Vectors To Final

Today the weather was too nice to resist a quick trip around the patch. Ryan, a new employee at the office, was "forced" to join me on the trip - his first in a general aviation plane. :) I flew around the north side of the KRIC airspace to overfly his house on the other side. We then asked for a landing at Richmond, which we got after a bit of vectoring around. I must have picked a busy time to come in - had I known I might have not bothered with that stop. We spent a decent amount of time on the ground as well - getting a lengthly takeoff clearance and then being given the option to just turn right back around to depart opposite the runway we came in. We taxied into position quickly but had to wait on a few other bigger airplanes landing on another runway before blasting off. On the way back to JGG Ryan took the controls for some straight and level flight. After I showed him a few steep turns he was back in control to enter the landing pattern. We landed on 31 and p...

I had the pleasure of accompanying two friends on a trip down south in the Turbo Cirrus this weekend. We left at 7:30 Sunday morning after filling up the TKS anti-ice fluid tank. Cirrus thoughtfully redesigned that tank for the G3 airplanes – which is nice because the G2 and earlier have a less-than-ideal design. The only way we know to find that the TKS tanks are full is to try to put fluid in and watch it overflow all over the place. The G3 has the filling port on the wing, instead of on the fuselage. I assume you can also look in to see the fluid level. We filed IFR and picked it up from Norfolk Approach in the air. We climbed up to 8000 feet and broke out on top about 200 feet above an overcast cloud layer. It is so much fun to be barely over the clouds like that – it gives you a true sense of speed since you are passing the clouds so close by. Feels like what I imagine low level mountain flying might be like – but way way safer. Skimming the tops of clouds at 180 knots i...

After returning solo from the thanksgiving holidays I got to fly back down to UZA this weekend to pick up my better half and our young son Evan. I was able to take the Turbo down for this trip and loved every second of it. Charlotte was kind enough to give me slightly better vectors than normal, saving me a minute or so of flight time. Being by myself I had some fun making use of the good roll rate of the Cirrus when I was entering the pattern. I kept all the banks under 30 degrees, but brought them in and out fairly sharply - lots of fun, but not something I would do with non-pilots on board. After 1.5 hours of near total straight and level flight banking felt good. I had some lunch with the family and then we were back to the airport for the return trip. I tried to get the airport folks to fill up the oxygen tank but they require a maintenance person do that task. It being Saturday no one was there to do that for me. Here's a video from the return trip which starts at take...