249 Years Ago, a group of brave American men declared our independence from Great Britain. This declaration would become, after years of toil and effort, the first successful Brexit, and the first step to the formation of the independent and free Republic of the United States of America.
So, Sonny Puzikas, the Russian emigre Spetsnaz/Systema trainer in the US, who has quite a following as a hard-core instructor, if you like that sort of thing, let the curtain slip a bit as he went gonzo over the US bombing Iran.
Not sure if he's mainly upset that the Israelis went through the best Russian-designed and manufactured air defense system outside of Russia like a hot knife through butter. Or, that the US followed up on that dismantling with some very effective bombing of the Iranian nuclear program without even being detected by the remains of that air defense system.
I get it.
If I was a Russian supporter, I'd likely be upset, if not scared as heck that the entire and vaunted Russian air defenses over its ally Iran can be defeated in detail by a modern western air effort.
It doesn't say much for the quality of Russki equipment in the face of western tech and pilots. Nor does it give much hope to the Russians if they decide to get frisky against the US.
Heck, it might tarnish his training business as he's teaching Russian fighting techniques to westerners - techniques that dare I say haven't exactly shown their worth in Ukraine and elsewhere.
However, he then crossed the line quite a bit in his unhappiness. and posted quite a lot on Facebook and did some live hot takes on it and went straight to classic Russian Antisemitism.
Basically, he's accusing the Jews of controlling the US government and President Trump.
The standard antisemitic tropes of Jews controlling the US Government. Right out of the Czarist Russian forgery of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Nice, at least he's true to historic Russian form.
Yet another antisemitic bit of BS: Puzikas' referring to Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu as Polish and "Melikowsky". Benjamin Netanyahu was born in Tel Aviv, Israel, and was born with the name Netanyahu. He's more Israeli than Puzikas is American, by far, that's for sure.
So no, I'd certainly not take any classes from Sonny Puzikas.
There's a ton of solid instructors out there who teach effective skills without the promotion of baseless conspiracy theories and antisemitism.
Our neighbor to the north celebrates its 158th birthday of its Confederation today.
So, Happy Canada Day to my Canadian friends, family, and readers.
Ne'er do well Quinton Marquise Allen from Detroit decided to rob a bank in Saginaw, and take a hostage while doing so.
The Michigan State Police then sent a drone over with a bottle of Faygo Red Pop.
When Quinton decided to Pop Up to get at the refreshing beverage, the MSP sniper Popped Off, and the hostage situation was fully and finally resolved, as was Quinton.
FOX10 News: Police used Faygo soda to lure suspect from bank before shooting him during hostage standoff
Faygo gets a couple new advertising slogans from this one:
"Faygo: The pop of choice of the MSP!"
and
"Faygo: Pop so good, you'd die for it."
Sunday was yet another great day for flying, no one had checked 914P out so I decided it needed some exercise. I decided to take a friend to Mt. Pleasant.
Got to the airport and the pre-flight went as expected.
Our neighbor beside our hangar had just taken his Cessna 170 out:
I pulled the plane out as he left and the start up was nice and normal as was the run-up.
I had decided to go VFR and got flight following arranged and took off from Runway 27R heading to the northwest.
I initially got to climb to 5,550, poking through the blue in between a very scattered layer of clouds.
As I got closer to Mt. Pleasant, a more solid overcast layer started appearing, so I called Great Lakes Approach and let them know I needed to descend to avoid clouds. Since I was VFR, going into clouds was a no-no. They stated altitude was at my discretion and they appreciated my calling them before I started descending.
Soon, I arrived about 10 miles out at Mt. Pleasant with the runway in sight. Two other planes were in the pattern to land with a third stating they were maneuvering above the airport at 3,500 feet. Since I was at 3,500, I descended for separation and let everyone know I would overfly the airfield and do a midfield downwind entry for Runway 27. I would have used 9 as the winds were calm and it would have been convenient, but the two other aircraft had stated they were going to 27 so I joined in accordingly.
I did a nice overflight and then dropped into a midfield downwind entry, by which time one plane had landed, and the other plane was already on base and separation was good.
I did a really nice landing, parked, and headed into the terminal and called for a shuttle to the casino.
Had a nice lunch at Johnny Rockets, hit the craps table and got slaughtered.
That's why it's called gambling and not a sure thing. Still, it was an enjoyable experience, nice dealers and nice folks around the table and I learned some things. Didn't bet the rent, so no serious loss other than play money, and that I'll win back the next time, maybe.
Got the shuttle back to the airport, did the preflight and then took off from Runway 9 as winds were again calm and no traffic was about, and headed to the southeast back to Pontiac.
I got yet another nice view of Flint.
Nice to get a higher aerial view. I'm typically under the hood when flying at Flint and tend to just see the runway on final.
Great Lakes Approach at the end of their airspace decided not to hand me off to Detroit and instead had me squawk VFR and contact Pontiac Tower, which was fine.
I already had the ATIS for Pontiac and after contacting them was told to enter the right downwind for 27R and was #2 to land, behind another aircraft.
Said aircraft decided to fly a bomber-sized pattern, so Tower finally told them to turn base, I then extended my downwind for spacing and turned base outside of them, and then landed with a decent landing. I had too much speed so had to bleed some off - which I seem to do often with N914P, and I need to work on that. So I had a lot more float than I wanted. But, I still landed on 27R to complete the trip.
It was a very nice, if quite hot, day to fly.
That's 1.9 and 2 landings.
Went to a friend's lake house to see the fireworks show.
Around here, each lake association holds a fireworks show on different nights as we get closer to Independence Day.
So on Friday night we arrived and the street was buzzing with people. We parked. Then we walked around and went to the lakefront side of the house and chatted with friends and had some adult beverages.
The house next door had a live band as part of the festivities, the Northville Folk Band, who did a rockin' good job. Singing popular tunes that could be heard and appreciated even across the Middle Straits Lake.
The sun started to set.
Impressive that a lake association put it on, and they did a great job doing so.
A great way to spend a Friday night outdoors with friends.
The weather was forecast to be rather nice today, and a plane was available.
So I gave Mr. B. a call and we arranged to meet.
I got N914P all pre-flighted and ready to go and after a weather brief filed IFR to see him in nothern Indiana.
Got my clearance, got the run up done,and took off flying runway heading climbing to 3,000 feet.
Pontiac was MVFR with a layer at 2500.
I let them know the cloud tops was 4,400 feet over Pontiac as I made it through the layer.
Above the layer all was calm and serene.
I got a nice overhead shot of Three Rivers Airport:
I got passed of to Great Lakes Approach and went through all their sectors through Kalamazoo until I got passed off to South Bend.
South Bend was busy. So much so they told did a broadcast to everyone who was VFR to not call them and stay out of their airspace until they had things under control.
Luckily I was IFR, so I went right over their airport at 6,000 feet.
South Bend then started getting me lower as I got close to Mr. B's Airport.
Got on the CTAF to announce my arrival and two dingbats were having a long, involved, conversation about airplane radio wiring on the frequency while people were trying to coordinate in the pattern, not helpful.
I did a decent if somewhat long landing as I hadn't quite been lowered enough altitude-wise in time, but all was well.
Met up with Mr. B., and we headed to his local Mexican restaurant which was very tasty. After that we got some local ice cream. We had a good time catching up, and then we headed back to the airport.
I got a weather brief, did the preflight and filed IFR home.
Mr. B. got a good shot of my takeoff.
It was a pretty uneventful ride home, more turbulent than the way outbound, and I was in a layer quite a bit as I was at 5,000 feet and the clouds decided they wanted to be there too.
I got out of the layer as Detroit Approach descended me to 4,000 feet, and I overflew Brighton Airport and the shooting range I go to is right near it.
Landing at Pontiac was fun with variable winds gusting to 20 typically from 300 degrees. I landed on 27L and did a good landing, with a lot of crosswind control, and then headed to the hangar.
I cleaned and refueled the plane and that was that.
It was the proverbial $200 Mexican and Ice Cream Flight (as opposed to the standard $100 Hamburger flight), and totally worth it to get to spend some time catching up with a friend.
That's 1.8 there with 1 good landing, and 1.9 back with another good landing and a smattering of actual IFR time.
I was invited by a friend yesterday to do some sporting clay shooting.
Sporting clays was explained to me as being: "Like golf, but with shotguns".
This was intriguing, and having never done it before, I said yes I'd gove it a shot.
So I met up with him at the Detroit Gun Club where he's a member and we got checked in.
I got a loaner gun, an Italian over/under 12 gauge, which turned out to be an over $14k shotgun. Very nice indeed. It did, however, have one quirk that made for an interesting time.
So we headed out to the sporting clay course.
Having not shot sporting clays before it was rather interesting.
You go from station to station and typically shoot 2 sets of two clays. The clays zip along at different angles and are rather a lot of fun to try and hit.
The quirk of the loaner shotgun was that right above the mechanism to open the action, there was a switch on top inline with the safety, that unbeknownst to me, when I opened the action, my hand also brushed and moved that small switch from one red dot to two.
It then quite surprisingly fired both barrels at once for a rather spicy shot at the first clay. Ouch.
I was surprised, my friend was surprised, the very annihilated clay was also surprised.
We figured out what was doing it, and I had to be very careful to check each time I closed the action as that switch moved with very little prompting.
So we shot at all 16 stations, and I steadily improved as we went.
Took quite a bit to figure out how much to lead the clay targets, not to mention where they were coming from at times. and I missed a lot starting out trying to figure things out.
I did manage to have a clean run at one station with all four targets hit, but I was typically 50/50.
Still it was a lot of fun, and I'd go do it again.
