Other Interests/Toys/Stuff Not all is aviation (Just most of the good stuff).
(7/16/06) Since the Cardinal is gone, I thought I would take the opportunity to fly a bunch of different stuff. This weekend I went up with Rajesh to Glenn's Falls in a relatively new DA-40. Nice plane. The G1000 panel is awesome, though it does tend to keep your eyes in the cockpit more than it should.
It's kinda slow, though. We were cruising at 120Knots at 4000' or so. If I were to buy anything to fill the gap between the Cardinal and the RV it would have to be at least as fast as the Cardinal, which would true out at 135K cross-country.
SOLD!! (7/7/06) Well, I finally sold the Cardinal. This is a picture in St. Petersburg, FL on my last long CC flight to SNF'06 after sparring with the F18 shown here. I intercepted him in flight and forced him to land at PIE and taxi to Signature to buy me some fuel (well, something like that anyway).
I sold the Cardinal to two guys from Fitchburg who were pretty pumped up about it. They should be. It is a great plane and I enjoyed it for many, many hours and great trips. Enjoy it Jack and Dave.
I am already having withdrawal symptoms and am not sure I'll be able to wait before getting something else to fly while I finish building the RV-8A. Hmmm... Maybe a used Cirrus SR-20.
Gets pretty exciting with the needles at three o'clock!
LOTUS SOLD!! (6/4/06) Actually it was traded in on one of these. The wife had been driving a beater Subaru wagon for the last couple of years and it was time to go. I needed the garage space for the more space intensive operations like mounting the tail and wings on the plane, so it just made sense.
It was a shame to lose that car. I never really drove it that much, but when I did it was an adrenaline-packed, hyper-active experience that was sure to cause loss of license one of these days. Driving the FJCruiser is just not quite the same, though it CAN climb some pretty impressive inclines - I've proven that expermentally. Don't tell the wife.
The worst part was dropping the Lotus off at the dealership. You could tell that the sales guys were just salivating waiting for their turn to go for a romp. Though the car was incredibly capable of mind-wrenching speeds, it was somewhat delicate in the lower gears. Dragstrip launches were a no-no with that transaxle and big tires. I hope it survived.
Goofing off when I should be scanning and paying attention to flying in IMC.
Hey, I finally took the time to figure out how to do thumbnails. This will tighten up page loading by quite a bit!
(7/6/05) A salute from Graceland.