Author: shanmoon

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M.A.M.E Madness

Cocktail Cabinet v1.0
I’ve bee infected with M.A.M.E. madness. For those of you who don’t know, M.A.M.E. is the Multi Arcade Machine Emulator which allows you to read ROM images of thousands of popular arcade games and play them on home computer software.

I have nearly completed my cocktail table style arcade machine. As I finish it up, I’ve started on an upright arcade cabinet also!

Resisting the Dark Side!

Katana
Katana
I couldn’t help but wonder if I love soaring so much because it’s the first thing I tried after my long hiatus from flying. Temptation won out, and I got checked out to fly power again in a little Katana.

Katana Panel
Katana Panel
She’s a fun little ship, but as I flew around the airport I kept feeling like something was missing. I kept feeling like I had too much time on my hands… No hunting for thermals, no constantly thinking “where can I glide to now” in the back of my head… No constant adjustments of speed and pitch to surf the sky as smoothly as I could. Just looking at the engine gauges and thinking “everything is green. Been another X minutes, used another 1/2 gallon of fuel.” Hmph.

Don’t get me wrong… I love being in the sky, but slipping into the cockpit of this little beauty didn’t feel like slipping into my real skin like my little Grob. I’ll probably hop over to the dark side of power planes every now and then, but ultimately my heart wants to soar

USHGA Rated! Hurray!

USHGA
USHGA
Sunday was a fun-day for me! I passed my Hang-1 test, Hang-2 test, and Aero tow written tests. Then I soloed the Target hanglider at Sheets (It was fun, even if the trim was a bit off). Now I’m no longer rated a “Beginner”. I have my official USHGA Novice rating. Hurray! I love my sailplane, but I think I’ll keep flying these funny contraptions, too.

Now I have this urge to get rated as a tug pilot…When will it end? :p

Soaring Adventures

Grob 102
Grob 102
Woot! I went on a long long LONG cross-country Saturday… So long I ended up landing out on the way back, about 20 miles north of homebase. I still broke 100 miles, though! Woot!

Many thanks to the folks at Skyranch (I nice little grass strip that isn’t even on the sectional charts) for the use of a phone, a BIG bottle of gatorade, and letting me drool over their Stearman!

Best of luck to the alligator that made me land with a tail wind back at base. I hope you made it back to your own pond, big guy!

Note to self: next time pull out the camera, ya big dolt!

Aprils Fools

Grrr! Mother Nature played the worst April Fools joke on all of us poor suckers out at the Gliderport today… Pre-fontal weather, nice and hot, cloud streets like you wouldn’t believe,,,, we were all talking about cross-countries to Georgia and back… and when we went up…NOTHING. Crappy litter erratic cores that vanished in a turn… 8+ knot downdrafts everywhere…. Ah well, I STILL got to fly, just didn’t go anywhere… and a bad day flying beats a good day at work. :)
At least I finally got around to washing and waxing my baby, and re-taping all the gaps. She’s good to go for the next soaring day.

Learning to fly…again

Tandem
Tandem
I kept seeing hangliders in the air whenever I flew my sailplane. Temptation won out, and I stopped by the hanglider port on my way home from a day of soaring. Now I’m hooked on another sport, and I’m learning to fly hangliders, too.

A Dream Come True!

Grob 102
Grob 102
The happiest day of my life: After more than 10 years of waiting and longing, at long last I have my own plane. She’s a Grob 102 Standard Astir II, a standard class racing sailplane with goodies like retractable gear, water ballast, audio variometer, radio, etc. I flew her two hours on my maiden flight, andI hope to fly her in my first soaring competition over the Thanksgiving weekend