New Blog, Old Blog

In a flash of burning inspiration it came to me; The Mission deserves a blog all to itself.

And so in the blink of an eye one was created!

It is here.

Basically that blog will be purely dedicated to my “mission” posts.  The remainder of my mental meanderings will remain right here.

Don’t worry about missing anything, anytime I post something to The Mission, I’ll let you know here. 

Lost in Translation

My boss is working with the Principal of a school In Quebec. Said principal’s assistant and I need to correspond occasionally via email.

She doesn’t speak English and my French, well it isn’t what it used to be; my "business French" even more so. In truth we are corresponding via the medium of Google Translate at the moment.

It is ……… interesting to say the least.

New beginnings

One of the more subtle changes you may have spotted is that I’ve retired WMAP. It is true that I started this blog as the “World’s Most Anxious Person” and at the time it was very apt.

Getting into a plane was a high stress activity for me, flying one was inconceivable at this point.

But as we all know, eventually it happened and I ended up with a shiny new PPL licence. I’ve made good command decisions in the plane and am simply not the person who started out on this journey anymore.

So WMAP needed to go. Besides, I rather like the persona of LocalFlightEast that I’ve created. She’s going to stick around for a while.

WMAP started this blog, but it was very definitely LFE who passed her flight test!

Ch-ch-ch-changes

I’m playing around with some stuff on the blog. Making a few tweaks here and there, seeing what works and what doesn’t.

It may be a tad temperamental for a day or so, while I work out the kinks.

Rest assured that I’ve come to the decision to keep on with this blog as it is but watch this space for an exciting new enterprise from LocalFlightEast.

Possibly

Maybe.

Winter

bring it on ........

The rare Blue Yeti in its natural environment

My mission…

…and I have chosen to accept it!

Now that I’ve got a licence (a proper shiny one from Transport Canada!) I need something to focus on. I need to fly every month to keep current at the flight school and I know me; being the conservative flyer that I am, if I’m not careful I know that all I’ll do each month is fly out to Claremont, pootle around a bit and come home.

Okay but not exactly riveting and hardly a good use of all my hard work.

So I need a plan and I need to push myself while I still have the confidence to do so. I’m kind a feeling on top of my game at the moment, like a proper pilot. Let’s capitalise on that. Let’s take the things I’m still nervy and unsure about and work on those.

Well finding airports, even larger international ones has always been a teensy bit of a problem for me and I still struggle to visualise joining paths for the circuit.

We should do something about that. 

Here it is then.

My mission

I am going to visit every single airport on my sectional chart.

Now some of them I won’t be able to land at because the insurance won’t let me land on anything over than a hard surface (so no gravel or grass) but I can at least do a “low and over”. Either way I’m going to find those suckers!

Obviously this is a majorly long term plan, we are talking years probably. But at least when I find myself needing to fly, I’ll have a goal in mind.

It is officially official.

Got home yesterday to this in the mail:

My shiny, new, official aviation booklet.

It’s full of official looking stuff and far too many images of my photo.

There are many abbreviations inside; including the fact that I’m officially a PPL SEL.

That’s Single Engine Land.

I informed RTH that I needed to get both my Sea and Multi engine rating ASAP.

Because then I’d be SMELS, and I find that funnier than I should!

In true Canadian Bureaucratic style though, all is not as simple as it should be. My “Aviation Documentt” negates the need to carry my medical certificate with me (it’s now a sticker in the back of the booklet) but it doesn’t include my radio licence (different department you see) so I still have a loose piece of paper that I need to lug around.