First "solo" flight in complex airplane

Today I took my wife and her brother up for a little flight around the local area. I had the airplane scheduled for tomorrow morning but since the wx was so nice, I called to see if I could move it up to today. Luckily it was available.



When we got to the airport we saw the lunch crowd was huge. There was a P-51 called Double Trouble 2, a Piper Mirage, a chopper "taxiing" down the runway all while 5-6 planes were moving toward runway 31. By far the busiest I've seen out there. Charly's sure is an attractive $100 hamburger joint (it IS good).



I preflighted and we all got in to start the engine. However, when I hit the starter I could hear it turning but the prop wasn't moving. I tried once or twice more, then called the owner to get his thoughts on how to fix it. He told me to turn the prop, by hand, a few times to see if that got the starter in a better state. I did that (maybe 1 turn) and the prop turned right over - a few seconds later and the engine was warming up.

We followed a few airplanes down to 31, worked our way into a little spot to do a quick run-up, and took off.



Wheels up a few seconds later and we started our tour (the GPS track is to the right here).

I did a loop over the middle peninsula, down to do a touch and go at Newport News (with a crummy touchdown) and it was back to JGG to land. It was a fun 1.0 hour flight with great weather.

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