Desert Pilot Podcast

I have really come to enjoy the flight for the valley just into the mountains to Payson , AZ. The flight has taught me a lot about flying in mountains things like mountain waves and going from an area of high to low pressure. I saw my grandparents while up there, like always. They got a new 42" HD TV so I had to see that. There was a TFR just north of the town for a forest fire. I didn't see any smoke but the airport was crawling with fire aircraft of all kinds. It was very neat to see. I didn't get any pictures of them though. I forgot my camera at home so only had my cell phone but the pictures turned out better then I thought they would. Me flying home. up over the Beeline 87 highway Coming in to Phoenix this is Falcon Field right off my nose. click here to download file to view this route in Google Earth

Check out this map I made using my Garmin GPSmaps 96 : This is just a screenshot so it you can't see much detail but if you click HERE to download the file and see in Google Earth . You can zoom in a on the map and see exactly what I flew and even see where I parked at the airport. Here is how I did it. Garmin came out with this program called BaseCamp . You can just upload the route you flew, drove, hiked, whatever. There was lots flights on my GPS just select the one you want, this one is a flight I took a few weeks ago . Then there is a menu at the top where you can view your selected route in Google Earth. Then to get it from Google Earth to maps you export it to a .kml file. and upload to a site like Google sites and you put the link of the file in Google maps and it will show up as shown above. This is the only way I could figure out how you do it. If anyone know an easier way let me know.

That's right I passed the instrument written exam. For most every aeronautical rating advancement (private, instrument, commercial, ATP, just to name a few) there are 3 parts of the test. First is the written porion, then an oral test, and the last is a practical flight test. The latter of the two are with a check instructor pilot (a special instructor blessed by the FAA to give tests) and are called the check ride. The written exam I took was 60 questions in 2 1/2 hrs. This was of the 700-something questions that there are for instrument. When I went into studying for this test I thought it would be like the private test. I study for a couple of weeks and feel ready, then take the test. After trying to study for the instrument like I did my private, I learned I couldn't do that. So after getting a Gleim , an online study help program and 3 months later I felt ready and passed. The good news is that I hear this is one of the hardest writtens there are, so I'm glad to get ...

Got my first free flying "mission" with CAP today. It wasn't a lot it was a short 20min flight from Chandler to Deer Valley airport and back. I shared the flight with 2 others so I only flew on the way back. All the pics I took from the back seat on the way there. I hadn't been in the back for about 6-7 years. The pic below is some of the CAP planes in a row before we left at Deer Valley and it looked cool. Here is what we flew. I think I would fly around the valley when I do it again because of all the extra radios that are in the CAP airplane there was tons of static and radio interference around south mt. (two peaks on the map) from all the radio towers on top. the flag on my shoulder me Chandler tower flying over Stellar airpark south mountain this is a military center of some sort the radar gave it a away but I'm not quiet sure, looks army Deer Valley's brand new tower At Deer Valley we had a few hour class about mountain flying it was very infor...