Flying to Disneyland KFUL

This Thanksgiving really reminded me how awesome it is to own a private airplane.  A week before the holiday I hopped in the plane at 8am, flew across the state to pickup some family and brought them back to Northern California and still made it back in time to work half a day.  Amazing!  Then I flew them back the day before Thanksgiving, making the two legs effortlessly with three adults, a toddler and a baby on board, and all their stuff.  Then Thanksgiving morning I headed out with my immediate family to join them. I had a minor incident with a stuck hangar door and thought I might be screwed.  I called a guy who referred a guy, and long story short the GA community rules!  He came out within 20 minutes on Thanksgiving day and got my door unjammed and we were on our way.

I was keeping an airplane car in LA but recently sold it because it wasn't getting the use and I figured I might as well rent.  That turned out to be a good call, we arrive at Pentastar and are given the usual red carpet treatment, rental car ready and waiting.  Gotta love it.

Transfer the stuff and on our way, full sized shampoo bottles and shoes in tact, yay!  A few days in socal we partied LA style and then had setup to take the kids to Disney.  Drive across 2.5 hours worth of urban sprawl?  Hell no!  15 minutes in the Baron and we arrive at KFUL.  My first visit but that place rocks.  Super nice folks at AFI, free tie downs, helpful line crew grabbed all our bags and called our taxi.  I practically had to force him to take a $5 tip.  Didn't need gas so that's all I spent there... unreal.  It's a quick cab ride to Disney and we had an amazing two days at the park.  Took our time on the second day and left on our schedule, about when we all had enough.  Quick cab ride back to KFUL and we blast off for home at sunset, home in time to get the kids to bed early for school the next day.  All of this would have been a colossal pain in the butt on commercial and easily taken twice as long.  How cool is it to not worry if a line might be too long because you might miss your flight?  Priceless.  The topper was a most beautiful flight home with 20kt tailwinds.  KFUL to KCCR in 1:45.  Woot!

cloud surfing in the Baron

Today I got a nice warm up for the IFR season.  Day before Thanksgiving it was nice to see plenty of air traffic out there, but for my IFR routing ATC wanted to keep me low... 8k or below which put me right in the top of the cloud layer.  I love this kind of flying, you really get the sensation of hauling ass when you see the clouds fly by at 230 mph.  It's also too warm for ice yet so a stress free IFR flight with 45 minutes of actual all inside a 2000 ft thick cloud layer.  Good fun!