Vectors To Final

Unfortunately, this weekend my parents were unable to visit; due strangely enough to more than a foot of snow in S.C. So I did not get to take them flying today as was planned. But I DID get to take the wife, circlek, up again which is a great consolation prize any day (sorry, K). ;) We got in 1.0 hours; with the attitude indicator not working for the last bit of the flight (see image). We hopped over to West Point to get a landing in. It needed to be a full stop landing as the airplane wanted to float further than I wanted it to. But the full stop was nice because we were able to see the airport a little closer up than a touch-and-go allows, and K was able to get a feel for what it is like to taxi an airplane since there was plenty of empty taxiway to crawl on. She did very well. I hope to convince her to get her certificate as well, especially if we ever actually buy our own plane. After taking off from West Point we simply flew back to the Williamsburg area and got a few s...

The Chenoweths and I went up today in 99A for 0.8 hours. We had a good time; flew over the Gloucester area and then back to the western side of the Williamsburg area. A decent bit of wind started up right around the time we were taking off. The wind did not help my landing too much; had a bounce and a bad landing in general. But we got some good pictures and saw some nice scenery, with actual sun shine above us. :)

Posted by my wife: Jason took me up for a combo birthday/Valentine's Day flight today. It's the first time that I've been up with him since he started flying again a few weeks ago. The last flight description in his logbook where I participated says something, as I recall, like "circlek in the clouds". So we had a lazy morning and left around noon to grab a sandwich at the Coffee Beanery. We've been there for coffee before, but never for food. A coworker mentioned that their sammies were good. Jason had a "kickin roast beef" sandwich on foccacia, but the horseradish won about 3/4 of the way through it. I had smoked turkey and swiss on wheat and it was very tasty. We then went to the airport and a family was just returning with the 5199A plane that we'd be taking. We got the key and went out on the tarmac to check out a few unusual planes, and the plane wasn't parked in the usual place for the school's planes. JGG was extremely bu...

I did my first cross country today since starting back into flying (1.6hrs worth). Had a few problems with the nav radio in 71E but managed to get to ASJ anyway. Had a particularly bad and gusty crosswind at that airport when landing on runway 1 that caused a few bounces in my very quick touch-and-go. That was my worst landing ever, I think. But I made it back to JGG a bit later and did an OK landing there. And I felt pretty good about my navigation and VOR capabilities. Still lots to re-learn on the landing side. But I am re-gaining knowledge each time. Hopefully the aircraft I fly will stay in one piece long enough for me to get decent again. :) Weather permitting; I will be taking the wife up on Valentine's day. :)

I took 71E up solo this morning; it was my first solo time in 7 years. I flew over the house and got a few shots, then headed over to West Point to shoot one touch-and-go on runway 9. I got some help from a fellow pilot out there that I was using an old frequency, which I was starting to suspect when I saw plenty of traffic in the area yet heard no radio calls. My landing was a bit hard there, which made me realize why I have had so much trouble with flaring properly in 71E. The seat was WAY too high. I lowered it on the way back to JGG and made a decent little squeak landing ~150' down the runway, with the stall warning going off a few inches above the ground (that was my first landing on 13 with right hand traffic). It was quite cold today; had to use the propane engine pre-heater before cranking it up.

I went up in 99A with Tom again for a 0.9 hour flight; mainly some touch-and-go's at West Point . The flight went well, did 3 landings (one of which was fairly decent), and I did a lot better on the engine-out procedures compared to last time. :) After the flight we did another hour of ground time, where he quizzed me on the FARs and reading sectional charts. So now I can fly the two Cessnas at JGG. I have some time on Sunday scheduled in the hopes that, if the weather is good, I can get some solo time in with the N-model.

After not being able to fly last Thursday due to 90-degree crosswinds of 15-17 knots I finally got up in the air again today for 1.3 hours. I was hoping to finish up my BFR (provided I flew well) while also get checked out in Cessna 99A, a 172 model R plane with fancier systems than an older 172 (auto-pilot, GPS, fuel-injection, etc). When I got there I found out that there was little chance of finishing the BFR since there would not be enough time to do the ground parts of it. That was no big deal though, b/c I could do that right before going solo by coming in a bit early and working with the instructor (Tom) to finish up that phase. So I started my pre-flight. There were a few things foreign to me in that pre-flight. Some were easy to figure out, like testing the pitot-heater and the car-style seat belts, others were totally new to me like the annunciator panel (just a set of panel warning lights, like cars have). But with some help from Tom, I learned those things, as wel...