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Posts from ‘July, 2010’

Enabling cloud addiction.

“This is so friggin’ cool,” Tom said as he flew through low clouds, mist and rain over the Eastern Shore of Maryland with me this morning. I have to agree with him — it was very cool to see the rain on the windscreen and hear it pelt the wings, to cruise through the clouds [...]

The slow, subtle death of a critical system.

Yesterday afternoon I sat at my desk using Microsoft Flight Simulator, attempting to generate an image of the instrument panel of a single-engine airplane in flight, after it had suffered the failure of its vacuum pump. I needed this image for a training module I’m developing. The timing of this project could not have been [...]

Why do I fly? It’s simply, complicated.

Haven’t you ever stopped to ask yourself, why do you do what you do? If you’re a doctor, why do you seek to cure the sick? If you’re a lawyer, why do you seek to defend the innocent and punish the guilty? If you’re a pilot, why do you fly? Why did I pack my [...]

He at least could have told me the score…

As I flew north up the east shore of the Hudson River at around 12:30 p.m. on Friday, the Newark Tower controller advised me that I’d have to steer about a mile to the west, over Teterboro Airport, to avoid a temporary flight restriction over Yankee Stadium. Apparently the Bombers were playing an afternoon home [...]