Worked Hard

If you're interested in what Kaylee and Steve did today, or anything other than flying, you are sorely out of luck and might as well skip this one. ;)

I got out to Kokomo around 9:15 a.m., and Chuck pulled the T-6 out of the hangar for me (thank you, Chuck!) I did the preflight, then Jim arrived. To shorten this post up by a large amount, the bottom line is that we did three flights throughout the day of about an hour and a half or so each. Jim called that a "quick turn". We'd do ground school for around 30-45 minutes, go fly for an hour and a half over what we briefed, come down and go over what we had done, take a break for a drink and some food, then brief the next round, go fly it, come down and debrief it, take a break for a bit, then do it again for the third time. We covered an amazing amount of material. In fact, at the end of this, I'll type out some of what we did just in the last two days, and most of it has been done multiple times. I am sitting here at home now with my entire body aching. My wrists are sore, my arms from holding certain things, my shoulders from pulling, my legs, my neck, there is not much on me that couldn't use a massage and a hot tub. And I like it. ;)

Jim and I both had a lot of fun today, that's for sure, and I'm feeling really pleased about the whole thing. I haven't even had to demonstrate my bounce recovery skills yet. ;) (But I'm quite sure that's coming. We had two light wind days.) I'm really glad he was up here for the weekend and could fly this much for two days. I've learned a lot and did I mention I had a blast? I'm wrung out, sweaty, sore, wiped out, worked hard, and...internally I'm the Cheshire Cat. ;)

What we were doing probably looked crazy from the outside. We did aborted takeoffs, go-arounds, no flap landings, emergency procedures, a touch and go, just all sorts of things that will make you go "hmmmm". So here's a list of some of the stuff we did yesterday and today, all multiple times, not including all the ground school items we covered, for you to skip if you're uninterested:

Cockpit familiarization, of course starting, taxiing, run up, takeoffs, climbs, turns, power on and power off wings level stalls, turning stalls, approach to landing stalls, engine failure at cruise altitude, pattern and full flap landings, taxi practice in a confined area, steep turns up to 60 degrees bank, minimum controllable airspeed, aborted takeoff, go-around, low altitude engine failure, simulated fire on start up, half-flap landings, no-flap landings, balked landings, simulated hydraulic failure, engine out on takeoff roll and simulated engine out right after takeoff, simulated fire during flight, and of course checklist usage and familiarization. That doesn't cover all the ground work like performance charts, aerodynamics discussions, yadda yadda. Lots of information, and Lots to go still, too.

What a wonderful, fun, exciting weekend...I guess we'll see if 739KS and 739SC, the two C-172s I am flying in tomorrow, will be enough to bring me back to reality. ;)