Hello all,

Just thought I would check in and say hi.

I was getting tired of all the troll banter and bickering so I decided

to just take a break from it. :-)

So anyway in the mean time I went to Oshkosh Airventure 2011 and had a

great time. I flew into Milwaukee at midnight on Wed the 27th and my

buddy John from our podcast who I have never met face to face drove 90

miles to Milwaukee from Oshkosh to pick me up. Had had already been at

Camp Scholler at Oshkosh since Monday so everything was all set when I

got there. We arrived back around 2am and hit the sack. In all the

excitement I work up at like 6am and was ready to go. It was awesome

because I got up and we were camped along with a bunch of other guys

we talk to on twitter all the time so it was great to finally put a

face with the name. I must say after camping there till Sunday morning

it is the best way to do Oshkosh.

Prior to going to Oshkosh I did my checkride but unfortunately did not

pass it all. I was very upset at that and was in some ways even

embarrassed but at podapalooza I told all about it after some liquid

encouragement. :-)

Podapalooza was a live podcast we done from Oshkosh one night from the

Sennheiser booth. It was a great party.

One of the very cool things we done at Oshkosh was to tour the Boeing

787 Dreamliner. Since we have a podcast we were considered media so we

got to go on first before the rest of the crowd as part of the media

tour.

Since being back home I passed the check ride, well at least the parts

I either failed or didn't do on my first attempt and am now a licensed

pilot as of 09-25-2011 :-)

Three weeks ago I flew up to Flagstaff with my buddy Dean in his

Cessna 140 on a blood run. I have done this run with him a few other

times and I think I probably even spoke about it here. This was a

little different because on touchdown the tail wheel flatted and so

81L the little Cessna was stuck in FLG and his wife had to drive up

and pick us up. So he had them replace the tube and tire that week and

the next Sat 10-8 I flew him up in the Archer III to pick it up and

brought along my youngest daughter too. So they were officially my

first passengers.

We let Dean take off first since I figured we would catch up in the

air before getting back to DVT however as my daughter and I are

heading down the runway I decide to abort takeoff because I didnt feel

we were getting all the power we should. I was afraid I just made my

Daughter real nervous but I assured her everything was ok. Tower asked

if I need any assistance and I said no I just wanted to check a couple

of things but I thought everything was fine. As I'm taxiing back I

realized I'm at 7000' now and not at the 1400' like back in Phoenix.

So of course Im not going to get all the HP this plane can produce. I

leaned the MX a little to compensate for the lack of oxygen and took

off for DVT. I let Maddy fly on the way back. I think she had the yoke

for about 30 min of the flight and she loved it.

If you want to hear about the failed check ride check out the podcast

http://www.inthepatternpodcast.com/ Episode 16 which is the latest one

we have up. We need to podcast soon and get out two more to catch up

lol

Cheers,

Chris