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Uggghhh! At my last oil change, I cut my oil filter open as I always do, but this time, there were shiny specs all over the filter media. I washed the filter paper in solvent and collected the resulting "debris". There was a little less than 1/4 teaspoon of ferrous metal in the leftovers. My...

A flight to the San Juan Islands for a cuppa Joe on a lazy summer morning.

Washington State DOT operates a number of grass strips up in the Cascade Mountains. These runways are typically closed by NOTAM from October 1st until June 1st. This year, spring was dryer and warmer than usual, so many of these airports were opened early. Skykomish State was one of the lucky...

I've seen and have participated (unsuccessfully) in a number of STOL (Short TakeOff & Landing) contests. STOL events typically take place on a longer runway with the vast majority of the pavement (or grass) unused. This STOL stunt had a wildly limited space to try and land on. The discussion of...

OK, Jerry Seinfeld has his YouTube Channel called Comedians in Cars getting coffee, and it can be funny. The cars they drive can also be interesting. Still, its just about 2 people driving to a local coffee shop and swapping stories along the way. Nothing out of the ordinary in any of that. Now...

Back in 2019, there was a lot of buzz around the new Horten HX-2 flying wing LSA. The buzz continued into early 2020, then everything went silent. What happened? It's a cool looking design. Did the European authorities ever certify the design? Did the company fail because of bad timing around...

This gem of a grass runway on a mountain lake is in the Selkirk Mountains of NE Washington State. It is an absolute joy to fly to, camp and and enjoy the stars since there are no big city lights anywhere in the vicinity. The runway is adjacent to a state campground and there is fresh, potable...

I flew from a small town about 30 miles north of Seattle to the big show this year. My first stop was a bit of a detour so I could take in a touch of backcountry heaven. I stayed at Ryan Field, just outside the western entrance to Glacier National Park in Montana. That is a spectacular location...

Just after Christmas, I received a note from Pilots and Paws had 2 dogs that needed help getting to their forever homes. Curiously, one of the dogs was in Orgon and needed to get to Washington State and one in Washington State needed to get to Oregon. The one in Washington state that needed to...

I wanted a picture of my plane and tent with a backdrop of stars. The Alvord desert is the place to go for that shot, so I loaded up the plane and headed out. It was the new moon, so the sky should be really dark. Well, it was but that darkness was not from the lack of a moon, it was the storm...

Washington State DOT/Aviation maintains a series of airports in the Mountains that are only open from June 1 - September 30. This video captures my flight to Tieton State airport (4S6) in the middle of September this year. It is a remarkably beautiful place to visit, and provides a good...

I flew to Oshkosh from Washington State and experienced every kind of terrain and most kinds of weather along the way. It took 4 days because I was slow and widespread thunderstorms shut my flying down early several days. My rear is tired and my wallet is empty but I had a great time.

I recently upgraded to a mode S transponder with extended squitter from Garmin (GTX-335). I already had an ADS-B in solution with a portable DUAL XGPS 170 receiver. As I understood the process, my DUAL receiver would pick up traffic once I had an ADS-B out signal to activate the ground...

I have a Garmin 430 in my panel and I've been maintaining a full set of US charts for that unit. That costs $440/year. I also have a an Android tablet running the DroidEFB App. That provides the same coverage (all of the US) and is more user friendly and has more information than the Jeppesen...

After a 25 year hiatus, I'm considering a flight to Oshkosh again. How early do I need to arrive to ensure a parking spot on the field? I'll be flying a plane that looks like it was built in the 1950s (a Maule tail dragger), but it's actually a 2002 model, so antique parking isn't viable. I'm...

I've been to a lot of fly-ins and pilot gatherings, but the best I've ever attended was the High Sierra Fly-in on a dry lakebed in northwestern Nevada. They have their own Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/groups/968770996478605/ and the fly-in is heavily covered in the...

I was washing my plane after a great trip to the High Sierra Fly-in and this weird plane shot a couple of landings at the Jefferson County Airport. It looks like a smaller, monoplane version of De Havilland's Dragon Rapide, or a poor man's Mosquito (also built by De Havilland), but I can't find...

Here's a video clip of a flight to the Copalis beach airport (S16) in Washington State. This is not a paved runway at the beach, this is landing on the sand! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BQ5oR39RF8

I've been looking at the prices for adding ADS-B out to my plane and all of the units I've found have their own WAAS compliant GPS built in. I already have a WAAS GPS (Garmin 430) with an RS 232 port. Have any of you found a transmitter that will work with the position signal from an existing...

Let me start by saying I subscribe to Flying Magazine, and have for a VERY long time. Even though most of their stories are about aircraft I will never ride in, let alone fly, they have done more to include the lower end of the aviation spectrum in recent years. They've added fun articles about...