I received the panel frame and yoke mounting kit from Simkits last week and got a lot more done on the panel. Now I have most of the instruments put together, and to avoid gluing them together I have ordered a set of MountPlates, a great aftermarket product by Chris Brace in New Zealand. Unfortunately, [...]

The weather here has been really crappy, with over a week of misty skies followed by a week of bitter sub-zero cold. I never did get the check-out in the 172 when my brother was in town.

Today I finally got up with Mark and we did an hour of time “under the hood”. I’m getting [...]

A few months ago I decided to build a 172 simulator panel to hook up to Flight Simulator 2004. Simkits, in the Netherlands, makes a full set of 172 simulator parts available in kit form, and I ordered pretty much an entire panel (except radios) last month.

Friday the first shipment arrived, with the panel, a [...]

I finished my night flight requirements last night with eight more full-stop landings. Visibility was very good (30NM or more), but the ceiling was about 2500 AGL and it was snowing lightly.

Winds were perpendicular to the runway so we bounced back and forth between runway 28 and 10, which saved some time. Mark took perverse [...]

Yesterday was a stunning blue day but very windy. I thought I’d go up for some crosswind practice, but as it turned out the winds were blowing down the runway by then, at 14 gusting to 24. I decided to fly over to Madison and do a couple of touch and goes and practice working [...]