Vectors To Final

The weather was calling me to the airport today, so after learning how to use the online scheduling system I reserved the newer Cessna 172 at the local airport and decided to pay a visit to nearby Spartanburg airport . I did the preflight and had to take a little extra time to remember where all of the 13 fuel test points are on the airplane. I found the 5 under each wing with no trouble, but 2 of the 3 under the cowling took some time to locate. I also double-checked the tires since I didn't want to blow one out like last time. :) The airplane was in great condition so I taxied out and took off to the north in front of a turboprop that was practicing the ILS. I was turning crosswind before he was within a mile of the airport so I stayed out of his way easily. A straight shot to the west started my course as I started re-learning the autopilot. It all came back to me pretty quick from my IFR training days in a similar plane so before long old "Otto" was in charge of

My flying buddy John was insanely kind to me this week (as usual). He flew almost 2 hours down in the Cirrus (in light chop) to SC to pick me up and let me fly for the return trip. He brought along a KJGG CFI for the trip and that gentleman sat right seat. Then, after I conducted my business in Williamsburg, John repeated the whole thing in reverse for me - I flew us back down to UZA and he flew the Cirrus back. For the return trip to UZA we had a special guest - Charlie, the lineman who has taken such good care of us and our airplanes for these past years. He sat up front with me and seemed to have a good time. We taught him about the airframe parachute and how to deploy it. We showed him where the egress hammer is in case we ended up inverted on the ground and have to smack our way of of the plane. We did follow-up that those events were incredibly unlikely. :) Shortly after takeoff I tried to convince him to take the reigns and wield the 310 horses of the SR22 for himself,

After our recent move to S.C. I was feeling the need to get airborne again. Enter flyuza.com - the local training and aircraft rental facility. I scheduled a bit of time out at KUZA today to get checked out in the C172s - particularly the newer C172R. That airplane had what I expected - a nice little 2 axis autopilot, modern avionics, and fuel injection. What I didn't expect was a Garmin 530 GPS (instead of the smaller standard King GPS) that not only did all the standard fancy garmin stuff, but has traffic and terrain alerting. Color me impressed. Well, that was, until I broke the plane. :) On my first landing we felt a weird vibration as we rolled off of the runway toward the taxiway. It felt much like a nose-wheel shimmy, except this was coming for the left side. Plus the airplane wanted to turn left very badly. I looked down and, with no wheel pants installed, could see the problem right away - a flat tire. I eased to a stop while we decided what to do. We were jus