Compatriots of the Sky

If you click on that it shoudl get larger. That’s me in the plane at Paso Robles, about to fire up the engine to go out for my instrument check ride. The designated examiner is sitting next to me. My heart is pounding and my blood pressure is probably in the unsafe zone.

The war bird looks amazing. That’s a trainer for WW2 fighter pilots. It made a great noise as it taxied in.

It is less than a week since I got the instrument rating. I have already filed IFR on a return flight from Las Vegas. Los Angeles Center was not doing flight following or VFR advisories, so I filed IFR and they put me in the system. It was a comfort, since I had the whole family in the plane. Then the visibility over the basin wasn’t great, since the sun was setting and lighting up the haze (hello, JFK Jr), so it was doubly nice to be on an instrument approach back to the airport.

On the eve of my instrument check ride, I will write about yet another VFR rated pilot flying in marginal weather conditions. With a little luck (and all my hard work since April) tomorrow evening I will no longer be a VFR rated pilot.

Why did (another) Yankee baseball player die in a plane crash? What happened?

There’s a lot of speculation out on the Internet about the accident. The National Traffic and Safety Board (NTSB) is examining the crash and will, in several months, issue a statement of probably cause. Before that, I’ll toss in my two cents.

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