Today is the 100th birthday of the Wright brothers invention of the airplane.
Any other pilots out there in C&F land?
Been a couple of years since I could afford to fly left seat - especially since Salt Lake is covered in tons of class B and you waste half your money waiting for clearances! But still zooming all over on the ol’ flight sim to try and stay as current as that allows. 
Up Wright Brothers!
Bri~
Hey, I forgot you were a pilot, Brian. I read that on another message somewhere a few weeks ago. And hey, why you looking so happy in that pic? Oh, almost forgot, there’s no perspective like that from above!
I havn’t flown for years either, flying is just too expensive anymore as hobby. My three cousins, and uncle still fly alot though, and own planes. Uncle has a Mooney.
Just lost a couple pilots in a 2-seater Gasair yesterday, in a field about 10 miles south of my place. Don’t know the cause yet, it was a good weather. There were some rolling foothills and he was flying close to the windmill farm, I suppose he could have lost some elevation , or caught a downdraft under a hill, coming up and over, you how how the wind tumbles. You got to keep those Glasairs moving.
It’s funny - I don’t know which I look forward to more: Dale’s whistle news or the latest Sporty’s catalouge!
Sorry to hear about the flyers lost. The heart always greives when that sort of thing happens. We seem to have planes going down more than they should here too…though even so, it’s not often thank God! I remember back a few years ago we even had a military F-16 jet crash right across a major freeway on short final. The lucky thing was he’d just dropped all his live munitions over the test trange about twenty minutes earlier. Pilot ejected and was relatively unharmed, but MAN that could have been one major disaster!
Alas for my sorry butt, I doubt I’ll ever get to fly a Mooney, let alone ride in one - but perhaps some day. Actually had a guy belly a BRAND new one into the runway about three years ago too. Amazing that you can take a hollow tube of metal and plastic, slam it to the ground from a height of probably five or ten feet and a speed of almost 150 miles an hour (according to one of the instructors I spoke with who was onboard when it happened) and everyone walked away without so much as a scratch. The prop was gone of course, but replaced it and one of the VOR antennas that was sheared off in the skid and it flew itself back to Texas for repainting and other minor repairs.
You’d NEVER see a car hold up that well in such an amazing impact. Give me a plane ANY day of the week! I’ve been up gliding once before and had an absolute blast! The seat was pretty cramped with two grown guys side by side, but it was still pretty amazing. We got an extra show when we landed and found out there was a private P-51 hangared at the little strip we were flying out of. Talk about a Ferrari with wings! DAMN!! I can’t even imagine what entire flights of that plane must have sounded (and felt) like. 
Best!
B~
Me want Mustang!!!
Couple of years ago I met a late middle aged guy in the grocery store checkout line wearing an old leather flight jacket, with some sort of P51 logo on it. I asked him if he used to fly those and he told me he owned one! Had it hangered at nearby Bennington Vt. They have some nice old DC-3s up there too.
Back when I was in college I took a bike ride out past the Albany airport, and was pleasantly surprised to see a P-40, minus the war paint, coming in for a landing. Airport security was nonexistent in those days, so I simply rode my bike out to where the plane taxied to a stop and chatted with the owner. Man, those WWII prop planes were wonderful!
Alas, Flight Sim is as close as I have gotten to a cockpit. Better sell a LOT of whistles :roll:
-Ex-hang glider flier here. -Ex after honoring my inner chicken. Never really good, but solved bad takeoffs and landings (learned wrong by self-teaching) by taking lessons from a retired naval flier and using videos to spot problems. He flew so smoothly it was difficult to spot control motions. I guess thats what comes of decades of dropping jets down on carrier decks. -Still in awe of that class of skill.
-Vivid memories remain of close calls, crosswind landings gone wrong (never felt like an inverted turtle before) and exhilaration of running off a hill into lift, gaining altitude and watching friends on terra firma (the more firma, the less terra) recede to ant-like proportions. Hooting & hollering? - Impossible to repress! 
Its been 30 years since I climbed into a cockpit and took the controls. I was taking lessons to get my license. I never completed the training but I loved flying. Now my son in law is a simulation engineer at Airbus flight training center. When I visit there I get to fly the Airbus 340. I can’t believe how realistic the simulation is. The last time i was there he set me up to take off from Miami with a 90 mph crosswind in a thunderstorm with wind sheer. We had full motion and I got airsick. I have a grandson that thinks the WWII birds are great. I took him to the museum at Dayton. He was in heaven and so was his grandpa.
Ron
If you’re ever in Ohio, check out the Wright-Pattersion Airforce Museum in Dayton. They have a lot of antique aircraft, Apollo Capsules and Personal Carrying aircraft that you can walk through.
It’s on the East side of Dayton.