Big Sky Airport

We flew into Ennis, Montana (Big Sky Airport) last week and there happened to be another company plane on the ramp. The sunset was awesome and I had to get the shot with both planes on the ramp.

Update!

I know it's been a while since my last post, so here is an update. I got married on May 9, 2009 to a wonderful woman named Melanie. I went down to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico for 9 days and stayed at the five star Hilton Beach and Golf Resort.

SFO Landing

I never get tired of flying into large airports such as San Francisco.
We have the best seat in the house for watching the heavy iron land
and takeoff. I took this yesterday while we were holding short of
runway 28R in SFO waiting for departure.

Laguna Seca

Laguna Seca MRY, originally uploaded by Mike Lombardi.

View of Laguna Seca Raceway from the Piaggio. This was taken on final to Runway 28L in Monterey, CA.

Porsche Crew Car

We flew to a nice FBO yesterday in Lexington, Kentucky called Air 51. They have great customer service, free soda fountain drinks, various snacks, and a Porsche Boxster as a crew car. As you can see in the picture, they let us take the Porsche overnight to the Campbell House Crown Plaza Hotel where we were staying.

Redmond to Rockford

Today I met the plane in San Jose, we flew it empty up to Redmond, OR where we picked up two people and flew them to Rockford, IL, northwest of Chicago.

At 1398 nautical miles, this was the longest distance I have flow in the Piaggio. Luckily, we had an average of 60kts of tailwind to help us get to Rockford non-stop. We ended burning 314 gallons of fuel flying at 39,000 ft and the time enroute was it in 3 hours 48 minutes takeoff to landing, which is an average speed of 368 kts (416mph).

We could have gone much faster if we flew a bit lower and were not in gas saving mode, however this is still very impressive for a little turboprop.

Click on the picture for a larger view of the route.

Stratosphere Tower

Stratosphere Tower, originally uploaded by Mike Lombardi.

I was bored on an overnight the other day in Vegas, so I grabbed my camera and took this long exposure picture of the Stratosphere Tower at night. The tower is over five and a half miles away and the light streaks you see is from an airplane landing from right to left.

Downtown Ketchum

P1010768, originally uploaded by Mike Lombardi.

We had lunch at a Nice Soup and Sandwich shop (not shown) in downtown.

Downtown Ketchum

P1010764.JPG, originally uploaded by Mike Lombardi.

Bald Mountain

P1010763.JPG, originally uploaded by Mike Lombardi.

Bald Mountain ski resort in Ketchum, ID.

Sun Valley

P1010761.JPG, originally uploaded by Mike Lombardi.

We had an overnight in Sun Valley last week, so we went out and explored the area.

MacWorld

P1010174, originally uploaded by Mike Lombardi.

Testing embedded video.

Flickr Blog Feature

N150SL, originally uploaded by Mike Lombardi.

I just found out that I can post pictures to this blog straight from my Flickr account!

Here is a view of downtown San Diego from the Landmark ramp at the airport. The view is awesome at night as you can see.

On our way to Burbank in the back of 137SL.

East to West Coast

I finally made the transition from St. Petersburg, Florida to Camarillo, CA in a Piaggio. This marks the first time in nearly four years with the company that I actually flew a plane from the east coast to the west coast. Most of the time when we get a cross country trip, it is going east and I end up flying home on an airliner. I left St. Pete on Thursday morning in Piaggio N137SL (Piaggio I)and flew to Houston,TX - Harlington,TX - Dallas,TX - Fort Smith, AR - Albuquerque,NM and ended up in Camarillo on Saturday.

The company needed a Piaggio II qualified captain in Palm Springs, so tomorrow I am catching a ride in the back of Piaggio N137SL from Camarillo to Burbank, where I will rent a car and drive to Palm Springs to take over N172SL and fly it to Aurora, OR with five passengers.

Six check complete

I completed my six month check ride today in the "red rocket". This is actually one of our older airplanes that was painted in Ferrari colors. From what I understand, it was painted to celebrate the close ties between Ferrari and Piaggio ( Ferrari owns part of Piaggio ) .

I also got the chance to test out our new touch screen EFB's (Electronic Flight Bag) which are really cool. In the past we used tablet PC's with a stylus, but these are much smaller and have a touchscreen to access important information easier.

I have been very busy lately with holidays and getting things done around the house, so it's been a while since I posted some pictures. I am currently in St. Petersburg, Florida at our company headquarters to do my six month check ride which is required by the FAA.

The checkride is basically the equivalent of taking your drivers license test every six months (but more difficult obviously) and if you fail, you will be required to do more training. If you fail again, then you may lose your job, so failing is no good.

The first pic is of my luggage under some interesting hotel room lighting, the second picture is from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico and the third is from Kalispell, MT.