I grew up in an aviation family. No influence has been bigger or more encouraging to my dreams of flight than my father’s.

Dad is a Certified Flight Instructor (CFI) and served as an Airline Transport Pilot (ATP) with American Airlines for over 30 years, flying some of the biggest and best metal in the industry. Today, he teaches down in Texas, keeping his skills sharp training new pilots.

As my sim (and real!) adventures you’ve been watching have unfolded, he’s been there coaching me and pushing me to be better, sharper, more on the ball.

Sounds like a pretty good opportunity for a show, doesn’t it? Father and son, flying together?

We thought so too.

Introducing Flying With Dad, Episode 1!

To stay up to date on all the Flying With Dad episodes, see the Flying With Dad playlist on YouTube.

Siskyou KSIY to Weed O46

This first episode takes us to northern California, in Siskyou county near the town of Montague. The goal is a flight from Siskyou County (KSIY), down South to a small airfield (O46) in the town of Weed, boxed in all sides with mountains, with IFR conditions preventing us from visually navigating the terrain. We need to fly a precise departure out of Siskyou and a precise approach down to minimums at Weed in order to break out safely and see the runway for landing.

There’s a lot to learn here, from an in-depth chart briefing to plenty of practice with the Garmin G1000 running a flight plan and making use of both the PFD and MFD glass to gain and maintain full situational awareness despite having no visibility.

Dad brings his A-game to teach all the aspects we need for a successful flight; I come out confident and we nail the approach, get visual at minimums, and land safely.

I’m sure they won’t all feel this easy.

Finding Our Stride

New shows have a lot of learning to do in their first few episodes. We think we’ve got good raw materials - from the Foreflight integration to the interesting locales, to the interplay between us as pilot and CFI. But there’s so much more we can do to really make future episodes shine. Interviews, step-by-step diagrams, checklists, instant replays, multiple camera angles … the list goes on.

There’s probably even an opportunity for us to fly for real together, maybe for a Very Special Episode one of these days.

As we go, I encourage you to leave your thoughts and suggestions for improvement as YouTube comments so we can make better episodes that are truly tailored to what you’d like to see. We think there’s an audience out there for this content; we hope to find you and give you a great experience.

Stay tuned for Episode 2, when we head out to Telluride, CO for a fly-in skiing vacation!