Finally the time has come to refresh my acquaintance with 79J.
It was over three months since I flew last time. For all that time either weather or schedule did not cooperate but today the weather was almost perfect and I really needed something to take my mind completely off of everyday problems. So I went to the airport and did the preflight. When the time has come to pull the Cherokee out it turned out that grass is so soft that there is no way I can do it on my own. Fortunately I had another Cherokee with me that one equipped with nice 10500 pound winch up front. So I used one to pull out the other.
After that it was just a regular thing. I was pleasantly surprised that after all those months of siting on the ground all my landings were soft enough to qualify them as almost greasers 
Looks like when you really focus on what you do and keep watching the airspeed everything comes up nicely almost by itself.
I was running low on time so I did only two touch and goes. After third landing I taxied back to the parking spot and again using my other Cherokee pulled the Piper back in.
it was really good to be back in the air. Even though it was just 0.4h it made me to completely switch off my ‘regular’ brain and turn on my ‘flying’ one. I’m very fresh pilot and flying still demands 100% of my brain to do it safely. That king of ‘distraction’ from my regular routine works wonders. And the nicest thing – I’m current again!
0.4h/0.0h inst : 3 to/ldg logged
68.1h/3.1h inst : 330 to/ldg total
How many of us fly commercially and don’t even think about how safe it is? We think we know it, we are pilots after all. But is it really as safe as we think it’s there? Were those pilots pushed beyond their capabilities in the name of keeping the business profitable?
And how much they made? $16k a year…
There wasn’t much flying weather recently but that does not mean I haven’t been at the airport nor that I did not have fun. Recently I got new endorsement from our CFI. Snow plow endorsement stating that I received training and proofed to be qualify to plow our runway Despite all fun I had doing so I can tell you – it’s a piece of work to plow the entire runway area!
As I’ve mentioned Saturday wasn’t the best day for flying. But we spent three hours at the airport shooting pictures of our Cherokee and Citabria. Some of them came out really nice. Or so I think. You may check them out yourself here.
That’s all I can tell after I finally tried my new DIY in ear headset. You see the only thing I wholeheartedly hate in aviation are those bulky pilot headsets. They clam my head so hard that after an hour or so of flight I start having migraines. The problem is that they have to clamp you so hard to seal ear cup to prevent it from leaking noise. There are some nice high tech active noise canceling headsets out there but they cost so much that I simply can only dream about them.
Browsing trough the internet I found that there is an alternative for guys like me – in ear headsets. They look and work very similar to earphones you got with your iPod or Walkman. With one small difference – they use special foam or silicon seals to fill your ear canal so no sound can get to your ear other than your radio’s. Many pilots claim that they reduce noise as well or better than those fancy ANR headsets. But again – the price for those is still beyond my rich.
So I build my own. Using cheapest pilot headset from Aircraft Spruce (below $70) as a microphone and cable donor and a pair of Comply NR-10 headphones I rolled my own in ear headset:
I made the frame from 3/16″ steel rod, taped everything together and took it today for first flight. They are simply awesome. I can’t really say how much better they seal the noise (the green ear plugs are rated 33dB NRR while my old headset was rated just 24dB) but they are a lot. Plus the sound is delivered directly to your ear so it has no chance to mix with residual noise that went through ear cup. The result – today was the very first day when I really had to dial down volume on the intercom because it was simply to loud, and I still had zero problems with sound clarity). No more sweaty ears, clamped head and migraines.
