And last, but not least: Leonard flying his self-financed drone in Bremen, next to the Soccer Stadium of Werder Bremen: Youtube.
Still love it going up, once in a while with my friend Sven in Bremen, Germany for spin with his Cirrus SR22.
On a more somber note
I remember the day I heard that a plane of my flight school crashed a little more than a year after I was flying it the last time. Together with my mother-in-law Sigi and our friends Kanaan and Tobias we had a beautiful flight with this very modern Cessna 172S, equipped with auto pilot and GPS (which was very advanced for that time!) through the Hudson Corridor along Manhattan. Making a low turn around “The Lady” Statue of Liberty on to the Verrazano Bridge connecting Staten Island with Brooklyn.
The plane flown by a very experienced instructor was overloaded and crashed on the beach at Coney Island. Find some pictures from our beautiful flight and the disaster and the accident report from the NTSB on the N778LP page.
Check Ride
After quite a while (64.2 hrs flight time 134 t/o and landings in 13 month) I made my check ride in Teterboro, New Jersey on June, 8th 2003.
After my check ride for the Private Pilot License here is my ‘Maiden Flight’ with Petra as my first passenger and the third flight with Stefan (© Rainer Fehringer):
First Flight with Petra entering the East River in BrooklynYoutube
On the way to my License
And then there was the day: May, 18th 2003: My first cross country solo flight with a Cessna Skyhawk N54838 from Teterboro, New Jersey to Sullivan County International in Upstate New York!
My friends Rainer, Stefan and Miriam surprised me there and took these takes – Two calls and two pics:
Entering the traffic pattern – the call
Turning final – the call
The landing Youtube
Exiting the plane Youtube
June, 2nd 2003: Returning to Teterboro, New Jersey with the Cessna Skyhawk N98786 from my night cross country flight :Landing TEB, runway 24 Youtube
Videos
Links to flight videos of my friends Stefan, Rainer and me:
Stefan landing in Connecticut (watch the eyebrow!) 11/2002: Youtube
Rainer’s Night Landing FRG 11/02 Youtube
My first landings in Morristown, NJ (January, 19th 2003):
Rainer was courageous enough to sit in the back and to tape them. Very amusing, especially the rough landing #2! To see the videos double-click on the Icon
Landing Morristown, NJ #1 01/19/03 Youtub
#2 (quite rough) 01/19/03 Youtube
#3 01/19/03 Youtube
Landing back in Teterboro, NJ 01/19/03 Youtube
Landing in Caldwell, NJ 02/08/03 You-tube
Harbor Island, Bahamas
Stefan joined us with a Piper Warrior in the Bahamas! The trip took him three and a half days from New York. Rainer, Uschi and I made a trip around ‘the Cays’ and flew to Norman’s Kay (place where Carlos Lehder, accomplice of Pablo Escobar, had his hide-out for a while). Very little Island, a short and relatively narrow runway but very impressive! See also at the Picture section!
Arrival Stefan on April, 15th in North Eleuthera, BahamasYoutube
Rainer flying along the East Shore of Harbor Island 04/16/03 Youtube
Landing in Norman’s Kay, April,16th 2003 Youtube
Flying along Harbor Island, Hanne and Petra waving on the beach! 04/16/03 Youtube
Landing back in North Eleuthera 04/16/03 Youtube
The real thing
Well, after playing around for a while with the Flight Simulator, my friends Gerold & Stefan introduced me 2002 to the real thing.
What could be nicer than flying along Manhattan, what is more challenging than learning to fly in one of the busiest airspaces worldwide: New York?
Here are some pictures about flying in New York and the Bahamas.
Data-Industrial Complex
An interesting overview of several contributing factors for the result of the last election of the President of the United States is to be found on the “US Centre’s” blog of the London School of Economics.
How Trump’s campaign used the new data-industrial complex to win the election
The data that turned the world upside down
motherboard.vice.com/…/how-our-likes-helped-trump-win
An excellent overview about the state of the art Military psy-ops, Facebook data-mining and the possibilities and limits of influencing public opinion. In a way scary stuff, but important be aware about it.
The data that turned the world upside down
Background Paper on Michal Kosinski, a psychologist specialized in psycho-metrics, his invention of the five factor personality model “OCEAN” used to analyze big data through coming Facebook for “Likes” and “Dislikes” people give to posts. Furthermore it reads like a detective story about using scientific findings in order to influence elections and support Anti-EU groups in the Brexit vote 2016 by Nagel Farage who hired the company Cambridge Analytica.
I’m a reasonable man, get off my case.
Great Mandolin and strings
Democracies not attractive anymore?
How Stable Are Democracies? ‘Warning Signs Are Flashing Red’
Yascha Mounk is used to being the most pessimistic person in the room. Mr. Mounk, a lecturer in government at Harvard, has spent the past few years challenging one of the bedrock assumptions of Western politics: that once a country becomes a liberal democracy, it will stay that way.
Google and social research
US data scientist Seth Stephens‑Davidowitz on disturbing truth about our hidden desires, beliefs and prejudices by analyzing Google trends:
Everybody lies: how Google search reveals our darkest secrets
Everybody lies. People lie about how many drinks they had on the way home. They lie about how often they go to the gym, how much those new shoes cost, whether they read that book. They call in sick when they’re not. They say they’ll be in touch when they won’t.
Give me one reason
https://youtu.be/qThqvWFGIO4
Flying
Just found this nice clip of a Jordanian Airline pilot. Cheesy music but great video! Gee, I am missing to fly.
“House visit”
…an art event by the folks of Kubo Bremen: an impromptu exhibition at home in the apartment of Kay, a photographer. That’s where we met Peter Funken again.
Pretty cool, nice people and discussions.
