Day 1 of Family Vacation

Jan and I left home at 4:45 am to make our 6 am flight out of Daytona. Mom and Dad's flight left Charlotte at 7:30 am. We met up in Phoenix and after I got the car - we headed north to Sedona. A beautiful 'artisan' style town, it reminds me a lot of Sante Fe. We did some exploring on the back roads until it was time to head north toward the Grand Canyon.

Nothing can prepare anyone for the first time they see the Grand Canyon and both mom and dad were very excited they saw it. We then headed to the town of Williams Arizona and stayed in the oldest hotel in Arizona - the Grand Canyon Hotel. Pretty cool place. We watched a 'street show' of 4 cowboys shooting it out in town then had dinner and went to be somewhere around 8:30 pacific time. It was a very long day.

Sedona Photos:






Grand Canyon Photos:

More from the "Land Of No".

NO, originally uploaded by gwmeadows.

Readers of my blog may remember my post (Here
) about a year and a half ago about the U.S. being the 'land of no".
While working the race this week in Daytona, I spied a sign just waiting for it's deployment in the regulatory world. On standby for quick action.

The Red Bull Albatross

I don't remember a time when I didn't absolutely LOVE flying boats. To be able to combine the 2 things I love to do -be in the air and be on the water - into one item is just too much to ignore. My house if full of artwork with nostalgic flying boats on it and (I didn't realized until recently that) much of my clothing has flying boats on it.

In 2001, I bought the most affordable version of a flying boat and flew it for 3 summers as a business on the Outer Banks of NC - taking tourists for discovery flights over the islands. I've flown a lot of light aircraft - from paragliders, hang gliders, several types of ultralights and various small airplanes and NOTHING came close to the thrill of taking off and landing on water.
My Flying Boat

So, it should come as no surprise that the Grumman Albatross - the largest production flying boat that Grumman made has been a big goal for getting to fly in. Chalk Airlines out of Miami used to fly from there to the Bahamas on a daily basis for passsenger service utilizing the Albatross - until a catastrophic accident in 2005 shut the service down. I'd always figured I go take a trip on that service - but after it's closing, the ability of the average person to fly on an Albatross went down dramatically.






My friend Othar whom I met in the hang gliding/paragliding world is a paragliding national champion, aerobatic performer, skydiver exhibitionist, base jumper and leader/creator of the Red Bull Airforce. I found out he was going to be in the Charlotte area for race week as part of the Red Bull Albatross promotional team. I had invited him to come take a tour of the TV production truck and he invited me to come spend an afternoon out on the lake in the Albatross as they did promotional flights. There was no way I was going to miss THAT opportunity!

So I went out to the Rusty Rudder Restaurant on Lake Norman and met up with the shuttle boat that took me out to the Albatross. It's beautifully painted and as I stepped aboard I was offered access to any type of drink I could want including of course - Red Bull. I got the quick tour of the bird and then took a seat right behind the co-pilot MIke as we made our first take off. It was awesome - with the loud radial engines turning at full power and kicking up huge sprays of water behind us, we slowly converted the boat with wings to an airplane with a hull.


We appeared to be flying extremely slow as we cruised around the lake, but the airspeed indictor showed 120 knots - not setting any records but certainly faster than the apparent speed. The pilot - John - used to be a hang glider pilot as well and after we'd been in the air for about 10 minutes, he moved out of the pilot seat and offered it to me. No hesitation here!


Flying the Albatross was interesting with lots of resistance in the controls and the need to constantly adjust the pitch based on how the people in the back of the plane were moving around. John described it as trying to move an elephant down a hallway by leaning on it. Of course, Mike was there in the co-pilot seat making any correction that I was missing, but for a certain amount of time - I was flying the Red Bull Albatross.

After we landed, Othar opened up a hatch in the top of the plane and we all went up on the wings and many folks jumped into the water and some of us just hung out on top of the wings enjoying the afternoon.

More flying led to me getting to experience more of the plane including the observation room in the nose of the aircraft which has a lexan bubble to gaze out the front. Othar opened up the top section of the barn doors in the rear of the aircraft for us to be more in touch with the air.


It was an awesome afternoon and Red Bull continues to live up to it's reputation as a first class business. They take no money of any type for flying in the Albatross - it's solely for promotion.



Thanks to Othar for inviting me out and taking good care of me. Once again, I'm fortunate to have the friends I do - in many ways. I'll continue to offer what I can to my friends to help to offset the good that is done for me.

Also, thanks to Clyde. Couldn't have done it without you.

More Flying Lessons

This is the NEW airplane that I flew today. It's the very latest model of the same plane I've been flying. This is the first one that's IFR certified (which allows it to be flown in bad weather where you can't see the ground or horizon.) I'm not to that point of my training yet, but it's nice to fly the very latest equipment. They sold the plane I was flying up until now.


I had such a great time today with the flying lessons. When I arrived at UrbanAir in Melbourne, I asked Jim if we were up for cross country training today and he said we were. I suggested we fly over to Quest Air, where a lot of my friends were completing the last day of a hang gliding competition. Jim, a past US Hang gliding champion himself, agreed that would be a fun day.

We did our flight planning, flight plan filing and pre-flight check and then we were off toward the west, headed around the southern end of Orlando's airspace. We made a dogleg turn over Wallaby Ranch (another hang gliding flight park) and headed NNW to Quest Air. Arriving there, we circled the field once and then landed toward the south on the grass strip.

It was great to spend about 2 hours hanging out while the competitors launched and then after a quick lunch under the shade trees, we got back in the plane and took off toward the west and then headed north along the hang gliding competition task route. We spotted a good number of gliders climbing out about half way to Ocala turnpoint and then made a decision to head back to Melbourne - taking the route around the northern end of the Orlando airspace - over toward Daytona Beach and then down south toward Melbourne.


In the center of this photo is the Titusville Cracker Barrel - where Jan works. We flew over it today during the last leg of today's flight.

I got to learn a lot about planning airplane cross country flights. Where there's lots of restricted airspace (like in central Florida), there's a lot to be aware of. Filing a flight plan for the first time with the FAA was interesting - especially since the briefer that I filed it with didn't 'file' it and I had to do it again from the air over the radio while climbing out and beginning my navigation. It can only get easier from that point huh?.

Jim is an excellent instructor. I feel very fortunate to have the opportunity to get my training from him. I'm looking forward to my next lesson - in 2 weeks after I get back from 2 races in Charlotte.