Welcome to leftturnwhenable

Welcome to leftturnwhenable.us, my personal blog for flying and flying-related activity. Mostly I anticipate it being trip reports, hopefully some trip videos, interesting articles on flying, anything I want, really.

The site started out as a sub-domain of my personal blogging website and the old posts can still be found at flying.guapacha.com. Over time I will move the old trip diaries and training diaries to this site. I was going to move the old posts but have decided to leave them there.

I can’t say there will always be something interesting here but I hope on occasion there will be something you find of interest. Comments are always appreciated!

Thanks. Paul.

Back In The Air!

Well, it’s been 5 months almost to the day but my logbook finally has some new ink in it. Some MRSA infections, colds, flu and other (mostly mental) factors have kept me on the ground but last night I finally kicked myself in the ass and got back behind a yoke. It helps that I found a new club plane that I wanted to fly, it’s only a C172 but has a great interior, nice looking panel and just a good feel to it. Also, it’s available to take to Mexico so I might get myself checked out for that.

I had no fixed agenda for the flight other than to head down the coast and back around, see how it was feeling and then to decide. It all felt good so I decided to head on east to Imperial and then to Brawley where I hoped to surprise my wife with a visit. Unfortunately she wasn’t home so after 20 minutes I turned around and flew back, mostly in night conditions, to San Diego.

I want to make some videos of the flights and although I have a decent camera I decided to try out the Flip for last evening’s flight. The mount I had bought was too big for the dashboard so the only way to take footage was to hold it in my hand: this meant no takeoff or landing clips! Yeah, I know, those are usually the best parts to watch. Next time I will try a different mounting idea, and the better camera which I can plug the radio into so you hear all the SoCal controller goodness.

Total time was 3.0 dead on, 3 day landings and 1 night landing, not to mention a good chunk of night flying. I plan to fly again on Thursday and restore the night currency as well.