S&T Swim Club meet in Columbia

 News from Rolla: Benjamin and his club had a swim meet at Mizzou this weekend.

 

Airways Aviation ESMA visit

We visited Airways Aviation ESMA in Montpellier this weekend. This is the school where Frédéric did his dispatcher training in 2009. 

The hangar at ESMA

The fleet

Testing it out and chatting with current students

Flying the simulator at ESMA

We were able to group the visit with a trip to Mermoz Academy at Nimes as well. Noah got to speak with current students and fly another simulator. 

Then we visited the center of Nimes since we were there. Sunny southern France, they said. 

Sunday we attended church with our friends the Dauners in Marseille and went to their house for lunch before catching our flight back home. 

Waiting for our plane

On our way back home

More Flying

This blog used to be all about swim meets. Now it's all about flying.

Noah got to fly two days in a row and his instructor is nearly ready to release him to fly "solo nav" - meaning he can fly further afield on his own versus just short local flights.

In contrast to learning to drive, flying solo is part of the normal course of instruction and requirements before obtaining a pilot's license. 

The weather turned out to be not so great on Tuesday, so the instructor took advantage of not being able to fly far to have Noah do a lot of exercises.

In Noah's words: "It was a practice 'end of the world flight': airspeed indicator failure, flap failure, engine failure, flight control failure, alternator failure, radio failure, field landing exercises, engine vibration, blind flight exercises, and ground fire."

Day 1: not super weather

Day 1

Day 2: he took a friend along, who took photos

Sunshine

We've finally had some long overdue sunshine here the past few days. This winter has been even more dreary than usual, so it is always nice to have a break in the gray weather.