Well....

This was not an overly good day, and yet it turned out pretty well anyway.

When I got Kaylee up to take her out to the airport with me, she woke up on the wrong side of the bed and she was a crank. She whined, she complained, she dragged her feet, and then she started stomping, and when she threw the laundry basket onto the floor scattering dirty clothes everywhere, that's when my patience ran out and we had ourselves a little...tussle. I left the house late for my appointment, with her crying in the back seat, and me cranky now too. In the car, I find out that the airplane that was going to come up to see us today was delayed, and D needed me to fly to Missouri to pick him up and bring him back to Kokomo, asap. I wouldn't have time to eat anything otherwise, so I stopped at McDonald's, even though I'm late, and McDonald's makes me park along with 4 other people because they don't have our food ready/available. Now this is the 4th time that's happened! Wake up, McDonald's, you're always busy for breakfast, so KEEP UP. They finally show up with my food, and now I'm Really late, so I see the bag and the bigger bag and away I go. I'm halfway to the airport when I dig into the bag to get the hasbrowns, and they aren't there. I open the bag and it's just Kaylee's fork and butter. They hadn't included ANY of my food, but they did get some of Kaylee's. I didn't have time to turn around, I wasn't going to be able to eat until almost 4 pm, and I am Not Happy. Kaylee shared some of her breakfast, I called McDonald's and the phone rang and rang and rang and nobody ever answered. So I will be going back or calling tomorrow and they will hear about this one. It's not like I could get food anywhere else or for the next 5 hours, either. Not cool.

I finally get a flight plan filed and get out of here on my way to Missouri, and I've got ferocious head winds. I'm getting 112 knots ground speed in an airplane with a TAS of 155-160 knots. So I richen it up a bit and fly it more at 75% power, and pick up to about 120 knots...for a whole 20 minutes, and then the winds get even worse, and I'm stuck at 108 knots the rest of the way there. That's very slow. Thankfully I brought my iPod along and listened to music all the way there to keep me entertained. I also took pictures of the panel, of the Loran, and of myself cheesing it. I stayed as low as I could, which meant when I got closer to my destination in the middle of nowhere, I was losing my center (ATC). I cancelled IFR and started a descent over the hills/baby mountains, and I didn't get 500 feet down when I hit the turbulence. It was impressive turbulence, too. Maybe a little wind shear action in there. Just sitting there the plane was suddenly tossed into a 30-60 degree bank for no apparent reason. Repeatedly. When it wasn't slamming up and down. I slowed down my airspeed to maneuvering speed and hung on for the ride for a little while there. I was starting to wonder about this landing out there down amongst the hills and trees--coming down on the approach was really quite sporty, and it stayed sporty until the wheels were down solid. Fortunately the touch down was pretty good, but I haven't had to work that hard at a landing in awhile. ;)

When we took back off, it wasn't as bad as coming in, and we were up out of the turbulence within a couple minutes and back to the smooth air, but this time the wind was in my favor. We had 208 knots for awhile, then it settled in around 204-205. In a Viking, that's a really impressive groundspeed. We were home in record speed (well, not compared to the Cheyenne, but c'mon, this is a little single-engine wood & fabric airplane. ;))

Unfortunately he had just learned before I landed that the airplane we were looking at today wasn't going to make it up today at all. There were airline tickets purchased, rental cars set up, return ticket for the pilot, three people who all flew in on airlines to come in and see the plane, everybody was set up for today, and it wasn't going to happen, and Nobody was happy about it.

The day went like this until about 5 pm or so, but the speedy trip home started things looking better, the burger the guys had waiting for me improved things a lot more, and dinner out finished off the job. :)

The plane should be here Monday for us to look at and take a test flight in, and we'll know more then. I hope it works out. That is a kick-butt airplane. ;)