aviation - The Random Adventure That Is Life (RATIL)

Flying To Dallas With A Toddler

I have been wanting to fly to Dallas for a while and 3 opportunities in a row have resulted in the weather not cooperating. Well, we finally had the weather we needed to make the trip. I generally prefer to fly the Flight School's Cessna 172, but after a recent

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Family Vacation: Maui

Lahain Pali Trail Haleakala Sunrise Flying - Maui County Road To Hana Deep Sea Fishing Koko Head and Diamond Head Traveling With The LO Our family vacation this year was to Maui, HI so that we could visit family that recently moved to Honolulu. The trip was an amazing opportunity

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Flying To The Coast

The last opportunity we had to fly the family to the coast was back in November and the plane had a leaky fuel sump and kept us on the ground, so being able to finally make the trip in January was a treat. We originally had plans to be in

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Pilots N' Paws

I recently had the oppurtunity to work with a pretty sweet charity organization: Pilots 'N Paws. They are an organization that pairs pilots who want to fly with dogs who need transport to their forever home. In many cases, these dogs are within hours of being put down and the

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Formation Flight Photoshoot

Credit for these photos is to one of the other pilots I fly with. He did a pretty dang good job. About a week ago I was lucky enough to get to do a formation flight with the two planes from G4K Aviation, a Cessna 172 and a Piper Cherokee.

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Baby's First Flight

I was finally able to realize one of my life dreams...taking my family on a cross-country flight. When I got my Private Pilot's License, my goal had always been to fly my family somewhere. Mrs. Steen and I had certainly flown before but being able to do so with

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New Plane...New Airport

I stumbled upon a new plane rental opportunity a few weeks ago and was finally able to go and fly the plane. The gentlemen who is renting the plane originally had it listed on OpenAirplane (how I found it in the first place) and I had been trying to get

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Commercial Drone Pilot

Drones are making quite the statement these days with awesome adventure video footage, real estate videos, using sensors to map terrain and detect environmental contaminants around oil fields, and perhaps eventually, delivering your Amazon Prime packages. What most folks don't realize is that the FAA considers drones to be aircraft

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Home Built Weather and Air Traffic Reciever (Stratux)

I was finally able to get out and fly this weekend to test out my newest toy...an ADS-B IN receiver built from a Raspberry Pi. Now that I have tested it and have a nice screenshot of the info is provides (proof or it didn't happen right?), I wanted

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The Journey To My Private Pilot License

I finally received the permanent and plastic version of my Private Pilot Certificate in the mail this week after completing my checkride on 11 November. Seemed like this would be good time to document my journey from beginning to end. Becoming a Pilot I think I have wanted to be