Author Archives: Rory

Complex Time with a Retractable Gear 172

By Rory | Published: January 10, 2012
A complex aircraft has flaps, retractable landing gear, and an adjustable pitch propeller. Believe it or not, I have used a Groupon more than once to get a flying lesson at a flying school that I would not otherwise have visited. As a result, I have had the opportunity to fly a complex Cessna 172 [...]
Posted in Complex Aircraft, Learn to Fly, My Private Pilot Training, Private Pilot | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Flying the Rocky Mountains

By Rory | Published: December 20, 2011
It has been a goal of mine to go flying in my old hometown for a long time. I knew that I wanted to fly with a flight school at KBJC, Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport (Formerly Jeffco Airport) in Broomfield, CO. I found McAir Aviation, they have a fantastic modern fleet of training aircraft. We [...]
Posted in Airports, KAPA - Centennial, KBJC - Rocky Mountain Metropolitan, Learn to Fly | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Cross Country to Camarillo

By Rory | Published: October 21, 2011
My instructor had a commendable amount of patience as he walked me through the ins and outs of flight planning. I sat mostly stumped trying to remember high school algebra that was dusty as hell somewhere in the back of my head. Since I just passed the private pilot written exam, I knew that some [...]
Posted in KCMA - Camarillo, KSMO - Santa Monica, KSNA - John Wayne - Santa Ana, Learn to Fly | Leave a comment

Studying for the Private Pilot Written Exam

By Rory | Published: September 23, 2011
One of my best purchases in my student pilot career has definitely been my iPad. I have been studying for my private pilot written exam with the Study Buddy app released by Sporty’s. The Private Pilot version is $10 and has 700+ questions to review to prepare for the Private Pilot Written exam. I started [...]
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Not winning a plane

By Rory | Published: August 29, 2011
In July, The 1940 Terminal Air Museum at Houston Hobby Airport held their annual drawing to win a raffle plane. Unlike Sporty’s drawing, or the one for AOPA, I actually thought that there may be a decent chance with this one since they (the museum folks who run the drawing) promise to only sell a [...]
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Weather creates chaos at Sun N Fun

By Rory | Published: April 1, 2011
Nothing will ruin a picnic quicker than some bad weather. No one knows this better than pilots. The best way to ruin a pilot’s day is by putting them in the middle of bad weather. This year’s Sun N Fun fly-in took a turn for the most unpleasant as a tornado reportedly touched down in [...]
Posted in Sun N Fun, Weather | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Kona – The Departure

By Rory | Published: March 9, 2011
This post should have been the first one, but I just now was able to get these awesome videos uploaded. On taxi to run up, the controller gave us our choice of what runway to use. We picked runway 17 because we were closer to that end of the field. During run up, a UPS [...]
Posted in Airports, Cross Country, Learn to Fly, PHKO - Kona at Keahole - KOA | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Flying Around Kona

By Rory | Published: February 23, 2011
We woke up early, at 5 AM to meet the instructor at the Kona Airport by 6 am. The sun wasn’t up yet, so we did the preflight on the Cessna 172 in the dark with a flashlight. The instructor really expedited our checklists and preflight, so we started up pretty quickly and headed off [...]
Posted in Learn to Fly | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments