Vectors To Final

This weekend marked our last family trip in a Cirrus, at least for a while. :) That's because we are moving in a few weeks, down to Rock Hill, SC. We took the opportunity to head back down to KUZA for a little time with my family. K, Ev, and I packed up into the turbo and pointed the nose SW. The weekend was great, and both the flight down and back were as enjoyable as ever. As we neared Rock Hill, we were at about 4000' and turned a bit more South to dodge some of the CLT airspace. Being on an IFR flight plan we were listening to the CLT controllers when we heard an urgent traffic alert call for another aircraft. The other aircraft didn't respond immediately so the controller repeated the alert. After a few long seconds the aircraft finally responded that he'd had a close encounter - after he caught his breath he thanked the controller for the warning. It sounded like an eye-opening event. On the way home we sped away from the setting sun and, after breaking th...

After jabbering on and on to a co-worker at the recent Christmas party about how great the Cirrus aircraft are, it came time to put my money where my mouth was - a demo flight was in order. And I was more than happy to do it! Gene, a professor from William & Mary, kindly met me this morning for a little hop around the local area. His daughter was invited to join us but didn't feel up to it. So we hopped into the turbo SR22 with co-owner John in the front right. We dropped him off at RIC to pickup the older Cirrus and Gene swapped out for the front seat. After taxiing the short distance to the runway and waiting on a few commercial jets to do their thing, we took off. We mostly flew my standard pattern around the peninsula, but altered it with a close fly-by of the Langley (where F-22s are based) and Norfolk international. Gene flew the majority of the trip and did a truly top notch job. I told him I found it hard to believe he had only been in a small plane once or twice ...