Leslie and I took off the next day for Hoover Island. It was a much needed vacation from all of the crazy flying and studying leading up to my test. We enjoyed a full week of canoeing, sailing, swimming, reading, fishing, hammocking (sp?), eating and relaxing. It was fantastic.

My Dad was very proud of me and I think he was happy to be back on the ground too. I know I was :) The next thing on the to do list was a vacation.

Mom looks even happier to be back on the ground :)

Here is one of my first passengers. My Dad was playing Co-pilot. It was a pleasure to take my parents up a few days after I recieved my license. We had a blast flying around north of Spokane and enjoying the countryside. Unfortunately it was pretty smokey due to all the forest fires lately.

The real "BIG" news is that I complete my Private Pilot Certificate. So now I am a real Pilot. It was a big relief to pass the test and very encouraging to be past that milestone. I won't bore you with the details but the test consisted of a 2 hour written test, a 4 hour oral examination and a 2 hour flight test. Fortunately not all the same day.

September started with Awana. It is going to be an exciting and challenging year. I am co-director of the boys T&T program this year and it has been a blast so far. We have about 40 kids so far and it has been growing every week. I am going to learn a lot.

Let the blogging begin!
Also Let me start off with the fact that I feel like a real turkey that I have not updated this site in so long. I especially apologize to all my daily blog checkers that have been disapointed for that last month. What a crazy month it has been. It started a while ago with this wild turkey wondering through the streets of spokane. Pretty bold as November approaches.

This is my instructor Brian and I at a short stop on one of our trips around Washington. I found out today that if the weather holds and I continue to fly well I will be taking my Private Pilot test as early as the end of next week. I have a lot to learn and perfect between now and then but it is amazing how fast our education is progressing. I still have not had time to finish my first solo video. I will keep you posted.

It is Cross Country time. So far I have flown to Pullman (not much there worth writing about, go Dawgs), Walla Walla, Pasco, Moses Lake, Ephrata and Wenatchee. This is a picture from our stop in Wenatchee. I have had some great trips but I have not taken many pictures because the visibillity has been down due to all the wild fires. That and I have been pretty busy just flying the plane.

Back at school we are still working on this maneuver. So far we have the top position pretty well worked out but we are struggling with keeping our skyhawks inverted with those pesky gravity feed fuel systems. I will let you know when we work it out.

Ack it has been a while since I have had a moment to update the blog. I apologize to those faithful visitors over that last few weeks. Since I wrote last I have been engrosed with flying and maintenance at school. However, we did manage to escape for a weekend and see the airshow at Faichild Air Force Base. It was fantastic, and for the record, that is a F-117 pilot waving to me.

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.