New Home...

As you can see in the image above, "My Plane" has a new home... a much bigger home than when I met her. It is now located at Oakland County International Airport (Also known as Pontiac - KPTK). It's kept in a nice heated hanger sandwiched between a Citation and a King Air. Pontiac is about a 40min drive from my house vs. the 15min drive I was spoiled with when it was in Lapeer. But the rental price is the same and the new staff seems helpful.

So today I got my Dad to tag along. We were both getting pretty bored with just flying over our houses. Today we decided to cruise along the Detroit river. I had never done this in the past, and for good reason... there is a very narrow corridor for VFR traffic. When entering the narrow path, you are basically sandwiched between Detroit City Airport and Windsor Airport (Canada), both of which have airspace that tops out at 3,000.

So as you cruise over Belle Isle and get beyond both airports, you have to drop down to 2,500 to stay underneath Detroit Metro's airspace. Its really not that big of a deal, but you have to stay focused. Because the airplane I fly has the G1000 (see previous posts), I had a lot greater confidence in not violating any airspace. This time of year was good because you can't fly over downtown on game days due to the new flight restrictions over stadiums (Post 9/11). Seeing as how both the Lions and Tigers are not in season, we had a green light.

While I flew I had my dad operate the "Blogger Cam" (Canon SD450), this is a sweet little pocket cam. I end up shooting more with this than my larger Canon 20D.

He snapped a picture of Belle Isle, Downtown, the old Tiger Stadium and the newer Comerica Park that is right next to Ford Field. Now if we could only get the Lions to have a season like the 2006 Tigers! He also got a shot of the Ambassador bridge.


Here is a very short video as we entered the corridor:


It was pretty cool...!

It's Been Over a Month...

Well, I'm not happy to admit this... but I haven't flow in a month. Not by choice, work and weather just seemed to conflict.

And now I have an even BIGGER problem... MY PLANE IS GONE! I call it my plane only because I never had a problem renting it an hour prior to a flight, so it felt like my own plane.

Anyhow, earlier this week I called to schedule some time for this weekend. I was quickly informed that the plane was moved to another airport about 30 miles away. I guess this isn't a huge deal, but I'm not even sure if it will be available for rent. The plane is owned by a person who puts it on lease back (meaning he owns it and makes it available for renting to offset costs). Now I have to track this thing down... any way I look at it, it won't be as convenient. I could downgrade to a lesser equipped aircraft, but I have been spoiled by the G1000.

Oh well... it was good while it lasted. If these are the extent of problems in my life, things are going well! :)

This gives me a chance to show off one of my favorite pilot tools. For all you Mac users out there (and Yahoo! Widget users on a PC), there is a great aviation weather widget for getting local METAR and TAF information. It makes it very handy for a quick check of weather. I find myself using it all the time! The picture at the top is the cluster of all my weather widgets on my dashboard.

Here is a screen shot: