What if Every Hand Was Winnable?

John HurlbutPersonal GrowthLeave a Comment

I’ve been playing a lot of Solitaire lately.  And by a lot, I mean dozens of games a day. When I was a kid, I spent every weekend and all day M-F in the summers with my grandparents. My grandmother and grandfather were divorced, but only lived a president away from each other in Manitou in South Tacoma. Grandma lived on Madison & Grandpa lived on Monroe only a block away from each other. On weekends my mom would drop me at Grandpa Ralph’s Saturday morning and I would stay with him until after Lawrence Welk, then he’d take me to Grandma Ruth’s in his old rusted out green 1966 Chevy pickup, where I’d lie on the floor and watch Love Boat and Fantasy Island. Then Sunday morning he’d come back, pick me up and drop me off for Sunday School. I’d meet Grandma Ruth and Aunt Evelyn for church. After … Read More

Getting My Night Currency…

John HurlbutFlyingLeave a Comment

One of the things about being a pilot is maintaining your currency. To be allowed to carry passengers as a private pilot you must have made three take offs and landings in the previous 90 days, so basically if you fly once a month you’re “current”. There are no requirements about being PROFICIENT however. If those takeoffs and landings were done during the day, you are current for daytime flight. In other words you have to be back down on the ground within 1 hour of official sunset. You may remember this post from my flight training days where I did my long cross country and had to add in a few landings at a tower controlled airport? I made it back with about 20 minutes to spare before it was officially dark. As a student pilot you are not allowed to fly at night solo. You have to wait … Read More

Epic Day of Flying! FATPNW Fly-In and Sight Seeing Around Mount Saint Helens!

John HurlbutFlyingLeave a Comment

Since I started flight training in 2014 I’ve been a member of a group called “Flights Above the Pacific Northwest” (or FATPNW for short) on Facebook. I learned about them at the Northwest Aviation conference at the Puyallup fairgrounds. It’s a really cool group of NW pilots that share their flying adventures often with photos & video of our amazing landscape here in the upper corner of the country. We have everyone from aviation enthusiasts, student pilots all the way up to professional pilots that fly for the airlines on the page. Anytime I have a question about how to do something, I usually get 30+ responses and many of them are incredibly detailed. It’s a good representation of what the entire aviation community has been like for me. Incredibly welcoming and giving. In fact, they were recently even written up in AOPA magazine after surpassing their 2,000th member! Here’s … Read More