Tonight, Brian and I are packing our bags and prepping the Texan for the 2 hour flight to EAA Airventure in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. We're leaving first thing Thursday morning and plan to bring back plenty of stories and pictures when we return on Saturday evening. Hope to see you there!

As I mentioned a while back, Brian and I were fortunate enough to be included the latest edition of The Iowan magazine, which included some pix uber photographer Larry Reynolds snapped at the Greenfield fly-in last summer. Larry shared a link to all the photos he snapped from the fly-in, and we saw many familiar faces, including Randy Nyberg, Amy Sawhill and others. Click here to see Larry's album from Greenfield. I hope you're having a great weekend.

The weekend flew by (no pun intended) as Brian spent his hours at the hangar giving a couple new Stearman owners flight instruction and tinkering on the Red Baron Stearman. I, on the other hand, took advantage of air conditioning and lounged at home for the weekend. Ah, those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer. 
How about you? Any fun weekend flying adventures? 

The FCC (Federal Communications Commission) just announced that the use of 121.5 MHz ELTs are now prohibited. That's a little bit ironic since 99% of us private pilots are still on this frequency, and there aren't enough new 406 MHz ELTs available for purchase (plus they cost an arm and a leg). Now it's an acronym battle as the FCC, FAA and AOPA debate the fiasco. There's a good article on AOPA, which you can check out here. 
How about you? Any interesting ELT stories to share? 

Whew! I'm glad it's Friday! After a busy week, the weather looks great for a flying weekend. A few of the Morningstar folks are flying out to Sully for breakfast tomorrow morning. As I type this, Brian is on his way to Cedar Rapids to hook up with a couple guys who just brought a Stearman home with them. Brian will be giving them both flight instruction. They bought the silver #88 Stearman, who you may know used to be hangared in Cedar Rapids and belonged to Steve Redman, a dear friend of ours who we miss very much.

As for me, I took some pictures of old Lycoming 0-435 parts we had laying around. That's about as close as I get to engine work. They're now posted on ebay with hopes to clear some clutter out of the hangar. The parts original came with the Stinson (or the Stinson came with the parts, depending on how you want to look at it). But, if - and that's a big if - we restore the Stinson, we'll put a much meatier engine on it. Hmm... I wonder how a radial on a Stinson 108 would look?

Have a great weekend!

This weekend turned out to be three days and nights at the hangar without a single hour logged in the air... not counting RC airplane time (of which there were many hours logged). Since the weather didn't cooperate, we spent the weekend making our own fun, which included some RC airplane wars, pylon races, carrier landings, and many dares, double-dares, and "oops."  I hope you had a fantastic holiday weekend!

Have a great Fourth of July weekend with you family, friends, and/or airplanes. The Sokos are coming to town this weekend, and we plan to spend as much time as possible in the air... or, if the weather turns against us, hangar flying in Ames. See you next week! 

If you can't fly this weekend, make your own patriotic paper airplane here. 

We've tossed around this idea before but haven't really given it any serious thought. What are your thoughts on a summertime fly-in lunch at the hangar in Ames? With how fast the summer flies (no pun intended), it would be August at the earliest with October the latest to account for weather. What are your thoughts? Dates? Types of food? Activities (e.g., flour bombing)?