Flight Schools, Traffic, and Etiquette: I fly into Delaware Airpark (33N) frequently. Lately I’ve noticed the traffic pattern absolutely filled with Delaware State flight school airplanes doing power off approaches; touch and goes; and general pattern work. What are the new pilots learning? With 4 airplanes in a small airport pattern, and sometimes more, the ..read more

Update to the Avidyne UTC Mismatch Issue: I’m still experiencing this on the first startup of the day. While having Avidyne review the logs, they found an issue with my JDM monitor being connected to port 3 of the IFD. I paid to have it changed to Port 4, and like usual, the avionics shop ..read more

Avidyne Support is Excellent and the IFD550 is amazingly powerful. The upload and download design of this equipment is not very well thought out, however, and is a risk for the end user. I’ll discuss two features that I’ll call out on this product. The most pressing is the Update and Download process, but there ..read more

With all the airplane drama dealing with the radio issues I’ve had, Bev and I decided to fly down to Tampa on Avelo; rent a car from Hertz; and fly back on Avelo from Orlando. The Avelo experience was excellent, the Wilmington based crew experienced and polite, and the airplane comfortable. The Hertz counter was quick and efficient, the counter rep (Jeremy I think he said), was polite and easy to deal with. The entire process was easy to accomplish. I had signed up for recurrent training in simulators with the RTC company in Trinity, Florida to align with our planned week in our Orlando timesh ..read more

On my last post I used the phrase ‘all is well that ends well‘. I spoke that phrase prematurely, as I had some serious radio issues crop us to bite me. This was the result of an improper avionics installation, a lack of testing on the shops part, and a major mistake on my part. All those things combined to cost me time, money, and aggravation. Self Induced IFD550 Failure: I tried to download new data three times to update my primary radio. It didn’t work, and ended up bricking the radio. I think the issue was that I did successfully download data with the JDM application from Jeppesen, but di ..read more

Let me first say that Life is Good!  No Great! My wife and I feel like we’ve been putting out fires, one after the other for most of the past month. We feel very fortunate, however, that the challenges were given to us one at a time, and in a manner that we could manage. Had these events happened all at once while away from home, we might have had a more difficult time getting through them. Saturday, April 20th, 2024 I had spit out a very small piece of tooth the week prior, but I wasn’t totally sure it was actually from a tooth, nor which tooth it would have come from. I’ve had a tempera ..read more

Biden is here already, but the TSA will not screen on his departure day. Therefore, in order to get out of the airport before 2pm, I have to move the airplane out of the inner ring. I chose to fly it just a few minutes south to Summit Airport (KEVY), which is closer to my home anyway. I filed a TSA reservation 24 hours in advance, and also filed an IFR flight plan to cover the flight. I arrived at my hangar and positioned my wife’s car there; and had her drive my car down to summit. From there I taxiied over to Hangar 17 at KILG and met with both the TSA and a Secret Service agent before I co ..read more

Just like accident investigations that take place the next day, in bright sunny and clear conditions. We had the same thing today, only there was no accident. Our ‘Sho Up’ cab came right on time and whisked us off to the airport some 12 miles out of town. Darlington is an old WWII airport with a triangle of runways, where two of the runways are now closed. Typical design with typical outcome. the remaining runway is in great shape, and there are new hangars aplenty. If I lived down here, I’d love to operate from this airport. We untied our airplane that we’d already fueled. We reloaded our lu ..read more

Beverly and I sat patiently for 3 hours or so in the FBO Lobby in Easton, MD (KESN). We ate our packed lunch, talk with a nice couple who was touring the area by car, and waited for the weather to improve. Just after noon I felt that the temperature had increased enough, and that the cloud cover had broken somewhat. It actually looked like it was clearing to the west of us, just as the Airmet Zulu was at the end of it’s forecast period. We made a rest room stop, packed up our gear, and lifted off for Punta Gorda once again. Our flight plan was to include a stop at KCKI, Williamsburg, SC (Kings ..read more

Heading to Florida for a few days of warmth with friends My wife and I were invited by our good friends, Bernadette and John, to visit them while they vacationed near Punta Gorda, FL. Our plan was to fly our Twin Comanche down on Saturday, February 24th and to fly back home on Tuesday morning, February 27th. We’d make one stop to break the trip up in 3 hour legs. Deciding to Start the Flight Long range forecasting showed a storm system going through in the days prior, with a front clearing that was supposed to clear by the time of our departure. I admit that there was an Airmet Zulu in effect ..read more