This was a very enjoyable flight for me for many different reasons. For one, I was able to share it with my cousin! Was awesome having Alex flying right seat. The weather was beautiful, and we had a reprieve from the crazy winds that we’ve seen in North Texas.

I also got to play with my new Drift HD170 camera and Panavise mount! Check out the video on Vimeo here. It’s a little bumpy while we are on the ground simply because the ground is BUMPY! The only runways I have ever landed on that were as smooth as glass were recently repaved ones like Stephenville (KSEP) or the north 1-2K feet of Denton (KDTO). I’m going to take another look at the mount that I am using to see if there is a potentially better option that might have a bit more cushion for the runway activities. Also, there is no intercom audio on this one because I was missing an adapter cable (should have read the WHOLE review), but that will be remedied for the next video!

We took off to the north and headed south east toward Dallas. I’ve learned that when the winds are from the north, air traffic around downtown Dallas gets pretty complicated. We had to do some circles outside of Addison’s airspace to wait for a path to be opened up for  us. Once we were granted in, we had to stay east and south of downtown Dallas (you can see in the video). I was OK with this because for some reason the G1000 was kicking out a strange error that I had seen before, but was not part of the normal operations. Apparently there are other conditions where you want to leave the fuel pump on (as opposed to following the checklist which instructs you to turn off the fuel pump in many scenarios). I found another screen that I can use to diagnose issues around fuel PSI that is not in the main engine readout on the MFD. Also would LOVE to figure out how to get that readout back on the PFD. Low fuel PSI did not negatively affect the FLOW of fuel, but I think it made the engine run leaner than it should have, and one of the cylinders started heating up a bit. Nothing that would have caused an unsafe issue because I had Dallas Love very close if we had an emergency, and flipping on the fuel pump immediately resolved the problem.

You will also see me using the autopilot a bit. If you can get set up on an altitude prior to entering ATC control, the autopilot absolutely helps from a workload management perspective. See me enter a heading change at 3:40 in the video when we were cleared over the top of DFW Airport.

If you are wondering why my right hand seems to eternally have a pen in it, it’s because I will write down instructions from ATC if they give me rapid fire details so I can read it back. When in congested, controlled airspace, it’s pretty critical to be on your toes and focused.

Anyway, great flight! Hope you enjoy the video!