First "solo" flight in complex airplane

Today I took my wife and her brother up for a little flight around the local area. I had the airplane scheduled for tomorrow morning but since the wx was so nice, I called to see if I could move it up to today. Luckily it was available.



When we got to the airport we saw the lunch crowd was huge. There was a P-51 called Double Trouble 2, a Piper Mirage, a chopper "taxiing" down the runway all while 5-6 planes were moving toward runway 31. By far the busiest I've seen out there. Charly's sure is an attractive $100 hamburger joint (it IS good).



I preflighted and we all got in to start the engine. However, when I hit the starter I could hear it turning but the prop wasn't moving. I tried once or twice more, then called the owner to get his thoughts on how to fix it. He told me to turn the prop, by hand, a few times to see if that got the starter in a better state. I did that (maybe 1 turn) and the prop turned right over - a few seconds later and the engine was warming up.

We followed a few airplanes down to 31, worked our way into a little spot to do a quick run-up, and took off.



Wheels up a few seconds later and we started our tour (the GPS track is to the right here).

I did a loop over the middle peninsula, down to do a touch and go at Newport News (with a crummy touchdown) and it was back to JGG to land. It was a fun 1.0 hour flight with great weather.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Updating data on the Garmin Perspective system

Image
After changing from the Avidyne system to the Cirrus Perspective (G1000) system, I had to relearn an important part of owning an airplane: how to update all the data the systems use. There's even more data in the Perspective, including AOPA directory data and more charts. In this walkthrough, I make use of the Jeppesen app for Apple OS X: JDM .  It has worked well for me, though I did need to call Jeppesen when I first set this up to get my subscriptions fixed up.  They gave great customer support when I did. The process starts (optionally) by hooking up a ground power unit (GPU).  In the case of the Cirrus, you can certainly do this without it, but I tend to hook it up just to be sure.  The systems draw about 8-10amps while updating, but you won't generally have the power on for long.  One tip I've read: power up the GPU before plugging it into the plane, at least for the one I bought.  That saves the plane from seeing any power spikes that might have occurred when t
Read more

G1000 transistion training - emergencies - final flight

Image
For the final flight in my G1000 transition course we focused on failure scenarios. Not the "engine goes POOF" kind but the avionics kind. Normal situation This picture shows what the 2 Garmin screens show in a normal (non failure) situation. You can see we have 2 screens - the left PFD focusing on flight performance (airspeed, heading, attitude, altitude) and the right screen (MFD) focusing on engine data, mapping, checklists, and everything else. Failed PFD screen In this scenario the screen that is right in front of you (the PFD) has failed. This basically means the screen has gone dark. We simulate that by dimming the screen down to 0% brightness. After darkening the PFD we shot a GPS approach into Rock Hill. When this failure has occured you shift the G1000 into Reversionary mode. That means the info that is normally split across 2 screens is now merged into 1. It actually duplicates the same data on both screens, but since the PFD screen is no longer functioning
Read more

A-10C Standby Compass - Sun Shade

Image
 One of the final items to add to this instrument build (besides the text covers for the lower LEDs) was the sun shade for the AR LED box.  I made this out of thin aluminum sheets , cutting it from a template using some metal sheers .    My template was created by tracing some of the actual artwork from the DCS sim, and then scaling it to the proper size. It turned out ok, not perfect but pretty good.  Primed and painted it and then installed it using 2 of the 4 holes that were already on the LED box 3D print.  I used some heat inserts in those holes to give the screws something to bite, but the holes are really too big for my inserts so had to use some glue to help out.  
Read more