April showers around here don't bring May flowers-they drown them. Glenndale is a lake again, and our park is a couple of small lakes thinking about merging into a big one again. The good news is that from Wednesday on, we're looking at temperatures rising up to the upper 70s and sunshine, which will hopefully start drying everything out quickly. It's a good thing we have some planes on paved strips too, because these last two seasons have been rough on our little grass strip.
Yesterday was a good Rest At Home day. We slept in a little, even took a nap during the day, played a few games with Kaylee, did a little housework and laundry, you know, stuff. It was a quiet, easy day that required very little. Today being Monday, it's payback for the time off-Steve is swamped.
Even being Monday, it can't be too bad of a day. By noon I'd gotten a decent amount of things done, I'd had lunch with friends, and Nathan had told me I could fly the T-6 into Oshkosh this year. A good start to even a gloomy day as far as I'm concerned! :)
I was smiling at a couple of flying articles too. The first was in "Warbirds", and was the story of a man learning to fly as a cadet pilot during WWII in a Stearman. It's fun to read someone's experiences who learned to fly by looking outside the cockpit, feeling, seeing and hearing changes in the plane, doing aerobatics and spin training at 10 hours flight time...true seat of the pants flying. But what made me smile was the end of his article, where he passes his checkride and is moving up to the next big bird-the Vultee BT-13. His last paragraph was "One stopped at our field the other day, and we got to have a good look at it. Its cadet pilot showed us the cockpit full of new instruments and radios all unknown to the primary trainers. Just when you feel you have everything mastered, the next step makes you feel like a freshman all over again." Ah, the universal long-time half-lament, half-excited at the challenge words of perfectionist pilots everywhere. ;)
The other was in "Flying", on old-time spot landing contests. This made me laugh, because while we don't do it any more, we used to, and I think we still should now and then. Of course at this point egos may have to be bruised to get back into spot landing shape. ;) But this describes them fairly well, though I came in at the tail end of some of this stuff. "You don't hear much about spot landing contests anymore and the anemic attempts I watch on practical tests suggest accuracy landings have gone the way of spin training and dead reckoning skills. So I think we should get 'em back. They're fun--OK, sometimes embarrassing--but a surefire way to sharpen basic skills and not nearly as expensive as the current $300 hamburger run. Classically you close the throttle on downind leg opposite a touchdown point, with the objective of landing on or beyond that target. Add power anywhere on the approach and you're disqualified; touch down before the mains are on or over the line and you're toast. Other than that, it was Katie-Bar-the-Door: no rules. Angle your base leg in or out, use no flaps, some flaps or full flaps and maybe dump them right over the line for a spectacularly abrupt arrival; use slips, with flaps if necessary; open the cowl flaps, windows, doors or emergency exits and deploy arms and feet as necessary to spoil excess lift. Do whatever you need to-but remember the power thing. If the judges hear engine noise on the approach, you're not only disqualified but the object of huge derision from the peanut gallery...guys you always thought were your friends. (...) As you can imagine, this lighthearted Saturday afternoon outing inevitably degenerated into an arm waving, insult hurling, epithet shouting confrontation. Long-time flying buddies loudly assaulted each others' flying abilities, veracity, eyesight and parentage. And in pursuit of a really tacky trophy, nosewheels, friendships and even marriages came unglued. It was glorious fun, and we need more of them. Contests, friendships, trophies and marriages, that is."
That last part is said tongue-in-cheek...mostly. See, the last time Steve and I had a spot landing contest against each other was the last time Steve and I had a spot landing contest against each other. ;) We were doing spot landings at Camel-Lot, both of us in one...152 or 172. At the end of the runway was an abandoned little barn building. The rules were, power off on downwind, if you add power to make the runway, you lose, shortest landing wins as long as it's on the runway. Let's just say that I haven't seen the top of another building that close from an airplane (twice) before or since. I'd almost bet there are tire marks up there. That contest ended in a "tie", which is the result that remains to this day, more than 10 years later... Ah, the good ole days. ;)
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"A goal without a plan is just a wish."~Antoine de Saint Exupéry
"If you are clear about what you want, the world responds with clarity." ~Loretta Staples
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