For those who’ve requested a picture of the Flying Carpet…
Greg
Author: Greg Brown
Greg writes the "Flying Carpet" column in AOPA Flight Training magazine, and books about flying and pilots. He's also a noted photographer.
Greg’s latest delivered “Down to Earth” series Fine Art Metal Print
I never imagined my “Down to Earth” series terrestrial photos would prove as popular as my aerial shots.
Here’s a flush-framed 13″ x 19″ Sunset over the Coconino County Fair Fine Art Metal Print, newly arrived for delivery.
Greg
“Off Limits?” Greg’s April, 2018 Flying Carpet column
Adventures in restricted airspace
Restricted airspace is something we pilots study and then studiously avoid.
Fortunately, it’s limited enough in most places to easily bypass. But here in the Intermountain West, huge swaths of the stuff can dictate 100-mile detours.
Jean and I regularly experience this flying from Flagstaff to Alamogordo, New Mexico to visit family. To bypass 135 miles of restricted airspace encompassing White Sands Missile Range, we must steer east past Socorro and then 90 miles south, or southeast to El Paso and turn north.
Normally we take the shorter northern route. But when weather recently shrouded northern New Mexico, we launched via El Paso.
En route, we reflected on restricted-airspace lessons we’ve learned…
**Read Greg’s entire column, “OFF LIMITS?“** (Mobile-friendly version HERE.)
Photo: Arizona Highway 85, viewed from 100 feet.
(This column first appeared in AOPA Flight Training magazine.)
Greg
©2018 Gregory N. Brown
If you enjoyed this story, you’ll love Greg’s book, Flying Carpet: The Soul of an Airplane. Autographed copies available!
“Cloud Wings,” Greg’s March, 2018 Flying Carpet column
Earning your wings requires hand-eye coordination, but instrument flying (IFR) is a brain game.
Yes, mastering flight by tiny needles is tough, but navigation, holds, and approaches are exciting and fun. And while IFR may be the hardest rating, it’s also the most safety-enhancing, rewarding, and practical. When I earned my cloud wings forty years ago this month, my flight-completion rate doubled overnight to over 90%.
Instrument flying, of course, gets you where you’re going without sight of the ground, and “instrument approaches” deliver you safely to landing.
As with VFR cross-countries, instrument flight plans are crafted around checkpoints, but using predefined fixes from an IFR chart. These days, thanks to GPS and moving maps, we can fly great distances and shoot programmed instrument approaches almost as readily as by looking out the window.
But it wasn’t always that easy…
**Read Greg’s entire column, “CLOUD WINGS“**
Photo: GPS Runway 3 LPV instrument approach to Flagstaff, Arizona.
(This column first appeared in AOPA Flight Training magazine.)
Greg
©2018 Gregory N. Brown
If you enjoyed this story, you’ll love Greg’s book, Flying Carpet: The Soul of an Airplane. Autographed copies available!
Poppies and Pinecones: Greg’s latest Fine Art Photography Metal Prints
Flower Power!
I photographed “Bradshaw Mountains Poppies” north of Phoenix near Black Canyon City, Arizona.
Nowhere is the power of numbers more boldly reflected than in these fields of Mexican and Golden poppies captured from a mile in the air. (Available in both horizontal and vertical formats.)
See all my latest “Views from the Flying Carpet” aerial Fine Art Metal Prints, including “Cloud Quilt,” “Earthbound Rainbow”, “Flaming Autumn Aspens,” and a new vertical crop of my iconic, “Sunset Rains.” (I’ve received numerous requests for that image to fit vertical spaces, but it took me awhile to get it just right.)
The Great New Year’s Pine Cone Drop!
And here’s my latest “Down to Earth” terrestrial Fine Art Metal Print, “The Great Pine Cone Drop,” celebrating New Year’s at downtown Flagstaff’s historic Old Weatherford Hotel.
See all my latest “Down to Earth” prints including, “Supermoon Rises over Kachina Wetlands.”
Many thanks to all who have invested in my photography products to date, including Fine Art Metal Prints, and Pilot Achievement Plaques.
Happy New Year!
Greg
Celebrating five years since Greg’s first solo fine art print exhibition
Wow! Five years have already passed since my first solo “Views from the Flying Carpet” photography exhibition.
Thank you, friend, fellow pilot, and Master Printer Richard Jackson (above left) for starting me down this path, and former Northern Arizona University College of Arts & Letters Dean Michael Vincent for inviting this first solo exhibition that led to numerous others.
And a special thanks to all you good folks who have supported my passions for flying and photography by investing in my Views from the Flying Carpet and “Down to Earth” series Fine Art Metal Prints, and Pilot Achievement Plaques since then!
Here’s wishing you the Happiest and Healthiest of New Years for 2018!
Greg
“Special Girl,” Greg’s February, 2018 Flying Carpet column
The romance of flight comes in many flavors, so when my friend Andrew requested a “huge favor,” I didn’t know what to expect.
Andrew formerly edited our local entertainment weekly, for which I’d provided aerial photos. An avid outdoorsman, he was eager to explore Arizona from above, so I’d invited him on flights to Tucson and Lake Havasu City. Instantly he was hooked on both the views and the controls. But that was months ago.
“What’s this ‘huge favor?’” I asked, surprised.
“I’ve met this special girl, Rachel,” he replied, “and I’m planning fun things to do together. So suddenly I got this idea… Would you consider taking us flying? It would be a total surprise for her.” Coincidentally, I already had a fitting mission planned: my semiannual rendezvous with buddy and former neighbor Gary at Payson Airport—Gary motorcycles from Phoenix, while I travel by Flying Carpet.
“Would you and Rachel care to join us for breakfast?” I offered, “Grab a separate table if you like. We’ll sightsee Sedona on the way back!”
“That sounds awesome!” said Andrew. “And we’ll definitely join your table because Rachel is a very social person.” Later, Andrew texted downloaded photos of Payson Airport’s Crosswinds Restaurant. “Is this where we’re eating?” he asked. I replied affirmatively with restaurant views of the scenic Mogollon Rim. My friend’s enthusiasm made me feel increasingly honored that he’d involve me in such a personal mission.
When Andrew introduced me to Rachel at Flagstaff Pulliam Airport, I immediately saw the magic that attracted him to her. A dynamic, outgoing professional woman, Rachel sparkles with humor. When I cranked up the Flying Carpet’s radios she asked, “Greg, are you gonna say that ‘copy, roger, affirmative, and negative’ stuff?”…
**Read Greg’s entire column, “SPECIAL GIRL“**
Photo: Andrew and Rachel ‘play airplane’ at Payson Airport, Arizona.
(This column first appeared in AOPA Flight Training magazine.)
Greg
©2018 Gregory N. Brown
If you enjoyed this story, you’ll love Greg’s book, Flying Carpet: The Soul of an Airplane. Autographed copies available!
“Dark, Scary Night,” Greg’s January, 2018 Flying Carpet column
“Beware—the airport you fly into every day is not the same airport at night,” my friend Donna Wood observed last year.
As a new private pilot, Wood had invested in a Cessna 182 and launched on ambitious regular flights between her Detroit home and Charleston, South Carolina, where she has family and business.
Wood is exceptionally careful and diligent, but 18 months after earning her wings, she’d experienced a scare. Battling u
nforecast headwinds from South Carolina with her nonpilot husband, Roger, the couple had arrived home after dark.
“I was legally night current,” Wood said the next morning, “but wasn’t planning on night flight.” Her first challenge was finding urban Oakland/Troy Airport (VLL) under Detroit Class Bravo airspace, landlocked by obstacles and buildings. “All I saw were lights, everywhere.” Then, on the downwind leg of the traffic pattern, the runway lights—activated by a previous aircraft—went out.
Rattled, she keyed the mic too quickly to reactivate them. Fortunately, her former CFI Wayne Hendrickson was waiting to help hangar the airplane, and triggered the lights with his handheld radio.
Now flustered, Wood turned final for Troy’s obstructed 3,549-foot runway, high and too fast. So, she went around. But this time she flew downwind too near the runway and overshot final, destabilizing her approach. This began a dangerous chain of events…
**Read Greg’s entire column, “DARK, SCARY NIGHT“**
Photo: “Detroit’s Oakland Troy Airport is surrounded by obstructions, thought-provoking even in daytime.”
(This column first appeared in AOPA Flight Training magazine.)
Greg
©2017 Gregory N. Brown
If you enjoyed this story, you’ll love Greg’s book, Flying Carpet: The Soul of an Airplane. Autographed copies available!
My 45th year as a Pilot!
Today I celebrate 45 years as a licensed pilot. (My checkride was also the day before Thanksgiving that year.)
Rather than reminisce anew, here’s my column from five years ago, “Forty years aloft,” about how different and yet similar piloting was back then. (Be sure to click “read entire column” near bottom of post.)
What an adventure this has been! Here’s wishing another 40 years of fun for all of us aviators!
Greg
PS: If anyone’s interested in some stories over all those years, check out my book, Flying Carpet: The Soul of an Airplane, available in print and ebook.
Photo: Greg & Jean at Lebanon-Warren County Airport, Ohio, on a 1977 day trip to Kings Island Amusement Park. See more photos here.
©2012, 2017 Gregory N.Brown
(This column first appeared in AOPA Flight Training magazine.)
If you enjoyed this story, you’ll love Greg’s book, Flying Carpet: The Soul of an Airplane. Autographed copies available!
“We’re So Vain,” Greg’s December, 2017 Flying Carpet column
“You’re So Vain…you flew your Learjet…to see the total eclipse of the sun,” taunted my friend Tom Lippert from the old Carly Simon song.
We laughed because he and his wife Laurel had just flown their Cessna 182, Henry, from Truckee, California, to meet our Flying Carpet in Hailey, Idaho for this year’s celestial event. Jean and I had originally planned to fly to Oregon, but amid predictions of gridlocked airports and roads I’d phoned Laurel and Tom, asking if and where they planned to view the eclipse.
“Greg, that’s three months away!” Laurel had chuckled. But upon learning that hotels and airport ramps were already filling, she proposed we rendezvous in Sun Valley where friends would loan us their condo. For 38 years, Jean has endured stories about the time I flew to Canada for a mid-winter total solar eclipse, on a weekend she had to work. (Flying Carpet, March, 2002) Now, finally, I hoped to share the experience with her.
As media hype grew, however, so did our concerns. Would there be room to land and park? Would the weather cooperate? Could we count on ground transportation? Should we bring groceries, assuming restaurants would be full and stores empty?
Then there was the route—traversing high mountains across Arizona, Utah, and Idaho, and transitioning Salt Lake City’s mountain-ringed Class Bravo airspace…
**Read Greg’s entire column, “WE’RE SO VAIN“** (Mobile link here.)
Top Photo: “Tom and Laurel Lippert eclipse-watching with Greg and Jean, at Galena Summit, Idaho.” Lower Photo: “Colander holes cast multiple images of the pre-totality eclipse.” SEE MORE PHOTOS!
(This column first appeared in AOPA Flight Training magazine.)
Greg
©2017 Gregory N. Brown
If you enjoyed this story, you’ll love Greg’s book, Flying Carpet: The Soul of an Airplane. Autographed copies available!