Maneuvers and Landings

After a really crap day at work I needed to get some left seat time to purge the mind from things that really don't matter.  I 'll leave it at that.

Mary had fallen and hit her head after getting tangled in the swinging baby gate for our Ziva girl. I rushed home and made sure she was ok and not showing any concussion symptoms. I guess by 4pm I was driving her crazy and she said go fly, call Mike, go, fly, eat dinner out.  Ok, I can take a hint.

I needed to fuel the plane for our Friday beach flight so I may as well get some practice in this evening. Mike and I swapped some text messages and were both headed to New Garden. It still feels weird pulling 08Romeo out of a hangar but it's nice to see her all shiny again and no rain water stains or bird droppings.

I completed my pre-flight inside, how nice huh?  Then pulled 08Romeo out on the taxi lane. After my neighbor informed of my hangar etiquette error I wanted to make sure I did the right thing. We did leave the doors open this evening but I now know to shut down on the taxi lane and push 08Romeo in vs turning away from my hangar and blowing dust in.

I started up 08Romeo and made the short taxi for fuel. With 40 total on board we were off to play. I launched and headed south for some air work in the practice area near 58M. Slow flight hanging on the prop, or so it seemed followed by slow flight maneuvers clean and with flaps. Next was steep turns and they needed me to shed some rust. The second round was much better.

Following the air work we headed to KEVY, Summit for some landing work trying to get my sight picture squared away for short narrow fields. Short and narrow compared to Wilmington 6000'x150'. Three touch and goes later I was feeling pretty good. Mike still wants more stall horn when I touchdown, I'll keep working on that.

We headed back to New Garden for another VOR approach. I made a lap in the Procedure Turn and the needles were steady and altitude solid. I descended to the minimum descent altitude of 1020' and drove to the field getting the call to remove my foggles at a half mile or so. I added flaps and made a smooth landing, not enough stall horn but smooth.

 

We followed up a good night of flying (1.3 hours) with Dinner at the Hartefeld National Golf Club Grille and Pub.

 

Thanks Mike, you're the MAN!! I really appreciate the work out and keeping me proficient.

 

Tonight's flight puts me over 800 hours!!

ASEL:                                 800.6 (1017 Landings, 217 Approaches)