FINALLY...

So I finally got the opportunity to go flying...and the the opportunity for another, even better trip. After taking 2 finals on Friday, I called up D to see if he'd be up for some evening flying. He definitely wanted to, but a glance at the weather showed that some very isolated t-storms *might* be headed our way. I suggested we have dinner near the airport and then check it out afterwards. After some tasty burgers at Five Guys, we could see some cells off in the distance (east and west) but the sky was clear and shaping up for a gorgeous sunset. Let's go flying.

We hit the airport, checked the official weather, scheduled and dispatched the flight, and then did the world's quickest preflight (we split it - don't worry, not shirking PIC responsibilites here; Dwight is a an A+P and I did a final walk around to double check his work). We fired her up and told tower we'd like to stay in the pattern. I knew we'd only have about half an hour because I'm not night current at the moment.

We taxied to 2 (there was a cat roaming around in the grass, which we reported to tower) and took an intersection departure at Foxtrot. Runup - everything's good. Taxi on, 10 degrees flaps, full power and...we're flying. It was one of the smoothest takeoffs I can ever remember (the Cherokee either rotates super smoothly or sort of "jumps" off the pavement), and we started around the pattern. Coming back in for the runway, everything was looking good, and I put her down with a perfect squeak 500 feet down the runway. We were off again in another 1000. As a matter of fact, all four landings I did were perfect squeakers in less than 1000 feet. I'd never done anything like that before. On the last one, I savored the roll out, and taxied off where we had begun at Foxtrot. Perfect flight:

Hobbs: .5 (only .3 on the tach!)
Landings: 4

Today, fellow senior Dan and I had the idea of flying to Myrtle Beach on Tuesday for a day of sun and fun to celebrate our completion at Davidson. I've been to KCRE once before (Nov. 8) on my long cross country as a student. This time, though, I'm taking a friend, we'll be leaving first thing in the morning, spending a day lounding on the beach, and then returning in the afternoon/evening. Just as the fates would have it, the plane was avaialble all day, and the weather is looking great (little windy, but it should be down the runway at Concord and not much of a factor at CRE). PIC x/c time!

In addition to this trip, Mark's coming on Thursday, and we'll probably end up going flying on Friday or Saturday. So stay tuned - blogging should be back for while.

Where am I?

So today I opened up the "Flying" section of my bookmarks and stumbled upon this page. I seem to remember keeping a blog here a long time ago. In reality, it wasn't that long ago, but it's hard to blog about flying when you're not, well, flying. I flew only twice in April due to 2 trips out of town, horrendously unpredictable weather, and the increased workload that comes at the end of the semester. The 2.7 I logged in April is easily the lowest of any month in which I've logged time. On several occasions, I've logged more time in a single flight!

My last flight was 4/25 (see my last post) for a quick up and down jaunt. By the time I got to Concord, the winds were already starting to pick up (220 at 6, if I recall correctly). The plane started right up (I love warm weather!), and tower had me taxi to runway 2, where Jim was trying to teach some poor student to do short fields with a 6 knot tailwind. Poor guy. I left Concord for some maneuvering in the practice area. I got out there and configured the airplane for my favorite maneuver: slow flight. With a perfect setup: airspeed stuck in the white-only area, altitude pegged, and (one of my favorite things about the Cherokee) hardly any nose-up attitude, I watched the ground creeeeeep by below me. I did some clearing turns (in the slow flight configuration) without losing any altitude, and then did a power-off stall. During the stall, I focused on pulling the plane all the way into the stall (not just into the buffeting) before recovery. Upon recovery, a Learjet that I had NOT seen before passed about a quarter mile off my left wing. I could see the windows. Unfortunately, jet traffic is incredibly difficult to spot and anticipate while practicing maneuvers, because they can appear out of nowhere due to their speed. Duly shaken, I checked my altitude (to make sure I hadn't busted the bravo), and then called up Charlotte for flight following. I then did a nearly-perfect set of steep tunrs (I overshot the second turn) and a couple more stalls before heading into Concord for some landings. By this time, the wind was more across the runway (240 at 6), but at least they'd turned the airport around. My first landing on 20 was nearly perfect - right wheel first, then left wheel, then nose wheel, all super soft. The next two, though, were not as pretty. I wasn't too upset, as it's pretty difficult to land in a right crosswind (which continued to pick up) when you're solo in the left seat and the plane has an uncompressed (and thus longer) right strut. Something to work on I guess.

Hopefully my lack of flying is gone for good, though. May is here, along with beautiful weather (although it's not supposed to be so hot this weekend). In addition, the semester is winding down, leaving me with lots of dead time before graduation. And finally, several of my friends have unclaimed rain checks for flights that should get cashed in. My goal is to break 100 hours before June 29 - I'm 7 away.

Next flight: well I was going to go with grandfather tomorrow, but the weather's not looking so good. I'll probably go up for a pre-finals flight after finishing my last term paper.

It's go-time

Reserved a plane today from 830-1200. Weather looked a bit dicey last night, but this morning, things are looking OK:

KCLT 250520Z 250606 20004KT P6SM SCT250
FM1500 20014G22KT P6SM FEW060 SCT250
FM0000 20006KT P6SM SCT060 BKN200

I'm definitely going up - it's been way too long. I'll just keep an eye (or an ear) on the ATIS to avoid any particularly nasty winds.

It's not my fault!

So this time, my laziness isn't preventing me from blogging - rather, it's my lack of flying. I still haven't been up since I took Doog to Lexington in the Sundowner. The weather has been awful in the Charlotte area, alternating between storms and crystal clear days with winds gusting into the thirties or forties. To make matters worse, somebody took 63R down to Florida for SunNFun - I'm only slightly jealous. Finally, schoolwork has been a bitch (yes, I still do my schoolwork every once in a while). Sigh. I really want to go up - there's a chance that this weekend a guy I know, whose IFR checkride is on the 23rd in 63R, will want/need a checkpilot. At this point, I'll take what I can get.

2 more flights

I have to make this brief, but I thought I'd share details from my two most recent flights:

3/31 - Adam and I went up, and had a great time. I took him over Davidson for some flightseeing, then up to Statesville for a T+G, and then down to Gastonia. On the way to AKH, I had one of those "max capacity" experiences - flying at 1800 feet (1000 AGL) with the bravo right above me, the airport still not in sight, some big towers to our left, and a short runway to land on. Fortunatley, I handled the pressure masterfully, and we had a nice landing in Gastonia (and a nice drive back to Concord). We grabbed lunch at Five Guys, a burger restaurant that compares favorably to In-N-Out Burger - I highly reccomend.

4/6 - Doog needed to have 46LA worked on again, so asked me to pick him up in Lexington in the Sundowner. This flight was super-easy, and on the way into Lexington I logged by 200th landing (a decent one, too)! On the way out, I flew under the hood the whole way home, including the GPS 24 into Bowman (which Doog said I did with "checkride quality"). Only problem: Doog's yellow-tinted foggles messed up my depth perception when I "broke out" into the sunny day on 2 mile final at 500 AGL. So I flared late, grazed the mains, and ballooned up again. No problem, though, - add some power, pitch it up, and settle it down. We were off the runway before the intersection.

Totals for these two flight:
Hobbs/PIC: 2.9
Landings: 4
Cross-country: 1.8
Sim. Instrument: 1.0
Instrument approaches: 1

Next flight: who knows?

Change of plans

So the instructor Dwight was supposed to go up with this morning bailed on him at the last possible minute for some "family crisis." Of course, I was disapointed that we wouldn't be flying, but also that means I got to sleep to a humane hour. However, as I haven't been flying in over a week, I called another friend, Adam, who has wanted to go flying with me for some time. He seems a bit nervous, but more excited than anything (he says he's been skydiving, so how can a person who's jumped out of a perfectly good airplane be nervous about flying in one?). We're going to leave Davidson at about 12:30, and do a little sightseeing - Davidson, etc. Jim called and asked if instead of coming back to Concord, we drop the plane off in Gastonia (AKH) for the 100 hour, and then drive back in a crew car - all for a free half an hour in the plane! You bet! Looks like it should be a fun day - weather doesn't even look too bad.

Also - check out the way-cool fuel-tax-increase calculator at Av8rDan.

READ THIS NOW!

So we've all heard the crap about the user fees, and how much it could suck to be a pilot if they were to be implemented. Well, here's hard, concrete, statistical proof of how much it would suck. The AOPA has an article and a video describing a flight taken by two guys in Europe. It's a pretty standard flight, really - IFR from England to Germany (sort of like IFR from Bowman to Concord). In a lot of ways, the system seems pretty familiar, except for one little detail - the user fees. For this trip, which featured standard IFR procedures (a weather briefing, a flight plan, a missed approach, an ILS, and a landing), the total fees were $233.97!!!

It doesn't stop there, though. AOPA details in its article about how there are fees for every single landing, touch-and-go and instrument approach flown in Europe. Even if you have to go missed (like the guys in the video), you still pay for the approach. The big problem here is one of safety. During pilot training, the importance of safety is hammered into student pilots more than any one technique or maneuver. However, anyone that's taken a basic econ course knows one of that discipline's fundamental rules: "Tax something, and you'll get less of it; subsidize something, and you'll get more of it." The JAA (Europe's equivalent to the FAA) thinks that what they are taxing by implementing these fees is general aviation. It seems this wouldn't be so bad, because GA pilots generally have fairly deep pockets (or access to them) because, let's face it, flying is expensive no matter how you slice it. No, what the JAA is taxing is safety. Because every flight, landing, and approach costs money, student pilots will be far less likely to practice them on a regular basis. Which means that pilots might be flying "real" flights (ie, to unfamiliar airports, with passengers on board, in shaky weather, etc) with less practice under their belt than their American counterparts! Let's think about some of the other unsafe behavior this will encourage:

- Scud running - IFR costs money? Screw that - we'll go VFR - even though its overcast at 1200 with decreasing viz and thunderstorms nearby. It's legal right?
- Flying approaches below MDAs or DHs. Going missed costs money, so better get the airplane on the ground the first time.
- Cancelling IFR prematurely. Note how in the video, the pilot remarks that cancelling IFR before landing will save the pilot lots of money. Now this is fine in some situations, but in high-traffic areas or in bad weather, pilots cancelling IFR to save money can be dangerous. Add to this that picking up a new IFR clearance in air is an "emergency," and pilots might make some VERY unsafe decisions.

There are plenty of other examples of things that pilots will be tempted to do to save some money. Fortunately, in the US we don't have to worry about any of these issues - yet. We have an ATC and FlightService system that is easy to work with, extremely capable, and (most of the time) friendly. They have saved lives in the past, and will continue to do so - as long as they are freely accessible to pilots when they are needed. We MUST stop this user's fee proposal in its tracks, or it might not just GA that dies.