Netflix delivered One Six Left to my home in time to view it over the weekend. If you enjoyed One Six Right I highly recommend you check out One Six Left. The DVD features the beautiful trailer "Into the Clouds" which features music by Enya, a 12 minute movie montage of amazing aerial shots of a wide variety of planes that fly in and out of Van Nuys. Additionally, the video has interviews with the Director and the videographer and a few other features.

This was one of those films that just connects with a pilots love for aviation. The cinematography is spectacular and should be used by any pilot that is trying to convince a friend or family member to learn to fly. The great news is Brian Terwiliger the Director of One Six Right is actively working on another yet to be named aviation documentary.

I am shipping the DVD back to Netflix so another pilot or aviation enthusiast can enjoy the film and will be ordering a copy of both One Six Right and One Six Left for my personal DVD collection.

I arrived nearly an hour early so that I could save some seats for fellow members of the Chicago Aviation Meetup Group who were going to join me for the event. As is often the case at any pilot get together or at a local airport it is nearly impossible to be alone long around pilots. Within seconds of sitting down I was engaged in a conversation with several fellow pilots. One of which was a remarkable man, Clarence (Clancy) Hess. Clancy was one of the first members of AOPA when he joined for the price of $3 in 1940. He was a Marine Aviator in WWII and also was a co-founder of Wings of Hope, a non-profit organization that delivers food and medical assistance to third world countries. He shared with me and a few fellow pilots some amazing photos including one of him with Jimmy Doolitle who inspired Clancy to pursue aviation. Clancy was recently inducted into the Illinois Aviation Hall of Fame.

In looking around the room it was obvious why AOPA is working so hard to bring new pilots into aviation as the median age had to be close to if not over 50 years of age. I knew that this particular AOPA event had both presentations for current pilots and for prospective pilots. I was excited that three of the six members of the Chicago Aviation Meetup Group who were able to attend were interested in learning to fly. Mid-way through the evening those interested in learning to fly were taken to a separate room to learn about the steps it takes to learn to fly. As a special gift, AOPA presented them each with a voucher for a free introductory flight. It was great hearing from the three future pilots after the meeting, each of them sounded very excited about taking the introductory flight. A.J. commented that he always knew he wanted to fly, he even was close to attending Embry Riddle to learn to fly but chose another career path. He now wants to get into aviation and stop putting off his dream of flying. He said this event just fueled his interest in learning to fly which was great to see.

Another fun story was from Mark, a private pilot who has not flown in several months. He mentioned this weekend he was outside when his young daughter pointed to the sky and said "airplane". He was so excited he took her to the local airport and showed her the planes up close as they watched from the fence line as planes came and went. He is looking forward to getting current again this spring and taking his daughter flying.

Tonight my eyes were opened once again to what I already knew but just needed a reminder of; all of us pilots are very passionate about aviation. In most cases it is a love affair we have had since we were children. It is our duty as pilots to be good ambassadors for aviation. We need to be vigilantly looking for the twinkle in one's eye when the topic of aviation comes up or one's attention is drawn to an overflying plane and we need to seize that moment to share our passion for flying with that person. I know I find great joy in helping people step away from the fence line and cross over to the tarmac to take an introductory flight or simply to visit an FBO or look at the inside of a General Aviation plane.

Tonight was one of those great nights where I enjoyed the camaraderie of other pilots and remembered again what a joy it is to have the privilege of flying. Thanks AOPA for looking out for the interests of pilots and offering this great forum to bring fellow aviators together for a great evening!

The photo above is of several Chicago Aviation Meetup Group Members along with the President of AOPA Phil Boyer and Clancy Hess. (Left to Right: Rob, Catrina, Phil, Clancy, A.J. & Myself.)

Since I needed to perform a check out ride anyways to rent aircraft from Windy City Flyers I decided to make it a BFR as well to fulfill that requirement in advance of my deadline later this year. We flew up to Lake in the Hills where we performed a wide variety of takeoff and landings including: short field, soft field and a simulated engine out emergency landing.

After that I performed many of the maneuvers on the private pilot check ride like an simulated off field emergency landing and stalls. The flight went smoothly. We also did a review of aviation knowledge. To prepare for that portion of the BFR I used Biennial Flight Review Flash Cards by James Spudich. They were very thorough and great for refreshing my knowledge.

At the end of the day I had passed my second BFR.

I was pleasantly surprised to learn that when Mike Collins wrote a follow-up article on blogs for the April issue of Flight Training Magazine. In "Blogs for Reading: A Summary of Reader Recommendations" Mike featured seven aviation blogs including MyFlightBlog.com. For those that don't have a subscription to the magazine I scanned a copy of the article that you can read here. This website was in great company with several other blogs that I read on a frequent basis.

Mike Collins wrote "We've all seen 'information' on the Internet that wasn't worth reading, but I was impressed by both the quality and variety of aviation blogs." When I started this blog in the Spring of 2004 there were only a handful of other aviation blogs. One of which was David West's Flight Lessons Learned which was also mention in this article. It is great to see that several years later there are an abundance of blogs to help educate and inspire aspiring pilots.

Also featured in the article was fellow Illinois based student pilot Evan Krueger of The Flying Toga. I was glad he was featured as I had not stumbled upon his blog yet. I have really enjoyed following Evan's experiences learning to fly. He is learning to fly out of Lake in The Hills airport a small airport Northwest of Chicago.

Also mentioned were Finally Learning to Fly, Signal Charlie and Roger's Soaring Blog.

Three years ago I had the pleasure of meeting Phil Boyer at an AOPA Town Meeting in Cincinnati. I am an advocate of AOPA and appreciate all the hard work Mr. Boyer and his staff put in every day to protect the rights and interests of private pilots.

If you are a pilot and live anywhere near the Chicago area, I encourage you to come out to this event.

It is well known that 75% of all accidents are a result of pilot error and of the many errors pilot make, five stand out as frequent mistakes.

I look forward to learning more about these common pilot mistakes and learning how to avoid them.

On Saturday, I was blessed with a beautiful day to fly. The goal of the flight was to work on maneuvers we did not practice on the first flight last week. Those maneuvers included power-on and -off stalls, 45 degree turns, and emergency procedures. I performed all the maneuvers well except the 45 degree turns to the left which were a little sloppy but improved the more of them I performed. Both emergency landing maneuvers went well with my CFI and I both being confident I could have safely landed on some poor farmer’s field had it been necessary.

Either next weekend or the weekend after that I will go in for the BFR which will consist of at least one hour of ground verbal review followed by at least an hour of flight review in which I need to perform all maneuvers to test standards. I last successfully performed a BFR in September of 2006. I am looking forward to getting this one behind me.

We departed Palwaukee and headed east for a flight down the Chicago Lakeshore en-route to Lansing on the South side of Chicago. We had a beautiful view of the city of Chicago on our way down and on the way back. We were heading to Lansing for the March meeting of the Chicago Aviation Meetup Group. We had a smooth flight to Lansing that only took about 25 minutes due to a nice tailwind.

We met four other aviation enthusiasts at Shannon's Landing, the on airport restaurant where we enjoyed a bite to eat and sharing some aviation stories. After lunch we met Luke from Sun Aero who talked to the group about the helicopter operations and training they offer at Lansing. I learned there are hobbies more expensive then flying, flying helicopters that is. It was cool checking out the inside of some of the smaller helicopters that although small did feel less cramped the then the Cessna 152 I trained in.

After an enjoyable time learning about Helicopters we jumped back in the Mooney and flew back up the lakeshore to Palwaukee. The return flight took a little longer as we were flying in the wind but the Mooney still made great time and appears to be a great trip plane.

Check out some photos from the event below.

I started off the day flying out of Chicago Executive Airport in one of my flight clubs Cessna 172SP. Forest a CFI, joined me for the flight as I need to rebuild currency with Windy City Flyers. We flew north to Waukegan Airport where I worked on landings. I conducted six landings there and one go-around which the tower requested when they spotted a coyote on the runway. That was the first time I had ever performed a go-around for that reason.

Total flight time for the morning flight was 1.7 hours which pushed me over the 100 hours of flight time mark. It was great to be back in the plane and I am looking forward to flying more regularly this Spring. I made sure of that by scheduling my next flight in about two weeks.

Those two articles showcased just a handful of the great blogs dedicated to aviation. Where can you find more aviation blogs? Sure you can troll through the blogroll lists on your favorite aviation blogs like I do on a regular basis. But, now there is another great resource for you to find the best of aviation blogs. Check out Blogged, a site dedicated to helping users find better blogs. To their credit they have very focused categories and instead of tossing aviation blogs in a broad category like transportation or hobbies they have an Aviation category. It currently lists over 60 aviation blogs that have been critiqued by the Blogged staff and each is ranked on a 10 point scale.

MyFlightBlog is proud to be in the top five, currently ranked number 3 with a "Great" rating of 8.6. Also high on the list are several blogs written by pilots I keep in touch with regularly and that I recommend: JetWhine (#2 with a 8.7 score), Av8rdan's World of Flying (#4 with an 8.6 score) and CAPBlog (#16 with a 8.2 score). If you enjoy MyFlightBlog please visit Blogged and give us a review. While you are there check out all the other great aviation blogs.

The group was a well rounded group including pilots, an airline pilot, a kit plane builder, student pilots, an air traffic controller, prospective pilots and aviation enthusiasts. I had a great time chatting with others about their interests in aviation and their aviation experiences.

After lunch we visited Northwest Aviation the main fixed based operator at Schaumburg. Victor offered to take the group out on to the flightline to look at a few of their planes including a few Diamond Aircraft and a Piper Warrior. For many this was their first time being up close to a small general aviation aircraft Though, I have a feeling many will be back out to try flying one soon.

We all agreed to get together again next month with the specific event and location to be determined. If you are interested in joining visit out Meetup group page.

Those who attended the last event had a great time checking out the control tower at Chicago Executive Airport.

Come join fellow aviation enthusiasts for lunch. We are trying to organize a tour of the flight line with one of the local fixed based operators as well. Visit the Chicago Aviation Meetup Group website today to R.S.V.P. for this event.

I am sure the other three pilots have seen increased traffic to their blogs as I have see here. I have enjoyed the e-mails from both fellow pilots and student pilots as a result of the article. I created the blog for two reasons, one being that I wanted to keep family and friends up-to-date on my progress while I was learning to fly. The second was that before I started my training, I looked around for advice and information about becoming a private pilot and although there were some great online resources there were few first person accounts; that has changed greatly in the past few years as the blogroll to the right shows.

A week does not go by that I don't get a nice e-mail from someone who is thinking of learning to fly and who asks for advice. I love being able to give back and share my experiences with these prospective pilots. I also get a bunch of pilots who comment or e-mail about their experiences that help me continue to learn and improve as a pilot. One of my favorite e-mails was from an older gentleman who had not flown in over 30 years and said reading my blog brought back the great memories from when he learned to fly, surely a fond memory for him.

Here is the excerpt of my part of the article. You can view the entire article here on WSJ.com (WSJ subscription required).

MyFlightBlog.com
Todd McClamroch always dreamed of flying. About three years ago, the Chicago resident earned his private pilot's license, and he has been blogging about his time in the air ever since -- in part, he writes, to encourage others to pursue their dreams.

Some of Mr. McClamroch's posts offer practical advice to beginners who are interested in aviation, on topics like choosing an aviation school. And he details the time and expense involved in getting a license. But he also takes time to express the joy of piloting: "It's the achievement of making a dream a reality and finally learning to fly after years of looking up at the skies wishing," he writes. "I am sure flying will take me to places I would not have gone, and it may even allow me to travel more efficiently, but in the end it will be for the pure satisfaction of flying."

I have had the pleasure of seeing the Red Baron's fly at least five times at a variety of airshows. Last summer I had the opportunity to take a flight with the team.

The Squadron was made up of four great pilots whose love for flying was evident the moment I met them. They were as disappointed as I was that the weather prevented them from putting me through a full acrobatic flight. Though I still enjoyed my flight in the Stearman with this great flight team

The folks at AirShowBuzz.com are trying to get people to sign a petition to bring back the Red Baron Squadron. You can sign the petition here then Digg the story as well.

You can show your support for the the Save the Red Baron movement with this t-shirt I created for sale at RogerWilcoWear.com. The red short sleeve t-shirt is available for $21.00.

Roger Wilco Wear was developed with the pilot in mind; our line of t-shirts utilize elements familiar to pilots. After spending hours looking at sectionals I realized that images from the sectional chart would make for great t-shirts and many of our offerings feature those images.

The site currently features airport specific t-shirt designs including Door County Cherrlyand Airport, Lunken Field Airport, New Garden Airport, Palwaukee Municipal Airport, Van Nuys Airport. Each week we release a new airport specific shirt as our Aviation T-Shirt of the Week. Let me know if there is a shirt you would like to see featured.

Additionally, we offer several customizable t-shirts. We have a General Aviation Pilot t-shirt that can be customized to include your home airport three letter identifier. Additionally, we offer custom t-shirts that let you commemorate where you flew your first solo or learned to fly.

One last note, our t-shirts are being sold through Spreadshirt.com. They will handle fulfillment of your order and unfortunately, I will not know specifically who has bought a t-shirt. So please drop me a line if you buy one!

Visit the store today at RogerWilcoWear.com