A touchup of fresh dope here and there, a bit of polish on the brightwork, check the spark plugs, and it’s good as new, Guvner!
I tried that with 3 other guys & an Luscombe 8a that was in much better condition. Worst mistake I ever made.
Not the airplane, the trying to work with three other pilots/mechanics.
Not really GA, but the pictures of the aftermathof the train derailment in Montana are jarring. Six new 737 fuselages on the way from Wichita to Renton went down an embankment and into a river. Not at all clear if they’re going to be usable after retrieval.
Absolutely GA: I finally got to the Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome yesterday, and I wish I’d gone long ago. It’s one of the world’s leading shrines to WW1 and early aviation, and one of the few places you can see these planes still fly. Not all are replicas, some are original. I’d never seen a Fokker D.VII fly before, and didn’t know there were any that did, but it’s clear how superior a machine it was at the time. It still couldn’t beat the SPAD in the simulated dogfight, even teamed up with “the Black Baron’s” Dr.I, though. 
The full airshow, complete with the rescue of Trudy Truelove from the evil Baron by Sir Percy Goodfellow, and the classic Flying Farmer routine, is a complete blast. Any time you’re in the Northeast, you gotta go.
This is a video of a Sopwith at the Chino Air Show in 2006. I attended that show. The aircraft is original, and it has an original rotary engine. You can hear the ‘throttle’ control in the video. (Quoted, because engine speed was controlled by ‘blipping’ the magneto switch and turning the engine off and on.)
Old Rhinebeck has a Camel but didn’t fly it yesterday. They did fire up their LeRhone-powered Caudron, with some difficulty, but didn’t do the usual hops down the runway due to wind.
Having not gone there yet is one of my biggest regrets… 
Well, work it out then! It’s almost like being on the set of Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines. I think some of their fleet may have been built for the film.
Well… The Arlington Fly-In is next weekend. (Technically Thursday through Saturday, but I’m going on Saturday.) The SO doesn’t want to go. She went last year, and says she’ll go alternate years. I’m registered for AOPA’s Rusty Pilot seminar. I have a shiny new-model Sporty’s electronic E6B. I have my manual E6B ‘whiz wheel’ in my backpack, and a notebook with E6B instructions so I can refresh my memory when I can find the time. (I’m ashamed. I was a total slug this long weekend.) The 2011 FAR/AIM and Aviation Weather are at hand. There are fresh batteries in my Sporty’s SP-200 NAV/COM (say, do you know it’s been discontinued?) and a new Seattle sectional I can get frequencies from. A lightweight Telex headset is in my backpack. I can tune in SEA and listen to chatter while I work tomorrow. (Assuming, that is, the radio still works. I get some nice static from it here at the house!)
I have plenty of brushing-up material, plus two upcoming inspirational outings. Now I need to renew my Medical (it expired months ago) and see if I can scrounge up some money to get some training and a biennial.
Oh, yes… I also need to win the lottery so I can get that '77 Grumman AA-1B and '76 Cessna 172M I want, and the Cessna 172K that used to be dad’s. And there’s a Beechcraft T-34B for sale… 
One thing they’ll tell rusty pilots is that you don’t need an E6B anymore. 
Everyone has a GPS now.
That was the hardest thing when I tried to get airborne again (before I ran out of funds – Dammit!). I’ll tell you, I greased that first landing in slicker 'n snot! But the Garmin 430? So much going on! I’m used to just twisting the knob on a KX-155 and looking at the DG and out the window! I wish they’d make a Mac-compatible simulator for the Garmin.
Another thing to get used to is having to read back a taxi clearance. Back when I was flying fixed-wings before it was like ‘Cessna 5-7-3, cleared to taxi.’ ‘Five-seven-three.’ Now it’s ‘Cessna 3-0-5-1-Echo, cleared to taxi to runway three-four via Foxtrot-Alpha-Golf.’ ‘Roger, Cessna 3-0-5-1-Echo cleared to taxi, runway three-four via Foxtrot-Alpha-Golf.’ I snickered every time I was given that taxi clearance. (Yes, I’m twelve.)
I went to the AOPA Rusty Pilots seminar. Good information. I knew what was presented already, but I took copious notes anyway. There was a little distraction when a T-6 was doing low-level maneuvers over the runway, and a Stearman and a P-51D landed.
The presenter is active-duty Navy and does flight instruction in his spare time. Unlike the full-time instructor I tried to get a BFR with a couple of years ago, and who left me thinking, ‘Gee, we’re sure poking a lot of holes in the sky without much BFR talk,’ this guy doesn’t have an incentive to milk the hours. He said he just wants to make sure we don’t crash the airplane. He seems goal-oriented.
Now I just need to renew my medical and schedule a couple of flights. But I’m having wisdom teeth out next Friday and the following Friday, so it’s going to be a little while before I can do that.
Many moons ago, I was in Astoria OR and was going to rent a 172 to take the wife & older sister up so the sister could give commentary on the local area. I really like to get the lay of things in a new to me place by cruising lazy patterns about the area.
All paper work & flight time were fine but I had to take a check ride. It would be added to my flight time so I was paying for it. :: sigh :::
Could not fault the guy but sheesh…
Anywho, he & I went out, did the preflight and headed for the active. It was a big old air base with lots of big runways going every which a way.
All the while he was giving me a long list of what we were going to do and exactly what he wanted my departure to consist of. I was thinking, “Dude, I have several thousand hours & you have seen the log book. I am renting your 172 for an hour of VFR on a CAVU day with light wind. I’ll probably be within sight of the airport the whole time.”
So I’m working hard to remember all the turns & altitudes he wants to do as we do the run-up, clear the area & take the runway.
Off we go, I do what he wanted, turn this way at 800’, that way at 1200 feet, go ½ mile that-a-way and them climb to … etc. … Some where in all that he chopped the power, kept his hand on the throttle and just waited.
So I start making the moves to get to a good approach point to make a runway, he still does not clear the engine or anything, just sits there. I make all the necessary radio calls & broadcast my intentions, no control tower at this airport. ( no traffic either ) Landing is nice, he adds power & we taxi back to the terminal.
I look at him with an raised eyebrow.
“This is how I find out what kind of a pilot you are in the shortest amount of time when it comes to a sight seeing flight in the local area in my 172.”
I kind of had to agree with him.
Total time on the meter I had to pay for ( actual flight time plus taxi time = 6 minutes. )
He got to see:
My preflight
My radio work,
Ability to remember instructions ( mostly he said so that I would be too busy trying to do the complicated climb out & forget where the airport was in relation to me ) { hah, I always know where the airport is but I saw his point }
flight under emergency conditions,
real low is easy, few choices,
real high is easy, lots of time ( unless you are on fire )
and just the wrong altitude where it seems you have time, a lot of choices but they all go away real fast and the wrong choice is real evident real quick. ( very nasty trap )
Ability to get to the runway without a lot of cowboy antics. ( I personally like ‘cowboy’ antics but not during a check flight … without permission that is. ) < veg >
It wastes the least amount of my money and saves him money on those he has to say ‘No’ to.
Are they still making you state your intention to “hold short”?
How long does a taxiway need to be so that you forget the instruction to hold short?
Your taxi clearance will include hold-short instructions, and yes, you do have to read it back. Your readback can be condensed, not word for word, as long as it shows you have every step understood. The readback process is a good way to drive the instructions into your brain; it isn’t just rote.
Forgetting a step is mostly a product of distraction, not time. You have plenty of warning when you’re reaching a hold-short line - signs, extra lines on the taxiway, sometimes lights - plus, you should still be on Ground Control frequency and you’ll get yelled at (at the least) if you do it anyway. When in doubt, hold anyway and ask to cross.
So, the flying part of the BFR…
As soon as I renew my medical, I can go up. (I think I can get a BFR w/o a medical, but I’d not be legal for PIC until I got it. I’ll have to look it up.) I have four choices of where to fly. The first is the place where I felt I was being milked. There’s another place whose name I don’t recall so I can’t see what they have for rental. Very small operation, anyway.
A third place offers a Cessna 172 or a Piper Warrior, according to their website. When I checked it out a couple of years ago they also had a Cessna 152, a Cessna 150 taildragger conversion, and an older Beechcraft Bonanza (V-tail, with the small, teardrop-shaped 3rd window). They also have a Robinson R22. Their aircraft seem well-maintained. This FBO is at my ‘home airport’, so it’s convenient. They charge $125/hour for the 172 and PA-28, which is $10/hour more than I paid for the 172N in 2011 at the other place.
The fourth option is down at Skagit Regional Airport, at the FBO the presenter of the seminar flies out of. It takes almost an hour to drive down to BVS, about twice as long as it takes me to get to BLI. But I’ve already met, and chatted briefly with, the instructor and he seems like a good egg. His goal is to make sure people are safe, and get them back into the air. Good. In 2011 I demonstrated I could take off and land, perform stalls, initiate and continue emergency procedures after a simulated power failure, communicate over the radio, follow instructions from the tower after they directed two or more planes to the same little patch of pattern (on more than one occasion), and so on. With this guy it sounds like ‘You show me your stuff. Show me you’re safe, and I’ll sign you off.’ Oh, and BVS is on my way home from work. It doesn’t get dark until late, so I could swing and fly for an hour and still be home before sunset.
There are four aircraft to choose from at BVS: A Cessna 172, two Piper PA-28-140s, and a Cessna 152. The four-seaters rent for $115/hour. The 152 is right out. Too small, not enough payload, and the instructor likes a little shoulder room. (I do too.) Most of my fixed-wing flying has been in Skyhawks, so my immediate choice would be theirs. It’s down for maintenance right now, but I have oral surgery to have done and recover from. It’s also a 172B, a ‘swept-tail fastback’ of 1961 vintage. I haven’t flown a fixed-wing without a back window sine the Piper Dakota I flew once in the early-'90s. And there’s a Johnson bar for the flaps, instead of electric flaps. But a Skyhawk is a Skyhawk. It would be a good choice for my BFR. On the other hand, it would be good to fly a Cherokee just for the variety. Can’t fly too many different types, eh? And of course, one of the benefits AOPA (undoubtedly) sells to FBOs that present their seminar is that it builds business. The FBO, or at least the instructor who presented it, went to some effort to make it available. I like the idea of free seminars and other programs for pilots, so I want to encourage the FBO through my patronage.
I think what I’ll do is this: Renew my medical, and then schedule a BFR with the instructor who presented the seminar; rent both the 172B and a PA-28-140 after I’m signed off, for the experience and the variety; go to the third FBO I mentioned in this thread with a recent BFR and recent experience, and get checked out in their airplanes. That way I support the FBO and instructor at Skagit, support a local FBO, and have a place where I can rent a plane to fly down to Skagit for a $100 hamburger.
The challenge will be maintaining currency, given my other financial obligations.
I would expect them to sign you off on each type of plane. Of everything you listed I’d go for the Cherokee 140. I much prefer the manual flaps. Great for windy days when you land you can dump the flaps immediately.
Have you looked into joining a flying club?
I think Cherokees are pretty airplanes. The only thing I don’t like about them is that it seems undignified to have to get in on the starboard side and slide your arse over into the left seat. 
I might have to look into a flying club. There’s one at Skagit, but I don’t know of one in Bellingham. Of course there’s always the Civil Air Patrol. 
Aren’t those burgers now $150?
In central CA, there is, somewhere in the Sierra foothills, a small airport next to a State park which allows camping.
So folks now have the option of a $150 burger or a $500 overnight camping trip.
Parlin Field in Newport, NH, in the midst of the Sunapee Mountains, has a camping area off one end of the crosswind grass strip, along the river, and a nice Mexican restaurant on the other side of the field.