February 24, 2007

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...!

2 comments:

Stephen Force (Steve Tupper) said...

Nice post and blog. Welcome to KPTK! I've been flying there on and off since 2001 and am currently in a Part 141 instrument program at Tradewinds on the south side of the field. I particularly liked the descriptions of flying between the scattered layer and the overcast. A similar experience while shooting approaches in actual at KFNT was probably my coolest flight to date.

nicnacjak said...

Nice blog. Please keep it up!