Van's RV-9A in Aurora

The Big Picture

The Big Picture
Flying! 8/28/2011

Sunday, May 24, 2015

Memorial Day Weekend

We had a storm system blow through the area overnight. With an El Nino pattern in place, Texas has been getting much needed rain. In fact we've had nearly 3 weeks with at least a chance of rain every day and, unlike what has been happening here for the past few years, it has actually been raining. So the ground is saturated, and the wave of heavy rains has caused flooding and our creeks and rivers to put on a rare show. Our house in Lakeway got 4", but southern Blanco county got nearly a foot of rain!


So this morning the ceiling was nice and high for the first time in weeks, so I sent out an email blast inviting the group for an aerial tour of the local rivers. Got a few takers, John, Betty, Suanne, Pat, and Lynne. We flew over the Pedernales to see the river and the state park, and also Hamilton Pool. Some of the pax got to see a big area of flotsam clogging up Pace Bend. The ceiling kept lowering the whole time, and by the end I was definitely scud running. Should have flown some approaches, but I had passengers, and I needed to stop for lunch. Some of them took pictures, hopefully I can get copies and I'll post them.

Thursday, May 7, 2015

May update

Well hopefully this isn't my only post for May, but I thought I'd say a few words about current events.


First, I just added a first flight page. Look at the links section on the left margin. Here's also a direct link.


I finally got to fly with John Prickett a couple of weekends ago and he agreed to sign me off for my commercial checkride. This Saturday he reviewed my logbooks and signed the endorsement. I have a checkride scheduled for June 2. I still need more practice on soft field landings and lazy 8's. This last Saturday I flew up to Lampassas and got a bunch of landings in with Cav, and at least those worked out pretty well. I also worked on the Lazy 8's, and these are starting to get reasonable for me.

The weather in Central Texas has been miserable for flying. 3 weeks solid of marginal/IFR conditions in the morning, with chances of thunderstorms in the afternoon. Dave K. will miss his backup checkride tomorrow because of low ceilings.

Google Blog and Picasa have been acting weird lately, so it's been challenging to get pictures properly shared and visible in my blog posts. I think it's getting better, but as I type, there's a new problem with editing this page in WYSIWYG mode. I think the problem is a browser incompatibility on my part.