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Now that is one weird link. I understood a little of the Russian, but not enough to want to travel to this corner of the world, even if they do have $15 flights in Antonov AN2 biplanes, and $10 hostel style rooms. Still, thanks for the wee little geography lesson.

Friday Harbor on San Juan Island is a great little town, but if you want to avoid cities, you might prefer Eastsound airport on Orcas Island. There is a town there, but just barely. You can also fly into ROche Harbor on San Juan Island. It's a private strip, but is open to the public. They have...

Lumping all grass landing areas in one bucket doesn't make any more sense than suggesting all "paved" strips are alike. I've landed on the 7,000' Bermuda grass runway at Triple Tree Aerodrome (SC00) and it was the most wonderful surface to land on imaginable. It was like a golf green. The grass...

If you successfully land the plane without any damage, the insurance company won't have any responsibility and the engine rebuild/replacement will be paid for out of your pocket. If you have a survivable landing that severely damages the plane, the insurance company buys the whole thing and you...

Tiny little grass strip with tall trees at each end. This is in the Puget Sound area of Washington State. My mechanic is based here, so my Maule and I are regular visitors.

A flight to the northern edge of Washington State along the Canadian Border to the residential airport at Lynden, WA. Mount Baker above Fire Mountain Runway at Lynden is sandwiched between houses: Sunset over the Mount Baker in the Cascades on my way home

I flew to the San Juan Islands for lunch a couple of days ago. The trip was as beautiful as ever

Wow - I never had to check the tire pressure on a desk before. That would be novel...

It's good they cleaned all the grime off the bottom of the wings before the shoot!

I have a commercial ticket and an instrument rating, but when I passed the 2,000 hour mark my insurance rates went up 30%. It turns out flying a taildragger and getting older are the curse of financial death regardless of my sterling record, my ratings and the number of hours I fly each year...

I've flown from the Seattle area to Virginia and back in a 180 Hp Maule and it is slower than the Cherokee. I planned 4 days and it took me 8. Imbedded thunderstorms across the Midwest pushed me WAY off of my planned track from Sante Fe, NM to Norman Oklahoma. I wound up in North Platte...

Local strip with a coffee & pastry/sandwich shop on the field. I like having snow close enough that I can play in it if I want, but easily avoid it if I'm not interested.

According to the referenced article, part of that disagreement was over the slow pace of battery development. It seems the project was relying on battery design and capability expanding to meet the needs of the project faster than is actually happening. If that is the case, this may be a really...

I went flying this AM to warm up the engine and circulate the oil before an oil change. I was lucky enough to spot a Trident Submarine being escorted back to Bangor submarine base from the Pacific Ocean. They don't advertise their arrivals and departures, so seeing one is purely luck.

Best tugs are great, but man, the company sure is proud of them cost-wise. I decided to design and build my own electric tug using parts and components from the electric scooter market. I built a great little electric tug for my taildragger with a 1 kW motor and a 48V Lion battery pack for...

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 looked at all the tugs on the market and was flummoxed at the prices they're getting for them. So I designed and built my own out of steel tubes from home depot. The power unit uses components from the electric scooter industry. It has a 48 volt lithium ion battery pack and a 1 Kw motor. I...

If you're flying a long XC in the summer in a single engine w/o oxygen, you'd better have time on your hands. The old saying about only flying yourself if you have time to spare rings true. Remember that when thunder boomers pop up, you have to give them a wide berth. I was more than 3 miles...

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...

Meatloaf when the temperatures are in the high 80s? No thanks! I'll skip the fire too. Now, if you can make ice cream while airplane camping, I'd be interested.