From the Cockpit

Darlington County (KUDG)

2007-01-06T13:31:00.001-08:00

Sorry, no pictures today. I departed Myrtle Beach International (KMYR) at about noon in the Cessna 150 (N77PP) for Darlington County Jetport (KUDG). KUDG is only about 65NM from KMYR, but with winds out of the west at 28 knots, my groundspeed during cruise was only about 70 knots. The trip over took about an hour and ten minutes. The flight back was only about 40 minutes.

KUDG has a triangle runway configuration with 05/23, 10/28 and 16/34. I landed on 23 with a moderate crosswind out of the west. The 05/23 runway is in excellent shape. The other two runways appeared to get minimal use. I chose not to stop (just a touch and go), but the field does have services available.

I used my new Garmin 296 (GPS) for the second time. It is absolutely awesome. Everything you could possibly want is available at the touch of a button (or two). A moving map is available which provides tremendous situational awareness. Battery life for the 296 is in excess of 8 hours, or you can use an adaptor that provides power from the cig. lighter. I don't ever want to fly without the 296 again.

Fly safe. Hope to have a report on some lowcountry aiports soon.

Berkeley County (50J)

2006-11-28T19:06:00.000-08:00

Visited Berkeley County Airport on Sunday. BCA is located about a mile from the town of Moncks Corner. BCA is a great little airport. The runway is 4,350 feet running 05 and 23. The terminal is brand new (opened in January of 2005). Lots of GA hangars on the field. Here are a few pictures of the flight and the airport:

Hemingway Stuckey (38J)

2006-11-25T15:02:00.000-08:00

I departed Twin City and headed southwest to Hemingway Stuckey - about a 20 minute flight in the C172 with a pretty good tailwind. There is very little activity at Hemingway Stuckey. The runway (11/29) is paved (about 3,300 feet) and in pretty decent shape.

After a touch and go at Hemingway Stuckey, I returned to Myrtle Beach International (about 30 minutes due east from Hemingway Stuckey with the headwind).

A nice morning of flying followed by a Gamecock victory over Clemson (31-28). Life doesn't get much better!

Twin City (5J9)

2006-11-25T14:29:00.000-08:00

Absolutely beautiful day to fly today. I departed Myrtle Beach International in N7206Q at about 0830 for the 20 minute flight to Twin City airport in Loris, SC. I was using my new Bose noise cancelling headset for the first time. By far the best headset I have ever used.

Twin City's runway is about 3,700 feet running basically east/west (08 and 26). The runway is in very good shape. There is no taxiway, so after landing on 08, I had to back taxi to the hangars at the other end of the runway.

There are several hangars at Twin City and a couple of maintenance facilities. Twin City does not sell fuel, and is generally not very busy.

There are a couple of flight instructors at Twin City including a gentlemen who gives tail wheel checkouts and aerobatic instruction. A little white cat named Starlight appears to be in charge of airport operations.

A lot on the airport would probably be a decent investment as the Grand Strand continues to grow westward.

Barnstorming South Carolina

2006-11-20T18:38:00.000-08:00

I have decided that over the next year, I will fly in to at least one new South Carolina airport each week. My goal is to visit as many South Carolina airport facilities as possible in one year, and to give a brief report on each one.

There are about 70 public airport facilities in South Carolina, and a whole bunch of private strips.

In addition to my weekly reports, I will update the list of airports I have flown into once a month or so. Yes, I know that this is not really barnstorming, as I will probably not be providing any exhibitions of stunt flying or other aerobatic perfomances. But I hope my tour of South Carolina airports will provide some interesting stories and pictures of the facilities and pilots of South Carolina.

SCAA Fly-In Breakfast

2006-11-20T17:54:00.000-08:00

I attended the South Carolina Aviation Association fly-in breakfast at Mt. Pleasant Regional Airport (f.k.a. East Cooper Regional Airport) on Sunday. I flew down with a group of fellow Myrtle Beach Flying Club pilots. We had a great time, and the weather was absolutely perfect. Sorry I don't have any pictures to share - forgot the camera.

For any fellow South Carolina pilots, I strongly urge you to join SCAA and attend some of the fly-in breakfast meetings.

Democrats Continue to Play Politics with Our National Security

2006-09-29T12:48:00.000-07:00

I wrote the following comment over at Liberal Avenger (in response to a post by Ape Man) regarding the unseriousness of the democrats on national security. As of this moment, my comment is awaiting moderation, so I will post it here in its entirety.

How do we know that democrats are not serious about the defense of this country and are more interested in playing politics?

During the Clinton years, the official policy of this country in regard to Iraq was regime change. Numerous democrat leaders stood up with President Clinton and declared that Saddam was pursuing weapons of mass destruction and that he would absolutely use them one day. Not a word of dissent from the official party position could be heard. Interestingly, Republicans also agreed.

After a humiliating presidential defeat in 2000, the democrats became obsessed with undermining the Bush administration. However, with the tragic events of September 11th, it became clear to the vast majority of Americans that we were fortunate to have George Bush as President rather than Albert Gore.

Democrats stood reluctantly with President Bush in the early days after September 11th, bemoaning their misfortune that this tragedy occurred during Bush’s tenure rather than Mr. Clinton’s. By all rights, this historic opportunity should have belonged to Mr. Clinton who was after all the greatest president of all time.

As Saddam continued to defy the feckless UN, President Bush announced his now famous Bush Doctrine in which he made it clear that we would not tolerate rogue regimes who sponsored terrorism and that we would not wait until a threat was imminent to take action.
After 11 years of UN resolutions and months of Congressional debate, Bush secured both UN and Congressional approval to take action if Saddam did not cooperate. While voting to give Bush the authority to take action, democrats constantly attacked the President with fantastic accusations that he was unilaterally rushing to war, that he was a war monger, and that the war was blood for oil.

As the ultimate display of the fact that there were no limits to the perverse depths to which the democrat party would go, they nominated an “electable” candidate for president in 2004 whose claim to fame was a brief three month tour in Vietnam after which he returned home to falsely accuse his fellow soldiers of committing war atrocities. This so-called war hero was supposed to give the democrats credibility on national security, after all he was a war hero wasn’t he? Unfortunately the war hero candidate quickly displayed how completely unserious he was about defending this great nation when he declared (in connection with a bill to provide our troops with the resources necessary to effectively fight the war that the war hero had supported) “I actually voted for it before I voted against it.” The war hero “reported for duty” at the Democrat convention with Michael Moore by his side.

The majority of Americans understood at this point that to Democrats, politics was more important than the defense of the country. George Bush was re-elected in 2004 receiving a majority of the popular vote - a feat not accomplish since his father did so in 1988.

But democrats were not finished. They continued to talk down the troops and the war effort for the next two years accusing the troops of acting like terrorists and engaging in torture. The democrat Senate minority leader bragged about the “killing” of the Patriot Act and Democrats celebrated the NY Times leaks of the classified NSA surveillance program and the Swift financial tracking program. Democrats made clear that their policy for Iraq was “cut and run” notwithstanding that virtually every Middle East expert indicated that this would be the worst possible thing we could do. Representative Murtha even ridiculously suggested that our troops should be redeployed to the Phillipines.

As a final gesture of partisanship, the rabid anti-war left gave the middle finger to Joe Leiberman, their former vice presidential candidate, by successfully leading a campaign to defeat the one voice of reason left in the democrat party in the Connecticut Senate democrat primary.

The Democrats have a five year history of placing partisan politics ahead of our national security. It is way past time for Republicans to take off the gloves. President Bush was right on the money this week when he declared that the party of Truman had become the party of cut and run.

FAR QUESTION

2006-08-05T11:39:00.000-07:00

Very hazy day to fly today. My friend Gil and I flew to BHS this morning, but the ceiling was too low at BHS to fly sailplanes so we immediately returned to MB.

Prior to leaving this morning, we discovered that our rotating beacon was not working. A quick review of the FARs seemed to say that the rotating beacon was required equipment for VFR day flight, so we replaced the light prior to departing - probably delayed us for 45 minutes or so. I believe the FARs only allow a pilot to fly an aircraft with a non-functioning beacon to a facility for repairs.

Anyone know for sure whether the rotating beacon was required to be operational for our day VFR flight?

YALE REJECTS JUAN COLE

2006-08-03T12:30:00.000-07:00

This is a good article on Yale's rejection of Juan Cole. It seems hard to imagine that someone who holds the following views is worthy to teach at any school of higher education:

This was a mind that, in July 2005, claimed that the September 11 Commission report cited the "Israeli attack on the Jenin refugee camp" as a motivation for the terrorist attack, even though the Jenin attack didn't happen until seven months after 9/11. And in May of this year, Cole justified his notion that Iran is harmless by declaring, "We don't give a rat's ass what Ahmadinejad thinks about European history or what pissant speech the little sh*t gives."

PANDER AND RUN

2006-07-28T05:38:00.000-07:00

I am not a big Peter Beinart fan, but he absolutely nails this one.

Privately, some Democrats, while admitting that they haven't exactly been taking the high road, say they have no choice, that in a competition with Karl Rove, nice guys finish last. But even politically, that's probably wrong. The Democratic Party's single biggest foreign policy liability is not that Americans think Democrats are soft. It is that Americans think Democrats stand for nothing, that they have no principles beyond political expedience. And given the party's behavior over the past several months, it is not hard to understand why.

Read the whole thing.

USER FEES A REAL THREAT TO GA

2006-07-27T18:18:00.000-07:00

$30 for a flight service station "consultation," plus an additional $5.31 for each forecast product used. That's GA reality in the United Kingdom.

$1.50 per minute for an FSS briefing in Germany. $1,000 for a private pilot knowledge test in the Netherlands.

In Austria, $31 to fly an ILS approach, and $70 to land after the approach. "In my situation, it's actually cheaper to fly the whole family by airline to the United States, rent an aircraft for about 30 hours, and have a nice two-week vacation (including hotel and rental car costs) than flying the same amount of hours in Europe," wrote an Austrian pilot to AOPA President Boyer.

In New Zealand, the wife of a pilot tells of how her husband complained about the expense of getting a briefing and filing a flight plan. He was killed in a weather-related accident. He'd skipped the briefing and hadn't filed.
Read the whole thing, and make sure your Congressman and Senators here from you this election year.

LITTLE AILERON

2006-07-10T18:55:00.000-07:00

Took a short flight with Little Aileron tonight. He was not impressed with the C150. Might help if you take the sun shade out of the windshield little man!

BJORN LOMBORG: SETTING PRIORITIES

2006-07-08T18:58:00.000-07:00

The Wall Street Journal had an excellent article today by Kimberley Strassel on Bjorn Lomborg. Mr. Lomborg is the Danish political scientist who wrote "The Skeptical Environmentalist." Mr. Lomborg argues persuasively that policy makers need to prioritize in addressing world problems based on cost effectiveness. This would, of course, require policy makers to act rationally! I don't hold much hope out that this will happen any time soon, but Mr. Lomborg's argument makes alot of sense.

Interestingly, when economists (from all political stripes) were asked to prioritize issues based on cost effectiveness, global warming dropped to the bottom of the list! Based on Lomborg's argument, Al Gore is in fact acting quite irrationally. Yes, I know - it is hard to believe that anyone would suggest that the inventor of the Internet is irrational.

BERMUDA HIGH SOARING

2006-07-08T14:10:00.000-07:00

I flew to Bermuda High Soaring today while the family was away - about an hour and ten minute flight in the C150. Sorry for the old and not so good picture. My wife had the digital camera, so I didn't get any pictures today.

For those of you who have never taken a glider ride, you really should if you ever have the opportunity. Every fixed wing pilot would benefit from a little glider training. Most tricycle gear pilots really have limited skills when it comes to proper use of rudder. A few flights in a glider will really help the tricycle gear pilot gain a valuable appreciation for stick and rudder coordination - not to mention it is just plain (pun intended) fun!!

The transition from Private Pilot airplane to Private Pilot glider can be completed in three or four days for as little as $1,500. If you are ever in South Carolina, stop by and see Frank and Jayne at Bermuda High Soaring.

FLYING INTO MANNING, SC

2006-07-04T07:07:00.000-07:00

PROJECT PILOT

2006-07-01T06:43:00.000-07:00

This is an interesting new program from AOPA designed to increase the number of student pilots. If you are a current pilot and wish to mentor a new student pilot, or if you are a current student pilot or are interested in becoming a pilot, then go here to get started.

Fly Safe!

WELCOME TO "FROM THE COCKPIT"

2006-06-30T19:52:00.000-07:00

Welcome to From the Cockpit. If you enjoy flying and conservative commentary, I hope you will put From the Cockpit on your list of favorites. Your comments are welcome.