On a beautiful summer day we embarked on a rescue to Maryland to save three dogs from a kill shelter. Pilots Pete Lehmann and Jonathan Plesset suited up and took the Piper on the 2:00 hr flight. Upon leaving Maryland the pilots had an engine issue that required them to make an unexpected landing 10 minutes into the flight. On the ground as we sorted out the maintenance issue the dogs were overjoyed to be on their way. Jonathan had some difficulty keeping the dogs in place and needed to tie the dogs down to keep from losing his arm. Low and behold one of the dogs broke free and decided to test the runway for himself to see if he could run fast enough to get airborne down runway 27. Happily the dogs realized that they needed to be inside the plane to fly.
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- At 7:30am we arrive at the hanger and begin the process of pre-fligting the airplane. When we pre-flight we check the airplane over to make sure it is fit for flight.
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- Next we move on to the planning process where we check all the available weather sources, plot the trip on our iPad GPS, and put a little fuel in the pilot courtesy of Dunkin Donuts
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- Inside the plane we also plot our course on the planes GPS as a backup to our iPad GPS. We fly the course all while talking to various control facilities and ground centers.
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- Coming back to Pittsburgh we encountered some clouds. We had to ascend to 8500 feet to get over these clouds. We felt like the Millennium Falcon flying towards Cloud City
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- Two of our passengers skipped the inflight meal and movie and instead caught up on some Z’s
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- Our most rambunctious passenger managed to chew through her leash. Notice that we had to use the rope usually reserved for tying the airplane to the ground as a makeshift leash. Bad doggie.
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- We landed in Frederick about 1:30 after we departed Allegheny. We met with some great people and picked up three doggies for this trip.
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- On the ground back in Pittsburgh where we delivered our dogs. They were great passengers and we were sad to see them go. We are happy to know that these dogs were adopted into their fureverhomes
