Long XC

I'm pleased to report that Cody has completed his first long cross country solo in N2886T.  

Beautiful weather today for an early start and early morning flight down and back.  

The plane did well and this was the longest and farthest we've flown it yet. 

This is the world famous Triple Tree as seen from the Cherokee!

Here is Clemson University and Death Valley Stadium.

Past Pilots

I received a nice note from the AOPA which was sent into the "Letters to the Editor" section and wanted to share that here.

August 17, 2016

To the Editor:

Arriving home from work yesterday, I saw the September issue of AOPA Pilot sitting on the kitchen table

so I made a quick grab and headed to the recliner for some reading.  After a few minutes of thumbing

through the pages I ran across an article called "The $1,000 Cherokee" written by Jill Tallman.  Wow, this

excellent piece brought back some fantastic memories.  The reason for this is that N2886T is the aircraft I

completed my first supervised solo with at the now gone Alameda airport (Q64) in Albuquerque.  The date

was May 19, 1976 which was during my sophomore year of High School and my morning aerial

adventure made me show up late for class so I was sent to the Principal’s office.  When asked for an

excuse, I told Mr. Barefoot about what had just transpired and held out my certificate of solo flight.  He

looked it over, gave me a smile, a handshake and handed me a hall pass.

The last time I saw N2886T was on May 21, 1992.  I had flown a Skylane to Tupelo from Atlanta and

noticed it sitting in an area for permanent tie downs.  I walked over to where she was parked and spent

time reminiscing about that special day.  Thanks for helping me make another flight down memory lane

and I wish Mr. Atkins many years of great times and safe flying with the Cherokee I'll never forget.

25 hour oil change

Finally hit that magic 25 hour goal that we had set and it was time to change the oil.  

Again as before i was relieved to find that we had no trash in the oil filter.  This time however I opted to send the oil off for analysis.  Should have the results back in a few weeks.  

No Glitter! 

AOPA Live!

We made it to this weeks edition of AOPA Live!  Our segment is around the 8:23 mark.

https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/aopa-live#.V60rmP02mOA.gmail

The real purpose of this blog has and always will be to remove the mystery of airplane ownership and to emphasize that GA aircraft ownership is possible by the middle class.   I am so grateful that the AOPA picked up on this and not only produced this story piece but also highlighted it in their broadcast.

Some XC time for Cody

Cody received his solo endorsements and was able to get some solo practice time in this afternoon.

Few nice pictures from the flight between destinations.

Offical AOPA Digital Article and Video

The digital edition of the Sept Issue of AOPA Flight is out now and has a link to the video piece that was done back in June.

Read the full article here and watch the video segment at the end.

https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2016/september/pilot/The-$1000-Cherokee

What a weekend!

Boy what a weekend....hot on the heels of the AOPA article we had 3 major accomplishments back to back.

First, I finally was able to take the Cherokee up for my first solo flight.  What a flight it was!  Second, I was able to fly my first formation flight and on a beautiful summer evening.

Finally,  Cody received solo sign off and was able to solo the Cherokee for the very first time.

Enjoy these beautiful pictures!

 

AOPA Article

The article on the little Cherokee is out!  Seen in this month's issue of AOPA Flight Magazine.