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If it's full of touch-and-go traffic, it probably means a bunch of students which means a bunch of Cessnas... Which also means that they are going to be flying 60 kt patterns. The only time I'm flying that slow is during the last stages of my flare, right before the wheels touch the ground, so...

It's possible that some people might look at a straight in approach as someone "cutting in line"... I don't consider it that way, but there might be *some* people who do... If I hear a few people in the pattern, I'm not likely to do a straight in approach... If it is late at night and the...

Probably because most pilots are "Type A" personalities and believe that they are right and everyone else is wrong... Kind of like the internet, I guess... ;) Personally, I'm pretty flexible with respect to pattern entry procedures... If someone wants to do a straight in, I don't have a problem...

There are probably even runways that are such that you even though you physically might take off in the opposite direction that you landed, from a practical standpoint, it's not really an option... Of course, technically, heliports are a class of airports and as such, they only have a single...

As long as two objects don't try to occupy the same point in the space time continuum, it's no big deal... Violate that one rule and bad things happen...

Oh no! I'm flying a Canadian pattern... I'm going to have to change my position reports! "Grumman XXX, crossing midfield at 1500, turning downwind for 09, eh"

By the time I finish the turn, I'm at pattern altitude, so I've got a good view of the pattern during the turn. For many types of aircraft, I would not use this procedure, but in my Grumman, it works quite well... Plus, if there are more just a couple of planes in the pattern, I'm probably...

The procedure that I like is to cross over midfield at 500 ft above pattern altitude and then bank sharply into a left turn while losing 500 ft and entering the downwind leg. This allows me to see everyone that is in the pattern and if it is a bit crowded, I can go further out and merge back in...

The .357 is good for home defense... The 125 grain round is a proven round with something like a 96% one-shot-stop record, if I remember correctly... Personally, I prefer a .45, but I'm just a bit old fashioned...The .25 is not a home defense round... It is something that you carry when you...

I figured out a long time ago that it was better to have a job that pays you enough to let you fly for fun vs trying to get a job in aviation that lets you fly for free, but doesn't pay you enough to live.

If you wanted to carry a baseball bat into the cabin with you, there is a very good chance that you will be prohibited from doing it (at least I think that the rules are still this way, I haven't checked in awhile and things change on a daily basis with the idiots at the TSA). On the other...

I've known people to travel to Mexico for extensive dental work (crowns, veneers, etc) when they were wanting all of their teeth worked on. Considerably cheaper than here in the US.

Use your existing vehicle and rent (or buy) a small enclosed trailer for those trips. U-Haul has a small "sport" trailer that can supposedly be pulled by any car that goes for $20 per day... Whereas their 4x8 enclosed cargo trailer goes for $15 per day: On the other hand, if you want to...

Let's assume that you have a larger 4x4 that gets 12 mpg and you drive 15K miles per year. Assuming $53 per gallon gas, you are looking at $3750 per year in fuel costs. Let's assume that your current vehicle gets 30 mpg. This works out to be $1500 per year for the fuel costs. So, you would...

It's not quite that simple... There is the coefficient of drag also... There's usually not enough difference between the coefficient of drag on vehicles in a certain class to make as much of a difference as a reduction in frontal plate area. The weight of a vehicle also makes a difference, but...

And if you need to carry more than the Outback can carry, buy yourself a small enclosed utility trailer. Compared to the cost of a new vehicle, they're cheap... That way, you're only carrying around the extra weight and having a larger vehicle (and its respective parking limitations) when you...

I remember some people saying after 9/11 that by destroying the WTC towers, it actually improved the NYC skyline since the WTC towers were so butt ugly. Compared to the architectural style of the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building, I suspect that they might have been right. I've...

Careful... I made a comment once about the need for a planet-killer meteor to strike Washington and rid us of the IRS and the Congress-Critters who have created our convoluted tax code and I ended up getting visited by 2 US Treasury Agents. They didn't seem to realize that I did not have the...

My '95 XJ has been pretty reliable... A WJ that my S.O. had was not as bulletproof though -- the electric window controllers went out within a couple of months of each other and it was around $400 each time... Plus, the transmission / diff always seemed to have a bit of a whine in it... It had...

When I was up there back around 1980, we would routinely tie a string onto a 6-pack of beer and hang it overboard a couple of feet down to keep it cool during the 'summer'. The thermocline was about 2-3 ft from the surface which basically put it at your 'nads when you were treading water after...