Sightseeing

Krista and I went up for 1 hour this morning in 5199A.

We did some sightseeing and photographing, and then went down to Wakefield (AKQ) to do a quick touch and go. I made some use of the autopilot for practice sake. It is quite a nice tool to have on board.

When we got back to JGG it was pushing lunchtime so I knew the place would be swamped (Charlie's is a great lunch destination there). I started making position reports from a good ways out hoping to entice others to do the same. I thought it had worked, and that I was well aware of all the nearby traffic, until we were a half mile from entering the downwind leg of the 31 pattern and I heard a call that someone was just entering downwind themselves. My head on a swivel, I started looking for them hoping that when I found them they wouldn't be filling the windscreen with white.

After a few tense seconds I spotted them on a very tight downwind, almost over the runway (at least from my perspective). I called on the radio that I was number 2 to land with the traffic in sight and throttled back to go a little slower. Keeping my eye on the traffic in front, I noticed that he was getting very very low and still had no turned to the base leg. For a bit I thought he was setting up to land in the woods, which would be a bad idea, but just then he turned for his base leg. It was probably just my perspective, but he seemed WAY too low. Anyway, I extended my downwind leg a bit to let him get past/behind my left wing before I turned base.

Turning onto final I saw that he was just touching down. I watched to see how quickly he'd get off the runway, hoping that I had not cut my pattern too close such that I'd have to go-around because he was still on the runway. I announced I was on final and he pulled off on the first taxiway leaving me plenty of time to set it down. We had a few little crosswind gusts making the landing interesting, but I set it down OK. I still didn't touchdown very smoothly - I have been struggling with that at JGG recently. :)

Anyway, we had a great time!

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