Preferably with a decent piece of hickory.

Men and women. Beat ’em bloody until they learn decent manners. The beat ’em once more for good measure.

Pro-Hamas supporters scream at families visiting Santa in Toronto.

They need a stocking full of coal and a deportation letter.pic.twitter.com/18Sp6WrapV

— Billboard Chris 🇨🇦🇺🇸 (@BillboardChris) December 17, 2023

Why do they have to destroy Christmas and Santa for these kids?

In a just world, The rest of the shoppers would turn on them, they’d be beaten senseless…. And others would learn to behave.

She has worked hard for her money, she has had success that didn’t just happen. She has talent and she has capitalized on it….

And now she’s enjoying the fruits of her hard work.

Taylor Swift’s whirlwind romance with ‘soul mate’ Travis Kelce has produced 138 TONS of CO2 emissions in three months – and the singer would need to plant more than 2,200 trees to offset the damage

If she was preaching the Climate Change mantra then that would be one thing….But I haven’t heard that from her. I hope she enjoys her success and burns lots more carbon.

at her favorite restaurant in Traverse City. (it’s a great place, and one of my favorites too)

Now, to get there from where I live it’s about a 5 and a half hour drive, or a 1 hour flight.

We flew.

Picked her up, went to the airport, pulled the plane from the hangar (it was already preflighted the day before) and filed for 15,000 direct.  Fired up the engines, listened to the ATIS, taxiied to the runway, did the runup (the taxi and runup take less than 5 minutes)…Got the IFR clearance, pulled up to the threshold, got the release and took off. Climbed to 15,000 in a nice steady cruise climb:

and then cruised for a while at 15K. [you can hear the difference in the engines between climb and cruise]

(The 340 is now configured how I want it to be. You may notice, if you pay attention compared to past videos, that the panel has had some instruments moved around, specifically the Garmin GI275 and the vacuum horizon.)

We got the Traverse City in a bit over 48 minutes, takeoff to landing.

ATC didn’t descend us until I asked, and then made us wait for a few minutes before letting us down, so by then we needed about a 900 ft/min descent rate, which did make our ears uncomfortable…. Then over to the Traverse City Tower, who had me do a right downwind entry to rwy18 (would have preferred rwy28, and the wind would have allowed it, but the runway was closed for some unknown incident so 18 it was.)

Landed, taxiied to the FBO, parked, waited for the 100LL fuel truck to get there (for some reason, lots of times the FBO wants to fill the 340 with Jet-A which is a No-No) to make sure they would fill it with the correct fuel, and got a crew car to go to downtown. MC  shopped a bit, then we had a terrific lunch at the Flying Noodle, then did a bit more shopping before heading back.

(I was tempted to buy some of this stuff for a friend, but refrained)

The downtown/Shopping area of Traverse City is really nice, well set up for shopping, eating and just hanging out. Lots of shops, lots of restaurants, bars, and neat places. It’s a great place to visit for a day or so, especially when the weather is mild, as it was then,

Finished shopping, loaded it all into the car, drove back, parked the car, unloaded all the shopping bags (and 2 containers of To-Go Alfredo noodles for my freezer), paid the fuel bill (and the new $8 “Landing Fee” ) and loaded the airplane, preflighted, and closed the door.

Started the engines, listened to the ATIS, called ground and tried to get my clearance…..nope. Again, “no flight plan on file”…even though I had, once again, received both an acknowledgement of the flight plan and a route update….I had the airport folks file a new one for me, got my clearance (CRAFT) and got instructions to taxi to Rwy 28 for departure.

Did the runup, called tower and got permission to take off. Runway heading and 3000 ft.

As we were climbing out,  Tower told to us to go to Departure, who had us climb to our filed altitude of 14,000 and turn on course. The clouds, however, were exactly at 14,000 ft and the temp was just below freezing at altitude (ICE!!), so I asked if I could stop at 10,000, which ATC approved. ( I dislike Icing even though the plane is well equipped (fully FIKI), and the best way to stay out of icing is to stay out of clouds when it is below freezing).

Climbed to 10,000 ft and cruised southish. Played a bit with the engines to find the best mixture, now that they are somewhat broke-in and I don’t need to run them rich. Found that the best mixture is about 33 GPH (16.5 or so a side) at 2400RPM and 30 inches of manifold pressure giving about 196 knots (with reasonable EGT/TIT and cylinder head temps). It’ll go faster at those setting up higher, but not bad for 10K, really.

Here’s a look at Lake Michigan (west shoreline) flying southish more or less over Muskegon, Mi.

South Bend Approach was busy, but they descended us nicely and set us up for the practice RNAV approach back home. The pattern was full of other airplanes, which made for a bit of irritation, as I had to break off the RNAV approach due to traffic (airplanes on final have the right-of-way, if yer on base, you should extend, not turn in and encroach upon the final airplane’s flight path), but we turned away and reentered and landed safely. While legally I had the right of way, discretion was better than a crash…Avoidance is always the better option….It’s part of the fun at an “Uncontrolled”/CTAF airports.

2.3 seat time, 2 landings, and one aborted approach on final.

Plus a great meal and a bit of fun shopping.

This is the reason why I learned to fly and own an airplane ….Not just for the joy of flying, (which is not to be discounted, mind you) but as a Time Machine. A fast aircraft is expensive, both in acquisition and upkeep as well as fuel, but when you can take hours of travel time and turn them into minutes…. Bypass nearly an entire day of travel to have fun and return in a day, or even take a weekend that would be a 3 or 4 day thing, and turn it into a regular 2 day trip with people you care about and whose company you enjoy … so neither of you have to miss work…and you can make someone happy…that is well worth the price.

‘Twas a good day.

(Apparently I am not the only one that has had issues with filing flight plans via ForeFlight. The solution, apparently is to file for a departure at least 10 minutes BEFORE you actually want to pick up the clearance, as otherwise it may or may not show up on the controllers screen. )

If “Disseminating Disinformation” is worth a $900 million settlement, do we get to sue Fauci, Pfizer and the Mainstream Media for telling us over and over the lie that the Covid Shot would protect us from getting covid and that it was perfectly safe?

Or is it only politically incorrect statements that are punished…Like that of Alex Jones and Rudy Giuliani?

Since Fauci and Pfizer and the MSM did it for a longer time over a wider population, do we get to increase the penalty…by, say, a factor of 100?

I mean, “equal protection under the law” and all that, right?

ETA 10Am CT: Can Trump sue Letitia James and (biased) Judge Engoron in their current attack on Trump? They are obviously lying about the real valuation of Mar-A Lago in an attempt to indict him to keep him off the ballot in 2024. Their claims sure sound as close to slander as the claims are against Giuliani and Jones…

I mean, some folks have really bad bad luck (I do) and then there’s folks like this, who have absolute shit luck.

IDF accidentally kills 3 hostages who escaped Hamas captors during firefight. 

Get free and get mistaken for the enemy and shot by folks on your side.

Dead is dead, however, no matter how it happened.

And not gone back to Gaza.

Woman sues to get out of Gaza, says Biden Administration isn’t doing enough to get Dual Citizens out. 

I gotta ask, (again): Why is it the responsibility of the US government to get people out of trouble zones? When did that become the responsibility of the Federal Government?

If you leave the borders, be it on business or a pleasure trip, you leave the protection and security of the US. While I do think that the US Government should do what they can to help you, if you are on foreign soil it isn’t their responsibility to evacuate you when things get pear shaped.

A clean place, where people feel safe to shop in, with adequate parking….and business booms.

Strange ideas that actually work

Dramatic footage shows thousands of migrants lining the train tracks in Mexico three hours from the southern border, hoping to catch a ride to the US line.

The Mexican authorities HAVE to be complicit in this invasion. There is no way that all these people can move across the country of Mexico without having stops for food and hygiene. Without having some sort of transportation.

Shut that off and the flow stops.

But they are allowing it, if not aiding it.

I guess the money Soros is reportedly spreading around is enough to buy a lot of Mexican Government Officials (an, apparently, lots of Us officials too)

“I did not do anything wrong…And even in I did, you can’t blame my Dad, even if he did profit from it.”

Paraphrased, Hunter Biden.

I think I translated that correctly. You decide for yourself.

So I did some rearranging of the panel on the 340…when I bought it, the left (pilot) seat had an Aspen AND a Garmin 275….as well as standard 6 pack analog flight instruments…..but the right seat had only a vacuum horizon…no other flight instruments…no airspeed, no altimeter (No, I don’t know why).  The 275 was kinda redundant on the pilot’s side and the lack of instruments on the other was kinda an issue.

The Aspen on the pilot’s side had a bad switch, and it was gonna cost to have it repaired (they have a single price for repairs).

I had bought a pair of used Aspens (and a whole bunch of other stuff) from a guy who had redone his panel to all Garnin displays for $300 for the lot, *gauges, instruments, switches, Autopilot servos, all of it), and so I had a shop send one the of the Aspens off for the full 1000 Max upgrade (not much more that the repair price on the other, older one) and had them install that where the other older Aspen was, and move the 275 over to the right side of the panel and the vacuum horizon to where the 275 was….making the copilot have at least a decent (if small) set of flight instruments right in front of him/her …

But when we did that, the autopilot wasn’t quite right. We tried fixing it remotely, with him telling me what buttons to push via FaceTime, but no joy….so I took it back to the shop. Flew from Indiana to KFCM Tuesday morning…..

What a debacle. Firstly Clearance couldn’t find my IFR flight plan, then after they filed it for me, they flew me south for 30 miles before turning me back north (apparently for traffic flow into Midway),,,but then I had to contend with 60 knot headwinds…which made for a slow groundspeed. I ended up being an hour late…despite running the engines hard to make as much speed as possible. the winds didn’t change much from 16,000 ft to 6,000 ft,,,just a bitch of a headwind.

The lights on the ground sure do make for a pretty sight in the predawn darkness though. Here is looking north towards Chicago from the south at 7,000 feet, just off of the Gary airport (KGYY)

The good news is that with a bit of factory consultation, the avionics guys were able to get the configuration correct…so then a quick (40 minute) test flight and I got home the same day, Of course, this time, (for once!) I actually got that same wind…only this time as a tailwind, which made for a short flight back. 2:48 up and 1:22 back. Now the autopilot holds altitude and heading (and will take steering from the GTN750) the way it should…,…It makes flying sorta boring though…. But less stressful and less tiring than hand flying for hours and hours. It is amazing how much task unloading an autopilot does.

I’m also getting the engine settings dialed in with the new engines. Oddly the fuel flow numbers are quite different than the old engines. Now that I have a properly working autopilot I can work of dialing those numbers in even more.

So that’s 4:50 seat time and 3 landings in the book. 183 gallons of 100LL out the tailpipe.