Marc's Public Blog - Flying

π 2009-09-05 01:01 in Flying, Nflying

While driving back from Hollister, I notice a 'aircraft museum' sign on 101 close to where south county airport is, and I had a bit of spare time on my hands, so I figure "what the hell?".
I went to check it out, and it was indeed a nice little local museum with a few interesting pieces that aren't that easy to see elsewhere, if at all, and I specifically liked the local maps of airports here 50-60 years ago, before they got wiped by "progress" (well, not that I liked the fact that they are gone, but knowing how things were during simpler times, not so long ago).

Here are a few picts, along with my recommendation to go check it out if you're driving by. It's not pretentious or huge, but it's worth the time.

the bay area used to have lots of airports. Too bad almost all of them are gone

the former santa clara airport

I'd totally want to fly in that.... Not! :)

See more images for Wings History Aircraft Museum

π 2009-09-05 01:01 in Flying, Nflying

My coworker Wolf nicely agreed to give me a "sled ride" in one of the gliders he flies out of Hollister. Unfortunately, we didn't get any lift at all, so it was only a half hour-ish flight, but still it was nice to see how gliders work and get a feel for one.
It was also a bit eery to fly pretty close to mountain tops without any power, in a position that would have been dire in a powered plane without engine power.

the tailwheel dolly is actually removed before flight

golf car tow to the runway

our tow plane, an old cropduster with a nice biker dude pilot :)

cabin room is limited :)

Hollister runways

tow plane unhooked and flying away

much closer to the rocks as I would have gone in a no engine aircraft :)

wolf was in the back, taking care of the important flying

nice garden maze by the runway

Even though we didn't get any lift whatsoever, it was quite an interesting experience. Thanks Wolf for taking me along.

See more images for My first glider flight

π 2009-09-02 01:01 in Flying, Nflying

These pictures are taken off my blog entry on our Hawaii trip for the flying blog. There is a bit of duplication here, sorry:

When we were in Kauai, I signed us up for a flight in 2 trikes, each of us flying one with a CFI.

This was our first time in a trike

Flying the trike was interesting, but from the back seat it was very tiring to extend your arms so far forward to control it. The other bummer was that for safety reasons, they did not allow us to take a camera due to the risk of it flying off into the prop in the back, which would be a problem if it were to happen.

Unfortunately, the flight was underwhelming because of high winds and too many clouds to see the ground (you can see on the map above that despite 1H of flight, we didn't get far). We had groundspeeds of barely 25kts (i.e. slower than our driving on the road there) and didn't get very good views outside of a few places, due to the cloud cover.

This could have been quite nice, but it turned out to be fairly disappointing unfortunately, especially when we were charged full price for their pictures and we only got a few good ones, the others were pointless or bad due to a fogged in lens :-