Here we are, the Moody Aviation crew. This is the two flight classes and the A&P classes together. We have about 20 other people that are in the Bible Pre Av year that are not in the picture.

Here Fran and I are posing with the mig that doubles as a windsock. Here in Idaho, they are just not satisfied with your everyday run of the mill orange windsock. Only a full scale military fighter on a perfectly balanced swivel will do. Just Land the same direction the Jet is pointed.

That is my friend Paul showing off just how much bigger his burger is than mine (the one on the right). At least I did not have to do a weight and balance calculation after lunch to determine if we could get the plane back off the ground. :)

In order to take a much needed peek out the window while flying, several of us took a trip to St. Maries Idaho for lunch last Friday. It was a great way to celebrate our progress in Instrument training so far. It was also fun to remember how to fly by looking out the window again. We also enjoyed a nice hamburger in town.

It is good to be back flying again. I sure had a blast in Papua New Guinea and it has really allowed me to appreciate my training here back at school. I have a much better understanding of why we work so hard for precision and excellence in our flying. Although, I have a ways to go before my flying can be described as such. In the mean time, I am approaching the 200 hour mark and I am making good progress towards my instrument rating. I have been going on lots of flights out over Spokane somewhere. I get to see the runway for a few seconds at takeoff and Landing. The rest of the time I get to watch all those needles move about on the instrument panel. It is the most challenging thing I have ever done. Already, I am beginning to see how it is really growing me as a pilot.

takeoff and landing

We are now in Papua New Guinea. Follow the link to our New Blog just for this trip. The new blog is www.png2007.blogspot.com.

This week we have been in our landing gear seminar. We have enjoyed having Mike, our guest speaker from Missionary Maintenance Services (MMS). He really knows his stuff and we have been learning a ton about brakes and landing gear. This is our little corner of the hangar for class and practicals. You can also see our new Decathlon in the lower right hand corner. Once we fix it during the winter we will use it for our tail wheel and aerobatic training. It will be a blast to fly.

Some nights I work after school. This was a particularly fun evening because of the snow and they were the largest windows Paul, Ben and I have ever installed. It has been great working for Paul and we alway have a blast working together. It is not a terribly exciting photo but we were proud of it, and it keeps us flying.

Poor 89V did not make the cut and had to spend some time outside the hangar during a recent snow. Snow does not hurt the planes but it does mean that before you fly it you will have to spend some time warming it up again and cleaning all the snow and ice off.

Since the snow has come we have been doing virtually no flying. Occasionally we have to move the planes around in the hangar which means moving some outside and doing an elaborate airplanes on ice dance. It can be pretty exciting to push them around on the snow and black ice.

Meanwhile, back at school, we just completed our maintenance seminar on electricity. At the end of the quarter we set aside two weeks to focus on refreshing our maintenance skills with specific instruction on electricity and and landing gear. It is a great time to practice some of our skills that we don't use every day and learn some new tricks to make maintenance a little easier. This is a picture of our project boards. Each one represent a complete electrical system. They each have all of the components necessary for a specific system on the airplane. The boards allows us to touch, interact and better understand the whole system without taking the plane apart. They also allows us to create faults and troubleshoot common electrical problems we may face from day to day.

Here is the view looking back towards Idaho and a little of Spokane Valley as the sun set. It was a fitting end to a wonderful day of skiing. It might be a while till I get to do that again. Skiing hasn't quite caught on yet in Papua New Guinea.

This was the last run of the day. The sun was setting and you can still see the dense fog that kept us from flying the whole day. It was sad to be grounded but it was still nice to have a way to get above the clouds.

Last weekend we had our first Moody Ski Day. It was pretty informal but we picked a super day for it. I was planning on having my first solo in the Cessna 182 that day but the weather had other plans, so it was off to the slopes. We were greeted by a beautiful sunrise once we broke above the freezing fog layer that had settled like a thick quilt over Spokane.