guns in the cockpit, crazy

this is a recent story about a gun that was brought into the cockpit by a pilot discharging (ie "firing a bullet") to parts unknown while it was on approach to charlotte.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g9H2FwrcdidAVzHfI4QBxa7YlEEwD8VKB31G0

i'll be interested in seeing the outcome of this. it's hard to imagine that the safety wasn't on (basic gun knowledge) and that it was loaded. since it was on approach to land i can't imagine how bad it would have been to have had it hit the pilot doing the landing at a critical (or any) moment. i can also imagine how startled they must have been when it happened.

a commercial pilot friend of mine once commented that he didn't believe in guns in the cockpit. he said he had all of the weapons he needed to defeat a takeover attempt in that he could depressurize the cabin and/or roll the plane to disrupt any attempt.

cross country - JYO-CHO-FCI-CJR-JYO

another pilot and i finally got out for a real cross country flight today (as opposed to the cross town flight last weekend). we flew JYO (leesburg) - CHO (charlottesville) - FCI (chesterfield) - CJR (culpeper) and then back to JYO. we alternated each leg of the flight so that we could pick up the cross country hours (flights greater than 50 miles). it went well but there was turbulence pretty much the entire flight. we also had a DG (directional gyro) fail on the way back but that wasn't much of an issue. i can't imagine how much more difficult and dangerous it was to fly back when GPS wasn't available (or VOR for that matter).
btw, FCI (chesterfield virginia, near richmond) has a very fine airport with an excellent looking cafeteria which was unfortunately closed due to today being easter.

perfect day for flying except...

surface weather report:
KJYO 201820Z AUTO 30023G34KT 10SM CLR 12/M02 A2988 RMK AO2

winds are 23-knots gusting to 34 right now.

winds aloft are:
FT 3000 6000
EMI 3132 3143-08

this means winds are 32 knots at 3,000 ft and 43 at 6,000. in my little 172 i could probably go backwards in slow flight (have done that once).

a cross country, err, cross town flight and some ADM and a new ADIZ lesson

a friend and i were planning on picking up some cross country hours last weekend. originally, the weather looked bad and then appeared to get better so we planned a long (for us) flight from JYO-CHO-FCI-OKV-JYO with us splitting the flying time to pick up the hours. we were due to t/o from JYO at 0930 and had filed the first leg and ADIZ exit flight plans via duats. unfortunately, we ran into a new problem during the preflight. we noticed that the left aileron push rod appeared to be bent and was touching the edge of the access hole in the wing. we had never seen this before and both pondered the implications and decided to get a chief flight instructor to look at it. he went out and held the aileron and had me try to turn the yoke to the right and it didn't move. then, i tried turning it to the left and it turned a pretty significant distance (a bad thing). this meant the plane could not be flown so we had to find another one. the only one available was a 172-S (we usually fly 172-R) which meant we had to take a renter's exam (which meant some review of the performance/limitation info). we've both flown in S's before but always with an instructor. after passing the exam we then had to get updated weather, pre-flight and re-file flight plans. this all took quite a while and we were now looking at a 1pm or later departure. we finally got off the ground after that and immediately ran into unexpected turbulence. we evaluated spending the rest of the afternoon behind schedule, in potentially worsening weather and it being a roughish ride and elected to turn back. this is where the ADIZ lesson comes in. had i been flying solo i would probably have just entered the JYO ADIZ ingress transponder code and turned back. however, we had only filed the egress leg expecting to file ingress later on the return. luckily, my friend had experienced something similar before with an instructor and pointed out that we needed to contact ATC and request a squawk code for return to JYO. that took a couple of minutes and we were on our way home. the funny thing was, after all that time we had not gotten very far (we probably could have walked the distance i think). however, it was a useful lesson in terms of ADM (aeronautical decision making), being hungry, in a hurry, hoping to avoid weather and being tired (a bad combination) and it probably kept me from having an ADIZ violation (a hot topic nowadays) so i'm glad it turned out the way it did. we can always fly another day.
we did decide that we would call the flight a cross-town vs a cross-country though.

AOPA Air Safety Foundation (ASF) airspace training

i got some email from AOPA Air Safety Foundation (ASF) on a little online airspace training course today. you can find that and their other courses at:
http://www.aopa.org/asf/online_courses/

the airspace one is very good in that it also provides audio of typical activities including airspace entry denial which i've never heard before. being a low-time new pilot i very much like to see and hear things like this for when i'm in the same situation.

flew my first (real) passenger today

i flew my first (real) passenger today. the reason i say that is that your first passenger is actually the FAA pilot examiner. today, a friend that got his license a month or so ago were going to fly from Leesburg (JYO) to W45 (Luray). we needed to be back by 10 because there was another reservation after us. we wanted to go to W45 because that would let us start accumulating cross country (flights greater than 50 miles) hours to qualify us for instrument training (he would fly down there and i would fly back). the plane needed gas and oil so we got started later than intended. the route we were going to take was a 170 radial from JYO to the 232 radial from MRB. that radial would take us there via FRR (Front Royal). when we got to FRR we could see that going any further would probably make us late getting back so we elected to land in FRR and switch seats. we headed back via the same route and arrived at 1000. unfortunately, the DG (directional gyro) was still frozen which meant that the next guy (who was going to fly IFR to PHL) could not use it so we shortened our trip for nothing. it was still an excellent little trip.

one more thing, a couple of days ago i mentioned that a flyer at JYO (the paper kind) said to monitor guard on 123.0 (rather than 121.5) while using the JYO notch in the DC ADIZ. i have asked two instructors since seeing that and neither know about that change and both think it might be a typo in the flyer.

another update on this. i called the FAA today and they said that the 123.0 is incorrect and that you should continue to monitor 121.5.