Plaza Flights – Fun Scenic Flights for Everyone

Over 200 people have enjoyed scenic flights over the glittering lights of the KC Country Club Plaza and are pictured in the online Plaza Flights Hall of Fame. Plaza Flights are a wonderful Christmas tradition – you almost expect to see Rudolph and Santa flying across the evening sky. Intrepid aviators-to-be board a Cessna 172 at the KC Downtown Airport and are soon soaring over the lights of the city spanning from horizon to horizon.

Once airborne, the search lights from Power and Light District and the Sprint Center come into view as well as various downtown buildings lit up with cheery holiday lights. You can spot the rotating restaurant, Skies – it’s the thing that looks like a flying saucer on top of the Hyatt Hotel. From there, look just to the South for Crown Center and the Mayor’s Christmas Tree.

Soon you will be over the Country Club Plaza. Each building is outlined in sparkling Christmas lights. You can see the individual restaurants, shops and cars all illuminated by millions of little lights. You can also spot available parking spaces that are normally so elusive when you’re in your car. Don’t forget to view the Nelson Art Gallery, the new Bloch buildings are brilliantly lit from the inside out.
At this time, the airplane is going 100 miles per hour, but seems to orbit the Plaza at a leisurely pace. If a fellow is planning to pop the question to his sweet-heart, this is the time to do it. It’s happened three times so far on previous flights.

2008 Plaza Flights Hall of Fame
2007 Plaza Flights Hall of Fame
2006 Plaza Flights Hall of Fame
2005 Plaza Flights Hall of Fame
2004 Plaza Flights Hall of Fame

Out of the 200+ people pictured in the online Plaza Flights Hall of Fame, over 95% have never been in a small private plane before. This is indeed a discovery flight, where Plaza Flyers see that airplanes are a lot different than cars. Pilots steer with their feet on the rudder pedals while on the ground, and there is no gas pedal, only a throttle knob. Small airplanes are indeed small, or rather, cozy. They’re narrow so there’s less wind resistance.

After the flight, passengers receive a commemorative Plaza Flight pin or button, a completion certificate, and if they desire, their picture is proudly added to the Hall of Fame.

Plaza Flights are provided by Roger Dodger Aviation and KCplazaflights.com.

Can Air Shows Be Better?

Well at least someone is asking this question. Aero-TV interviewed a few of the notable Air Show names at the International Council of Air Shows 2007 convention.

Air shows can feature breathtaking aerial armadas and unique aircraft at the high end of the entertainment spectrum, or at the other end, single performers flying similar repetitive maneuvers in similar airplanes. Honestly, how many times can a Cuban 8 be entertaining?

photo by Alan Radecki Akradecki

Air shows are ripe for improvement, and this blog entry could be a laundry list of complaints, but instead we will list some positive examples of recent air show innovations that raise the bar for aviation entertainment…
Rocket Racing League rocket-planes
Self-launched jet-powered glider
Red Bull aerobatic helicopter

Sean D. Tucker is a long-time air show favorite. He may not have been the first to pioneer the audio-feed from the cockpit, but he is the best at it. During his performances he can talk directly to the crowd:
“Hey everybody, watch this…….whoa baby………..Yeah!”

Franklin’s Flying Circus presents a pirate-themed air show. It’s original but just a tad gimmicky. At least they don’t endlessly play Bette Midler’s “Wind Beneath My Wings” or Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA" during the performance like other air show acts.

Other notable crowd-pleasers are the huge formations of aircraft like RV’s or T-6’s or T-28’s that now appear annually over Oshkosh and the heritage flights of civilian-owned warbirds flying along side modern military fighters

Here’s the interview on Aero-TV:
Can Air Shows keep up with the times?



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See the Space Station From Your Home

It’s the 10th anniversary of the International Space Station. Unlike many other major international projects, you can actually see this one from your home.


The ISS zips around the earth at over 14,000 miles per hour, so anytime it comes into view overhead, you only have a few minutes to see it. The ISS appears as a bright dot against the backdrop of a starry night, so if you know exactly where and when to look for it, you will greatly increase your chances of seeing it.

NASA publishes instructions on how to see the ISS and an updated schedule of sighting opportunities from your city.


Here is the real-time location of the ISS over a moving map.

Here is some great footage of the ISS from Dirk Ewers of Hofgeismar, Germany…



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More info about the ISS 10th birthday at Aero-News.

Dogfights is “History”

The History Channel cancelled its popular Dogfights Series. When Dogfights first premiered on the History Channel we actually had parties where we would watch an episode of Dogfights, then climb in the flight simulators and fly the same missions in the same airplanes. How’s that for interactive entertainment?


The History Channel’s decision to cancel Dogfights after two seasons is the target of hundreds of critical comments on the official forums. According to the fans of the show, Dogfights was one of the History Channel’s most popular programs. Several of the angry comments are directed at the show that replaced Dogfights – Ice Road Truckers, which is not a historical documentary, but rather a “reality” show like those on other channels.

It seems there was an overall change of programming at the History Channel, and shooting down Dogfights was just part of the larger shift towards shows of little historical content. The History Channel still has history, but it also has programs like Human Weapon, Tougher in Alaska, UFO Hunters and Monster Quest. Things you definitely would not find in a history book.

Dogfights Season 1 and Season 2 are on Amazon.

For what it’s worth, the Dogfights official website is here. It’s interesting to note they had their own flight simulator game.

If you want to stick it to the man, here’s some YouTube clips from the popular series:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EadMxLadg18
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI3dkZ0qBnE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZmnVqkKapI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdCm5z2RpI8

Flight Simulator Multiple Monitors

After we released our first video featuring DIY Desktop Airliner Cockpit, several people emailed and asked how we set up the two monitors to work together. Actually, until then we thought it was just one of those things that “everybody” knows. Well, this reminded us that flight simulating is a growing hobby and new people are always climbing on board.

A flight sim pilot can use two monitors to effectively double the amount screen area he can observe at once. For example, the left screen can show the flight instruments and the view out the cockpit. The right screen can show the overhead panel, GPS, throttle quadrant, radio stack or ATC window. In Virtual Cockpit, the view spans all the way across both screens.

Or you can get creative and show flight instruments on one screen and see external views of your pretty airplane on the other.

Or get even more creative and use a projector to display the view out the front window on a large screen. Show your flight instruments on a conventional monitor.

There are a couple of ways to set up multiple monitors and we had a lot of material so we ended up making two free DIY videos (below). At least one of these methods should work for you. The only problem we’ve heard of so far (Oct 2008) is that Microsoft Vista Home Ultimate still can’t support multiple monitors with some new graphics cards like the nVidia GeForce 8800.

Part 1


Part 2


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Civil Air Patrol Aviation Business Academy

CAP and Evergreen teamed up recently and launched the first annual Capt. Michael King Smith Evergreen Aviation Business Academy held at the amazing Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum in McMinnville, Oregon.

Well that’s superb, and rare that youth have an opportunity to learn about aviation entrepreneurship in this way. Innovation is closely related to entrepreneurship and a way to eventually improve the aviation industry.

Parts of the aviation industry tend to treat their machines better than their customers. Customer service at the airlines is awful, but not because the pilots or management (or the TSA) lack a certain technical knowledge. Likewise, in General Aviation it’s hard to find and retain a good Flight Instructor. Again, not because the CFI’s lack a technical knowledge, but many lack a focus on the customer.

On the other hand, many Air Charter operators seem to be experts in meeting and exceeding customer expectations. These companies are also much smaller than the one-size-fits-all airlines and also tend to be rather entrepreneurial. In fact, you can find several air charter pilots that own the charter business and the airplane they’re flying.

This new Aviation Business Academy is very interesting but there’s currently very little information about it on the web. Here’s a press release written prior to the academy at this link
and some cool pictures of the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum here, but that’s about it.

The article in CAP Volunteer shows cadets presenting their aviation-related business plans. I bet that each cadet remembered to include a website in their business plan. It’s strange that the Aviation Business Academy apparently does not have one.

You can get the short article, and actually the entire Sep-Oct 2008 issue of the CAP Volunteer here.

2008 KC Air Show Videos

Just a couple of days after the 2008 Kansas City Air Show, there were several YouTube videos reporting the event. Nearly all the videos were terrible. Imagine someone pointing a camcorder at the sky during an earthquake and then showing you the video; several looked like that. One video was just a slide show of pictures. One video was actually just a train, no airshow just a dirty, squealing train. Stupid.

Ramsey Mohsen's excellent video stands apart from the mediocre. His 2008 KC Air Show video includes interviews with people in the crowd, a quick tour of a B-25 Mitchell, the Jet Powered Outhouse, and some Air Force Thunderbirds aerobatics.

But best of all, Ramsey interviewed Major T. Dyon Douglas from the USAF Thunderbirds. Very cool!

We will excuse Ramsey’s use of the most clichéd music in aviation history:




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Air Combat Training Simulators

One of our customers recently asked about the Air Combat Training Simulators (ACTS) machines pictured on our website and our videos.


There were two machines, ACTS1 and ACTS2 completed in early 2006. They were Roger Dodger Aviation’s first dedicated dogfighters and we flew hundreds of missions with them.

ACTS1 and ACTS2 are sturdy and heavy; built from wood, medium density fiberboard (MDF), and seats from a Dodge Caravan. The pilots view a large projected screen mounted on the wall and use the TrackIR system for view tracking. The TrackIR camera is mounted on a post in the pictures, but now it’s mounted on a HUD replica.

ACTS showed us that you shouldn’t build things that are difficult to climb in and out of. We discovered that a center-mounted joystick wasn't going to work well for this machine. People kept tripping over it, so we changed it to a side stick. We also cut out a section of the right sidewall to make it easier to enter/exit.

ACTS comes apart in sections to make it somewhat portable, but it’s still very awkward to try to move it anywhere. It was a real hassle to move it for the NY2LA for Diabetes fund raiser, and this led to the idea for the lighter, more mobile and more attractive Portable Aviation Combat Sim (PACS) DIY project videos we sell on DIYflightsims.com.

We sold the ACTS1 cockpit shell last week. We're still using ACTS2. There are several more pictures of ACTS1 on this page.