Magic carpet

This weekend I took the aft seats out to make a four seater.  They came out really easily, took all of 5 minutes to remove both.  There is a little pin that secures them and then they slide right out, it really is a slick design.  The bagage area with the aft seats removed is cavernous.  We filled the plane up with luggage and car seats and groceries and just a ton of crap, stuck the kids in there and turned an 8 hour drive from hell from the SF Bay Area to LA into a 1.5 hr pleasure flight and did a trip I wouldn't otherwise have considered but for the awesomeness of my new magic carpet. How else can one leave at 7pm after work on a Friday night and go 300 miles straight shot and arrive in a distant city in time to put the kids to bed and relax with a glass of wine? The extra cost over Southwest is well worth it and I can do it door to door much faster. As long as the gov. doesn't tax us into oblivion or the speculators drive fuel prices through the stratosphere there will demand for this stuff, and if there isn't there really should be... what we do is just so freakin cool there really is no comparison or way to describe it...

This was the first family flight of any length and all things considered went extremely well.  My three year old son Caspian has a bit of a head cold, and on the flight down though he got a bit of a squeeze. The direct flight to VNY brings you up to about ten thousand feet and drops you down to 800 ft within 30 miles once you clear the mountains.  I could have circled for awhile and I probably should have, but it was night time by then and we were all ready to land.  Here is poor Cas looking bummed...

We got down ok and he bounced right back.  We had a great weekend, what an awesome thing it is to be able to fly and pack a jaunt like this into a normal two day weekend.

Dina called the Doc for the flight back and he recommended a bit of pediatric Sudafed which seemed to do the trick for the flight home.  I also made an extra effort to descend slowly by setting the autopilot in attitude mode and setting up for 300 ft per minute descent.  Here is a quick video showing Cas feeling much better and Dina is rocking out to the XM radio.  Junius did great on both legs but refused to keep his headset on... I'm glad I got the super sound proofing insulation upgrade!