Cockpit Chronicles: How pilots choose their schedules

Flew as FO on a Santo Domingo turn the other day.  Apart from staring at a Caravan that wanted to land on us, it was pretty uneventful.  Read the whole story here.  I also failed to mention in the story that as we were pushing back the APU quit, which left us without air conditioning and power for a moment.  This is a known issue on the 757 and the 767.  It typically happens when you shut off the air-conditioning just prior to starting the engines.  It was no problem to restart the APU while the tug was still connected.

Gadling: Should pilots have to compete for your business?

Many have seen the video going around from the short takeoff and landing Valdez May Day fly-in contest. My brother was a spectator at the event and had some great clips that he shared with me. 

While the takeoff is pretty amazing, the story behind a couple of the competitors was pretty cool. A father and 18 year old son pretty much cleaned up at the contest. Check out the video here.

Cockpit Chronicles: Panama City Riots

757 Black and White
Originally uploaded by Fly For Fun

I was getting a few trips behind and so I decided to post the latest trip from a couple of days ago. I'll catch up over the next few weeks.

Here's the latest post at Gadling.com:

Cockpit Chronicles: Panama City Riots 

And here's some video taken of the lunar eclipse:

Using ALL the runway...

This Russian IL76 wanted to get it's moneys worth out of this runway. Take a look at this takeoff.

Cockpit Chronicles: Travel Tip: Don't leave home without pants!

Most of you who've read this blog for a while know about my Irish buddy, Ruthann. Well, she gathered up her family and came over to London to meet up with us for a trip to the Air Museum in Duxford.

I wrote about it in the latest Gadling post and Ruthann took a bunch of pictures of this amazing place here.

I also whipped up a video for the Gadling post that's a collection of flying scenes above 10,000 feet. It may seem that the view is always spectacular, but these clips were taken over the last few hundred hours. I'll keep looking for interesting things to film. I'm open to suggestions, but I can't do takeoffs and landings.

Here's what I whipped up. Sometimes flying can be very relaxing:

Miami Turn - "You're pulling my leg!"

Sometimes its WHO you fly with that makes a trip memorable. Last week I did a Miami turn with a great captain who I'd never flown with.

Cockpit Chonicles: Miami Closed? You're pulling my leg!

Next report: meeting up with Ruthann and her family in London.

2 Day London - "Europe without the jetlag"

I've been busy catching up on the past few trips to post over at Gadling. The response there and the number of readers has been pretty exciting. I'm having fun with it so far.

So rather than repeat my post, take a look at "Cockpit Chronicles: Europe without the jetlag."

Another post about a Miami turn is coming later today.

I'm flying home tonight with the goal of NOT learning the score of the Superbowl that I'm recording at home. This is going to be incredibly difficult since we'll be flying into Boston. The company often sends us print outs of the score and it's always discussed over ATC frequencies as well. So I'm giving myself about a 5% chance.

I think we've come up with a good name for the Q&A section. Justin suggested "Plane Answers" which I thought fit perfecty. So look for that to come soon.