I will start this out by saying that this post was a long time in the making and I have delayed and procrastinated way too long, probably much longer than I should have…

It all started a few months after I got my ticket punched, see previous blog post about that…  I wanted to share my love for aviation and give the gift of flight to friends and family that trusted their precious lives in my hands.  So I started asking friends if they wanted to go for a short airplane hop around Huntsville to see the local sites from the air.

Test Passenger:

There were a few people that were cheering me on at work through my the process to get my license and one of those was also a pretty good photographer and aviation fan, Actually he is an excellent photographer! Andrew Gonzales gladly volunteered to be my test passenger.  The only requirement from him was that he wanted to take pictures of the whole flight.  Obviously, I had no problem with that!

The Flight:

The day was June 4th, 2015.  It was a hot, humid Alabama day with clear skies, great for flying if you can take the heat from the tarmac during the preflight and passenger brief.  I decided and planned for a short flight up to Fayetteville Municipal Airport, FYM.  It’s only about 25 miles north and a short 15 minute flight.  The route north from Redstone Army Airfield goes right past the US Space and Rocket Center  which has a pretty spectacular and famous Saturn V that is very visible when flying out of Redstone.  Andrew was sure to get pictures of the Rocket Center.

Sights and Sounds:

My favorite part of the flight was hearing the reaction from Andrew the moment the plane released its grip from the runway.  Not long after that reaction I saw him glued to the window with his camera taking lots of pics.

HSV Saturn V

Hwy 72

Shadow

Approach to Runway 2 at FYM

Usually the windscreen has lots of bugs and smears on it from the flight training that is completed in the planes.  I try to clean the windscreen before flight, but still I didn’t know how the pictures would turn out.  I was insanely shocked when I saw the pictures, they were all so clear and vivid it was like I was back on the flight when I saw the pictures.

Check Out Andrew’s Post with a gallery of all the Awesome pictures that he captured during our flight!

After the flight I told Andrew that I wanted to see the pictures whenever he had time to edit and post them to his photography site.  We were both busy with life, work, and other things that I kind of forgot about the pictures.  Fast forward about a year to this spring and I get a link from Andrew to the pictures from the flight.  I was so excited with how they turned out that I was beside myself.  I should have posted this blog post at that moment but I was distracted a few moments later when another friend messaged me about taking a flight. There will be more to come with this story but I will say that it motivated me to get back in the air and start flying again.  After selling our old house and purchasing our new property and house flying had to take a back seat to a full home renovation that ensued for the next year.  The home renovation is still wrapping up so I’m not able to fly as often as I would like but at least I have made a few flights this year and hopefully a few more to come!