Doug's Picture Gallery

I've put about ten hours on our new Garmin 430 WAAS receiver installation and the results are impressive. I've shot both LNAV+V and LPV approaches as well as tested the terrain capability and am amazed that the basic operation of the unit remains unchanged. There is nothing quite like flying a virtual ILS to my home field.

The horizontal stabilizer and flap came back from the repair station. The horizontal repair consists of a new center section and a doubling of the forward spar. This is essentially the same design on the new 172s. The upper and lower rear skins of the aileron were simply replaced. We expect not to have to paint the horizontal stab after all, but the aileron will need to be stripped and fully repainted.

I attended my local dealer's unveiling of the 1 series recently and am convinced from my brief interaction with the vehicle that BMW has a winner here. Contrary to what the marketing types would have you believe it's no 2002, but it's just as revolutionary. This is a phenomenal car inside and out...so much so that I can envision it being a fitting replacement for the E36 when the time comes. This was also the first time I had seen the new M3 in person as well so I took a bunch of pics of that too.

Our inspector found cracks and distortion in the forward spar of the horizontal stabilizer, so the stabilizer had to be removed and shipped to Indiana for repair with a Cessna kit. Several cracks we already knew about in the right flap had progressed beyond our ability to stop-drill so the flap was sent with the stabilizer to be reskinned. We also decided to replace the prop hub which was flagged by an airworthiness directive last year. Compare this hub with the old one in the inspection gallery below, and it's not hard to see the improvements in the design.

Our Hartzell 2-blade propeller was recently targeted by an airworthiness directive (AD) related to cracks in the hub that might result in hub failure. This flight was to Sensenich Propeller Services in Lancaster, PA for an eddy current inspection to determine if our hub had developed cracks. Thankfully, it was given a clean bill of health, but the AD still mandates inspections every 100 hours or hub replacement. We haven't decided which to do yet.

A suite of pictures from my June 2006 visit to the Columbia Air Services open house at Monmouth Executive airport in NJ. The highlight of the show IMHO was the Diamond TwinStar.

Pictures from an old family vacation spot. I haven't been here since I was 10 years old, but my mother had the opportunity to spend some time here in 2006. I gave her a spare digital camera and told her to click away. The pictures recapture the beauty of this place I so vividly remember. I recall my parents always wanted to run around while they were up there, but I always wanted to stay home and sit by the lake. Can you blame me?

There is nothing quite like flying a twin turbine airplane, particularly when you can kick the passengers out before you land so they can't judge you on the touchdown. :-)

Friends let friends fly jumpseat in a 737! Thanks to some very special friends, I recently had the opportunity to fly jumpseat in a private 737. Security mandates I mention no names or places, but I did get permission to show these pics. Thanks to all who made it happen (whoever you are!)

In April 2006 I took delivery of a new 2006 BMW 330ci. It has all options except for park distance control and navigation. My regular technician took time out of his schedule to do the PDI (pre-delivery inspection) on my car, so I tagged along.

After experiencing cable modem dropouts I worked with my network provider to determine that the signal level was too low. The only way to fix the problem was to get the modem closer to the demarcation point and rewire all the drops with low-loss Belden 1464 RG-6 and 1Ghz splitters.

I recently unearthed a late 80's vintage bag phone. The first thing to do was power it up, followed quickly by a disection to take a look at the time-capsule containing some of the earliest surface mount technology available. This was state of the art in miniaturization folks, circa 1987.

I decided to fly down to see my sister in Jacksonville. While there, I managed to fly to Titusville for lunch and spend some relaxing time at the beach.

I put this collection of pictures together for a friend who wanted to know more about General Aviation. This is the best of the last five years of travel in the 172.