A solo tour of northern S.C.

This morning I decided to take advantage of my holiday vacation to get some more practice flying the Alarus CH2000. The family was all out doing their Black Friday shopping, so I was left to fly solo.

Since this was the first time I had a chance to fly solo in Rock Hill, SC since 1996 I decided to make an aerial trek to nearby Crowder’s Mountain. Really it is a craggy hill but since it is surrounded by flat land a hike to its peak gives great views of the area. Of course, the views you get on a hike don’t match those from 3000 feet in an airplane, so I enjoyed the sights from my lofty perch.

I simply made a quick left hand turn around the mountain and headed back to over-fly my parent’s house. From there it was a quick left hand turn to get lined up on a long final for runway 02 at UZA.

I used the Garmin 430 to tune in the ILS on the way down but saw weird indications from the glideslope needle. The needle was bouncing up and down though the flag seemed to indicate it was getting signal. I just ignored it and used the VASI to set up my glidepath.

There was a little crosswind kicking that little airplane around so I made good use of the extreme rudder authority to kick her straight over the touchdown point.

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