Escorting a Soldier Home

10/25/08

Well, today was a very sad yet interesting flight. To completely understand the situation, I will have to give you a little back history.

There was a funeral in town today for a fallen soldier. The soldier was killed in iraq, several others were injured and 5 others were critically injured. So, another soldier escorted his body home, and stayed to help with the military service. After the service, he needed someone to take him to DFW so that he could catch a flight from there, home to Alaska. Well, My friend Emery, and my friend Paul, decided they would be honored to take this soldier to DFW, Emery went because he had the plane, and Paul went because he knew DFW.

When this soldier arrived at the airport, he told us his story, he also said that he would go home to alaska for about 1 day, then he would have to leave again to escort another soldier home. So, we all loaded into Emery's baron, and we flew this soldier to DFW so that he could get home. It was an honor for us to do this. When we were in the air, I looked at our soldier, and he was sleeping, guess it is true that they can sleep anywhere. I thought the plane was noisy. We went into DFW, and boy that was A LOT of talk on the radio! They even held an MD80 for us to taxi in front of it. That was interesting, in Palestine, the Baron is the big dog on the field, in DFW, we wer the puppy. That was interesting.

Anyways, when all was over with, it was nice to have been able to help out a soldier, they do so much to help us out!

Acrobatics!?*$# !!!!

Well, it's been quite an adventure. I've been busy with my friend Rob, let me give you a quick breakdown.

9/21/08

We left out in the 150, and headed over to mesquite. He told me we were going to practice acrobatics, and that there would be a lot of neat planes there, but I wasn't quite sure what that meant. When we got to Mesquite, we got in a piper arrow. It was a neat plane, i didn't think a whole lot about it because i have been in lots of planes. We did some landings, 5 to be exact. Then we got some sleep.

9/22/08

We went back to mesquite (we actually stayed the night there) and this tine I got to do some more tail dragger time, i liked that, it is still new to me, but i really like it. we did 4 landings. Then we headed back to Palestine in the 150. I'm not to keen on those overnight trips, but the flying in between sure is fun. It was nice to be home.

Then on 10/2/08 We went back to mesquite. This time we drove in the car over to Mesquite, we did some more flying and landing, just getting good practice in.

10/6/08

This is when it got interesting, this is when I actually got to start doing acrobatics. We went up and di some loops, rolls, accelerated stalls and other misc manuevers. Wow, good thing there were sic sacs available, luckily I didn't need them, but next time, I think I am going to not eat before we do that. It was a neat experience, I didn't know airplanes could do all that neat stuff.

10/7/08

We did even more acrobatics this day. Barrell Rolls, Splits, Cuban 8, Heck, I don't even know what all those things are, i just know that airplane was turning all sorts of different directions. It was tons of fun.