I must start by saying this past month has been a busy one and a sad one. On January 23, 2010 my grandfather lost his battle with cancer and passed away in Holland.
For those of you who have read through this blog or have visited the “About Me” page know that he was my inspiration. Without him, my passion for flying would have never existed and the happiness he brought to those around him will be missed dearly. He was my number one reader and it’s been tough to motivate myself to post knowing that he wouldn’t be able to read it. One thing I know is that he would have wanted me to continue flying and continue writing so that is one thing I will do.
I love and miss you grandpa and I will always think of you when I am flying through the skies. Thank you for being there for me when I needed you, an inspiration and a role model.
I have also done a lot of flying in the past month and have taken a lot of video. I think it’s important for pilots to record their flights for 2 reasons. The first is that it’s always a good idea to chronicle flights for the memories alone. Flying is something that is a rare gift that most people can’t do. A pilot should take pride in their flights and create an irreplaceable keepsake. The second reason pilots should record their flights is to analyze their technique (this is especially important for landings). I finally realized the importance of this and invested in a hand held, high definition camera that I could put in my flight bag. This should work out much better than using the iPhone and I’m looking forward to take it on my next flight. You can check out the Kodak Zi8 HERE.
This first video is a landing from my flight mentioned in my previous post where I took a couple of friends from college to Camarillo for lunch. At touch down, you can hear my friend say “that was smooth!”. It’s always nice to hear a compliment from a passenger.
This video is a landing at Santa Barbara in a 22 knot wind. This video is a great example of why I like to research my own landings to find out what I’m doing wrong. My approach was decent and the landing was fine but the wind tipped the plane a bit on the roll out. I have also included a ton of pictures from this beautiful flight.
This next video is a landing on runway 34L on our return to Van Nuys. The winds were gusting to to 17 knots and I was worried about a rough landing. Once again, my passenger made the comment “wind schmind” to let me know that the wind was no factor in our landing. On top of that, when I updated my page in my logbook that evening, I came to realize it was my 200th landing! I was very excited about that.
This last video is a take off from 34L at Van Nuys a couple of days later in similar wind conditions. My passenger was actually someone who came across this site and contacted me about starting his own flight training. I was happy to take him and his fiancé up for a while even though the bumpiness was not ideal.
I will try and keep up with this site and get some more video up with better quality. Be sure to download my podcast on iTunes, The Landing Gear.
Also, I will be starting the CTI program in order to become and air traffic controller so wish me luck and I will keep you posted!
