Chris_Doane

Thanks. Also, I feel like this emoticon is appropriate here:

Thanks http://www.chrisdoan...011/12/05/solo/

http://www.chrisdoane.net/heliblog/2011/12/05/solo/

Me.

The red one I had two weeks ago was in the Autobahn trim but without the Navi. I was hoping it would more/less be a GTI sedan. It isn't.

No fair...the red one I had last week didn't have any options. Or rather, the one I had wasn't the Autobahn or Autobahn & Nav trim.

'12 Fisker Karma

Me flying the Robinson R44:

Seems you have not driven a Eco Turbo. I expect at least a V5 option here and not just a 4. As for Ride Hight I suspect it is either the Camo or missing trim here. I think in person on the finished car they will not leave it this high. Even AWD should not look like a 4x4 on a car like this. I did note the ATS at the end and wondered if you had video on them too or did Cadillac not pay you to shoot them too. Just kidding! Ha, no I have plenty of ATS video. I just figured no one would care about it now since the ATS showed up at the 'Ring with less camo.

Ha... *rolls eyes* A Canon Vixia, um...HF30 I think. I wish they made it that easy.

The little holes cut in the camo? Yea that's for the radar. Probably a V6 of some kind. Maybe a turbo or two. Towards the end, they pulled up next to two ATS prototypes. Really shows the size difference.

http://www.leftlanenews.com/cadillac-xts.html

I can.

LoL.. Congrats then? (which Mercedes?) Thanks. We hadn't planned on having kids until I'm out of school, guess we got about a year ahead of schedule... The commercial she was referring to is for the C-class. At least I hope, the other one that's been on a lot lately is the M-class and I really don't want an SUV. But that's an issue for another day. You don't want a C class. An Escalade can beat it in a 25 yard drag race.

LoL.. Congrats then? (which Mercedes?)

Thanks. Hah, you may have, yea. From a pure business standpoint, it didn't make much sense back then.

Thanks guys

After about 8 years, I resigned my position with Brenda Priddy & Co. early last week to start my own business. About 2 months ago I thought staying on part-time at BP & Co, while doing flight school, would work. More recently, however, it became apparent that the best choice for me would be going on my own. Certainly not an easy choice to make, but with the big cost of flight school, I've got to look at everything from a business standpoint now. http://www.facebook.com/ChrisDoaneAuto

LOL, LOL......I didn't even realize that was today! How are you doing bud? Not bad. It's been a different sort of year for me.

Coming back on National Coming Out Day....did you plan that?

They're right.

Emulating Jalopnik = dangerous.

Thanks. We don't touch down while running the pattern just yet. I attempt to bring it to a stop over the helipad at about a 5ft hover, and then we depart for another go-around from there. Ha, the other reason is, we haven't really started the part where I try to do the actual landing. You've got to have hovering down pretty well before you try and actually set it down. It's same story with taking off. I know it seems like it would be easy, but hovering is probably the hardest thing to learn. A lot of has to do with where you look. When you're trying to bring it to a hover, initially, instinct would have you looking down at the ground right in front/below you, but that's exactly what you DON'T want to do. What you want to do is have your eyes way out on the horizon. That's what I'm trying to fight through right now. When you see me bucking in that video, it's because my eyes have gone down. When I recovered, I basically forced myself to lock onto that tan hanger in the distance, and things got back under control pretty quickly. Your hands follow your eyes, so if you look down, you're going to screw up the cyclic (stick in your right hand.) The other big thing is that, with most activities, your balance point is under you...like when you ride a bike. In a helicopter, your balance point is the rotor disk above your head. That's pretty hard to get used to. I'm 32.

Sounds like that guy had a tail rotor failure on take off. Probably means the tail boom struck something.

Thanks While it was a nasty screw up, my instructor said he was more impressed that I was able to recover it. So I felt like an idiot, and sort of good, at the same time. I haven't used any flight sims. I'm not sure anyone even makes "real" helicopter controls for a desktop computer sim.