Justin’s Pilot Reports (PIREP)

Happy Birthday and Congratulations to Allison! This afternoon she and her mother Ellen joined me for a local flight around San Antonio. This was a special flight since Allison was earning her official status as a Young Eagle!

We departed San Antonio International Airport at around 2pm this afternoon and enjoyed some sightseeing of downtown San Antonio from a lofty perch of 3,000 feet. We could see that Fiesta activities were getting underway and Allison was able to spot several unique landmarks from the air.

Our airplane - Skyhawk 23758 - provided constant awareness of other airplanes by displaying their location and track on the Garmin G1000 Multi-Function Display.

This is an excerpt of A Young Eagle is born!.
Read the full entry.

Shane Arnwine is a good friend and coworker of mine. As a member of the Commemorative Air Force, there is no doubt that aviation courses through his veins! Shane is also a student pilot who hopes to start his flight training in the not-so-distant future.

In the meantime, I love the opportunity to take him flying since I know how much he enjoys the experience. This would be my fourth flight with Shane. Our destination, Sonora Municipal Airport (Shane’s parents live there).

Or so we thought.

This is an excerpt of Wind gusts and glass cockpits.
Read the full entry.

A few months ago I learned that Wright Flyers, a flight school at San Antonio International Airport, had just acquired a 2006 Cessna Skyhawk equipped with the “NAV III” package. Translation? A Skyhawk with a Garmin G1000 glass cockpit. Instead of several round, traditional flight instruments this new Skyhawk boasts two large LCD displays that replace them.

This is an excerpt of Cessna 172 : “Glass Cockpit” checkout.
Read the full entry.

In case you didn’t know it, the Cessna 172 celebrates its 50th birthday this year. As a result, I thought I’d reserve a few blog entries to celebrate this amazing airplane. Like many pilots, I have a long relationship with the Skyhawk. It’s the airplane that quite literally facilitated the completion of my flying dream. I learned to fly in a Skyhawk, passed my Private Pilot practical test in a Skyhawk and earned my Instrument Rating in a Skyhawk.

I have a new, favorite piece of software for getting a quick low-down on the aviation weather scene. The software is called ForeFlight and is the creation of Krista and Jason Miller. You may have already met Jason online as he is a frequent contributer to the forum here at NoticeToAirmen.com.

ForeFlight has a host of valuable features. It uses a set of graphics to visually depict the weather described by the latest METAR at your local airport. Wind direction is graphically superimposed over the runways of a selected airport and includes a calculation of the crosswind component for all runways. The result? A quick and informative new way to quickly see the weather conditions at more than 1,600 airport and a lot of fun too!

This is an excerpt of Visualizing METARs & TAFs with ForeFlight.
Read the full entry.