We took off from runway 32R and headed first to Napa County airport. The airport was pretty easy to find and after 10 mn in the air we landed and taxied to the apron.
After a 20 mn break we decided to head to the west at Sonoma Skypark. Anothe ... read more

I had to call the weather briefer 3 times on Sunday morning to make sure that the weather was going to be VFR. Forecast was saying that things would get better, by noon ( an hour before take off ), thing got much better. The weather briefers were war ... read more

I wanted to try to go to a busier class D airport and decided to take off for Livermore. After taking off from Concord, I switched to Norcal approach but the destination airport was so close that I must have stayed on the frequency for less than 5 mn ... read more

We decided that day to fly to the northeast at the UC Davis airport not too far from Sacramento.
On the way there I had Naomi practice some basic maneuvers, straight and level flight, turns, climbs and descents. She did pretty well.
After ... read more

The METARs were announcing windy day in the bay area with gusts at 31 knots. However the crosswind angle was not going to be too hard to handle.
We took of from Concord and headed to the southeast flying North of Mount Diablo. When flying by th ... read more

We decided to fly to the Sonoma valley and enjoy the view of the vineyards.
We took off from Concord and flew towards the North West tracking the Point Reye VOR first then flew by the coast north all the way to Healdsburg.
When we got to ... read more

I asked James if I could get checked out so that I could rent the plane and fly by myself with a PSA aitcrsft.
We took off towards the Travis airforce base practice area and after getting VFR flight following fomr their approach we did some man ... read more

I had schedule a flight with James to fly over the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz. Unfortunately at the time of leaving the weather was pretty cloudy. The METAR and TAF were saying that the weather should stay stable and VFR.
We still decided ... read more

I flew with a new CFI this day; James. We took off towards the east to Byron. The weather was pretty hazy below 2000 feet but above it was totally fine.
When we overflew Byron we noticed a few gliders that were getting to get towed which preven ... read more

On my second flight session with Mara we decided to practice some basic maneuvers ( turns and stalls ) close to the Travis alert are. We contacted travis contorl and asked for flight following. After getting a sqwak number we practice a few maneuvers ... read more

After many months without flying, after moving out of Indiana and starting a new job I finally decided to get back to my passion.
I flew on a Saturday afternoon with an instructor, Mara. After going through the introduction and getting as much ... read more

I decided to take off on a nice Saturday morning. The winds very variables at 6 knots and the sky was overcast at 7000 feet.
I asked the tower for "closed traffic" departure so that I could practice a few touch and goes and get used to the carb ... read more

Me and Naomi took off from Bloomington in the middle of a Sunday afternoon. We headed south to Paoli, IN which took about 20 mn. After localizing the runway at enter a left downwind for runway 20 and landed smoothly.
We met the manager of the F ... read more

In order to finish my check out on the C150M, me and Ken executed 3 touch and goes and a go around. There was a lot of traffic taking off and landing, which forced us to extend our downwind many times or even execute 270 back to the base leg.
Af ... read more

For some multiple reasons but mainly economical I decided to get checked out on a smaller airplane at BMG, the C150M.
Ken Wysley was the instructor, we started the flight pretty late in the day and had to fly some of the touch and go in the dar ... read more

Chester a friend of mine and a CFI made me take my first flight review. I was not sure what to expect but he was very helpful. We went south of the lake to practice some maneuvers. I managed to execute a couple power on stalls this time. Then We went ... read more

I decided to practice a few more maneuvers and then headed out to Seymour. The airport was pretty empty but one of the FBO had a cirrus on display which I took a few pictures of. ... read more

My Flight review was due in a few months and and dicided to practice a few maneuvers. It had been a while I had not this and could not manage to execute power on stalls which have been one of the maneuvers I had issue with in the past too. I will pra ... read more

The weather forecast was pretty good. The flight briefer announced moderate turbulences on my route.
Me and my girlfriend took our time to get ready and even watched the owner of the FBO playing and doing touch and goes with his new toy, a L39 a ... read more

It had been a while I had not flown during the night, so in order to fly passengers after sunset I had to get current again and do 3 touch and goes. Me and my girlfriend got at the airport a little before 9 and had to take the plane out of the hangar ... read more

I needed to practice some maneuvers to refresh my skills and took off towards the north practice area. Their were multiple planes going in and out of Bloomington and was very careful to monitor the tower frequency and announced my position every time ... read more

I had to visit a couple of friends with my girlfriend on a Sunday. We flew first to Columbus, IN which is a class D airspace. The weather was overcast over 12000 and the ride very smooth. It took about 20 mn to get to Columbus and after having a brun ... read more

The winds were pretty strong and steady at 15 at least but blowing from the west around 240 which was actually perfect since both airport have a runway 6 - 24.
I took off from Bloomington and headed south, after about 20 mn I was over Orleans an ... read more

I took off towards the south from Bloomington planning to do some stalls and other maneuvers.
A centurion was first to take off, unfortunately for him he got some mechanical problem that was going to force him to land back to check it out. ATC ... read more

Ken Wisley had asked me if I wanted to fly to Indianapolis International one day, I accepted the offer right away.
An early Saturday afternoon we took off from Bloomington and asked for VFR flight following to Hullman approach. We got handed of ... read more

I was supposed to fly to Columbus, IN in the morning but the weather was IFR until noon. So I still rented the plane and took of with 3 of my friends. It had been the first time I had that many passengers and I actually felt it when lifting off as th ... read more

I hadn't been flying for a few months and went back to Ace High to rent an airplane for the week end. Unfortunately they had gone out of business, but fortunately they had sold the planes to the business next door at BMG aviation.
I met Ken Wis ... read more

I had been thinking about doing that trip for a long time. Since my mom happened to be in Pensylvania I decided to go and visit my family for the week end.
I planned the trip a week in advance. I talked to John May about the trip and asked him a ... read more

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For the first time, I decided to fly in a totally different area. I was visiting a friend of mine for the week end and got a hold on an flight school in Chandler municipal airport: tailwind flight school.
We were scheduled to meet with the CFI a ... read more

I was meeting some friends in Greenwood on a saturday evening and decided to fly there this time. Since Bloomington to Greenwood is less than 50 miles, I chose to fly to KMQJ ( Mount Comfort ) and then back south to Greenwood.
I asked flight fol ... read more

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Me and a couple of friends of mine decided to go visit another friend in Cincinnati, OH for the night. The plane was available all week end. We decided to take off just when dark started to come.
We took off towards the east and after having so ... read more

The weather was forecasted to be really clear and calm on a thursday evening. I took off with a couple of my friends who were willing to fly even if I was going to practice maneuver. It had been a long time I hadn't done stalls and other ground maneu ... read more

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My work required me to be in Peoria, IL for a couple days to setup a remote office. I made my final decision to fly there the day before. The weather on the way back was supposed to be fine but a line of bad weather was supposed to arrive at the begi ... read more

On a Sunday when the weather was really good compared to the past weeks I decided to go to a random airport about 50 miles away so that I could log the flight as a X-Country flight.
I found Paris, IL on the map. I took off to the north west and ... read more

I asked my instructor on a Friday night to fly for an hour in the area of Bloomington.
The main purpose was to get used to flying at night again since I hadn't done much of it lately. We took off towards the south east above the lake so that th ... read more

After getting current again, I decided to go on a cross country East with a couple friends ( Henry and Chris ). I had planned ... read more

It had been 4 months I hadn't flown, mainly because of the bad weather during the winter and specially on the week ends.
I contacted John May so that we can schedule a couple hours to practice some maneuvers and touch and goes.
I was obvi ... read more

For the first time ever I got to take passengers with me. That Sunday afternoon was gorgeous and I knew that the air should be pretty smooth. There's nothing worst to have a bumpy ride with new passengers
My girlfriend Lindsey, Tomoka and me to ... read more

Ace High Inc owns another cessna than the 2 SPs, it is a Cessna 172 M Skyhawk II. The plane is 28 years old and of course not in as good of a shape as the other 172. However since this type of skyhawk has a carburated engine I wanted to know how to u ... read more

I hadn't flown for 3 weeks since I got my PPL. I decided to try new things since I'm finally allowed to fly pretty much wherever I want.
Greenwood Municipal airport is 20 mn away from Bloomington, and I knew that the airspace would be busy.
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I got early at the ariport so that me and John May could check the plane out before preflying it with the examiner. I got to finish preparing my flight plan with the latest winds aloft and was ready to get tested at 9 am.
Larry Bothe was the FAA ... read more

I called the FAA examinor, Larry and the checkride got schedule for the 22nd of August. He gave me a cross country flight to plan. I got it ready and showed it to John so that we could fly the first legs of the trip.
We headed toward Clark Count ... read more

The day after I practice with John to get ready for the checkride, I flew to the same area, south of the lake and practice the same maneuvers again. My problem, the day before, was that I couldn't hold my altitude to +-100 feet while doing steep mane ... read more

John and I took off and flew to the southeast again. We basically reviewed most of the maneuvers for the checkride. His son, Jake was flying with us too. I could tell he was totally used to flying because he had no problem being in the plane while I ... read more

Getting ready for the checkride soon, I got to review all my maneuvers.
My neighbors were on the ramp to take some pictures of me taking off, these are available read more

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John and I took off towards the south east to practice more stalls since I had been having trouble the last 2 times to make power on stalls correctly.
I also experience recovery from unusual attitude for the first time, it was pretty interesting ... read more

The day was too cloudy to practice more stalls, I tried to get into a broken layer of clouds but it was too small to even do a 180. About 10 miles north out, I was still monitoring the the ATC frequency and someone was directly heading my way which k ... read more

I thought the day was good and clear enough to practice stalls solo. It took me a while to look for an area north of Bloomington with enough space to practice stalls at 4000'. I was already not very confident about my stalls technics yet but practici ... read more

I had not practice stalls for a very long time and was not confident enough to do them by myself before refreshing my memory.
Me and John went 15 miles north west to do some maneuvers. The all flight didn't take that long, he just made me do a c ... read more

On a night of a 5th of July John and me planned to do our night X-country to Evansville.
The skies were clear for the all trip even if a storm was coming from the west but was still on the west side of Illinois at the time. We asked VFR flight f ... read more

The day after I learned how to do short and soft field landings I took off from runway 24 hoping that I could do the same thing. Unfortunately the winds were from 10 to 15 knots gusting at 20 ( no crosswind fortunately ). This forced me to use just 2 ... read more

After being briefed for about half an hour, John and me took of for touch and goes on 17. This was my first time I worked on these type of landing. Take off on short field is pretty much climbing at a higher climb rate ( 62 knots instead of 74 on the ... read more

After a couple weeks without flying, I decided to solo and stay in the pattern for a short flight before sunset.
I was doing touch and goes on runway 17 with another cessna in the pattern, the winds were really calm, nothing special until the 3 ... read more

John Hendrix found a new job as a commercial pilot for a private company. He "handed" me over to John May another CFI at BMG.
We took off about 45 mn after sunset. After heading out west for 10 mn it was totally night and dark. We practiced som ... read more

I had a plane reserved for a Sunday afternoon at 2 pm. I was pretty tired but still decided to fly.
After taking off from 17 I decided to fly over the lake and then headed up to Bedford planning on doing touch and goes, unfortunately the heat i ... read more

John had decided to send me to Huntingburg and Madison Indiana for my long cross country flight. My flight plan forecasted a 2:14 mn flight.
The weather was pretty misty an hour before I took off but supposed to clear up later.
After taking ... read more

I decided to leave on a Saturday afternoon to complete my 2nd cross country flight to Crawfordsville (CFJ).
After taking off from runway 17, I made a right turn and headed up to north north west. I learned a new call from the tower during that t ... read more

The METAR was forecasting winds picking up after 10 am, I took off at 8:30 am keeping in mind that I should be back by 9:30 am.
I went straight to Bedford and couldn't decide which runway to use. When I observed the wind sock shifting from 150 t ... read more

Touch and goes - crosswind landings - go around ... read more

On a late friday afternoon, I rented a plane for a couple hours. I decided to practice as much touch and goes as I could and practice crosswind landings as well. The winds were between 4 and 8 knots, which made me feel pretty confident about request ... read more

The ceiling were barely VFR but the wind conditions were pretty calm that Sunday afternoon. Since I was really looking forward flying, I decided to take off anyways thinking that I would come back if the conditions would deteriorate. After an eastbou ... read more

I finally managed to complete my first solo X-country to a known airport. After taking off to the west and allowed to change frequency I tried to open up my flight plan that I had prepared earlier, unfortunately I had the wrong FSS frequency ( 122.60 ... read more

Full stops - turn around a point - S turns ... read more

It had been almost 20 days I hadn't flown because of weather issues. I finally decided to go for a short hour flight an early morning to get back on track.
I asked ground control for a southeast departure, the winds were really calm which was pe ... read more

I had the plane for 4 hours that Saturday morning, and asked John to fly with me because the weather wasn't good enough for my first solo cross country.
We decided to go 20 miles south to Bedford and practice a few touch and goes.
The win ... read more

The weather wasn't good enough for my first solo cross country. Since the plane was still reserved for the all morning, I decided to do some extensive practice in the area.
After going north and practicing multiple turns, steep turns for almost ... read more

This early morning, I managed to reserve a plane. The winds were totally calm and the ASOS was reporting sky clear and 10 SM visibility.
I had a few waypoints setup on my new GPS and was planning to fly around Bloomington for some read more

Finally the weather was fine this Saturday morning, clear sky, calm wind until 10 am then some gusty winds after this but nothing unmanageable.
I filed my flight plan to Lawrenceville, IL, the airport I was expecting to go for more than a month ... read more

Our cross-country flight got canceled again because of bad weather. Actually the air was pretty stable but fog and clouds were coming over the airport which allowed us to fly only for half an hour.
We practice 4 landings, winds were calm, which ... read more

Our cross-country flight got canceled again because of bad weather. Actually the air was pretty stable but fog and clouds were coming over the airport which allowed us to fly only for half an hour.
We practice 4 landings, winds were calm, which ... read more

We had scheduled a cross country flight that got canceled because of incoming thuderstorms in the area. So we decided to stay in the pattern for crosswind landing practice.
The ASOS was reporting winds at 10 to 12 knots from 220, we requested to ... read more

After 2 weeks without flying I had an hour solo flight scheduled early Friday morning. I had been checking the weather closely the days before and the wind were forecasted to be very calm, which was the case.
There was almost no traffic during m ... read more

We were supposed to leave for Lawrenceville, IL that morning but the weather was MVFR pretty much all over the northern part of the midwest. Ceiling was barely at 2500 and even if it would have been possible to fly there it wouldn't have been a pleas ... read more

For my second cross country we decided to file a flight plan before taking off. After I got briefed on how to open up a flight plan, and the differences between Flight plan and flight following, we took off towards the north west.
I had a little ... read more

1 day after practicing with John, I rented the plane ( on a Sunday ), and planned on doing the same thing that I did a day ago.
It was my first time out of the class D airspace by myself. So I made in sort that I had a backup GPS, backup batteri ... read more

We were supposed to leave for a cross country flight to Crawfordsville this Saturday morning but unfortunately again the weather was almost MVFR. Flying and trying to look for visual point would not have been that easy to do that day.
We decide ... read more

After 3 weeks without flying we finally got a chance to fly on Saturday morning.
This time everything was planned. We scheduled 4 hours for a cross country flight. John, had told me in advance that we would go to Clark Country airport in Jeffers ... read more

I was scheduled for a 8 am flight to practice maneuvers out north 20 miles away. Unofrtunately again the ceiling was pretty low ( around 2500 feet ) and practicing stalls and other maneuvers would have been dangerous below 2500. Also, the wind were p ... read more

Beautiful weather, unlimited visibility and even warmer temperature as usual were the conditions for that Saturday morning.
We took off from BMG, flew toward Spencer and reached a lake. John made me do different maneuvers that I already knew and ... read more

After a few weeks without flying, we decided to stay in the pattern that morning. Snow was forecasted later in the morning and John didn't want to get stuck in something bad.
We stayed in the pattern for an hour practicing more touch and goes wi ... read more

KBMG 0830Z 27004 10SM SKC M11/M12 ALT3022
That was the weather status this morning. Wind calm, very calm and I was expecting this to be the day, and it was !
John didn't mention anything though. We took off to practice touch and goes as a n ... read more

This morning was really helpful for my experience. Now that my landing and flares are pretty much OK, the winds that were blowing at 10 miles from 100 degrees on runway 17 which makes a 70 degrees crosswind made a really interesting touch and goes se ... read more

This saturday morning was barely VFR. Almost no wind, clear sky but a Visibility of just 3 miles. I was really looking forward my first solo that day but for some obvious reasons of safety we postponed it to another time.
The 7 landings I did we ... read more

That Saturday morning was a really cold morning, it had been snowing all day before and the airport was covered with snow partially. "Not a problem" said John.
We got to practice another serie of touch and goes but this time on runway 24 only. T ... read more

That morning was definitely different from the other "closed traffic" days.
Ceiling was at 1200 ft ( which is still VFR ) but the winds at 12kt with gust up to 25kt. And all of this coming from the NW.
The first landing was really different ... read more

I had the opportunity to fly early morning this Tuesday.
We took off runway 17 at around 7:30 am. The wind was so calm, it was definitely a great difference compare to last Saturday.
I had never felt the plane fly so well. The combination o ... read more

After 2 weeks of bad weather, this Saturday was finally a "good day to fly". Well that's what I thought until we climbed at 500 feet AGL.
We had a front wind of 12 knots, which shouldn't be to hard to deal with as an experience pilot. But as a n ... read more

The weather was again beautiful but the sunset about to happen.
We took off runway 35 facing a 9 kt wind.
After a few touch and goes which I did pretty well, we went NNW.
The sky was already pretty dark and I got to try those "gog ... read more

My flight was scheduled on a saturday morning at 7 am. I had spent my night before studying VORs and felt asleep on the coach without setting up my alarm.
I made it to the airport half an hour late, but still managed to fly over an hour ( 1.2 on ... read more

I had been used to fly almost twice a week since I started, but this time it had been a little bit over 2 weeks that I hadn't flown a plane.
For a change and because the weather was pretty windy, we did only a couple touch and goes ( instead of ... read more

I am starting that blog a little bit after my first hours of flight.
I will summarize those first 14 hours.

On a beautiful day of July I decided to stop by my local airport ( Bloomington, INDIANA - KBMG ) to see what it would take to ... read more