Posts Tagged ‘training’

Dealing with Weather

Posted by Brian and Bailey Pruett on Saturday, April 24th, 2010
No Joke. This was one of the better weather reports I could find for our flight yesterday. If you look close, you can see the yellow arrow points at our approximate route. They didn't waste any words!

No Joke. This was one of the better weather reports I could find for our flight yesterday. If you look close, you can see the yellow arrow points at our approximate route. They didn't waste any words!

Yesterday I soloed on the last airstrip  that we are currently using. It feels so good to be at this point, but I am realizing quickly that I find landing and taking off to be the easiest part. In fact, I feel a sense of relief when I circle to land at any of these airstrips because for me right now, that is the easy part. What is a challenge is flying in all the weather here. There is no real weather reporting between where we takeoff and where we land and all of our airstrips are located right in the middle of what our chief pilot calls “the weather factory.” It is always changing and keeps us on our toes.

Bailey is a big help in this area because she is now using the HF radio to call our missionaries and get weather reports. She then relays the weather to me in the airplane via the HF radio. Some days the HF works great, other days it is just a bunch of distracting static. However, it is the best thing we have right now so we are making it work for us. There is a lot for Bailey and I to learn these days about how to deal with all the radio calls and weather.

We recently had a flight planned to shuttle supplies between two locations, but when the rain came we had to throw off some extra weight and give up on our plans so that we could deliver the important cargo to the missionaries who were waiting for it at their airstrip. We took off in the rain and as you can see from the video, had a good time navigating around clouds to get to the most challenging airstrip I’ve ever experienced.

Motorcycles And Idiots

Posted by Brian and Bailey Pruett on Friday, August 21st, 2009

Jump at the Dump from Brian Pruett on Vimeo.

A very non-extreme motorcycle video of us posing as guys who actually know how to ride motorcycles! Mine is the white XR400 with the low flying fat guy in the black helmet.

I came across this video in my collection and it reminded me of the fun times we had in training “learning to ride dirtbikes so we would be safer riding on the field.” It seemed a lot easier to talk our wives into it if we played the safety card-so we did. I don’t how any of us thought it was a good idea to combine the words “dirtbikes” and “safety” into the same sentence but we did.

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Racing Through Pain

Posted by Brian and Bailey Pruett on Tuesday, July 28th, 2009

The Tour De France has just ended. It is almost inhuman what these cyclists can endure. This year the winner, Alberto Contador, rode 2,141 miles in 21 stages which took him a mere 85.8 hours. How is that even possible?! It takes training, and lots of it. To put it in perspective, that is the distance from our home town in Santa Maria, CA to Nashville TN. When I drove that stretch in my car it took me about 35 hours. (more…)

Where Have I Gone in 30 Years?

Posted by Brian and Bailey Pruett on Monday, June 22nd, 2009

Makati skyline from our window.

Today is my true 30th birthday and the first time in 23 years that I have celebrated it on the proper day! It is true that I was born on June 23rd, but I was born on the 23rd in Makati, Philippines, not in the United States. How awesome is it that this year I get to celebrate after only waiting 364 short days! (more…)