morning all. We have rain!!!! never thought I'd be glad to see it rain but I am.

I saw the news last night that Seattle has worse air than Beijing or Mumbai. All then California smoke is polluting the air. I was wondering if the EPA will fine the city for exceeding air pollution standards. I remember several years ago Texas wildfires just blew heavy smoke to OKC. The EPA fined the city for exceeding ozone and particulate standards for the day. Like there was any way for us to stop it.

with our luck they will. We are getting it from both sides. CA and BC. There are some 500+ fires up north.

Good to hear about the rain David.

We have the second half of our director's retreat today. I am so excited I have to pee. Wait, no, I just drank too much coffee. Never mind, it is a regular have to pee.

pee during the retreat..............

Oh crap :(

Unless the retreat is at some sort of fancy hotel or spa, crap most likely is NOT an exciting experience. Well, unless you're into that sort of thing.

Was in Boy Scouts and understand a fire watchtower way above the trees on top of a mountain in a National Forrest could be exciting. Especially if there are unsuspecting targets below. Something about an Eagle Scout and Eagle bird poop falling from the sky. Not that I personally had any experience mind you.

When asked if a bear poops in the woods, our answer was, If they are in the Bear Patrol they do.

Is an Admin's Retreat where you line up on opposite sides of a grassy field like you are going to attack each other, then run away?

Oh I know. It's where every one gets a treat. Then everyone gets another treat, hence retreat.

It was just a fancy restaurant and I did pee at the retreat. It was productive for the most part. It also had an open bar afterwards.

Happy Friday all. Most all. You Saturday guys know who you are!

Yes indeed. Another splendid Saturday. Enjoy! SmileWavy

TGIF folks.

We cheated death in the skies again yesterday. Overall a standard easy flight. At one spot while on a flight line there was a little bitty single cloud that attacked us. Well actually we skimmed just along the bottom of it and it was about a 1/4 of a second in the cloud before we were out. Every kid has looked up at pretty white puffy clouds and wondered how soft and fluffy they really are. We just hate them in all forms. High thin overcast is just fine, but the white fluffy clouds are not really that fluffy. Since that project had almost a 1,000 overall images and at most we lost one image we just ignored it. We have lots of forward overlap and sidelap. And it was so small it hardly cast a discernible shadow. We could not see a shadow at all. Even in the imagery.

They might look fluffy, but the average cumulus cloud is 1.1 million pound of water vapor.

morning all. Back to slightly foul air today.

You need more rain to cleanse the air.

Madison has been flooded the last few days here but the Mississippi river is down to 5 feet.

rain! we need more or one heck of a wind storm.

The one we skimmed was a way under average little wimpy almost not there cloud. It was still a little bumpy.

I can't even imagine the folks that fly INTO a hurricane on purpose. That has to be an exciting ride. I will pass.

We had a 14 knott wind for landing yesterday. The pilot I hire is an instructor, and learned and teaches in Oklahoma so it is no big deal to deal with that wind. It was no big deal at all. That instructor went to work down in Florida for a while with a school. He said the first day of orientation the Chief pilot was giving a briefing to all the pilots. He was saying that it was going to be a really windy day, and they could expect 8 to 10 knott winds. He told them that was a nice calm flying day in Oklahoma. One other instructor wanted to get practice in cross wind landing and came up to Oklahoma and said it was terrifying.

We did landings at the max cross wind component here often. There were a couple days we had to cancel because it was too high. Those days where you have to work for it are my favorite days. Of course for my final check ride for my license it was a calm day. We never had calm days and I was coming in too high for the landing because I was not used to not having a headwind component. Good thing you can do a straight in side slip in a 152 and use it like a huge airbrake.

Rain today, warm tomorrow, rain the day after...

I just discovered the REAL reason Chevy does not import the Holden UTE. It is all because of LBJ and his stupid taxes. The tax on the Trucks is still in effect!

https://www.wired.com/2014/12/subaru-brat/

He slapped a 25% tax on any light truck with just two seats not made in America. I guess the El Camino made in Mexico (like mine) was OK since it was a Chevy owned plant.

Now I guess the Holden production in Australia has ended. So no more Utes for anyone. Oh well. I will just keep driving my 32 year old El Camino.

The BRAT with the seats in the back didn't make it a very good 4 passenger OR pickup.