The International Cessna^® 170 Association

This last Saturday Jamie and I flew down to the Houston area to see my daughter Ashley, who was visiting her grandmother (my Mom) and escaping Manhattan for the weekend.
It was the first time I'd flown my 170 since late March...and for the first time ever in my career I felt out-of-place and slightly discumbobulated trying to recall how to operate the finer-points of my GPS's, not to mention the loss-of-finesse' I noticed during takeoffs and landings. This has never happened to me before and causes me to take a moment to reflect upon the importance of staying current, especially as the new "middle age" is now here for me.
I'm exposing my weakness in an effort to prompt others to re-evaluate their own recency-of-experience situation. My 170-flying skills definitely are somewhat in need of "brushing up" and the interesting thing for me to self-observe was the surprise it held for me.

Sooooo.... it looks like next weekend I'll be out practicing-up so I won't feel so intimidated by Bruce's Petit Jean video.

I recommend we all review ourselves... maybe with a CFI/friend.

I know exactly what you mean, George! I flew '98C on August 13 for the first time since returning from the Benton Harbor convention.

Fortunately, I have an experienced 170 instructor on the field and he helped me sweep out the cobwebs somewhat. For the first couple of flights, I stayed local and left the AnywhereMap on the ground to concentrate on flying the airplane. It's a little more like riding a bicycle that I thought it would be, but even after 6 hours, I'm still brushing off a bit of rust.

Why I'd forgotten all about that Petit Jean landing footage. Glad you brought it up George.

Bruce Fenstermacher wrote:Why I'd forgotten all about that Petit Jean landing footage. Glad you brought it up George.

More of that kind of entertainment here:
http://freedom4um.com/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=133255

Bruce Fenstermacher wrote:Why I'd forgotten all about that Petit Jean landing footage. Glad you brought it up George.

We need to re-load that video where it can be re-viewed from time to time. Not only is it an excellent demo for the short field capabilities of the 170...it's also a great demo of the comraderie of our group!

Ok George here it is:



Practice practice.

Ed Doyle ended up camping next to us at OSH this year. The one trait that I have observed in both Ed and our very own Bruce F. is that they speak with their actions and not their words.

Neither openly brags about their skills or abilities - but it shows in their actions. And gentlemen both!!!

That Petit Jean video brings back good memories and makes me want to sit around a fire listening to ol Gar and eating mud bugs.....

Bruce,

The hardest thing about a landing like that is to do it when someone is watching...

Kyle Wolfe wrote:Ed Doyle ended up camping next to us at OSH this year. The one trait that I have observed in both Ed and our very own Bruce F. is that they speak with their actions and not their words.

Neither openly brags about their skills or abilities - but it shows in their actions. And gentlemen both!!!

That Petit Jean video brings back good memories and makes me want to sit around a fire listening to ol Gar and eating mud bugs.....

Soooo....what are you saying there..??? actions say more than words...and Ol'Gar is someone only to listen to ???

It was nice to dig that small clip up from the archives and play it again.

Now that Kyle has spoken I would apparently be out of character if I told you that wasn't my first or my last very nice short landing. But I can also affirm that as Miles points out it is hard to do it in front of witnesses of any amount. Doug can attest to that as I barely bought a survivable landing when I flew his 170 in Boulder. He will probably be in disbelief that it was me flying.

Now for those not in attendance I'll allow that the crowd was not out there specifically to watch me land. In fact half of them probably missed it and wondered where I came from. You see they were all out on the edge of the field to greet Scott Lynn who arrived just before me with somewhat but much anticipated mud bugs. Yes I'm sure if they had all saw the landing they would have applauded which is why I enhanced that clip with a little applause sound effect.

And BTW you haven't lived till you sat around a camp fire with ol' Gar.