Vectors To Final

Today I took up my 17th "first time in a small plane" passenger - my son! The whole family (Dad, Mom, and Son) went down to South Carolina to visit with family for a few hours. The SR22 made the trip in 1.5 hours each way. Had a little trouble picking up our IFR clearance in both directions. I was picking it up from approach right after departing the airport and Norfolk had some confusion when looking up my flight plan in the morning and Charlotte just ignored me for a while in the afternoon. Thankfully it was severe clear out so I didn't have issues with avoiding clouds while waiting for clearance. We hooked Evan up with some swimming earplugs. They stayed in his ears well enough. They don't go in the ear canal, which is good because his 8 week old ears are very small, but that means they only block 20 or so decibels instead of 30 of so. He was quite fussy in the car on the way to the airport and quite fussy when we finally got him situated in the airplane in h...

Today I made my first solo flight in the turbo version of the Cirrus SR22. Had planned to shoot a few approaches but found that the GPS data cards were out getting updated. That meant the GPSs had no database of waypoints. So I decided to do the next best thing - get some landing practice in. I turned on some jazz on the XM radio and set the heading bug in the direction of nearby KPTB. Then I punched on the autopilot and started looking for traffic (as best I could while pointed into the sun) and monitoring the gauges. Since I was doing about 180 MPH across the ground KPTB arrived off the nose rather quickly. I powered back and told the autopilot to lose some altitude. After checking the KPTB metar on the MFD and AWOS I decided the use runway 23. Shortly afterward I heard traffic using that runway so I set up to come in behind them. One guy reported that he was on the GPS approach to the same runway, but was 9 miles out. I figured I could easily get down before I got in his way...

Today was my first flight in a Cirrus "solo" - or at least without another pilot on-board. Family was in town so I took two of my brothers-in-law up for a quick jaunt around the local area. We did some steep turns and a little unloading (a few seconds of 0.5G). Had a good time and I felt totally comfortable behind the wheel. :)

Today was the last day of my Cirrus SR22 transition training – I finally finished! This means I can fly without an instructor and actually be insured while doing so. Part of this training also included a high-performance checkout, but that was accomplished by default as part of all the transition training. Today we used the morning to focus on instrument approaches. They went fairly well. During the first approach I was mentally behind the airplane a bit. This was mainly due to some minor confusion when we discussed holding pattern entries. That confusion persisted after talking over it on the ground as well so I need to reference the AIM for a little clarification – and maybe another instructor or two. Other than that issue, the approaches went fine. I did a coupled ILS into Newport News and then flew the published missed approach. Since I did OK with that hold, we just made one turn and asked Norfolk approach for another ILS. This one I hand flew. The approach controller k...

Today I met with my new Cirrus (CSIP) instructor for a morning flight. My parents were in town so my Dad joined us in the back seat. We started the flight with a bit of ground discussion on IFR take-off minimums and departure procedures. I learned a good bit in a mere few minutes! Chatting on the ground allowed the fog to burn off so we didn't worry about picking up our IFR flight clearance. We did the VOR approach into KPTB but called that off early as they had parachutists in the air (along with at least 2 other local airports). From there spent some time doing airwork (slow flight, stalls, steep turns) then went to Franklin (FKN) to do 2 landings. After that we went back to Williamsburg to end the flight. On the way out of FKN my instructor and my Dad took a look at a recent crash site . The crash involved 2 people who were stuck 50' up in a tree for 6 hours, in swamp land. They were eventually lowered to the ground and walked away, but not before the rescue crew h...