Friday, January 09, 2009

Gaston's Reserved, Again

Yes, I know, I once again reserved a cabin at Gaston's in hopes of finally making this annual pilot get-together. In the past my blog entries were titled "Gaston's or Bust" and they were all a bust. June 08 was the closet we would come to making the trip but at the last minute sold our room to a fellow Pilot and forum member of Pilots Of America (blue board) and we made the decision to head south to Lakeland Florida to partake of the Sun-n-Fun adventure.

Well, It's the new year and I'm looking forward to expanding my flights west, south west even and this trip will do just that. The forums are already buzzing with Gaston's chat, the Blue board, Purple Board and even Red Board have pilots interest peaking six months in advance!

Mary has already made it clear that she will not attend Gaston's. I have more vacation time available and she would rather use her vacation on destinations we would both enjoy and have things to do rather then make it an all weekend aviation theme type deal. To put it bluntly, she would rather not watch airplanes come and go all day in the heat and humidity. I'm ok with that, heck I wouldn't want to shop all day. So, with a compromise she has insisted I go play with the boys, gawk at all the toys and have fun.

With the thoughts of now attending Gaston's I really need to schedule my IR check ride. That's right readers, I haven't finished yet. Relax, I will get it done! Since Mary (and Santa) conspired to get me a new airplane toy, the Zaon XRX, I am giving some thought to upgrading my GPS. Currently I have a Lowrance Airmap 1000 as my back up and love the big screen and the great battery life. However, Lowrance does not have XM weather available and I'm very much interested in that addition to the cockpit tool bag. I'm looking at Garmin 396 and 496 units. I want to have weather available and have the ability to connect my Zaon Collision Avoidance System to the GPS to provide potential target on screen.

All this thinking and wish list stuff is still in the preliminary stages, it will take time to unfold. Until then I have plenty of time to flight plan and dream about flying to Gaston's!!

2 comments:

Rob said...

Sounds like you are thinking of flying down if you can? Are you going to be able to take the Archer and land on the grass?

I'm contemplating trying to go, but have to try and see what Becky thinks and if I can swing the finances. This year we also would like to take the kids to Disney in December, so I'm hoping for a good tax return to make Gastons a possiblity....

I believe Ted is going from Williamsport too...

Gary said...

I plan on flying the Archer but I'm going to land about 10 miles east at KBPK. I do have a cabin reserved si I'm all set.

Ted and I swapped PM's about flying down but I really want to get some "real" cross country in the Archer. I should have some open seats.