A recent post triggered some nostalgia about my flying days. I realized that I had not yet seen any pilots here--much less flying stories.

One of my favorites:
One of our club members taxied a Cessna 150 into a post at a remote airport--putting a "dent" in the wing about the size of a basketball. Some suggested it would still fly, but--mindful of our liability---we dispatched our mechanic to deal with it.
Several of were gathered at the airport when he returned--he had used several rolls of duct tape to fashion a new leading edge over the dent. He non-chalantly stated that it still needed a lot of rudder to keep it flying straight.
He went on to effect a more permanent repair---and I think the club member got some new glasses.....

Hum? Only Linux using "pilot" that I know doesn't post here, I only see him occassionally at LUG meetings, but he is a genuine former pilot (grounded on medical). Formerly of one of the larger UK/European airlines, former RAF etc etc and a "dyed in the wool" gentoo user. Nice bloke, with some excellent "sea stories".

I used to fly, but lost my medical over 10 years ago. I still go up once in a while with other pilot friends of mine and dream of happier times... About the coolest thing that ever happened to me was on a flight I was making from San Jose Ca to Sacramento Ca. I was on a VFR flight over the Sacramento delta and a pair of F-16s came up beside each wing. I was flying a Piper Archer (top speed of about 120 knots) so they had to lower their landing gear and flaps just to go slow enough and not stall! I switched one of my comms over to Guard to see if they wanted me to do something, no communications either verbally or visually so I figured they were just out having some fun. Anyways after a few minutes of formation flying they cleaned up their aircraft, pulled out ahead of me, hit their afterburners and left me in the dust. :-)

How about doing touch and gos at Boeing field in Seattle (as a student pilot)
Short runway--student pilots in Cessna 150 doing touch and gos
Long runway--student pilots in Boeing 747s doing touch and gos

AND--at that field--it was quite common to reverse the pattern at some random point in the day.