Check Ride is Done!

After 65 days of training Check Ride day finally came and I passed. So now I am lucky enough to be able to fly the line in the Eclipse 500.


I have to say that the training was a lot tougher than I expected. My chief pilot sets a very high bar and it is up to us to meet those standards. The last few lessons are very busy and very stressful at times. We cram a lot of approaches into a very small geographic foot print as well as a short amount of time. The Check Ride was actually easy compared to the previous lessons.

A big thank you to fellow captain John H for taking these two shots of me shortly after my Check Ride. I might be able to post some more of John's awesome shots of aviation as a Linear Air pilot sees it if I am lucky.

Team Fortress 2

Meet the Demo Man!
"A fierce temper, a fascination with all things explosive, and a terrible plan to kill the Loch Ness Monster cost the six year old Demoman his original set of adoptive parents. Later, back at the Crypt Grammar School for Orphans near Ullapool in the Scottish Highlands, the boy's bomb-making skills improved dramatically. His disposition and total number of intact eyeballs, however, did not"( quote from Valve)

This is one of my favorite characters in probably my all time favorite game. When you chose the Demo Man you do so because you feel a little scottsman inside of you that just wants to blow stuff up.

The wizards at Valve have created an amazing computer game. Team Fortress 2 is probably the most inventive game ever. The Video above is one of short films Valve has made to show off their new game. The youtube video is low resolution but the actual gameplay uses the same graphics as the video but in high definition.

Below is a low res screen shot I took while playing with my best man Croly. In this shot I am the medic that is healing Croly who is the Demo Man!

Heel and Toe Shifting

My good friend and fellow captain Derek, just sent me a link to a great website called DrivingFast.net which has some great stuff in it. And that is were I found this video which I think is sweet.

That's something I would not mind practicing in this:

Oooh. This thing is F U N ! !

Three more lessons to go, then its off to New Mexico for my Type Rating. Hopefully.
Picture credits go to Alex, one of our DC based captains. Alex rode in the back and took these photos while I was enjoying lesson 3. This first picture is shot just as I am lining up on the runway for takeoff.


If you notice the center screen (MFD) is dark. This was a simulated problem and I am reading the checklist in order to fix the issue.


This should be about 50 degrees of bank or so as I am demonstrating steep turns. The goal being to do 2 linked 360 degree turns and stay within 100 feet of your intial altitude.



Hey! There's snow down there. The funny thing about steep turns in this plane is when you exceed 2 G's the gear starts to be pulled out of it's stowed position so the gear motors start running automatically to re-seat them. The locks that hold the gear up are only rated to 2 G's.