Fun in flight with some of the family

Today I got the chance to take my sister and Dad on a quick flight over to Petersburg, VA. The goal was to spot a few civil war battlefields.

We took off around 3:20 on runway 13 with light winds. We turned due south for noise abatement, but exited the pattern in a non-standard direction to avoid some inbound traffic. Turning the long way around to a heading of 275 we were on course for KPTB.

Upon reaching 3,000 feet I hand flew the airplane for a bit and then turned on the autopilot. That lets me get into a very thorough traffic scan without having to worry too much about nailing altitude. I pointed out the sights as we motored on to KPTB (a 27 minute trip). We saw various landmarks that my Dad and sister drove by to come up for the visit, as well as other local sights like ferry vessels, the ghost fleet, and my neighborhood.

Approaching KPTB we cross midfield and entered downwind for 05. A few radio calls later and we were on the runway. We taxied back, waited on an Extra to land, then departed again.

We headed out to the east on our search for battlefields. After a few minutes we had not found any, but I noticed what looked like a large field with a loop road in it. I tried to point it out to Dad but it was too close to my side of the plane for him to see. So we did a 360 and he recognized it as a battlefield. We took a few shots and then headed back to KJGG.

We ended the flight with a decent landing and a taxi-to-parking. I logged a fun 1.4 hours today.

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