It has been a while since I have had some time to post, let alone sleep (most of our days we start flying around 6:00 or 7:00am with an hour of preflight before that). So much has happened in the last week. For starters: I flew Solo! Which is an amazing experience. It was not the first time since I started flying in High school. Nevertheless, it was a great to do it again the "Moody way." We have been receiving a fantastic education. Every flight is carefully planned and executed down to the smallest details. It is very comforting to know that your lack of experience as a pilot is cushioned by a strong system of checklists and procedures resulting in very safe flying. I have been working on collecting some more video of my flying and when I get a chance to edit it into something a little less boring to watch I will put that up. Until then, this is a shot from my solo flight today. I was flying along about 20 miles north of our airport working on some procedures when I developed a new found appreciation for Flight Following (friendly radio people who sit in dark rooms all day and try and keep all the little green lights on their radar screens from bumping into each other). They called me up and said "Skyhawk 7275D, traffic is two miles, 9 o'clock, Boeing 747, Descend immediately at or below 5,000." That is airplane talk for: if you don't move it now, you are going to be a small splat on the windscreen of a very big jet. Thank you Flight Following! Another exciting day at the office.

Between the 4th of July, the world cup, work and school it has been a very busy week. My flight training has been progressing well and I wanted to give you a little feel for a typical flight over Spokane with a short video. I sped up many of the clips both to keep it short and fend off boredom (of course we don't taxi that fast). Also, I need to give a big thank you to David Crowder for the music and Steve Thimsen for letting me film his flying and move his CG aft (nice work Steve). This is my first attempt at aerial cinematography, hopefully it will improve with practice as I hope to bring you more "day in the life" vignettes in the future. :) enjoy! Low Res video or Higher Res Video

The first week of flight is over and I have been having an incredible time. This week seems like it has gone so slowly. We began with all the usual introduction and expectation talks and then got right down to flying planes. It has been over 90 degrees for almost every flight. There is nothing quite like sitting in that little oven. You would think that for a cool 150,000 dollars we would have AC. Nope, just a big fan on the front, and believe me, if that stops spinning it gets real hot in the cockpit. The only glitch in the week was that I came down with the flu right before my first flight. It probably was not some of my best flying but I survived and as soon as I returned to terra firma it was off to the couch back at home. I am all better now and I can't wait to continue on next week as we move into stalls and slow flight. More on that later.

Yup, this is still Spokane. My parents came out for the weekend and we took them around to some of the pretty places in town. This is Manito park near our house where Les and I sometimes go to feed the ducks and smell the roses.