2015 Salinas AOPA Fly In Event

Dear readers,

I had a fun time this past weekend volunteering at the AOPA local west coast fly in event in Salinas, California near Monterey. Originally I had planned to rent a Cessna 182 to fly from San Jose to Gnoss field to pick up a fellow pilot but due to fairly low ceilings and possible rain we drove down instead. It saved me $300 and weather was marginal VFR anyways. Upon arrival and check in at the volunteer booth, Anthony and I went to the flight line to help direct landing traffic to the parking areas.

I ended up spending a few hours parking dozens of aircraft and it was fun getting experience with the ground traffic signals waving the orange batons. After duty, I went to grab a tasty BBQ dinner. The next event was a sneak preview of the upcoming aviation film Living in the Age of Airplanes from the director of classic aviation film One Six Right directed by Brian J Terwilliger and narrated by awesome movie star and aviator Harrison Ford. I enjoyed the film even though it was quite different than what I had been expecting it to be!

Attendance was great and quite  a variety of aircraft on hand to investigate made it for serious aviation porn.

The plan that day had been to camp in a tent but rapidly dropping temperatures and the thought of freezing all night were not very tempting so I decided to get a motel room and stay warm and not freeze. Good decision and the next day were events and seminars. My favorite part was meeting new pilots and veterans in the aviation field. I enjoyed meeting fantastic aviation educator Rod Machado and he was gracious enough to sign my copy of his Instrument Flying Handbook and a very down to earth nice guy as well!

Local aviator and acrobat pilot from Livermore Yuichi Takagi debuted in his first acrobatic airshow event and it was spectacular! Here is a video of the show:

Pitts Acrobatic demo

I also had a great experience meeting veteran woman aviator performer Julie Clark and her awesome custom T34! She is a pioneer woman aviator and very down to earth smart awesome pilot!

The custom engine on her T34 is nothing short of spectacular!

It looks super pristine and gold plated even!
What a gorgeous plane.

I liked sitting in the glass cockpit brand new Cessna Corvallis TTX.

 The cool display is very high tech and modern.

On the exhibition grounds, my favorite new products were the Lynx ADSB touchscreen transponder and Bendix King AOA unit. My favorite sim is the Fly the Sim touchscreen which I had fun trying out at the fly in. It is definitely on my list and up to 10 hours of dual can be used toward the instrument rating. I figure sims are great way to save time and money in flight training and especially useful for the instrument rating.

It was my very first AOPA Fly In event and while I had originally wanted to fly in, the marginal VFR weather and time factors caused me to drive. It was a lot of fun and great way to learn and meet fellow pilots.

Cool new Amphibious LSA MVP Aero

I had a chance to catch a sneak peak into the upcoming LSA triphib aircraft from MVP Aero.

The aircraft is very modern with glass cockpit and many options to add a tent, hammock, and the canopy cockpit even pops up.

The cool wow factor is the ability to remove the pilot seat from the cockpit quickly after landing of course and add to the front as a seat for fishing off the seaplane! Very cool indeed.

Now the kicker will be to afford the price tag on one. At close to 200K for the base model most of us cannot afford that price but hopefully with additional sales and investments as production rolls out the cost of future LSA will be less expensive. I really like this compared to the Icon A5 amphibious that comes out this summer and hope that MVP Aero succeeds in mass production so that future aircraft will cost as same as a high end BMW or Mercedes. That would be fantastic for those who want to own a new aircraft on a budget.

Until next time!