Today, I wanted to two photos from one of the best amateur photographers out there: Christopher Austin (son of Paul & Cheryl Austin, who I'm sure many of you know are also aviation enthusiasts). Enjoy!

Oh, and if you share your photos with us - you just may find them on our blog (with all proper credit, of course)!

The national United States Air Force museum has one of the most impressive websites out there for aviation buffs. Be sure to have some free time because you'll have so much fun taking the virtual tour!

Here's the link!

For us, winter equals the annual inspection season. Now that we've wrapped up the inspections on all four planes, in our eyes, spring is officially here. Fortunately, aside from a new gas tank here and a few patches there, the inspections went relatively smooth. We're still (im)patiently waiting for the Champ's new upholstery, which should be here in the next week or so, then it's Iowa skies, watch out!

This weekend, we also checked out the Iowa Aviation Promotion Group's monthly meeting. It was held at the Iowa City airport, which, ironically, we decided to drive to due to weather. The IAPG is all about promoting aviation and is best known for sponsoring the annual Fly Iowa event, which will be at Atlantic September 15 this year.

As a side note, which has absolutely nothing to do with aviation, I'm all antsy with excitement because my (Berinn Rae's) next book comes out tomorrow. Hellbound is the second in the Guardians of the Seven Seals series, which is a fantasy romance series. The first book, Knightfall, came out last summer. Anyway, I'm giddy, so I thought I'd share my giddiness. Have a great week!  ;-)

If you have 27 minutes, here's an interesting video Dan Sokolowski sent us that shows how the legendary Piper Cub was made. Pretty interesting stuff!

The annual inspections are done! Below is a pic of the T6 during its annual this busy weekend.  Aside from waiting on new upholstery for the tri-champ, we're officially ready for the 2012 flying season. And if the weather so far is any sign, this may be a great year for logging hours. Have a great week!

In July (July 23-29 to be exact), many of us will make the annual pilgrammage to Oshkosh, Wisconsion for Airventure. During that week every year, OSH (Wittman Regional Airport) becomes the world's busiest airport. Seeing aircraft coming and going is reason alone to make the journey.

There's plenty to celebrate this year, such as 100 years of Marine Corps Aviation and the 75th anniversary of the adorable Piper Cub. I believe this is a big RV year, too, but my mind's drawing a blank right now (sorry about that, RV friends - the idea of a field of yellow and teddy bears distracted me).

For the most part, the week will be much like previous years. However, for warbirds, there's a new first-come-first-served camper pre-registration process beginning April 2. Click here for details.

How about you? Planning to fly or drive to AirVenture this year? Any tips to share?

The new "flint gray" carpeting has arrived, and Brian has already installed it in the Champ. The rest of the Champ is quickly coming together, just in time for spring!  Another couple weeks (still waiting on the rest of the new upholstery) and the Champ should be rearing to go.
In the meantime, the Texan has been moved to the front to the hangar for its annual inspection. It's the last of our winter inspections and -- fingers crossed -- should go quickly. With daylight savings time here, we have an extra hour of sunlight in the evenings to fly and hope to be doing just that very soon. It's been too dang long.
How about you? Any fun flying lately?

With spring in the air (kind of), I'm already looking forward to the next flying season. Sifting through photos, I came across some photos at last year's National Stearman Fly-in at Galesburg, Illinois.  

This has got to be the worst blog post of all time. I've got nuthin'. The Tri-Champ's annual is still underway (yup, serious). I'll post pictures when it's all done... although I'm sure you'll know we're done when you see me in the air all the time.
Since this is such a lame post, I tried to spice things up with an old timey picture of  a--ahem--co-pilot in an open cockpit biplane just after what looked to be a rather exciting flight. I figured the coolness of the picture would help cover the blandness of this blog post. Have a nice day, and get out there and fly. The weather's beautiful.