Vectors To Final

We had nice stable air today, under high overcast clouds. My friend, Maciek, and I decided to take the Arrow out for a little trip over to Petersburg, VA. We had a heck of a time getting the airplane started. Thankfully the flight school owner was able to help us out with a jump start. Once we were underway, however, it was a very easy, smooth trip. We took off on 13 at Williamsburg as the lunch crowd was starting to depart (Charlie's restaurant is a huge draw for pilots, and with good reason). We headed west, using my handheld GPS for guidance. I made one of my best landings yet at KPTB and taxied back to takeoff again, on runway 5. Back in Williamsburg we got another soft landing in (that plane is not hard to land softly, once you get a few under your belt) and stopped off for some soup at the restaurant before doing some ramp walking to drool over the planes. Before we left we talked with the flight school owner about some bad news. He is having to close up the business.

Since we were in D.C. today, my wife and her brother and took the metro to Reagan National airport . We had heard that you could get pretty close to the approach end of one of the runways and watch the airplanes come in. After getting off at the metro stop we had to get directions to learn how to walk to the sight-seeing point. Once we arrived we weren't disappointed. The view was impressive as the massive jets came turning in to line up on final. I stood right within the "running rabbit" lights and watched the planes over my head at maybe 100-150' AGL. The image to the right is a psuedo-3D image (just an animated gif) that I made of the view to the runway. I was trying to get the same effect I read about here , but mine isn't quite as good.

Found this online: UNUSUAL TECHNICAL IMAGES OF EQUIPMENT USED IN WORLD WAR II . Has some interesting aviation-related images in there.

Hopped back in the ole C-172R today to get 4 practices approaches taken care of. I needed to get instrument current before the 16th. Charles was my instructor/safety pilot and we shot the new ILS 25 approach in Newport News, with the autopilot coupled. Then we used the autopilot to shoot a GPS approach into West Point. After that we did a hand-flown VOR approach into West Point without the GPS and a single radio, no GPS approach back to Williamsburg to cap it off. I did ok considering I have not shot a series of approaches like that in a long time. I had a few little kinks to work out, but all in all I felt pretty good about the performance.