca.

( Photos! )

[LJ albums seem to be broken right now, so posting pretty pictures from Majorca will have to wait.]

probabilistic and I took the Mooney up on Sunday to see just how fast we could make it go.  At 8000' indicated, +13C outside air temp, we managed 158.5 knots.  That's at max RPM, full throttle, with ram air on.  It's fast, but not the advertised 175 knots that's ( Read more... )

Yesterday was an interesting day in aviation. I intended to fly from Toronto to Kincardine to have lunch with ksumnersmith and GSS. The flight out was uneventful. I encountered the usual rural airport where UNICOM doesn't answer he radio for a field status report, but will yell at you if you do something wrong. Typical ( Read more... )

When I last posted here, I wrote about the steps in buying a plane and the tasks still ahead of me.  Yesterday they were completed.

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It turns out that buying an aeroplane is an incredibly drawn-out process. I'm almost there, but like Xeno's walk there may still be some time to cover the last little bit. The sequence is:

• Find a classified ad that you like
• Talk to the broker
• Arrange to meet the owner on a day with good weather when you're both free
• Go for a test flight with the owner.
• ( Read more... )

All of that Piper Aztec flying (8 hours total) has paid off, and I now have a shiny multi-engine rating to put into my pilot's license.  Next step is the VFR Over The Top rating, for which I just need an additional 3.5 hours of instrument time ( Read more... )