Flordia 2006

corey    Books, Flying, Media, News, Projects, Vacation    

We had headed down to Flordia earlier in April to visit with some friends (Hi Jeannie and Tony!) and check out the area (I’ve never been there except to hop on the cruise ship). We had a great time and got to enjoy the nice warm Flordian weather. Sea kayaking was pretty fun, but we need to practice our coordination in a 2 person kayak. I couldn’t tell if we were fighting each other or the current.

The day before we left (a Monday) we headed to the Sun N Fun fly-in at Lakeland, FL. It’s not too far from St Petersburg and since it was mid-day there was hardly any traffic. Unfortunately, it was the very last day of the show and all of the vendors/displays were itching to pack up and go home. We did get to browse around and see most of the vendors I was interesting in seeing. I was a little bummed there was nothing going on at the Van’s Aircraft booth but I did get to meet Jan of Eggenfellner Aircraft.

We took some pictures, but as there wasn’t much going on (though the airshow was still cool, even if it was shorter than the other airshows during the previous week) we didn’t get very many. I will say, it’s hard to get a nice crisp shot when you are zoomed in at 300mm. Now I know I need to increase my shutter speed a bit to make them crisper – I was trying to blur the prop (instead of having the photo freeze the prop) and had adjusted my shutter speed down. That works great for airplanes that are closer but not for ones that require full zoom.

Here’s a couple OK ones, there’s more (maybe not OK but alright) photos in the gallery:

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Since then we’ve been busy getting the garage ready. I finally got some shelves up and have started organizing. We got a couple nifty organizer items from a line of products called Gladiator GarageWorks – we picked these up at Sears. I’d really like to start working on my airplane again, and I’m really close. We’ve got two benches built (thanks Ross!) and now just need to finish up our shelving.

I’m also finishing up school for the semester, so I’ve got to study this week for my finals. I have my flight sim class final on Thursday the 4th, but it shouldn’t be too rough – I just need to finish my preflight planning and make sure all the t’s are crossed and the i’s dotted. My weather class (which is an online class) has it’s final exam on the 12th and 13th so I’ll be studying for that most of the coming week. I’ve enjoyed my flight class as I’ve been able to do some more advanced stuff (things I haven’t learned through my Flight Instructor yet) but the weather class is boring me to tears. Weather theory is just a buncha random variables all thrown into the wind and seeing how they fall.. voi la! There’s your weather.

Speaking of instructors, I’ve got (again) a new instructor. Ryan will be starting me on my instrument training shortly, so hopefully he’ll be around to finish it! My previous instructor, Kyle, has gotten a job flying turbo-props – so congrats to him and good luck!

Letsee, what else can I talk about. Oh, I finally finished Fallen Dragon by Peter F Hamilton. It’s a pretty good sci-fi book even if he does ramble on quite a bit in his flashbacks. Now I’m reading The Assassins by Oliver North which my mother gave me for Christmas (or my birthday, one of those).

That’s all I got, for now. I should get back to work.

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