The biggest gathering in aviation, EAA’s AirVenture, is this week in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. The ungodly huge Airbus A380 showed up Tuesday and did a couple low passes before making this not-so-soft landing. Watch the flex in the wings at touchdown and for the full rudder deflection on rollout (the landing begins around 55 seconds into the video).
Looking at my E-Logbook, I’ve logged time in 25 different types of airplanes. I don’t think that’s too bad for a 25 year old that’s been flying for 8 years. Here’s a breakdown of all of them with photos. Unfortunately most of the airplanes I don’t actually have real photos of so they are just stock photos.
The list is essentially in chronological order and I note how many hours I have in each type.
 | Cessna 150 Seats – 2 Cruise Speed – 100 knots Hours Logged – 57 Learned to fly and took my now-wife up for her first flight in this plane. A real dog in the summertime. | |
 | Cessna 152 Seats – 2 Cruise Speed – 110 knots Hours Logged – 400 Flew many of these hours in the evening at 500 ft with the windows open. Took a lot of friends up in this plane. | |
 | Cessna 172 Seats – 4 Cruise Speed – 120 knots Hours Logged – 175 Typical first step up from 150/152. Flew these at CMSU (now UCM). First taste of flying a new airplane. | |
 | Piper Supercub Seats – 2 Cruise Speed – 100 knots Hours Logged – 3 Got my tailwheel endorsement in this plane at UCM. Some of the most fun flying I’ve done. Would love to fly this airplane more. | |
 | Piper Arrow Seats – 7 Cruise Speed – 140 knots Hours Logged – 10 Got my complex endorsement in this plane. Flew in my buddy’s Arrow to see Jimmy Buffett twice: once in Dallas and once in Chicago. | |
 | Beechcraft King Air C90B Seats – 4 Cruise Speed – 250 knots Hours Logged – 18 Flown copilot on a couple different King Airs. Flew former Missouri Governor Matt Blunt around the state for a couple days in this airplane. | |
 | Beechcraft F33A Bonanza Seats – 4 Cruise Speed – 165 knots Hours Logged – 90 Perhaps my favorite small airplane. Flies so well, good speed, range, payload. Got my commercial license in this airplane. | |
 | Beechcraft T-34 Mentor Seats – 2 Cruise Speed – 140 knots Hours Logged – 3 Fun airplane. Great visibility. Loops and rolls are a delight. | |
 | Piper Dakota Seats – 4 Cruise Speed – 140 knots Hours Logged – 20 Done some contract flying for the owner of this airplane. Solid and can haul a good load. | |
 | Beechcraft G36 Bonanza Seats – 6 Cruise Speed – 165 knots Hours Logged – 5 The new Beech Bonanza with the Garmin G1000 glass panel. What a pleasure to fly. Bonanza and glass panel… what more could you want? | |
 | Beechcraft B55 Baron Seats – 6 Cruise Speed – 185 knots Hours Logged – 3 Not much time in the Baron, but it flies just as well as the Bonanza. Would love to fly more. | |
 | Cessna 310 Seats – 6 Cruise Speed – 185 knots Hours Logged – 9 Got my multi-engine rating in this airplane. I flew the H model. More challenging to learn in than a Duchess or Seminole because no counter-rotating props. | |
 | Cessna 210 Centurion Seats – 6 Cruise Speed – 165 knots Hours Logged – 4 Only logged a few hours in this airplane but a nice mix of performance and weight-carrying ability. | |
 | Piper Cheyenne II Seats – 7 Cruise Speed – 240 knots Hours Logged – 35 This and the Chieftain below is what I first started building multi time in. And I was finally getting paid a little to fly too! That’s the actual plane on left. | |
 | Piper Navajo Chieftain Seats – 9 Cruise Speed – 185 knots Hours Logged – 45 Gained valuable multi time in this airplane pictured left at Kissimmee, FL. Copiloted to Orlando a couple times and several other places. | |
  | Cessna 182T Skylane Seats – 4 Cruise Speed – 150 knots Hours Logged – 60 All 60 hours in the G1000 equipped model. A great all-around airplane. I get 150 kts true and it carries a good load. Still fly this airplane occasionally. Bottom left is what the G1000 panel looks like in the 182. | |
 | Cessna 182RG Seats – 4 Cruise Speed – 160 knots Hours Logged – 40 Used this airplane to get my Flight Instructor license. Also did some flying for the owner. Great airplane also with nice speed and load carrying. Looks like a grasshopper though when the gear is coming up. | |
 | Cessna 525 CitationJet Seats – 7 Cruise Speed – 360 knots Hours Logged – 85 Ahh the first taste of jet power. Mostly logged in right seat but have also flown about 20 hours in the left seat. Very fun to fly. | |
 | Cirrus SR22 Seats – 4 Cruise Speed – 175 knots Hours Logged – 70 Done some contract flying in this plane. Great airplane, fun to fly. Climbs like a rocket. The sidestick is easy to get used to. | |
 | Piper Saratoga Seats – 6 Cruise Speed – 160 knots Hours Logged – 500 The airplane that I now get paid full time to fly. Flew 450 hours in it the last 12 months. Have flown it as far as Massachusetts. It is a nice balance between speed and load carrying. |
Got the tip on Twitter this morning that Wordpress has released its BlackBerry app for beta testing. I’m typing this post on it now.
So far it’s great. I had been using the WPhone plugin but the Wordpress app has a much better interface and is much easier to use. One terrific feature that cuts down on posting time is html link detection. When you start to type a web address it asks you if this is an html link. If you say yes, it pops up a windows where you can enter the address and an alt tag and it will put the html code in for you.
It has the ability to pull photos that are stored on your SD card or your device itself. You can also take a picture through the app and quickly insert it. Right now I can’t figure out how to put the image where I want it. It is placed at the bottom of the post for me. Also, you don’t get thumbnail previews when browsing through your photos on your SD card. You would have to go into your phone’s normal picture viewer to determine filename of image you want to use and then go back to WP app and pull it up from there.
All in all it’s more than a great start for a much-needed app for Bloggers.
To get the app for your BlackBerry go to blackberry.wordpress.org
Update – The app hung every time I tried to publish with a picture (on 3G and WiFi). When I removed the picture, it published the post in a few seconds.
After spending a month and a half in the engine overhaul shop, we finally got our airplane back last week. I took it up for an hour test flight and decided to fly down over the Branson/Table Rock Lake area to kill the time.
Here are some photos of the new Branson Regional Airport and then the Branson West Airport that is under construction.
Branson Regional Airport:
Branson West Airport
And here’s a bonus shot. Do you think this is the way Jimmy Buffett flies?
Congratulations to Jarrod and Becca Murdaugh (formerly Becca Sanders) on the birth of their first child!
Megan Matrone White has more pics here.
Our Siberian Husky, Jett, lost his manhood today. He recently turned 6 months old so we took him to the vet today for the ol’ neuter. We’ve had him about two months and he’s already so much bigger. Here he is just a couple days ago:
And here’s what he looked like the day we got him:
We’ve had two dog training sessions with him and he’s already getting a lot better. He still gets excited around new people but is getting better at sitting in front of you when he wants attention instead of jumping on you.
I joined Twitter back in March and posted a blog entry with my first impressions on it. Well now that it’s been a couple months I wanted to follow up on it.
I am really impressed by the whole Twitter experience. I started with just a personal account: @joshdmartin, but quickly realized the potential of having accounts for my websites… so I registered @ChesneyWorld and @BuffettWorld. Twitter is a great tool for websites (or businesses and organizations) because you can instantly send out news to your followers. Got a hot news item to share? Send out a tweet and many of your followers will get it instantly. I have an app on my BlackBerry that continually updates so that I am always getting new tweets from those I am following. Also when I’m on my laptop or desktop I’ve got an application running called Seesmic Desktop which notifies me within a couple of minutes whenever anyone that I’m following sends a tweet.
With regards to personal use, it’s fun to follow celebrities and watch what they are doing. It’s also nice to follow your favorite websites so you can get updates immediately whenever they publish new content. But until more of my friends get on Twitter, I may just be wasting my time when I send out tweets of my own at @joshdmartin. So why not join so I’m not just tweeting to myself?
It’s been over a month since I’ve posted last…. sorry. In early May our airplane was damaged when a lineman in Fort Worth ran a tug into the prop and damaged it:
I know it doesn’t look like much, but anytime the prop is damaged in a way that requires a repair then the engine has to be torn down and inspected to make sure nothing inside was bent. So we were down two weeks for the prop and now another 4-5 weeks for the engine. That puts us out until mid-June which will be a total of about a month and a half. Not having our airplane is a big loss for our operations as we typically fly 50 hours a month this time of year.
On another subject, I took this picture a few days back and I think it does a good job of showing how big Peyton is now.
And also Jett is getting big!
Here is a video of me landing at the Johnson County Airport in Mountain City, TN a couple weeks ago:
This morning I had the privilege of touring the oldest baseball stadium in the major leagues: Fenway Park in Boston. Now I’m not a Boston fan (my allegiance is to the Cardinals), but Fenway Park is legendary in baseball. Some of the greatest players of all time have played on that field: Babe Ruth and Ted Williams just to name two. So as a diehard fan of baseball in general, I just had to make the drive to Fenway this morning since I was only 45 minutes west of town on business. That’s one of the things I enjoy about being a corporate pilot… getting to see new places.
The red seat is where the longest homerun hit in Fenway Park landed. Ted Williams hit it.
Oldest seats in major league baseball. 1933 I believe is when they were put in.
