Captain Tedward's Flying Adventures

A few weeks ago, Kim and I went on a little Summer vacation. We flew to Marianna, FL to visit the Florida Caverns State Park first and spent the afternoon exploring the underground caves. Great way to beat the Summer heat! :-)

The following day, we flew to New Orleans. That was on Kim's top 5 list of places to visit so off we flew. It was amazing flying along the Gulf Coast and still seeing damage caused by Hurricane Katrina. The other neat thing (for me at least) was flying over Lake Pontchartrain.

Once we landed at Lakefront Airport, we took a cab to our hotel near the French Quarter and started exploring. One of my main goals of the visit was to try to join the 15 Dozen Club at the Acme Oyster House. Well, I didn't complete the challenge but did end up eating 114 oysters in about 48 minutes; the first 8 dozen were downed in 25 minutes!

Some other things we did besides sightseeing were the aquarium and IMAX movie (Hurricane on the Bayou), a walking ghost tour, and a cemetary tour. Of course, we had to eat some beignets while we were there!

The trip home was uneventful until we got in the Hilton Head Island area where a thunderstorm was parked near the airport. We just got in before the skies opened up! What a great adventure overall!

Captain Tedward

My recent adventure involved flying in and around some stormy weather. Barry and I decided to fly down to Jacksonville last Friday and visit Cecil Field since we have never been to that airport and wanted to check it out. When we approached the area, storms had developed and was basically blocking our approach path into the airport. Since the air traffic controller told us that the cell was an intense one based on the radar return, we opted to divert over to Craig; a few miles to the east (and in the clear for the time being!).

Once we landed, we parked at Sky Harbor and grabbed a crew car. Before we left for lunch, we took a quick glance at the local radar and very quickly changed our minds. It was best that we head home soon! Barry filed the flight plan, we got a little fuel, pre-flighted, and taxied out. Well, the leading edge of the storm beat us to the runway and we had to taxi back to the ramp. We waiting a few minutes for some clearing, looked at the radar again from our phones, and took off. The flight back was not too bad as we flew around the strongest of the cells. You will find some pictures and video I took from the flights. The video is from the trip back to Hilton Head and was taken about 40 miles SW of the airport.

Captain Tedward

YOU WILL NEED ADOBE FLASH PLAYER TO VIEW THE VIDEOS

Not too much to report in the adventure category lately as I have been flying quite a few missions in "Hound Dog One" for the Carolina Basset Hound Rescue. Don't get me wrong; they are adventures but I choose not to mix my flying for enjoyment with my flying for charity, hence you will not see those missions posted here. If you'd like to see those missions, please check out the Hound Dog One blog.

Ok, so I had to post this. Found this on YouTube this morning. St. Barts is known for its difficult approach path for airplanes coming over a hill and having to drop down in order to land on a short runway. This is an example of what happens when you don't plan the approach correctly and land too long.

Captain Tedward