I69 (Sporty's - Batavia, OH)

Well, since I've been on vacation, I'm catching up on some past events that are "blog-worthy", so I apologize to you, the reader, for the delayed postings. Let's just say that July was a busy month!:). On Tuesday, July 24th, before I went on vacation to Oshkosh, I managed to squeeze in a cross-country flight to Sporty's - I69 in Batavia, OH, with the senior member of our flying club, Ed. You can see a photo of Ed at the beginning of this blog. Ed is an 80-yr old pilot that is still cruising the skies. He was interested in flying to Sporty's to pick up a noise-cancelling headset, and I had wanted to hit Sporty's, just for the pure tourist value.

We had a beautiful day for flying, and held our course pretty well, I played around with the radios and the GPS to become more familiar with the flight planning tools. As a primary pilot, you don't get a lot of practice with the Garmin 430 during solo flight....you know aviate, then navigate...anyhoo, I welcome the chance to use all the neato functions and become more proficient with the 430. You can see from the inset photo, that our course took us very near KILN (Wilmington - Airborne Express headquarters). No traffic today, so we kept on cruising.

Approaching I69 from the Northeast, we circled the field, and entered the pattern for Runway 22, from the photo here you see our entry into the pattern. Landing at Sporty's was a slightly new experience, because there was a ramp worker that guided us into place! I've never experienced that before, but this guy gave us hand signals and everything else, and when the engine stopped and we got out, he asked if we needed fuel. What service! Well, I guess if you're charging $4.25/gal, you can afford to have a little service:). Of course, for $1/gal less, I'll just stick with the personalized service at I40, my home base. On the ground at Sporty's, I have to say that I was not super impressed with the store. It's more of a catalog store, instead of a retail store. They had a few display cases with some of their stuff strewn throughout, but didn't really have any items for sale that you coudl touch and feel. I don't know about you, but if I'm looking at spending $125 for a flight bag, I would like to be able to grab it off the shelf and open up all the pockets without having to find someone to unlock the display case. It's not jewlery, people! Sometimes, I feel like pilots have been left behind in the whole customer service consumer thing. It's like pilot gear is stuck in the 1980's, and the first person to catch on and give pilots some good quality stuff is going to make a mint. Anyways, I tried on a bunch of headsets and decided that the David Clark X11 is the best noise-canceling headset out there for weight, comfort, and sound quality. It's only $850, and that's $150 cheaper than the Bose headset, which I wasn't super-impressed with.

On the way back to Coshocton, OH, I flew past my brother & sister-in-law's house in Washington Courthouse, OH. Here's a neat aerial shot of their neighborhood...I can't wait until I have my private, and I can tak emy 5 year old nephew up for his first experience in an airplane. I need to get that kid indoctrinated early on that planes are cool, so that I can fly with him when he's a pilot someday. Thinkin' ahead for the future, that's me! Of course, he may choose to really like boats or jetskis or something else, which is okay...but not as cool as flying. The rest of the trip home to Coshocton was fairly uneventful with some light turbulence, but upon landing, we saw a Grumman Albatross sitting on the ramp at Coshocton, OH! After re-fueling, we got out and oooed and ahhhed at the airplane. Much bigger than most normal arrivals at Coshocton. They apparently had some trouble with an oil valve or something on the starboard engine. There was a lot of oil all over the ramp, and some rather grumpy mechanics crawling all over the wings. I enjoyed the aircraft, snapped a couple of photos, and was on my way back to work. Not a bad morning flight!