Kentucky & Ohio

I'm officially pooped! I'm not getting up early tomorrow, in fact I'm going to be mad if I wake up early. In fact I may make sure I DON'T wake up early. :p

Took the 340 with Nick and Logan down to Owensboro, KY. I wasn't sure which FBO to go to and neither were they. So I picked one of the three, since two of the three were right next to each other, seemed like a safe bet. It was called "Modern Jet Center". We pull up and the ramp is empty. It's a big hangar with no windows or doors I can see and a sign that says "Modern" on it but no way to access, nobody coming out, nobody there. We shut down and go in another hangar that says "RESTROOMS" on the door, and there's nobody in there. None of this looks familiar at all. So Nick and Logan decide to leave with their guy in a white truck parked on the other side of the fence waiting for them, and I decide to taxi over to the 3rd FBO and see what I can see. It's a tower controlled field, this isn't in the middle of nowhere. I taxi over, and later I learn that Nick and Logan couldn't get out anywhere over there, so they CLIMBED THE BARBED WIRE FENCE at an AIRPORT and got into the truck. I'm so glad they didn't get arrested or something! lol

I taxi over to the last FBO, which still doesn't really look familiar, but the moment I go inside, it is. I HAVE been there. I got gas, which took them forever to do. Nick and Logan weren't going to be gone long, so I didn't go anywhere to get any food. 

We left there after a couple hours, and headed back for Frankfort, dropped off the guys, and Ethan and I topped off the 340 again, flew over to Delphi, picked up Jim Y, flew over to Williams County to drop off Jim so he could pick up the Cherokee Six. Ethan and I flew over to Toledo, where I was to pick up the Conquest. 

We landed there in Toledo, and Morgan called me. She had her 2nd ever solo flight in the Meridian down to Florida. She had good weather on the way down, and halfway home, but from Georgia to Indiana, there was a line of weather that produced decent icing, so she called me to ask questions about the weather, flying, etc. I convinced her that it was okay to 'send it', and off she went, and off I went.

I get to Frankfort and the weather was tanking pretty fast. I came in the last 10 miles in almost IFR. Ethan was behind me in the 340. We got in as it started raining, too. Beautiful. ;)

The two planes got put away, I got in my car, checked, and Morgan had sent it and was on her way, had about an hour left. I had an hour drive in my car, so I tracked her on my phone and sent little text messages that she wouldn't get until later, narrating her trip. lol

She landed safely as I was walking into my house. Then Kaylee calls on her way home because she's had a long day and wants to talk for an hour on her way home. And borrow some butter for her Eggel (Bagel with an egg on it). Lots of talking!

So...today I hit my peopling wall, and I wasn't as friendly to everyone as I probably should've been, but tomorrow I have off, and I am taking it.

Man, that accident out in DC is such a bad deal. A friend of ours, Glenn O., is a pilot for PSA Airlines, flies the same type of plane that crashed. I didn't want to be the person who texts and asks if he's okay, because I knew if he was, and odds were good, that he'd be getting inundated with texts, calls, private messages, emails, etc. So I texted someone I knew probably wouldn't be able to help but text him, Spencer, and asked if he'd heard from him. He said yes, Glenn was fine. So that was good.

I'm also tired enough that this is setting me off a little, on the public stuff on it. Kind of like the Dallas warbird crash did. Some people claiming conspiracy theory or deliberate crash. Or Trump claiming that DEI probably caused the crash because he has common sense so he just knows it. The ATC staffing may have been low, but one guy doing multiple frequencies is an everyday common occurrence. When you listen to the ATC tapes, they did fine. It was standard. He asked them if they could take 33. They said they could. They circled to land, and the airliner did nothing wrong. ATC asked the helicopter if they had the RJ in sight. They said they did, and probably that they'd keep separation. ATC didn't do anything wrong with that. ATC was professional even in the midst and aftermath of the accident. The helicopter likely had SOMEBODY in sight, but not who they should've had in sight. They were supposed to be 200' or below. Were they? I don't know. They may have had NVGs on which may not have helped them see out. Who knows, but we know they flew into that airliner and didn't see it in time. We'll see after more info comes out, but shit happens. Big airliner accidents happen. Rarely, but they do. They happened long before DEI because a thing, and they've all had at least one white man at the controls. I guess the only thing left to see is if both the people in the helicopter were "minorities" of some sort, leaving him to say that. But one was an instructor with over 1000 hours. (Just found out the instructor is a nice married white male from Mississippi with several young kids named Andrew Eaves, and he was in charge of that flight.) So ATC was professional even if they're understaffed like they have been forever. The airliner did what it was supposed to. The helicopter is the most unknown.  But mostly I wish Trump had been more of a human or a president and less of a...spouter. "We're gonna find out what happened way sooner than the NTSB" or whatever that was. He sounded like Dan Gryder, who likes to announce what happened with accidents before the bodies have even been recovered.  Which is what this is too. Just...not cool. Meanwhile, that accident sends shock waves through the aviation industry, as Part 121 accidents are so rare, and so very bad. :( 

Gonna watch one more TV show then go sleeeeeep. Hard.

Iowa

Yep, another 6 am-er. I'm starting to have a harder time getting moving on these mornings, but I only have one more, tomorrow, for a couple days, so that's good.

We found out that Morgan has to get 200-300 hours multi time before they won't charge an arm and a leg to put her on insurance, so she'll be coming along on as many trips as possible to get that done. So she was there this morning, along with Nick and Logan, and we flew to Quad Cities first. Dropped off Nick and Logan, got 40 gallons of gas in order to waive their $50 landing fee, and then flew on to Cedar Rapids. Got a courtesy car there, and we went into town at a coffee shop and had breakfast. I love the small town breakfast nooks. :)  Bought another 20 gallons here to waive THEIR landing fee, too, and then Morgan and I waited for Nick and Logan to be done and come back, which took several hours.

In the meantime, I told her about this blog, and read her some of the days she remembered that were bigger days. It was super funny to her to hear what I said vs what she remembered that day. I also read her some of the entries I made when I was first learning to fly the T-6, which she also got a kick out of. It was an entertaining afternoon. lol

When we got back to Frankfort, it was warm-ish and sunny, and Morgan wanted to fly the Citabria, and I figured I could do that too. We get to Kokomo, the sun is down and it's getting colder now, but we hurry, and the airplane is low on gas. She's willing to self-serve fuel, so we do that, and then go fly for an hour. Do about 13 takeoffs and landings. It's actually more peaceful than expected, and I wasn't sorry we went even though I'm perpetually tired this week. :)

Kaylee texts me from the air, asks if I'll bring her dinner home, which I do, and go over there to spend some time with her too. 

Get back home home, and it's time to try to catch up on logbooks, billing, etc., and get prepared for the trip tomorrow to Owensboro, Kentucky. 

Morgan at sunset fueling up the Citabria

Kokomo Runways

Short final

Our laps at Kokomo

Illinois & N. Carolina

I'm tired today, from oooone too many wake-ups at 5:30-6:30 am in a row. Today made 4. Then I've got tomorrow and Thursday, too! Boo.

Monday was Sparta, IL. I took Nick there in the 340 for a project, and ate at the little cafe across the street. We were back at Frankfort by 2:30, so next I took the Conquest over to Toledo for maintenance work. I had Steve and Morgan come pick me up in the Aerostar, and man we had the best sunset on the way home. I got out at Frankfort so I could pick up my car, drove back to Kokomo and met them at Grindestone's for dinner.  Got home at like 9:30 pm, when I'd left the house at 7 am, so that made for a long day all together.

Back up at 6:30 am this morning to take the Cheyenne down to N. Carolina with Kevin and 4 of his employees for a business thing of theirs. We went to Asheville. The area was hit hard as you probably know. I saw places where they had water testing strips, some roads are out, the facility they were there to tour was shut down for months because the workers couldn't get there because of the roads. It's back open now, just. I found a nice little place to eat brunch, sitting in the sun on an enclosed patio, and enjoyed that. 

The rest of the afternoon I had a bunch of stuff to catch up. Scheduling, weather, trip planning, scanning receipts I'd gotten behind on, maintenance info, CAF stuff, I stayed busy from the time I got back from breakfast in N Carolina until it was time to leave at 2:45 pm.  They got back, we flew home, I landed at 4:30, took my car through a car wash which it badly needed, and headed for home for the night. 

I stopped by Kaylee's house for awhile, to talk, catch up, hug, you know, stuff. She has a heart monitor on as of 7:30 am this morning. It's supposed to stay on for 2 weeks, and she's supposed to hit a button on it every time she feels symptoms. So far she said she'd hit the button twice. It's WAY smaller than the one Ann had to wear. It's taped to her chest, she's not supposed to get it wet, so she's going to take baths and wash her hair in the sink. It's small enough that it can hide under her shirt, and doesn't have a box or wires dangling down. When she's done with it, after 2 weeks she peels off the tape and ships the thing back to the hospital, where they'll go through the data gathered. Way easier than Ann's monitor, where we had to take it back in to the hospital to return it. Kaylee was the youngest person in there By Far. She showed up with coffee, and the lady behind the desk was like "you're here for cardiac and you're drinking caffeine?" Kaylee said yes, it's just a monitor and she's supposed to carry on with normal life. I get it though. They're not used to 24 year olds coming in with heart issues. Fortunately.

Then more stuff to catch up on, prep and do. Laundry for clean clothes I was out of, dishes for clean dishes we were out of, last trip paperwork, next trip prep, and now I'm yawning like crazy at 9:30 pm. I'm going to try to get through the Rookie from 10-11 I hope, and then it's bed time so I can get up at 6 am again to go to Iowa, this time.

But look at this sunset, man. It was stunning.

340 on the ramp at Frankfort

Steve, me and Morgan at sunset in the Aerostar

Asheville

Cheyenne on the ramp in Asheville

The neat little cafe I had breakfast in today

Ground

As in Ground School, not as in GroundED. 6:30 am wake-up, out to Kokomo Airport, where Morgan and I pulled out the Aerostar (and it took both of us) and flew down to Terre Haute for the C-45 and BT-13 groundschools. Rick B. and the other Rick did a talk on the two different types of props on the two planes. Then I did the C-45 ground. I started with about an hour's discussion on the airplane on tour stuff. How you operate it, techniques to use, how the tour works, what is expected of you, tips to make it easier, etc. That was a hit, lots of discussions, questions, etc. We had a couple of brand new tour pilots in there, and a couple more online who have only done it a couple of times, along with the 'old hands', me and JP. So that was a good conversation. Then I went through the PowerPoint slides, which I have trimmed down about as short as possible, half of the size of what it used to be. We did our quiz, and then I was done. JP got up to talk about the engines, which didn't take long. Then Laurence got up and did his talk on the BT-13. It also wasn't super long, but altogether, with the engine and prop discussions separate, it adds up to meet the needs/requirements. I think it all went pretty well. 

The only thing I found a little annoying was one of the new guys, Mike (airline pilot), I'm up front teaching this stuff, and every time he had a question, he'd ask JP, look at JP, even if I was talking he'd verify with JP. Um, I signed off JP in the plane, I was his instructor, so...yeah. ;) I didn't say anything, but later Morgan brought it up; she noticed it too. She said she kept looking at me expecting me to react, but I did a good job not reacting. That's not something I'm going to react over, and I'll bet not one of the guys in there noticed. They rarely do notice stuff like that, and I try not to have a chip on my shoulder or lose sleep over something like that. But you do notice about the 3rd or 4th time in a row that someone has decided that they trust the answers of someone else more than they do yours. ;) Eh, I'll probably be his initial instructor in it, so he'll have to get used to just asking me stuff all by myself in the plane. ;)

Got home by like 4:30 pm, immediately got comfy pants on, made some mac & cheese, updated my CAF website with the appropriate dates for stuff, sent out a mass email to the class attendees, and started getting ready for tomorrow. Tonight we watched the first playoffs game halfheartedly, Eagles creamed them, and started watching the Chiefs and Bills game, but instead decided to watch a Landman episode and then check in on the game and see how it's going. If it's interesting, we'll watch the end of it. If it's not, we'll watch the last Landman episode. I have to get up at 6:15 am again tomorrow for my trip to Illinois, so I don't want to stay up super late. 

Pictures are from yesterday's trip to NY and today's trip to Terre Haute.

On Kaylee's wall or door or something :)

A little hydraulic mess

My 157 knot tailwind at 35,000' :)

View from above

From the Aerostar this morning. Very wintery.

New York, CAF

Friday I didn't do a whole lot. I was very tired and dehydrated, and with the 3 hour time difference, a little jet-lagged too. I did household stuff, basically, and prepared for Saturday's stuff, dealt with a couple of people on upcoming flights, all that good stuff. 

This morning I got up at 5:30 am, drove to Frankfort, which wasn't open yet, so I had to pull the Conquest out myself. Frigid, but not hard now. Bigger problem was the pile of hydraulic fluid on the floor under the right engine. Bad timing. Worst case scenario would be no flaps and emergency gear extension. It has a "low hydraulic fluid light", so I started it up and that wasn't on. I took off, retracted the gear and flaps, checked everything out, it seemed fine, so I headed to White Plains, NY. I did a partial flap landing, both places, just to save hydraulic action. Sent the photo of the mess to the owner to call the maintenance shop, and grounded the plane when I got home. I'll have to take the 340 to Illinois and Iowa Monday and Wednesday instead. *sigh*

The trip out to NY was FAST. I think I broke a record of having 158 knot tailwinds. I got a photo at 157, it went up, then I was leveling off and talking and by the time I got un-busy, the numbers had dropped off some. That's some serious wind though. Over 400 kts groundspeed for awhile. It took me about 1.5 hours to get there at 35,000', the only time I've ever had that plane up to its max ceiling so far. It struggles the last little bit of that but once it's there, it does all right. I picked up Andy, and on the way home, the winds were so bad, it would have taken me about 4 hours to get home at 34,000'.  So I went home at 14,000' and it still took 2.9 hours to get home. Double the time, almost. Unreal.

I was originally going to drop off Andy and then fly the Conquest to Kokomo to attend the CAF groundschool. Except now I didn't want to add an extra two takeoffs and landings, so I left it at Frankfort and drove to Kokomo, which made me an hour later than I was. Sat in on the end of the PT-26 groundschool and the CRM training. I'm not sorry I missed some of it. Except I also learned that nobody is doing the C-45 training. I'd said I didn't want to, and Laurence was doing the BT and Ray doing BOB. Except Ray backed out and JP whom I thought picked it up, didn't, so nobody was doing it. I texted JP about doing it and he answered me until I basically asked if he was doing it and then he didn't answer me any more. So I got home and went over the presentation and the quiz, adapted a few things over the hours, and I guess I'll do it after all. *double sigh*. It's someone else's turn. I've done it every year since we've had BOB and I haven't changed much of anything, so we need fresh blood. Plus I'm tired of doing it. LOVE having it dropped on me the night before, too, but hey.

We had Thai food with Kaylee tonight, and then it's bedtime for me, since I have to get up at...6:40 am. To fly to Terre Haute to spend the day doing BT-13 and C-45 ground school. Before Monday's trip to Illinois, before Tuesday's Cheyenne trip to N Carolina, before Wednesday's trip to Iowa in the 340 now too. And so on. Pictures tomorrow....

Wednesday in Vegas, Thursday Home

Had a text that came through from Kaylee at 3:30 am our time so didn’t see it, that the water isn’t working in her house. We’re not there, and we’re not sure why, and it’s now 3 hours later and she’s already at work, so Steve called Kenny to go over and check. Sure enough, no water. No flooded basement at least, either. OUR house works on the water, so we texted her to go over there for water. We left a little drip going in our sink too in case it was frozen pipes, but it was warm in the basement and the pipes should’ve been fine. So he had Kenny turn off the water main over there just in case. First our sewer goes down, then Kaylee's water. Good thing they both didn't happen at the same time, or we'd all be in a hotel room.

Steve and I spent a lot of the day just relaxing around the hotel suite. We did get downstairs for breakfast at a place Kaylee would enjoy. Later we got an Uber over to the MGM casino, to eat at Wolfgang Puck's bar and grill. We sit down, and Steve suddenly realizes his phone isn't in his pocket any more. Panic mode! I reached out to Uber, told them we'd left a phone in there, the driver found it, turned around, and gave it back to him. I'd tipped him very well, and the app charged us $10 for the return trip, and Steve tipped him again for coming back, so that was a fruitful trip for him! Steve was so relieved to have his phone back in one piece he'd probably have paid $100 for it. lol

The food at Wolfgang's was good. Calamari, sea bass, linguini and clams, and a volcano cake and apple crisp for dessert.  Mmm. We walked from there over to the Circus Du Soleil show, "KA". That was a little wild, but it was good. They had a stage that was digital, floated, and would even go hugely vertical, people fighting on that thing, people doing things sometimes without safety harnesses that made me lift my eyebrows a bit, so I guess that's always a hallmark of a good show. They really ought to let me take photos though. They had people there watching you like a hawk. NO PHOTOS. I had several mental photos that I thought would have been great. Anyway, it's one of the last Circus due Soleil shows in Vegas that we hadn't seen, and it was a pretty good one. We enjoyed.

Back to the hotel, repack everything and get ready, then I took a giant soak in the huge bath tub, no jets or bubbles, but bath salts and super deep water. Been awhile since I did that one. Then this morning get up and head out.

I hadn't really slept the last two nights, not sure why, so I'm hoping tonight is dream town. lol So I just got up early this morning finally, like 5 or so, and got ready to go. When we came out here we had bad headwinds. When we left here, we also had bad headwinds, which is not fair. But first we couldn't get out of there. The controller was the only person working Clearance, Ground and Tower, all three. We were on the ground for over 30 minutes trying to pick up a clearance and get out of there. I couldn't even get out VFR. We didn't have a ton of gas to spare as it was, and that didn't help. Then she didn't like the routing they gave me to start with, so she had to re-work it, and when she did, she apparently filed for FL230 as my final. I'd filed for FL290, and I needed to be that high for fuel burn. So eventually I ask the controllers when I can get higher, and they're like "we have 230 as your final". So I burned even more gas down low.  THEN, the headwinds were way worse than forecast. We were getting 117 knots mostly headwinds for half the trip. It was ridiculous. What was supposed to take 4.5 hours in the air took 5 hours, plus more than 30 minutes before we even got off the ground. One poor guy in the back had to pee 10 minutes after we took off and HELD IT for over 5 hours! I didn't know until we landed! The rest of us had dehydrated ourselves appropriately and were fine. I sipped on water throughout the flight, but stayed so dehydrated I didn't have to go to the bathroom until like 8 or 9 pm our time. Which means I went from 8:30 am until 5-6 pm without needing to use the bathroom. I'll try to make it up to my system tomorrow. 

Tonight I picked up Olive Garden for dinner for Kaylee, and we finally met up with her on her birthday day, hung out, spent the evening, caught up. She'd had a bad day at work, unfortunately, losing control of a couple of kids and a mom in a session, and she was pretty bummed about it. Hopefully she some day comes to believe that nobody does everything perfect or has the answer for everything all the time, and you learn more and you do more, and it's okay. She came over to take her shower here since she doesn't have any running water, and Steve took some buckets of water over to fill up her toilet tanks so she can get one flush each out of the front and back bathroom. He's pretty sure the main from the road to the house is the frozen one, and it's not going to warm up until next week, and he wants to be sure of what it is before he calls in the water company, so it may be a few days before she has running water again. What a pain. I KNOW what a pain that is, from a different end, but I do know. Running next door to do things is good that it's there and annoying as hell to have to do regularly. ;)

Welp, I'm tired, and even though it's only 9:30 pm Vegas time, it's 12:30 am my time, and that seems like the right time to go to bed. A few more pics I'll add tomorrow...

Sunrise out of our bed

Rainbow in the fountain below

Pretty

Lava cake

Apple crisp

Theater for "KA" at MGM

"Fire" on stage

Our nasty headwinds

Vegas Day Two

We ate at Sabella’s downstairs at the Bellagio for breakfast. Nice ambiance, just normal bacon, eggs, and a bagel, OJ. Then we walked around and looked at stuff for quite awhile before wandering over to the Arte Museum, which is an “interactive, immersive” activity that is different. The first room has super tall ceilings and it has digital waterfalls running down the walls. It’s dark in there, with mirrors, so you can’t see how big the room really is, it looks like the waterfalls go forever in both directions. You walk through various rooms with various themes. One was a giant water whale, one was a room full of flowers and butterflies that are on the ceilings, floors, walls, glass and mirrors everywhere. You have to move slowly so you don’t plow into a wall or mirror. lol I liked the raindrop room, had globes with lights in them at all “altitudes” in the room, and they changed colors, and otherwise it’s dark, so it looks like you’re in some kind of magical forest of globes or something. It was cool. Another room was an art room, and it was huge. It had three ‘shows’, lasted 35 min to see them all, and for example one was Van Gogh, and it showed his paintings to start with, then they became “alive” all around you, the starry night on the floor and walls, the brush strokes spinning sometimes, etc. It was kind of wild. My brain didn’t like some of the spinny things. The last section had a fun area for kids. The background walls was a jungle, and there were mystical creatures going across the front of the room. But the back of the room had a bunch of odd looking animal walking across it, and then I realized what it was. You could take a Lion, Giraffe, Elephant, etc., and color it yourself, write on it, etc., and then scan it in, and poof, your creation was walking through the jungle with the others. You can see your giant lion with “Brennan” written on it walking through larger than life. I thought that was clever. Anyway, it was an interesting way to spend some time.

We skipped lunch, because breakfast was more than we normally eat, and dinner was going to be big, which it was. The 8 of us went to Prime Steakhouse there at the Bellagio, and we ended up in the best seat in the house. You can’t reserve it, it’s first come first serve, and Ethan’s only gotten it once before in the 15 years he’s been coming here, until last night. It’s outdoors, right by the fountains, so you can watch the fountain shows while you eat. It was about 42 degrees outside, but they have these overhead heaters that just keep you nice and warm without being hot or cold. So we ate a delicious filet, and had some asparagus and truffle mashed potatoes and some excellent warm bread with real salted butter.  Dessert was creme brulet for me, a giant chocolate chip cookie with ice cream on it for Nick, apple pie for Steve, and basically lava cake for the other guys. Good stuff, man, good and full. And we enjoyed the fountain shows and good company before heading back up to the rooms to unwind.

Not a bad way to spend a Tuesday. :). These photos would be better if I edited them which I will probably do later, but I’ll just put these up as is anyway and go back and do yesterday’s too.

Sunrise Tuesday

Waterfall room that’s hard to get a good photo of from here

Flowers

Flowers

Orange teardrops

There was green and yellow and white too

Water rushing on the floor, walls, etc.

Room Art

Sunset from above

Logan, Ethan, Clay watching the fountains at dinner

Our group was, starting with Ethan and going clockwise. Ethan, Clay (soon to be son in law), Steve, me, Ben, Stephen, Nick, Logan. All workers for the concrete company

And from my room afterwards, lying in bed, feet showing, seeing the fountains come up nice and tall. ;)