I’ve got another trip planned to Bandon on the southern Oregon coast coming up, and I’m seven hours away from an oil change so I need to fly seven hours in the next six days because I don’t want to be mid-trip when my oil change is due. I’ve never been to Stehekin or Darrington [...]

The boss needed someone to pick up a customer from Baker City, Oregon so I volunteered. I’ve been to Baker City several times and it’s an easy, direct flight, but for today’s flight my iPad wasn’t functioning, or at least I thought it was my iPad or Bad Elf GPS or Air Navigation Pro that [...]

The boss needed supplies flown to a gentleman at Sand Canyon 1S9 in Chewelah, WA so I volunteered. This is a quiet residential airpark tucked in the Okanagon foothills in Northeast Washington.

Oops, someone goofed. It’s Thursday afternoon and someone forgot to order fabric and glue to get wings and control surfaces covered during the weekend. FedEx and UPS can’t get the stuff delivered tomorrow for a reasonable fee so the boss asked someone to go to Spencer Aircraft and bring the supplies back. I volunteered. I [...]

The flight from Yakima to Hood River and then south over I-5 was great at 8,500′ MSL. While crossing the hills to get to the coast, things began to get bumpy. By the time I reached Bandon, the wind was blowing 22 and gusting 34 knots. This kicked my a$$ on final as my head [...]

This morning I felt adventurous and wanted to practice landing at different airports in a variety of settings and, really, see how many airports I can visit before my rumpus maximus was too sore to continue. I’m proud to say I made it to eight different airports. Yakima to Cle Elum to Ellensburg to Quincy [...]

This wasn’t my first attempt at setting down in Packwood, but it was almost as harrowing as the first! This place has been on my list for a while and if at first you don’t succeed at landing in Packwood, try, try again. So I did. Some words of advice for anyone unfamiliar with this [...]

About 35 miles east of Monroe, WA along US Highway 2 (The Stevens Pass Highway) is the town of Skykomish with a grass strip.

Hmmm, where should we fly today? Funky clouds to the south. Grey skies to the east. Mostly blue skies to the north and west. Let’s go northwest! Some people have told me the City of Snoqualmie might want to use these pix in a brochure or other type of publication. That would be neat. If [...]

It was perfect weather for a flight today. No wind. Temps in the 50’s. I attached the GoPro to capture the autumn scenery and also record how fast I could make a flight from Yakima to Sunnyside to Prosser to Sunnyside and back to Yakima. Three airports and four landings. Unfortunately, the camera picked up [...]

The boss let me leave work early today (HA!) so what better excuse is there to go flying? I hoped that the Washington fall colors were coming into bloom in the Cascades and surrounding towns. I like seeing the autumn-colored leaves while driving, so seeing them from above must be spectacular. I’ve also wondered what [...]

One of the nice things of owning an airplane is that on days like today you can decide spur-of-the-moment to fly to places such as, oh, Mount Rainier! And if that airplane is a Wittman Tailwind you can do it fast and cheap (relatively speaking). So that’s where I flew to today, around Mount Rainier. [...]

The weather was good today so I spent a half hour working on my wheel landings. Nothing too exciting, but I am getting the feel for it and I like how the videos turned out. I had the airspace all to myself so the tower let me do abbreviated patterns which means one landing about [...]

I’ve been an aircraft owner for three weeks now, but haven’t been home long enough to take the Tailwind for an enjoyable flight since returning from my KY-to-WA cross country. After missing out on some beautiful weather yesterday and the day before, I decided that today I’m getting up early and making a quick trip [...]

Wow, I was tired. I slept in til 8am. Granted, I had only slept about 8 hours total in the previous two days and I gained (or lost) an hour because this was Mountain Time, but I still wanted to be in the air by 9am. During the night, another pilot made his way into [...]

Here’s what I learned last night: the inside of a Wittman Tailwind is not a good place to sleep. I’m five-foot-tenish, but even if I was four-foot-zeroish I still don’t think it would have been a good place to sleep. I’d like to say I woke up bright and early at 6:30 AM (sunrise) just [...]