Vectors To Final

I took my Dad up for the first time in quite a while this Saturday morning. We rented a C172 and flew to his friend's house to get some photos of a pond he has had installed. Then it was on to the house at Lake Wateree we recently bought. After that we dodged some clouds to go to our pond which is being worked on. They have lowered the water level 3 feet by digging a big trench in the dam. Beavers have been plugging the "leak" within a few hours of it being cleared out, so we thought we'd see if they had plugged it yet again. They had. :) Lake Wateree house The pond - covered in green plants with the dam on the right side Me standing on the dam the next day , by the drain trench, after Dad cleared it again I got Dad to shoot a pseudo-approach using KUZA's ILS 02 procedure - or at least what I remembered of it from memory. He did a great job, even with me monekying with the throttle too much. I took over at ~300 AGL and made an OK landing. Dad taxiied us back t...

This morning we started out bright and early. I didn't sleep too well because I had too much ForeFlight code bouncing around in my brain. But a quick gulp of an energy drink and a shower had me awake by 6:30AM. We were off for a trip from VA (KJGG) to Hickory, NC (KHKY) and Greenville, SC (KGYH). John let me do the flying so I could gain more time in the Turbo Cirrus. The trip was great - we dropped off John's step mother in Hickory (cool airport that used to be a hub for Piedmont airlines - back when commercial air travel was a good thing) and then went over to Greenville for John to spend a few minutes with a client of his. I grabbed some small snacks at each stop, just enough to cover me for the next leg. In Greenville I got a good chance to chat with Charlie (who works at KJGG) to get the most recent gossip about the goings-on at the airport. From there we went straight back to Williamsburg. I filed IFR for 11,000' direct to go back. That would have had us going r...

A week ago John flew down in the SR22 with a neighbor/friend Mike and Mike's son, Adam, to give me a lift up to Williamsburg. I did a quick preflight while the guys had some lunch and then, once we were all aboard, I cranked up the engine. I had a tough time cranking it, mainly due to not enough priming, but before too long we were heading east at 3000' to avoid CLT airspace. After letting Adam fly for a few minutes I called up CLT to get an IFR clearance. Once we flew around the CLT airspace we were finally allowed to point directly to Williamsburg and climb up into the cooler air at 7000'. Eventually we went up to 9000' to avoid a cloud layer and try to cool off a little more. After descending through the clouds near Williamsburg, I handed the reigns off to Adam who flew us through a little rain and then down to the traffic pattern. He did a great job and handed me the airplane just in time to add some flaps before turning to a right base leg. We all told Adam he was ...