I'm not sure what it is about trips to Olive Branch, Mississippi, but I didn't get much sleep last night this time either. I sure wasn't interested in getting up when my alarm went off. I had three students scheduled to fly today, but the weather was too bad to go flying VFR. Our prop was done for the 172RG, and waiting for us to pick up in Olive Branch. So since students couldn't go anyway, they or I canceled, I loaded up a human left-seat autopilot who wanted to exchange some multi-engine actual IFR trip experience for gas, and I finally got off the ground around 11 a.m. :) It was an interesting weather day. The forecast for the route had IFR, rain, cumulonimbus turbulence, icing, and isolated thunderstorms all rolled into one trip. But the IFR wasn't at minimums, the turbulence isn't really a factor without passengers, I could stay below the icing, and the radar would allow me to deviate around any storms. So that's what we did, and it ended up being much nicer than the forecast called for. We didn't see a hint of icing, there was no turbulence at all, and we broke out on top of the clouds for awhile and got to soak up some sunshine. We did have to deviate around one bit of weather, but other than that, the rain wasn't an issue and there wasn't a real storm. We did get to shoot a GPS approach into Olive Branch, and the ILS back into Kokomo, down to 600', so that was great practice for him.
He'd brought along some Thin Mints and Samoas,
so we munched on Girl Scout Cookies once we got straight and level and settled in. (We didn't actually keep all that up there, it just made for a humorous photo op: What You Need To Fly...cookies and an iPad. ;)) A little something to eat, a little something to drink, a little music to listen to, some weather to watch, some radios to monitor, some clouds to hand-fly in, and two missions accomplished at once: someone gaining some experience and us getting our prop back. Still not a bad way to spend a day, even if I didn't get home until after 6 p.m., and tired.
Hey, I saw sunshine today--how about you? ;)
so we munched on Girl Scout Cookies once we got straight and level and settled in. (We didn't actually keep all that up there, it just made for a humorous photo op: What You Need To Fly...cookies and an iPad. ;)) A little something to eat, a little something to drink, a little music to listen to, some weather to watch, some radios to monitor, some clouds to hand-fly in, and two missions accomplished at once: someone gaining some experience and us getting our prop back. Still not a bad way to spend a day, even if I didn't get home until after 6 p.m., and tired.
No comments:
Post a Comment