My name is Barry Orlando. This is the new home of my flying adventures for 2008 and beyond.  I will be posting items of interest for the would-be pilot and pilots in general. Family and friends can catch up on my flying here as well. I am a private pilot living in the Finger Lakes region of New York State and earned my ticket in mid-October of 2007 after three years of training, four different flight instructors, and by attending three different flight schools. I moved three times during all of my flight training and during this same time period I married my wife Sherry and together we built a house in the hills over looking Canandaigua Lake. My home base is the Penn Yan Flying Club in Penn Yan, New York and I fly N73450 – a 180 HP Cessna 172 built in 1976. It’s a nice plane and the flying club has various other aircraft to fly.

It has been a lean flying year for me. In 2008 I flew 7 times and so far in 2009 I have flown twice. Why? Well it’s not for the lack of wanting to. Sadly my absence has been due to lean times and since I try to be frugal, I only fly when I know I can afford it.

To combat this problem I have decided to join the Civil Air Patrol. I completed my application for the Rochester Senior Squadron and need to complete a finger printing card for membership. Why do this? Well here are a few reasons in no particular order:

1. To learn about other aircraft besides the Cessna 172 (like the 182 & 206)
2. To be around other pilots.
3. To learn the ins and outs of Class C airspace and ATC.
4. To give myself a more structured environment to grow in.
5. To earn time and become a Mission Pilot.
6. To be a better pilot.
7. To perform a volunteer service.
8. To find a career in aviation…if possible.

So that’s what’s going on. As always, donations are greatly appreciated since it still costs money to fly in the Civil Air Patrol.

Hi All – this blog is in a holding pattern until the Spring thaw!

I am up for an annual, as well as my medical in May.

I should never start blogging at 3am, but I just couldn’t go back to bed after waking up, so I hit the keyboard and had at it. I updated the look of this site with a new design and started typing a few entries to help get me in the mood for sleep.

If you know me, you know that I really love aviation but with my job situation and the fact that I have my boys living with me permanently, its been hard to demonstrate that affection. I have put out several one page sites for Middlesex Valley Airport and Canandaigua Airport as my way of supporting general aviation. I love going to Middlesex and having breakfast as the taildraggers come and go from the grass field tarmac.

Anyway, I have been studing for my Instrument Rating. Its been a slow process. This rating is under-rated and if you decide to go this path, be sure to have cash to burn because you will need it to earn it AND have it mean something to you. This rating is excellent and will really make you an aviator or it will kill you if you do not stay current and fly in IMC. If you have an Instrument Rating but do not fly in IMC, you are only fooling yourself and could be setting yourself up for a fall. The currency requiremment is not enough (in my humble opinion) and will not give you enough experience to keep from having a bad day as we like to call them. Single Pilot IFR is serious stuff and it seems like there is plenty going on to distract you from flying the plane. With that said I have begun studying to become a Basic Ground Instructor. You still learn, you save money, might even make money, but more importantly you help others interested in the same things that you are interested in.

Ground Instructor is a certificate issued in the United States by the Federal Aviation Administration; the rules for certification, and for certificate-holders, are detailed in Subpart I of Part 61 of the Federal Aviation Regulations, which are part of Title 14 of the Code of Federal Regulations. The Ground Instructor certificate allows the holder to offer various kinds of ground instruction required of those seeking pilot certificates and ratings. Ground Instructor certificates are issued with ratings, and these determine the exact areas in which the holder may give instruction.

The Basic Ground Instructor(BGI) rating allows the holder to give the ground instruction required for a sport pilot, recreational pilot, or private pilot certificate, and associated ratings; the holder may also approve (by endorsement or “sign off”) a student to take the written knowledge test for these certificates. The holder of a Basic Ground Instructor rating is additionally allowed to give the ground instruction required for a sport pilot, recreational pilot, or private pilot flight review.

So I am now studying Gleims Fundamentals of Instructing and Flight/Ground Instructor in order to take the FAA Exams to earn the BGI rating.  Ground Instructor certificates do not expire. To be eligible to give instruction, though, I must have either served as an instructor for at least three out of the preceding twelve months or have received from a ground or flight instructor an endorsement certifying that I am proficient in the subject matter which the certificate authorizes teaching. There’s always a catch. But what I am thinking of doing is using the Internet to help teach ground school to people who might not be local or some distance away where there is no ground school instruction. This way I can combine my Internet experience with aviation. Could it be a match made in heaven???

My flying drought continues as I exist on a tight budget, while the government continues to scare the hell out of the American consumer and bails out failing enterprises. I generally don’t like talking politics or religion in a blog, but I pray that the right people in high places start to do the RIGHT things and not the political thing to release the stress on the economy.

Anyway. My current condition is grounded until I complete my annual flight review (yes…the flying club requires an annual to fly the club planes) with an instructor. I have been working part-time days from the time my kids go to school until they come home.  I then help with homework and fix dinner for everyone while I tend to my clients needs later in the evening. Since we are in November, night-time is here by 6pm which leaves weekday flying as not much of an option for me.

In any event, I have completed two wings safety courses online and will be going to Williamson-Sodus for another next Thursday, November 20th at 7pm. This more than satisfies the flying clubs requirement for safety classes. I don’t like it if I fall behind on courses and at least this time of year gives me the opportunity to study while there is no flying going on in my life.

Today I teamed up with my flight instructor and flew for the first time in a Cessna 150. This is the two seat version of the Cessna 172 that I fly regularly. After getting over the initial shock of not seeing many of the things that I normally see in the cockpit, like a GPS, two com radios, ADF and so on…we took off from Canandaigua for a flight to Wellsville.

This flight was not an official training flight so much as it was a flight to get use to the plane. However, anyone who flies with their instructor knows that ANY flight is a training flight. A 150 is a lot like a leaf in the wind, you don’t have as much power and things sound different. As I was climbing to 4,500 feet, I noticed that I had a few clouds ahead of me. Now I do know what pitch and power are and how to use them…really…but I started to fixate on the clouds and not on my flying. The result was a desent and an airspeed increase into the yellow arc. I didn’t know you could go 120 kts in a 150…but I did. My instructor took over for a bit and I felt foolish about being so stupid as to not notice my situation as quick as he did.

I was looking at the clouds. My mind was on the regulation for cloud clearances…1000 ft above, 500 feet below and 2000 feet to the side. Which is why I was decending and turning right. Since the RPM gauge was now on the right side of the cockpit and not in front of me (out of sight out of mind) I didn’t catch it. Would I have made the same mistake in the 172? Probably not since I was a bit more timid in the 150 and still building up my confidence.

I was slightly disoriented in that I was looking and not seeing and wasn’t smart enough to remember to look right toward the RPM gauge. Did I look at it when I took off or was I just looking at my air speed? I think the truth was that I was looking solid at my airspeed and not at the RPM’s at all when I took off. All I cared about at the time was my rotation speed. Simply stupid…and dangerous…but in the 172 I look at the RPM’s religiously.

I guess this is why you take your instructor with you on such a flight!

Thanks Gordy!!!!

Today I went to Penn Yan and fired up N73450 (a Cessna 172) and performed a number of takeoffs and landings. Every private pilot who wishes to carry passengers must perform 3 takeoffs and landings to a full stop every 90 days in order to stay current and comply with the FAA regulations. It was a popular thing to do apparently since there were 3 or 4 other aircraft doing the same thing. In all I performed 7 takeoffs and landings, which will keep me current until 11.22.08.

This will be a short post since I am writing it at 1:30am. Having logged a whopping 1.6 hours of flight time in July and nothing yet in August. I am starting to long for an opportunity to get some IFR ground school and take the written test this fall. Right now I am studying for my instrument (IFR) exam, but my eyes are wandering around at the Ground Instructor certificate. Since I am working hard to grow in my internet business, I haven’t had the time to do too much of anything with aviation. I have have also been busy with my two sons this summer now that they live with me during the week, which is why I am so looking forward to September and having them in school during the day.

Well I went the whole month of June without a single flight. However, today I threw caution to the wind and took my wife out for a scenic flight to Hornell and the wind mills near Cohocton. We had 10 miles vis with haze. I was going to be going lower and slower so my wife could take in the sites.

We flew direct to Hornell and on the way passed to the east of the new wind mill farm going up in Cohocton. They are not on the charts yet, but we counted about 50 large scale turbines with most needing their blades installed…which are rumored to be defective even before they go up.

I wanted to go to Hornell (4G6) because of the topography (Wellsboro, PA might be next). Even with GPS I was too far east and had to cut back a bit, but the wind was on my side since its direction meant that I had to land on Runway 18. I made my call to the dead air space that I was on the 45 for RW 18 and went between two hills to do so. As I turned for my downwind the land started raising up a great deal. I turned base and watched the land and traffic as I did so. I was dead on for my final and did a good job landing.

Since this was a stop and hop for us just to say we went to a new field, we started our taxi for take-off. We got into position and again made our radio calls to the dead. I throttled up and started heading down the runway. As we started to pickup speed I saw this black thing…a big black thing running across the runway. Since it was moving and I was nearing my rotation speed we kept on going. As we got over the area where we saw this thing running, we could clearly see that it was a black bear. Oh…yes…I have a witness…which is good since I would not have believed it either. A big black bear running like hell into the nearby clear field to the west of the runway. We both laughed and smiled about it and continued on our trip.

We landed at Penn Yan and brought the 172 into the barn. Just as I towed it in ALL…and I mean ALL of the hydraulic fluid came out of the front landing gear. It was the strangest thing since it only leaked after the final push into the barn. I took the plane out of service and made a phone call to alert the powers that be about the problem.

They say all great things come to an end and today they did. My full-time position as a Director of Operations for an Internet company was eliminated leaving me out of work. Since flying is an “extra” I will need to cut back my flying until I know where my money is coming from. I do own my own Internet company and have been doing that part-time for years, but I will need to go full-time in that business to make up for the loss of cash. If things work out, great…if not…not so great. I have a few things lined up so we will see how things go.