30 Days of 30,000 Feet: A blog about taking a 30 day flight challenge.

I was recently challenged to take up to 30 flights in 30 days and write about it. This is a blog of that experiment.

The rules were simple: I had to be in the air on at least one paid revenue flight each day, and I could only spend up to 4 hours total on the ground between flights.

As you’ll see from the first few posts, I started out with a very basic question. How long can I go without sleeping? And then some more complicated ones. What does this experience teach us about humanity? And what are all these people doing when they get on planes every day?

This is the story of a private pilot who wanted to fly 30 days in 30 different airplanes in 30 different cities with 30 different passengers before turning 30 years old. The challenge was accepted and in just 11 months, all requirements were met.

Risks were taken, friends were made, and life-long followers were gained. This blog will tell the rest of the story of the flight challenge that changed the course of many people’s lives forever.

This website is a place for telling stories about life as a new pilot. The articles are vignettes that explore different aspects of aviation, or provide insight into the process of learning to fly. If you’re interested in flying, but don’t know much about it, you can gain some insight from these posts. If you’re a current or former pilot, you can get an idea of what it’s like to be learning to fly in 2020.

I started flying lessons in July 2019 and received my private pilot certificate in November 2020. I hadn’t flown much since then, so I decided to take on a challenge to get back into the swing of things and re-energize my love for aviation: take 30 flights in 30 days.

With this blog, I hope to share some of my experiences as I explore this amazing world of flying and all the things that go with it.

I’ve always been fascinated by the stories of pilots who are forced to make an emergency landing in a field or on the side of a highway. I imagine that it takes a great deal of skill, knowledge, and courage to land an airplane anywhere other than the intended airport. In fact, it takes so much skill that most pilots never have to do it in real life. It is rare enough that there are not many good resources for learning how to do it.

The only resource I could find was a YouTube video from Cessna titled “How to Land Anywhere” where a pilot explains what he does before and during these types of maneuvers. He mentions that he has landed on highways and dirt roads, but he has never had to land in a field with crops or tall grass. Crop fields are one of the most likely places you would be forced to land, given their widespread availability. On the other hand, they are also considered one of the most dangerous types of fields to land in due to the uneven surface and potential for foreign object damage (FOD) ingestion by the engine.

I figured that if I was going to learn how to safely land in a crop field, I should start with something slightly less dangerous. The city park

White Portland cement or white ordinary Portland cement (WOPC) is similar to ordinary, gray Portland cement in all aspects except for its high degree of whiteness. Obtaining this color requires substantial modification to the method of manufacture, and because of this, it is somewhat more expensive than the gray product. Its major use is in decoration, for which purpose it is used alone or with pigments.

White Portland cement has essentially the same properties as gray Portland cement, but differs in fineness and color. White cement is made from raw materials containing little or no iron or manganese, the substances that give conventional cement its gray color. The manufacturing process for white cement is the same as that used for gray cement, except for the change in raw material composition. To obtain the desired whiteness, white cement manufacturers must use raw materials with a low content of coloring elements and carefully control the manufacturing process. The primary difference between white and gray cements is in the degree of fineness to which they are ground; white cements normally have a higher level of fineness.

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In mortars where water retention is important

White Portland cement or white ordinary Portland cement (WOPC) is similar to ordinary, gray Portland cement in all aspects except for its high degree of whiteness. Obtaining this color requires substantial modification to the method of manufacture, and because of this, it is somewhat more expensive than the gray product.

White Portland cement has essentially the same properties as gray cement, except for color. It is readily available throughout North America. The color of white cement is determined by its raw materials and the manufacturing process. Metal oxides (Fe2O3, Mn2O3, Cr2O3) contribute to the color of the clinker and the cement and influence its chroma (relative purity) and tone (lightness or darkness). Chromium oxide is a particularly effective additive for producing bright-blue cements. In contrast, iron oxide produces yellowish-brown tones and manganese oxide produces pinkish-beige tones. The chroma of white clinker increases with increasing amounts of these oxides up to a limit that depends on the chemical composition of the raw materials used, which are primarily limestone (CaCO3), clay or shale (SiO2 + Al2O3), sand (SiO2), and iron ore (Fe2O3