HerdingChaos

Sunset during the return flight from North Carolina

Making 190+ knots over the ground and only burning 14.7 gal/hr on my way to NC to visit family on new year’s day.

As you can tell I have not updated this blog for 5 months. The super abridged version of the past five months follows.

Early July: Loren became potty trained.

Mid August: Celebrated 11 years of marriage.

Late August: Went to Sea World San Antonio with the family and had a blast.

Mid September: My beloved dog of 8 years is diagnosed with splenic hermangiosarcoma.

Three days later: I have to take him to the vet and say goodbye because he cannot breathe without pain and cannot eat or drink.

Late September: I spread my wings and complete my bi-annual flight review allowing me to execute the privileges of my pilots license once more.

Early October: Took Andrew and Tracy for a flight in a rented plane. They loved it.

Late October: Tracy turns 6.

Halloween: We all dress as pirates!

Mid November: I bought a plane.

Late November: Andrew turns 8.

Which brings us to this month. I have been working more crazy than normal the last couple of months. Not that work is a good excuse to miss out on other stuff, but that’s what was happening. After tying up a few milestones at work, I took vacation from the 7th through today and did PIC’s 10 day instrument rating course. Today at 2pm I did my check ride and I am now an instrument rated pilot. I am also tired. In the last 10 days I have flown 30 hours in the plane and 9 in the simulator. Probably would have been more but the weather was really bad for three of the 10 days and we focused on ground instruction. Regardless I am looking forward to going back to work for a break from this intensive course. I think the course was great and would recommend it to anyone. But do not fool yourself, it is a lot of work.

Today I called a seller about a plane.

Today I called a aviation medical examiner and made an appointment to update my FAA medical.

Today I called for an insurance quote on 2 different types of planes.

Today I put together a spreadsheet with a breakdown of expenses, investments, and rates we need to reserve per hour of operation for the plane.

Today I still have not flow since I put .6 on a Piper Warrior on Jan 7th 2003.

Today two of my children are old enough to go flying with me, and the third can come if I have mom along to help.

Today I resume my course because now I can take my family along.

Tomorrow (well not actually tomorrow.. I mean the figurative tomorrow); Tomorrow I fly.

Discovery HD ran a documentary on Christmas called One Six Right. I tivo’ed it and finally found time to watch it tonight. It is a great film and if you are a pilot or a fan of aviation then you should check it out. Discovery will be replaying the documentary. Also you can get it on DVD from the One Six Right website. The soundtrack is also quite good and can also be found on the website.

One of the few things that Microsoft does really well is their Flight Simulator. I have been playing MS FlightSim since I had an old TI Portable Professional Computer. The TIPPC was the first PC at the time to have something close to what we now call VGA graphics. So flight sim always looked better on my TIPPC vs. friend’s IBMs or clones. Or if you are not all geeknerd like me, it happened in the mid to late 80’s.

Well, this Tuesday they are releasing Flight Simulator X. Tonight I downloaded the demo and dusted off my old CH Pro yoke and pedals. The demo is pretty impressive and I am sure I will pick up the game as soon as it hits the shelves. It will give my PC something to do now that I spend most all of my time on this mac.

I am really excited about the launch this morning of Space Ship One. The whole family flew out for the first time they launched all the way into space. This morning’s flight is the first of two needed to win the Xprize. I just wish the web cast would stop cutting out.

UPDATE [10:52am]: Just finished watching the rocket fire and the safe return of SS1. Congrats to all the engineers at Scaled Composites and to pilot Mike Melville!

Wow. It has been over a month since my last entry.

I have been working some pretty long hours lately. Which is part of the reason it has been so long since my last post.

We have done quite a bit since the last entry. On the 21st of June the entire family was in the Mojave desert watching the first private manned space launch. Check out the Scaled website for more information.

The kids enjoyed the time away from the normal day to day. To keep the trip cost down we flew to Vegas and drove over to Mojave. We stayed an extra day just in case the launch was delayed for some reason. Since the launch went on as planned we found ourselves with an extra day. So we decided to go to Circus Circus and have some fun. The kids loved the indoor amusement park. As we were driving to the airport, Andrew asked if we could move to Las Vegas and live there.

For the 4th of July weekend my wife’s sister and her family flew in for a visit. The kids enjoyed playing with thier cousins and we all had a ton of fun.

I just received an email from an old co-worker. He is going to pick up his “new to him” plane this week. He is retired and has been working on his pilot’s license for the past year. He fell in love with flying.

While he was training I received email updates. It was like looking through a time machine at myself. I think every new pilot loves the same things about learning to fly.

For me it was all the firsts:

• Your first time taking off.
• Your first time landing.
• Your first time keeping up with a fast controller and not saying anything stupid.
• The first landing you don’t feel because it was so smooth.
• Your first solo.
• Your first night flight.

I have not flown since Jan 7th 2003 when I flew a Cherokee 140 for .6 hours. I am not current. I need to take care of a biannual flight review. At this point it will require quite a bit of instruction time to work out all the cobwebs.

I have a love for flying. Fortunately I can return to flying on my own schedule. I will never again see my kids at the same age they are today, tomorrow and the next day. I am on course. I will fly again.