My last flight time was June 19th. Yikes! It's been a minute. With some vacation trips coming up Mary and I thought we should get some air time. I could use the flight time to knock off a bit of rust and Mary wanted to do lunch.
With the Cambridge restaurant closed and Easton's café' temporarily closed we figured on lunch in St. Michaels. We both like Limoncello so I'll surprise my bride with Italian for lunch.
Weather is looking great for our flights so we will be in the air around 11am and make the thirty-five minute hop to Easton (KESN). I'll either grab a courtesy car or a rental to make our way into St. Michaels.
The Flight
It’s a busy morning at OXB with school planes and White Marlin Open traffic. Jets and King Airs are starting to fill up the ramp along with drop and go missions for each of the above mentioned.
I taxied out for three two, completed my run up and launched for Easton. Temps on the ground hovered just over eighty and at three thousand sat at sixty-five. The Easton ATIS called out runway three-three so that would be a straight in. I made a nice landing and taxied to Maryland Air to secure the plane. Courtesy car was first come first serve so we had to do a rental to get into town. It was 8.7 miles each direction to downtown and our place of choice for lunch.
Lunch
We did not have a reservation at Lemoncello but there were tables open. Mary ordered lobster ravioli and I had risotto with shrimp. The food was very good, and filling. We finished up and decided to check out a few shops then head back to the airport. I returned the rental to the tune of $45 and headed out to the ramp.
Return Flight Home
We climbed aboard and got the fan turning, it was getting warm. Thankfully we did have a good breeze today that made it somewhat comfortable on the ramp and in the plane prior to start up. I picked up the current ATIS and called for my taxi clearance. Easton ground and tower were busy, and did a great job dealing with school Cessna's and jets.
I was cleared for takeoff and launched for home, making a left turnout for a downwind departure. The ride was smooth and the Patuxent Approach frequency was busy. I saw Mary nod off and quickly ask about traffic call outs. What amazes me is that she can wake up and call out the traffic immediately.
I made my call at ten miles with intentions to join the left downwind for three-two like all the school planes and Marlin Open jets and twins. As we made our way in I heard a Sundowner call with his intentions, shooting the RNAV GPS 14 approach. I swapped calls as did others to try and let this guy know the active was three-two. I know, it's an uncontrolled field Boo-Hoo, get in line with the others, it's VFR for Gods sake and it's busy. What made it worse he was calling out fixes on the approach, no miles out, no time out, or direction, and nothing on how the approach would terminate. For all I knew he had every intention of landing. Maybe we all should have just turned south, fly away, then re-enter once the Sundowner sorted it all out. Why would anyone shoot approaches at such a busy place and the opposite direction of traffic, clueless.
I was happy to get the plane on the ground. I will debug tomorrow, plug in the battery minder and secure the covers. 1.1 in the book and a great day with my bride getting us out of the house for the afternoon along with an excellent lunch.
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