Missouri

Up and at 'em for the only flight I have this week, to Malden, Missouri. It was a little snowy here early this morning, and it was rainy and dreary and IFR down there, but up on top it was gloriously clear and sunny and warm. 

It was only an hour flight there, and it was the first one in the Conquest where we didn't have the Starlink going. See, ole Elon came out and cut off General Aviation in his plans, making it so that you can't use Starlink if you exceed 100 mph, which is 86 knots, which means none of the planes that have been using it are going to be able to continue doing so. You CAN buy a super expensive package for $1000/month to go up to the same speeds for only 20 Gig of data, vs $50/month for 100 Gig of data that we had before. We blow through the 20 gig in no time. So...no more internet on board, which is pretty sad and annoying. Not just because I could do blog posts or look on Facebook or do whatever from the air, that was just a cute fun little perk. But I could call AWOS numbers from afar, pull up real time weather, not blocky limited ADS-B weather or extra delayed XM weather. I could get live, current METARs. I could call from the air off the internet in an emergency. Flying out in the mountain areas, I could pull up live camera feeds and get real time weather information in an area with spotty and few weather stations. I could pull up live turbulence, icing, storm cell, all the things with it. I feel like I'm going backwards with less situational awareness and fewer options without it now.  He bait and switched us, man. Get everybody hooked on it, get them to buy the equipment and get rid of other options, let it operate for awhile, cut people back a few weeks ago by raising the price and lowering the speed, and then bill everybody on 3/1/26 for the month, and promptly shut off everybody on 3/2/26 who is exceeding 100 mph, without warning of any kind. That's some BS right there.

The flight was fine. Clay took the crew car so I sat in the lounge and ate a small bag of cheetos and a kit kat bar until he got back and it was time to head home.

The guys got the rest of the flooring done in the kitchen, which included all our closets in there, and they got the trim halfway up in the dining room area. It seems to be taking them a long time to finish this job, they were done for the day like by lunch time and never came back; but they need to put the trim back up in the rest of the dining room, the kitchen, and in the closets. Fix the light in one closet, repaint the red spot on the ceiling in the kitchen, caulk around the counter, and THEN I think they'll be done with this particular project.

Tomorrow I was supposed to fly the Cirrus, but the weather won't allow, so I'll probably go in and cancel that before I go to bed. It's supposed to be IFR and raining all day, so nothing will likely get done outside of the house tomorrow.

Wednesday is my important Zoom meeting, at high noon. No other flights are scheduled for this week, as all the guys we fly with are in Vegas for the week...

Pretty views on top of the clouds today :)

Oh my. This is real. I pass this all the time and never really looked at it. The Frankfort HOT DOGS?? YHGTBSM.  What's harder to read is the left side of the digital sign is "HOT DOG OF THE MONTH" with a name in the center and a photo on the right, of someone who "won" Hot Dog of the Month. How would you love to be a Hot Dog as a highschooler? Or Hot Dog of the month winner?? Seriously.