New home and new flying

 Settling in nicely to our new home at NC27.  Still getting comfortable flying in the mountains but the views are incredible. 

New Home!

 After making the move from Charlotte to Blowing Rock, NC I was finally able to move the plane into its new home at NC27.

First Warm day of the year.

 What an incredible day to fly.... it finally hit 80 degrees today and of course I headed down to the airport.  Air smooth as glass 

First flight of the year

Hey all, so we're still here just been flying around locally, nothing really exciting but finally got up and going for the first flight of the year.  Trying to work on tightening up those patterns.  A whopping 8 landings during pattern work.  Nothing exciting but gotta make sure to always keep learning.

 

Sunday Morning Flight to KMKS

 Tried to fly down to Moncks Corner for Breakfast but was turned away by the cloud layer over the airport.  While I wasn't able to enjoy a coastal breakfast I was treated to some amazing views.

Cherokee Crew Makes it to OSH 2021!

 Just returned back from OSH 2021!

The $1,000 Dollar Cherokee Crew made it to OSH for the first time.  While the plane did not make the trip this year the crew did and we had a great time!

Hopeful to take the plane next year!

South Carolina Breakfast Club at KCUB

 Another Breakfast Club is in the books!  And a quick early morning flight down to KCUB on a beautiful Sunday morning.

 Another Annual is in the books.  

All done for another year and no corrosion found (per the recent Piper AD)

KCRE Trip

 Decided to take an impromptu trip to KCRE for some long XC and towered practice.   Was smooth as glass at 4500 feet and as always beautiful views.

 

BQ1 Finally!

 We finally made it to BQ1, after 5 years of flight, the stars finally aligned to take a trip to BQ1 for Sunday Lunch.

Late Evening Flying

 The winds finally died down some so we decided to take a 3 ship formation down to EOE to check out the Newberry Airport.

Crazy headwind on the way down, took almost 35 minutes to make it down and 14 minutes to make it back!

New JPI-730

 

Should have added this years ago but we finally got around to adding an engine monitor to the little Cherokee.  Picked up a brand new 730 4 cht/egt with RPM, Oil and Temp.  

Now if the weather is willing to cooperate we can get some time to test it out!

First avionics upgrade is complete!

 The little Cherokee finally has had it's first panel upgrade in almost 25 years!

I have had a KLX-135 and KX-155 since I purchased the plane but had always had issues hearing over the radio or intermittent transmit issues.

I finally decided to bite the bullet and pull both my radios, audio panel and broken intercom and replace them with a single ICOM A220 radio.

I could not be happier with the outcome.  I can finally hear crystal clear on the radio and the display is nice and bright and easy to see in direct sun.

I replaced ALL the wires including the headphone/headset jacks to make 100% sure we had all new wiring and no chance of crummy connections.

I've also been able to relocated my iFly 740 GPS to the center of the panel now which creates a more uniform and less cluttered look which I really enjoy.  

Before

After

Weekend Flying

Some absolutely beautiful flying this weekend, the weather couldn't have been better for visibility and winds.  

Just did a quick hop up to EQY for lunch and to test out my new GoPRO mount and camera.  While I like the placement of the new mount I'm not sold on it's sturdiness.  I do like that it's just a clamp and not affixed to the plane however.

I also toyed around with recording in 4K at 60FPS so both of these videos are extremely high definition.  However the file sizes are huge which makes editing them a real pain, so not sure I'll record more at this resolution, but they look nice.

This was a morning flight up to EQY and it was very smooth, no bumps at all.

This was a later afternoon flight and while the sky was clear it was much more bumpy and I had to fight the winds all the way back.  Luckily it's a short hop.  I tried to find some cleaner air at 3k with no luck so just had to ride it out till LKR.

Quick flight to MEB

 So just out doing some local flying, was wanting to try and fly to CRE but the clouds were just dropping too much to risk getting stuck so instead just made it over to MEB to check out some of the old commercial airliners parked there.

Some Late Evening Flying

For the first time since my training and for the first time ever in the Cherokee, I was able to sneak down to the airport at dusk and get in some late evening / night flying.  It was a beautiful calm and clear night, perfect flying weather.

 

The coolest picture

 So was just taking a friend to pick up his plane after it's annual and on the way back we flew some formation and he captured the coolest picture I have ever had taken of the plane.  

This is just the most awesome picture, turn to final on Rwy6

And here are a few more shots from that flight.

Local Sighseeing

Beautiful clear day to fly over the lake, you could see for miles and smooth as silk.

 

Just checking out the clouds

 Sometimes you just gotta get up in the air and play around the clouds.  I'm not a religious person but there is something special (almost spiritual) that happens when you are up flying around clouds and such and you realize that no other human past/present/future will ever see the exact same sight that you are seeing.

It's almost like the entire universe is putting on a show just for you to enjoy, and for those few moments you feel like you can do anything.