Just a quick addition to the aviation humor about gripe sheets. This one is from Jonathan Bernath:
  S: #2 prop is leaking oil
  A: #2 prop oil leakage is normal

I've fallen behind on updating this site (as you might have noticed). I successfully received my Private Pilot's License on Friday the 23rd of January, 2004 at about 2000z. This is when I finished my checkride following a blistering course of study at Hawaii Flight Academy. Hopefully over the next few days I'll get the opportunity to provide some annecdotes and analysis of my experience in their 21 day accelerated course.

Short answer, I would wholey recommend it to anyone who can afford the time and money to do so. They have a great staff and good equipment as well as a fantastic location to learn to fly. I went in having 0 hours in the left seat and finished their Part 141 school 3 weeks later with my ticket. More to follow in the days to come.

This is a link to my instructor's (Jonathan Bernath) side business at Kona airport. He and a partner run Wing Over Hawaii, an acrobatic experience that promises to "Turn Hawaii Upside Down!"

You can choose from a short, 10-15 intro flight of 3 manuevers or go whole hog for "The Hawaiian Dare" which will let you choose 9 manuevers from their menu for 35-45 minutes of aerial excitement.

So, check out their website and book a session for your next trip to the Big Island.

I HOPE! We arrived at Kona airport without any significant issues after flying from the mainland yesterday. However, since this is supposed to be the dry side of the island, we were quite surprised to be landing in what appeared to be a monsoon! Rain and wind and aboutt 0 visibility. The Hawaiian Airlines guys did a great job of getting us down. However, if this extends much longer, then it could seriously endanger our schedule.

We met Chad's instructor Ebi and a few other folks over at the Fly Hawaii offices and everyone was really nice. Can't wait to get started on this new adventure. Right now, rain falling in buckets out of the sky woke me up (0520 our time) so I figured I'd make a post. Still have another 26+ hours until our first day begins so here's hoping for a break in the weather!

Finding myself with a hour to kill in Santa Monica recently (12/11/03), I decided to check out their community airport. What a beautiful day it turned out to be to make images. The air was about as clear as it get's in LA and their were the occassional clouds to give the sky some definition. That coupled with Santa Monica's great observation deck (just over 300 feet from the midline of 3-21) made for a fantastic afternoon.

Here is some radio communication humor from Supovadea found posted to the Pilot Journey forums.

Recently had a friend e-mail me a copy of a fax that was a printed copy of an e-mail forwarded to a friend of a cousin of... Well you get the idea.
Anyway, this is pretty funny stuff. This message details what purport to be the best complaints passed on to engineers by pilots at Qantas and the solutions to the problem. My favorite problem and solution from the gripe sheet is:
  Problem: Test flight OK, except auto-land very rough.
  Solution: Auto-land not installed on this aircraft.

This morning I moved one step closer to getting my PPL! I passed my FAA Written Exam with a 97% score. Wooohoooo!
It is weird. This test is comprised of 60 questions which are pulled from a pool of somewhere in the neighborhood of 600-800 multiple choice questions. What type of test you end up taking is largely determined by the luck of the draw.
In my case, this meant a lot of factual knowledge questions. Unfortunately, I felt going into this that the computational questions were really my strong suit. I've become a wizard with my E6B calculator and was hoping to put it to good use. A smatter of this type of question might even push my test time out to the allotted 2.5 hours. There were so few computational or cross-country navigation questions that I didn't even get to touch my flight calculator. I only used about 1 inch of the scratch paper (as opposed to the pages I used on some sample tests I took).
No such luck. 20 minutes after I started I was done! I was dumbfounded so I went back and redid every question again just to make sure that I had it right. There were 3 or four that I was unsure about so I went with my first guess (which they say is the right thing to do). Guess I split these right down the middle.
As it turns out, looking up the questions in the categories I missed, I was able to identify which ones where on the test and I'm kinda embarrassed in retrospect that I missed them. I knew the answers, I guess I just clutched.
Anyway, the Gleim Online Ground School and the Gleim "red book" for the FAA Written Exam, as well as Sporty's online FAA practise tests prepared me well. Soon enough comes the next step, Flight School in Hawaii. More on this later...

One of the ongoing themes of this page, besides showcasing my aviation photography, is my efforts to get my Private Pilot's ticket (and beyond I hope).
Since I have chosen to go the non-traditional route toward that goal, I've been doing my ground schooling using self-study.
At first this entailed borrowing a friend's copy of the King School DVD course. While this was good, I didn't feel that it was working for me. So I decided to purchase a copy of Gleim's Private Pilot Written Exam book. I felt that I was learning a great deal more using this tool but I was still looking for more to prepare me for the FAA knowledge exam.
I also found that in order to take the knowledge exam, I was going to need to have CFI sign off indicating  that I was prepared to take the exam. So, as I searched for the best and most cost-effective solution to this problem, I stumbled upon the Gleim Online Ground Shool.
All I can say is WOW! This truly interactive, web-based tool was just what I was looking for. Not only did it better re-inforce what I had learned in the book and the DVDs, but really is helping to prepare me for the exam. I would still recommend having a copy of the book since it much easier to do many of the exercises using paper versions rather than the online images (like sectionals and some of the graphs) however if you had a high enough resolution printer, you could get around this.
I had also previously worked with the Sporty's Study Buddy and Sample FAA tests but found that I was truly learning the material better in the Online Ground Shool. I'm more than half-way through the school and look forward to finishing up this week. My goal is to take the test this weekend. I'll let you all know how that goes!

Santa Ana winds created an unusual reverse pattern at SNA airport on a crisp autumn day. Enjoy some of the shots from an angle not usually seen at John Wayne airport.

Interesting information from Australia's Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) as reported by the Sydney Morning Hearald. Some of the reported incidents shed light on why pilots (and in the US the FAA) require them to be turned off on take-off and landing.

Found some images left over from an assignment to cover the 1985 MCAS El Toro airshow. These were the only color images to survive from that time.

Dawn breaks under cloudy skies with balloons ascending en-masse at the Albequerque Balloon Fiesta. The sunrise balloon ascension is one of the most spectacular sites you will ever see!

Wow! Talk about an imersive experience. Here I was lusting over the 3 head video card from Matrox when I stumbled across a link to this guy's site...

Isn't it amazing what you can do with 9 PCs, 13 monitors, too much money and a whole lot of time on your hands?

Well, now isn't that a nice looking ....plane... Yeah, that's it...

Actually found in the Thong of the Day section of a Fresno radio station's website...

Congratulations Andy! After many years away from flying, my friend Andy recently completed his re-solo and bi-annual review and is once again and active licensed pilot!

BTW - Nice ride you've got there Andy!

N4975F, a Cessna 172N rotates on takeoff from Montgomery Field (MYF) in San Diego early in March of this year. These were among the first pictures I'd taken with my new (to me) Nikon D1 digital camera.  These shots at MYF on March 1, 2003 were shot using an old 300mm f4.5 lens that has been through thick and thin together. Amazing how sharp the pictures are even after all the abuse it has seen .

N9488G, a Cessna 172N, climbs out of Montgomery Field on a blustery March morning.

Spotted leaving Montgomery Field (MYF) in San Diego, CA on 3/1/03. Loved the sound of this beautiful radial powered trainer. Anyone have a clue what it is?