Today I formally earned my Civil Air Patrol Wings, so I thought I would share with everyone how that works.  It's actually pretty neat.

The CAP is the USAF Auxiliary, so they want to make sure that the pilots that fly their planes are current, and have been formally tested-- as well as current with all FAA standards as well (of course).  My Squadron Commander was super about telling me about what I needed to have, tests to take ahead of time.  I had called ahead a week ago and scheduled my check ride with Tom, a retired Delta 777 Captain with about a billion hours (at least) of flying time.  Before I arrived I had taken an on-line Civil Air Patrol test to ensure that I knew my CAP regs, so I brought proof of that with me as well as some key information on my plane and Civil Air Patrol Cessna 172's.

My Squadron Mate Courtney Brooks met at the airport (today was election day no less!) and we pre-flighted Trixie and took off, heading for McCullom Field in Cobb County, about a 35 or 40 minute flight.  Beautiful Autumn morning, clear blue skies.  Had trouble finding McCullom, but managed to get us there and parked the plane.  We met with Tom at Northside Aviation at 9:00 AM for Ground School and orals, which lasted from 9-11 AM.  That sounds hard, but it wasn't.  He wanted to review, not grill me, and we did several exercises together.  Very interesting guy that went out of his way to get me to relax so we could discuss things at length.  We discussed my flight plan at length so there would be NO surprises, but he also gave Courtney and I some very usable and helpful information to make us better (translation: SAFER) pilots.

I pre-flighted the plane, and we taxied and took off.  As you can see from the photo below left, I turned to my left and immediately flew over a deep rock quarry right next to the airfield!

We spent a pretty intense hour where he wanted to ensure I knew how to fly slowly, to control the airplane, to recover from takeoff stalls and landing stalls.  I did fine on all of those, with a bit of coaching from Tom on power control.  It was a very short flight from McCullom to Cartersville, so he flew me north of Cartersville to a practice area, we climbed and worked for about a half hour.  Controlling a Cessna in slow flight is much harder than it looks.  I was having to control the plane's altitude and airspeed at only 10 MPH over her rated stall speed-- it's a lot of work and takes a bit of finesse, and certainly something I generally practice without passengers in the plane.  But I did fine.

Next we flew back south towards Cartersville, he showed me the field and I set up for a normal landing.  That went just fine.  After we taxied off and headed back to take off, he told me to do a soft field takeoff and soft field landing.  My takeoff was fine, but my landing stunk.  Borderline.  I had committed to a 70 MPH landing speed, but decided that I would let it drop to 60 MPH.  Not a good move- everything was great except I ran out of airspeed and put the plane down HARD on the runway. We talked about it- he said I knew where my problem was and he let me do it again.

The middle photo is me turning to final for my third landing, which went much, much better.  We taxied again for a short field takeoff and landing. Both were fine, but he gave me some great pointers for making them much better. I really like flying with a CAP instructor- not only is it free instruction, but it's from guys who usually have thousands of hours and thousands of landings. My final test was emergency landing, but I didn't know when he'd do it. He told me to take off and fly the pattern, no mention of emergency of course, and at 700 feet above the ground and about 1.5 miles from the end of the runway, he pulled the throttle and told me to return to the airport and land it. NO problem! Did a beautiful 360 degree turn, and had plenty of altitude for a smooth landing back the way we'd flown out. " You did great.  You passed.  Let's go back to McCullom."  So we turned the plane around at the end of the runway, did a normal takeoff, flew back to Cobb County, ate lunch while he took apart my flying.  (Believe me, criticism is good.  Smart pilots always want to hear it.)  So Ross is now a qualified pilot AND a qualified Civil Air Patrol Mission Pilot.  Very cool.  Glad to get that done!

Sunday evening again? Been sitting here for the past two hours doing some final "homework" for my Board Meeting presentation tomorrow in Chicago. Was an absolutely beautiful weekend after a very busy week this week-- got to fly a little on Saturday, went and saw Mom and Dad up in Hiawassee that afternoon.

Saturday morning at our Civil Air Patrol Squadron meeting, I set up a squadron photo in front of one of our Cessna 182's. Great group of guys- you can check out the link to the left to learn more about what we do-- it's pretty interesting.

I've really enjoyed working on the Squadron website, and it's starting to get noticed around the country already. I've designed the squadron patch, the site and some posters (since we do that at work, too). Here's a couple of poster designs I did this month and posted on our site:

Well, so much for the Civil Air Patrol. Today after church world's greatest living Statham (Jim) and I managed to cut down and cut up four trees, including one REALLY large red oak that took over 45 minutes to cut up with the chain saw. Jim's an incredibly hard worker-- he had the trailer hitched and loaded with wood while I put the tools away. He and Alyssa ended up with enough red oak to last them the Winter, for sure. I cut down one small dead red oak- all the dead trees were lost in the recent drought. We're giving away almost all of our red oak, since we don't burn much anymore.

Last week I gave a speech at Florida College in their "Life Enrichment" series, where I talked about the practicalities that college students should face in getting ready to enter the work force and enter the international area. I actually ended up giving four speeches on Thursday- a very brief one at Chapel, a presentation to an 11 am business class, a speech to the Sower's Club and the actual speech I was originally slated to give that evening at 7:30 PM. By the time I crashed Thursday night I was worn out.

Really enjoyed lunch with some of the faculty and students as well as dinner with Linda and Dr. Caldwell. VERY nice folks all. I continue to be very impressed with the dedication of the faculty at Florida College, and have committed to them to take a more active role in helping them build a bigger booster club in Atlanta.

Headed for Chicago in the morning- going to be up early to catch a Delta flight, back on Tuesday night. Keep those comments coming- I always enjoy reading them all!

Monday evening follow on posting: Sure enough, it's COLD in Chicago and we got SNOW this afternoon. Can you believe it? Plus the town has Obama fever- I told Cathy today that it's like visiting the Enemy Camp! But good board meetings-- I am very pleased with progress with our new WindTalker venture. Our board is very experienced and smart- they know exactly what do to and how to do it. I'm pleased.

Thanks for viewing my post!

Here it is mid-October and we're having a nice turn of cold nights and cool, clear sunny days. Got down to 44 degrees last night, getting down in the low 30's tonight. Really nice and cool with those clear blue skies that only come out in the Fall.

Yesterday (Saturday) was World Scouting's Jamboree On The Air ("JOTA") which is a world-wide Ham Radio event with Scouting. My Ham friends Chuck Lemming and Ryan Bagnal set up stations at Scoutland Scout Camp in Gainesville and used my radio call sign: KX4BSA. We had over 150 Cub Scouts come through and all that wanted to talk on the air were able to do so. Fun.

Civil Air Patrol is going pretty well; I put a ton of effort into my new role of Public Affairs Officer and webmaster, and you can see from the links on the left that our Squadron website I created looks pretty good. At least they like it so far! I'm also working on my flight quals with the CAP, and hope to have my wings for my uniform by the end of the year. Passed my written exam, still have to do my flight with a CAP check pilot.

I'm going to Florida College later this week to do an International Business talk Thursday evening- will also spend some time with one of the Business classes, too. If this goes well, I'll see if they'd like to expand it a bit this Spring. Would like to get Grant Hicks and Ken Gay at church involved, too.

Church is starting the elder selection process, and we're looking forward to having elders in the congregation again. At least, I am! I think we're ready. I pray we are.

Audrey has been sick this weekend, but was able to make church tonight and I think is much better. She's on the phone now with her Mom in Memphis. I enjoy these evenings sitting with her close by. Sure beats those years of travel I've endured, and continue to endure.

Thanks always for your comments- I read them all and enjoy them all!

About a month ago I was recruited to join the Civil Air Patrol, a really interesting service organization. The CAP is the USAF Auxiliary, and performs a series of humanitarian and national security missions, almost always at the local level. There's a CAP Squadron at the Dahlonega Airport, and I met the Squadron Commander, a retired Naval Aviator who has over 5,000 hours (!!) of flight time and a super guy.

So now I'm Lt. Statham, the Communications Officer and Public Information Officer of Squadron GA 477, Georgia Wing of the CAP. Impressed? Well, it's been fun so far. Ours is a senior squadron, made up of guys from their 20's into their 60's. We have retired airline pilots, businessmen, engineers, even a musician and several computer geeks (like me).

Most of our members have thousands of flight hours doing search and rescue (our squadron does a LOT of flying) and training. Check out our new website that I created: www.ga447.org.

Audrey says (rightfully so) that I'm painfully attracted to outfits that wear uniforms- you know, the Boy Scouts, the Army, and now the CAP. Hmmmm.... may be something to that. I did buy a complete set of Class B's, including my butter bars. ("Honey, it's all tax deductible!")

Other news: the Atlanta gasoline shortage has been PAINFUL. We simply cannot find gas around here, as any station that gets gas (you know, one out of 20, no kidding) end up with long lines and long waits. I know of one church that canceled it's gospel meeting for later this week due to the crunch.

In the BEST news: Meg and Andy are expecting again. WAAAAAAAY cool. Heading over to Birmingham tomorrow to visit! So of course, I'll be getting up at 6 AM to find some gas so I can make it to Alabama, where there's plenty. Duh!

Jim and Alyssa had wanted a small, quiet and private little wedding at our home- we were all sworn to secrecy on pain of death, dismemberment or at least getting a major wedgie.

It was a very nice ceremony at our home last Friday night (August 22, 2008). Steve Trammel (our evangelist from church) came with his wife Anna- he conducted the ceremony and she took most of the pictures! Here are some for your viewing pleasure, before, during and after the ceremony, which we did in our study:

It was very nicely done. My new daughter-in-law (whom I love DEARLY) was crying a bit, and that dear son of mine was standing tall and holding her hand. Audrey and I were on each side of them, and Cathy was seated taking it all in!

After the ceremony we went outside for photos, then we had a nice dinner before the bride and groom took off for the mountains. We surely feel blessed to have such a fine daughter-in-law. Hmmmm.... wonder if she can make him change his socks?