Recent flights

Our plane was down for annual for a few weeks, but it was cleared for flight again recently so I made good use of it.

We had some ForeFlight folks in town, so one pair of trips was to act as a shuttle to KGSP and back, about a 30 minute trip.

The first day brought fairly crummy weather. Calm winds and good temperatures, but plenty of rain and low clouds. GSP was clear so that side of the trip was easy, and even though it had been a few months since I worked with a Tower I felt quite at home with it.

Coming back to Rock Hill was a bit more interesting though. As we approached there were red radar returns right over the airport. We had to shoot the GPS 2 instead of the ILS as the ILS was down for maintenance. That meant we could only descend to 500' AGL instead of 200' AGL. ATC had us slow down for an aircraft in front of us. I happily did so as that gave the stronger rain time to move away from the airfield.

Luckily the clouds at the airport were barely above 500' AGL so we were able to see the runway and land safely. Our backup plan was to simply orbit a bit south of the field until conditions improved (or divert to a one of few different pre-planned locations), but that ended up not being required.

It was a great feeling to make use of my IFR rating like that. I think my instructor Charles, from KJGG, would have liked it. Coincidentally, years ago Charles gave me my first ride in a glass-panel SR22 and let me fly the entire flight (a memory that has stuck with me).

We made a flight to OH in the middle of the week. That was a trip up to Sporty's where we were exhibiting and giving a talk about the ForeFlight Mobile application. We had a great time and the weather was basically perfect. The A/C came in handy as the temperatures are finally starting to get pretty warm around here. I think the A/C was on continuously except when landing/taking off and when in cruise flight at 9000' or 10,000'.

The second flight to GSP was easy by comparison as the weather was great. I was asked to provide max forward airspeed while getting setup to land at KGSP (as there was a jet behind me) but I managed to give them 185 kts or so while still getting slowed down enough on final for a good short landing and early turn off of the runway. I dropped off my passenger and spun the airplane around for the return flight.

I'm at about 540 total hours now and starting to feel pretty comfortable in the SR22. It's just been the perfect airplane for the "missions" I tend to fly. Summer time is when I like to review the airplane systems by re-reading the POH and various bits of Cirrus training material I've acquired over the years. I'd also like to step it up a bit this year by getting some simulator training on emergencies - hopefully I can fit that into my schedule at some point. I think it will require a long weekend.

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