Author: The Flying Dutchman

I am a man who loves Christ, loves my wife, loves my family, loves my church, and loves aviation. In that order.

SIPE – Spurgeon In Plain English

On By The Flying DutchmanIn Faith2 Comments

Whom He justified, them He also glorified.”—Romans 8:30.

There is a precious truth for you who believe. You may be poor, or suffering, or unknown, but for your encouragement think about your “calling” and what comes from it, and especially the wonderful result written about in the above verse.. As surely as you are God’s child today, so surely shall all your trials soon be at an end, and you shalt be richly blessed. Wait awhile, and your weary head shall wear the crown of glory, and your tired hand shall grasp the palm-branch of victory. Don’t complain about your troubles, but rather rejoice that before long you will be where “there shall be neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain.” God’s fiery chariot is at your door, and you’ll be carried to glory in a moment. The everlasting song is on the tip of my tongue. The gates of heaven open for you. Don’t worry about failing to get into Heaven. If He has called you, nothing can separate you from His love. Distress cannot sever the bond; the fire of persecution cannot burn the link; the hammer of hell cannot break the chain. You are secure; that voice which called you at first, shall call you yet again from earth to heaven, from death’s dark gloom to immortality’s indescribable splendors. Rest assured, the heart of Him who has justified you beats with infinite love towards you. You shall soon be with the glorified, where your reward is; you are only waiting here to be made acceptable for the inheritance, and when done, the wings of angels shall carry you far away, to the mount of peace, and joy, and blessedness, where,

“Far from a world of grief and sin,
With God eternally shut in,”

you shall rest for ever and ever.

Adventures from primary flight training

On By The Flying DutchmanIn AviationLeave a comment

One of the things you do when you are leaning to fly is go on cross-country flights with your instructor.  We were on our first cross-country over Sacramento somewhere when our engine started to sputter.  My CFI (certified flight instrutor) played with the throttle a little, no change.  He went full throttle, no change.  The engine started losing power.  He put the mixture full in, pull on carb heat, and went full throttle.  No change, the engine was barely turning by this time and no amount of jockeying the controls was bringing it back.  We were getting flight following from NorCal approach so my CFI called them back and declared an emergency.   They asked him what his intentions were and he told them to land at the nearest airport.  He kind of gave me a “what the heck are they thinking” look.

NorCal had us contact Mather AFB tower.  Mather cleared us to land on 22R.  So everything looked good we had the field in sight, had enough altitude to make the end of the runway, we were feeling good.  Then Mather calls us back and says “Cessna N##### can you extend your glide, they are working on the approach end of the runway.”

My CFI looked at me and this time said “What the *expletive deleted* did they just ask us to do?”  He paused for a few seconds carefully considering what to say and answered with, “Negative.”

As we glided closer we could see that the runway was completely torn up and there were guys scrambling off tractors and running.  We were later to find out all they were told was a plane was going to crash at the airport and they were in the way.  The taxiway next to the runway was perfectly clear, and about 10 times as wide as our home runway and 5 times as long.  We landed on the taxiway without incident and coasted to a stop on the ramp well off the taxiway.

Moments later a firetruck that was bigger than my house showed up and aimed a big foam nozzle at us.  They were all wearing spacesuits.  We climbed out of the airplane.  I foolishly shouted “Don’t shoot, we mean you no harm!”  It seemed funny to me at the time.  My CFI told me to shut up.  What happened next was right out of a comedy.  One of the firemen came up and asked what happened, he was pushed out of the way by a fireman who was not in a moon suit who then asked us what happened.  Then a AF officer showed up and asked us what was going on here.  He was interrupted by a higher ranking officer who asked us what we were doing there.  My CFI and I just kept exchanging “Are these guys for real” looks at each other.

Eventually the MP’s showed up and explained everything to everyone.  The big officer was going to go “talk” to someone in the tower.  The maintenance guys were going to tow our airplane over to the Aero Club hangar.  They brought a tug that was bigger than our airplane.  They were scratching their heads trying to figure out how to tow it.  I pulled the little red tow bar out of the back of the plane and handed it to them.  I remember one of them saying, “Look!  It’s got it’s own little tow bar!”  They rigged up a way using duct tape to attach the tow bar to their hitch and then took off toward the aero club.  Our little 150 almost got airborn they were moving so fast.

Meanwhile my CFI were put into two separate MP cars and driven back to the control tower.  We were taken into separate rooms and asked what happened.  We had to fill out forms declaring what had happened.  Finally after about two hours my CFI and I were taken to the pilot’s lounge to wait for a ride to the aero club.  The final irony for my CFI (a career AF man) was being required to fill out a landing permit.  I can still hear him grumbling “Next time I’m landing in a *a few expletives deleted* bean field!”

We got to the aero club and called our mechanic.  He told us not to let any of them touch the plane and that he would come look at it.  We got a ride to a local GA airport about 5 miles down the road and one of the local pilots from our airport picked us up.  The mechanic did go up and get the 150 but never could find anything wrong.  He flew it home.  I finished my training in the plane and never had another problem with

The Airport

On By The Flying DutchmanIn Aviation, Faith, OpinionLeave a comment

Here is an amazing email I received from my wife tonight…

It is amazing how one piece of land surrounded by brush, animals is so unassuming
and yet had made a mark in you and in our family.  It is always going to be a part of us.

Images of you flying the rental plane then the Aeronca, the RV, and the RANS.
As you said it is where the earth meets the sky, where you found a dream and decided to soar and to experience what a few can, to fly to the clouds – a happy place where you are one with your plane and at peace with yourself.  I’ve been there many times through almost half a lifetime. 

Although the children grew, it didn’t change much except for a few improvements.
Although I have been there before, I can see now how and why you like it so much.
It brings peace to the soul, and its silence is healing to the heart.

I had a great time walking with you in one of your most favorite places in the world, probably second to none.

I love you!

Thank you for sharing it with me, my dear.  I love you more than the airport.

Trip to Half Moon Bay

On By The Flying DutchmanIn Aviation, TravelLeave a comment

Okay so one of the joys of being a pilot is being able to brag about the places you visit. So here goes. I’ve been wanting to take a longer flight than just flitting around my local area for a while now but the weather hasn’t been cooperating. Today was the perfect day for a road trip, er, air trip! The weather was perfect, a little overcast, temps in the 70’s, no wind to speak of, great early Spring day. Yep. It’s beach weather so I headed to the coast.

I had a hankerin’ for fish so Half Moon Bay was the destination. Specifically, Barbara’s Fish Trap. So I launched into the hazy air of California’s Central Valley.  My direction of flight was to make a beeline for the Altamont Pass, then directly to Sunol, the Dunbarton Bridge, then to squeeze between Palo Alto and San Carlos’ airspace and then pop over the hill to Half Moon Bay. This would keep me out of the San Francisco Class B airspace and out of the numerous Class D’s I just mentioned.

The flight was perfect. A little hazy but that’s what it’s like when we don’t have wind. I scooted over the Altamont, tuned to Livermore and watched for their traffic as I skirted their Class D. Passed over the Sunol grade just as planned, past Mission Peak in Fremont and then headed toward the bay and the Dunbarton Bridge. That’s when my GPS lost signal. Crap. I waited a minute and it came back. Great. As I went feet wet over the bay, my GPS lost signal again. Crap again. I was only about 20 minutes from KHAF at this point. I’d hate to have to turn around now. I didn’t need it to keep from getting lost, I needed to navigate the 1 mile wide corridor between Palo Alto and San Carlos’ respective Class D airspace. The GPS came back and then stayed solid so I continued on.



I kept a close eye on the jumbos on final for San Francisco and also for any traffic coming out of Palo Alto. I finally popped over the hills and made it to the coast. Ah, sweet relief.

There was only one plane in the pattern at KHAF, I announced, joined the pattern, and landed within minutes. The taxi to the tie downs was LONG. It took about 10 minutes to taxi to the tie downs closest to the gate into town. I got there and tied my ship down. Walked up to the gate, wrote the code down on my arm so I could get back in with out walking another mile to the terminal.

Once through the gate it’s only a 5 minute walk to Barbara’s. It’s located right on the beach with a view of the marina. I got there before they opened so I just walked along the piers watching the fishermen unload and listening to the fog horn. I finally got the fish lunch I had been salivating over. Since Cristy wasn’t with me, I bought her a togo box of fish and then headed back to the airport.



The wind had changed so I had to taxi all the way from one end of the field to the other, 15 minutes of taxiing! I finally got to the other end, did my run up and launched into the air to the south toward the marina. I was already at 1000 MSL before I got to the marina so I did a slow 180 to point back to the north.  For my trip home I decided to fly north, skirt San Francisco, fly over the Golden Gate Bridge, and do the north bay tour around to Suisun Bay, past Mt. Diablo, and then into the valley and then beeline home from there. And that’s pretty much what I did.

(The domed building in the lower portion of the picture has special meaning to me. It’s called the Palace of Fine Arts and is where Cristy first kissed me)

The entire trip was uneventful, not really the best sight seeing weather but good flying weather. It took me an hour and 6 minutes to get there and an hour and 20 minutes to get home. This would normally be a 3 hour trip one way through horrendous traffic. I love flying!

Where have you been?

On By The Flying DutchmanIn OpinionLeave a comment

So it’s been pointed out to me I haven’t written in my blog much lately.  Well, no, I haven’t.  It was a busy year end.  I had some personal issues to tie up.  The kids had lots of things to do.  Time with my wife.  Church stuff. And squeezing Aviation in there somewhere. 

This year I’m going to try to take more time to write my thoughts down.  More flying this year, more dates with my wife, more time with my kids, teaching my daughter how to drive. Surprised smile

Year 25–What a year

On By The Flying DutchmanIn Faith, Humor, Opinion1 Comment

Wow, what a ride this year has been.  I still can’t think of anyone I would rather ride the roller coaster with than my beautiful bride.  We married 25 years ago, against some pretty amazing odds no less.  We’ve had a lot of ups and downs in our marriage.  Those who know this will find it surprising but we almost split up once.  But God helped us heal ourselves and kept us together and here we are.  The hills and valleys continue even this year but we’re stronger than ever.

Looking forward to the next 25!

Guys, are you dating your wives?

On By The Flying DutchmanIn Opinion3 Comments

Now I don’t want to brag but I think I have a pretty good marriage.  But one thing I realized was that really, my marriage was on autopilot.  Now, providentially it was moving in a good direction and there were no huge problems.   Really though, I knew it could be better.  What I realized, and this was back in January, was that I had stopped “dating” my wife.  Also at that time I began to read about marriage after marriage that ended up in affairs or divorce, simply because the couple had stopped relating to one another.  They had lost the connection.  They “loved” each other but they weren’t “in love” with each other.

To that end I decided that even though we didn’t appear to be in any danger in the least, I was going to take steps to reconnect with my wife.  As a start I decided begin dating her again.  The approach I took was that I would plan the date, I would not ask her what she wanted to do, where she wanted to go.  I was the man, I was pursuing her, I made the plans, I asked her out.  Some dates were expensive, most were dirt cheap. Here are some of the dates we have been on:

  • An evening at a comedy club
  • Dinner and a movie
  • Dancing at a nightclub (yes, I do dance, and she dances … just…. wow.)
  • Picnic by our favorite lake
  • A visit to a local hotel (remember, we’re married)
  • Italian sodas at a local coffee house
  • Parking in the car and just talking

The most productive dates with her have been just sitting and talking.  One thing I learned in reconnecting with her is that many times she just needs me to listen and understand her.  I don’t need to solve the problems she is encountering.  She just needs me to hear her.  My needs are more simplistic but believe me, with our connection getting stronger, those needs are being met many times over.

So guys, don’t forget to date your wives.

Aloha

On By The Flying DutchmanIn TravelLeave a comment

We just got back from Maui.  I’ve never understood the big deal everyone makes about Hawaii but I have to admit, I really liked Maui.  Unfortunately my daughter got sick while we were there, and she had a broken ankle before we left.  Still we all tried to enjoy the island.  My wife really liked it because the plants, the people, the houses, all reminded her of her homeland.

We’ll definitely be back.

My Day

On By The Flying DutchmanIn Humor, OpinionLeave a comment

I haven’t been able to update my blog lately because of my life lately.  So, so busy.  For instance, today started at 2am.  Luckily I was able to work from home.  2 hours on the phone doing some maintenance work in Tacoma Washington.  Then back to bed for a couple hours.  Then off to work.  As soon as I arrived… you guessed it, trouble in Tacoma.  No one can print.  Was it related to our maintenance work, you bet it was.  One hour to diagnose and fix that problem.  Before I even got done more calls started coming in.  We’re having DNS issues.  Two hours to track down and fix that problem.  Then back to Tacoma, they would like a new wireless access point installed.  30 minutes for that.  Some paperwork.  Set up a virtual com port for our virtual VAX running on a virtual server.  An hour for that.  Two servers are way behind on security patches.  One more hour for that.  Throw in a lunch break and a few meetings and the day was done.

No it wasn’t, just before I leave there is trouble on a switch in Olympia Washington.  It took 4 hours, working with local support up there to get yesterdays config loaded onto the switch.

Then the day was FINALLY over at 7:30pm.

Anyone see why I like to fly?

Saturday morning golf

On By The Flying DutchmanIn Aviation, Rans S-6ES Coyote5 Comments

I’ve been grounded for almost a month trying to get over the Flu.  My ears and lungs had finally cleared and I really needed to get some fresh air so I hoped in my flying golf cart and flew out to the links.  Here is a video of the approach and landing at JB Golf (CN29).