Posts by Berck

A Sad Day for Freedom


by Berck

It’s been a cold, dreary, drizzly day. It’s been a long time since I remember a day feeling like this one. The last one I remember was just after final exams in December of ’98, in Dallas.

I flew on Saturday, to Duncan. I had a rough time navigating, but I managed to stay on course on the way there and back. I got a compliment on my landing back in Norman.

And now it’s Wednesday, and it’s been cloudy and raining ever since Sunday morning. Looks to be better tomorrow, but of course I can’t find anyone to schedule me for a plane. My instructor is supposedly handing me off to someone else because he’s switching over to teaching instruments. But I’ve heard from neither him nor anyone else. I went by the school today, but no one there knew anything. The phone number I had for my instructor doesn’t seem to be working, I might have copied it into the new phone wrong.

Joanna was acting like a kid at Christmas yesterday. I’m not quite sure how anyone can get so excited over an election. I told her at 10:30 that all that mattered was Ohio, and it looked like Kerry had quite lost. She didn’t give up for another half hour. She called everyone, even my mother, who had fallen asleep at the television. She eventually came to bed, but told me excitedly in the morning, that I was, in fact, right. Mom didn’t believe me either. Oh well.

I passed a pickup truck today with nothing but “911” written in shoe polish on the rear window. I wanted to stop and ask, “What does that mean?”

I just hope that I have some civil rights left by the time it’s over with.

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Weather and Telephones


by Berck

So, Dad decided to cancel his telephone service. And ours along with it, without warning.

It sort of gives Joanna a clean slate when it comes to resumes, since we know no one will be calling her about anything she’s sent out already!

It looks like the call she got just before we lost telephone service is for a possible insurance sales job. I’m not too excited about the prospects of a commission-only sales job, but she thinks it might work. I suppose it won’t matter until we find out if they call her back or not. Which, fortunately, they can do, because we have a new telephone number now. If you call me, I’ll tell you what it is.

I still haven’t flown since I went to Stillwater on Saturday. Between telephones and weather, it just didn’t happen. The weather cleared up a bit this afternoon, but the winds were quite high. I would have had to land with a crosswind exceeding that of the “maximum demonstrated crosswind velocity” of my airplane. Since I’ve only done that a couple of times, and it’s against my school’s policy for me to do so, I elected not to go. Furthermore, it looked like there was a possibility of thunderstorms popping up in the vicinity. And, I haven’t landed with stiff winds, much less a crosswind, in a very long time. Judging from some of the landings I saw out there today, I decided to wait for better weather.

I should be able to fly tomorrow. I’m on the schedule twice on Sunday, but it’s probably going to start storming again.

This rating is going to take me forever, I think. I’d hoped to be done before the winter solstice, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen.

I just can’t see Joanna as an insurance salesman. Can you?

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I Flew to Stillwater.


by Berck

After all my fretting about not flying for a month, the flight was easy. Nothing out of the ordinary occurred, although Stillwater Regional is under crazy construction. Runway 17/35 used to be 6100ft, but they extended it on the north side to 7400ft. The extension is concrete whereas the original runway is asphalt, so it looks like a patchwork quilt. To make things more amusing, they close all but the north 4,000ft during the afternoons and evenings to work on it. It’s tricky to figure out just what the north 4,000 ft is until you get pretty close to it.

It was a beautiful day for flying, temperatures in the low 70s, no clouds, smooth air.

While flying by Tinker AFB on the way back to Norman, I spotted a line of F-15’s a few thousand feet below me. Actually, what I saw first was a shadow… “Hmm.. something triangle-shaped is making that shadow…” After the first one whizzed by, there was another…. I saw 5 of them– there were probably six.

I’m on the schedule again tomorrow. I think I’ll go to Duncan, OK. I’m running out of approved airports just over 50NM away– I’ll probably have to start revisiting before I finish.

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Back to Flying, ever?


by Berck

Scheduling flights in is proving to be a major headache. I haven’t flown in the month of October. I intended to take a week-long break, but it’s turning into permanent retirement.

When I called my instructor on Wednesday morning, he said the earliest he could get me in was Friday at 4pm. It’s Friday around noon, and the OKC Terminal Aerodrome Forecast isn’t pretty. In fact, just to annoy Sydney, I think I’ll subject you guys to it.

TEMPO 2024 3SM TSRA BR OVC020CB

That means that from 3pm-7pm they’re predicting 3 miles visibility, thunderstorms and rain, mist and an overcast layer of cumulonimbus clouds at 2,000ft. So I don’t think I’m going anywhere today.

I’m on the schedule for tomorrow at noon, and possibly Sunday as well.

All these flights are solos. Ought to be fun since I haven’t flown in several weeks, and have only flown solo once in the last 3 months or so.

All I’m really worried about is getting lost. I don’t know why, but finding my way around just by looking at a sectional in the middle of Oklahoma scares me. It all looks the same.

I think that tomorrow I’ll fly to Stillwater, which is north of OKC, so I’ll be in fairly populated areas which means lots of landmarks. The tricky thing about that is that I have no idea how OKC approach will route me since the direct course goes right over Tinker AFB. And in the middle of the day, that’s not usually permitted, at least not at 5,000 feet or so.

There’s a VFR corridor through the OKC/Tinker airspace, but you have to remain below 2,500ft in it. And there are 2,000 ft towers at the end of it. I don’t much like being that close to big scary-looking towers.

It’s funny, I’m an instrument rated private pilot and a big baby when it comes to VFR navigation. Instrument flying is so nice because I don’t have any trouble knowing where I am. Most people are actually just the opposite– they’re leery of instrument navigation but have no problem looking at a collection of buildings that looks just like every other collection of buildings and saying, “That’s the town of Dibble.”

I’m also annoyed that I sit at home all day while wifey works, and it seems like the only time I can fly is when she’s home.

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Graffiti


by Berck

Public bathroom graffiti intrigues me. I’m not the only one. The graffiti in women’s restrooms are typically better, I hear, but I don’t get to see much of it.

I’m not sure why people feel compelled to scrawl on bathroom walls. There are lots of theories, and more than one post-graduate has attempted to study the phenomenon. In a public restroom at a gas station, the owners had hung a sheet of butcher paper titled, “Write Here!” The sheet of paper was covered in scrawling, but the bathroom walls were clean. A novel idea.

Political graffiti seems to be common these days. Somewhere in the plains, I saw a bit of graffiti that seemed to say it all.

“John Cary
is a
mother******”

Someone had inserted “smart” just before “mother”.

I fear for what’s left of our county.

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