Aerial pictures of North Myrtle Beach

Taking off from the Grand Strand Airport (CRE).

Barefoot Landing.

Looking back at the airport.

Turning out over the ocean before heading back to Raleigh Executive (TTA).

Nothing but water out of the right side of the plane.

North Myrtle and Cherry Grove. You can see para-sailors.

North Myrtle and Cherry Grove, looking north up highway 17.

Looking south back at the airport.

Landing video at Myrtle Beach

Video of me landing at the Grand Strand airport yesterday.

Airline flying pictures

Had a chance to get some good pictures earlier this week from the plane both going and coming back from NYC. The flight was from RDU to LGA in a CRJ900. The flight to LGA went up to I believe 32,000 feet and took about an hour, the flight coming back cruised at 28,000 feet and took about an hour and fifteen minutes. The weather was great for "big plane" flying.

Shortly after departure from runway 23R at RDU, so over Morrisville, about 6:25am.

Nice picture looking towards the sun with the misty clouds down below.

Same as above.

Our plane for the trip to NYC, CRJ900. We flew on the same thing back to RDU.

Shorty after departure from runway 4 at LGA, we made a left turn towards the northern part of Newark. This is a picture of the Hudson River looking south, Manhattan Island on the left, New Jersey on the right. The USAirways flight that crashed in the Hudson went down about 6-7 miles past the bridge you can see going over the river.

Somewhere over the northern Virginia on a beautiful day. I love how dark the sky gets at higher altitudes.

Falls lake with a small grass strip just north of Durham. The highway you see is I-85.

On the downwind to runway 5L at RDU. Good view looking east of the interchange where NC-147 (Durham Freeway) dumps out onto I-40.

Flying to La Guardia tomorrow

The wife's family is heading to NYC tomorrow for a long weekend. Our flight leaves RDU at 6:15am and is due to arrive at La Guardia (LGA) a little before 8am. Here's a few good pictures of LGA, all from Airliners.net. I'll have pictures/videos of our actual flight next week sometime.

Flying Pictures

Just some more random flying pictures. The pictures show:

1. Flying over Raleigh, a good view of the RBC Center, Carter Finley Stadium, and the NC State Fair Grounds. Right in front of the wingtip you can see a little bit of the clearing around RDU.
2. Kenan Stadium and Carmichael Gym (where Michael Jordan used to tear it up) a couple of years ago.
3. Durham Bulls Athletic Park (DBAP) and the American Tobacco District, a couple of years ago. You can see the construction of the Durham Performing Arts Center on the right.
4. Seeing the clouds with their own shadows gives some cool perspective... at least for me.

Raleigh Executive to Halifax-Northampton Regional Airport

I was finally able to get my brother up in the plane on Friday after a few months of rain-outs and low-ceilings. I got off work a couple of hours early and drove down to Sanford to get ready while my brother drove up from down south. The plan was to go to Halifax-Northampton Regional Airport (IXA), which opened last year just south of Roanoke Rapids, NC. It was about 84 miles one way, and the flight path took us directly over downtown Raleigh.

The weather was very hot, about 91 degrees. There was a convective sigmet (basically big and powerful thunderstorms) about 100 miles to the west. I was a little concerned by it, but felt confident that the weather would be no factor for us.

Crawling around on the hot pavement during pre-flight checking the wheels and the underside of the plane was brutal. I was in a rush to get the plane started so we could have some air movement while we were on the ground.

Even though it was hot the air was surprisingly smooth and pretty hazy. There were scattered clouds about 5,500', so I decided to level off at 3,500 for the first half of the flight. It wasn't as high as I would like to have been, but good enough. We had a great view of Cary and Raleigh on the way up and got some great pictures. I always enjoy flying over familiar places. Here's a picture of Carter-Finley Stadium and the RBC Center.

As we approached IXA there was only one other plane taking off. They headed off in the opposite direction from us so no big deal. We made left traffic for runway 20 and greased the landing. A picture of the final approach to IXA is below.

The FBO was already closed for the night so we just taxied back to the runway and took back off to the southwest back to TTA. The plan was to climb to 4,500' for cruise. About 4,000 I started to notice the apparent lack of visibility, and realized that I was arguably in a VERY thin cloud that really couldn't be seen, but did cause a pretty quick decrease in visibility. I immediately descended back down to 3,500' to avoid going out of VFR conditions.

The flight back was somewhat uneventful. We went back over downtown Raleigh and NC State University just like before and made our way down US-1 to TTA. There were several other planes in the pattern, but we fit right into the left downwind for runway 3 and made another very smooth landing. The ride was pretty much bump free. They call that ego flying because it makes you feel like you're really good (even though I know better).

The photos below are 1) looking south down Fayetteville Street in downtown Raleigh, 2) NC State's campus, 3) pretty cloud picture, and 4) final approach to runway 3 at TTA.

Flying Picture of the day/week/month/whatever

Awesome weather picture taken somewhere between Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) and Fort Lauderdale (FLL). That's one heck of an office view. Original image location at Airliners.net.