Travel Air & Camp II

Late last night, around 12:30 a.m., Kaylee sent me a text from her room, asking me to come talk to her.  She was feeling a little uncertain about this next week of camp, and had some concerns.  She knows she'll be the youngest one there, and the kids she will be in part "charge" of, some of them will only be one year younger than her, while most of the other helpers are several years older than she is.  So we sat up and talked for awhile, came up with contingency plans, went over what she was supposed to do, etc., until she felt more confident and ready to tackle the new challenge.  At one point she asked me, if we got all the way there and she really, really, really didn't want to do this, wanted to go home, would I make her stay.  I told her that if she was just a little scared, she should push through and deal with it, it's a safe place with good people who would take care of her; but if something was really, truly wrong with the situation, then I'd take her home.  So when we got there today, she hugged us goodbye, and a leader there took her in and called a couple other people over to interact with her, and I leaned in and said "So, you want to come home with us?"  She rolled her eyes at me and said "No, of course not!"   Well, there ya go.  ;)  So she is off onto the next adventure, and hopefully having a great time, even if it is supposed to rain there for the next three days.  :o

The rest is flying stuff, so you can skip it, Mom.  ;)

We had to be there early this time, and I had a flight to Missouri this afternoon, and the weather was calling for thunderstorms again.  So this meant we woke up at 8 to look at the weather, because if we had to drive, Steve would have to drive it leaving at 9 a.m., and I'd have to stay here so I could take the trip.  The problem was, the weather was not clear.  Some places were calling for a 65% chance of storms, "likely thunderstorms", the TAFs here were calling for storms, etc.  Last time we had that forecast, I drove to pick her up from camp, and thunderstorms blew up all over a four-state area.  This time, neither Steve nor I really thought it was going to do what it said it might.  Looking ahead at both flights, neither one had anything on radar in the morning, but...we just didn't see anything that made us that uneasy this time, so we went ahead and flew, and ended up that we didn't see a single thunderstorm the entire flight.  Whew.  Saved a 10 hour round trip drive for no good reason.

One kind of fortunate thing happened.  When I took off out of Kokomo and brought the gear up, I could hear it whirring, but nothing was happening.  I elected to get some altitude before messing with it, called up Grissom and told them I needed a minute for a gear issue, tried recycling it and checked the circuit breakers, which were in.  No good, it wouldn't come up.  Steve, sitting in the right seat, happened to notice that the manual extension handle for the gear, which is underneath my seat in such a handy place that the pilot can't see it because they're sitting on it, was not secured, and was sticking out at an angle he hadn't seen it in before.  He reached under the seat and hit the button and moved the handle, and the gear cycled up.  I recycled it again to make sure it was working properly, which it was, called back up Grissom that all was well, and we were on our way to Ohio. When I got to Ohio, I climbed over to the other seat where I could see and got the gear handle fully secured back in the clips where it belongs.  The reason I say it's a fortunate thing is because it's fortunate that today there was good VFR weather and two pilots there.  It's not life or death if the gear won't come up, but if I was single pilot and it was IFR and I took off and had the issue, it would be a lot more of a hassle to deal with at that point.

The trip to Hannibal was uneventful.  There's an old, raggedy looking T-6 on the ramp down there.  It's got a nice cover on it though.  I've wondered if they really needed that cover.  ;)  Anyway, I went and looked it over while I was waiting for my passenger, and it's an AT-6A. I know the G model and the D model but I'm not sure what the differences are in the A model, so I'll have to go look that up.  The poor thing looks like it needs flown, bad. On the other hand, the poor thing looks like it hasn't been flown for awhile, so I doubt I want to be the first.  There are trees and hills off the end of the runway, and nowhere real great to put an airplane down if it had a problem...

On the way home from Hannibal, my passenger pulled out a blanket and fell fast asleep in the back, while I played tunes off my iPad and watched the weather stay out of my way like a Good Mother Nature.  In fact, he was SO asleep, that I canceled IFR early, flew over the top of Glenndale, then did a high-ish and gentle turns fly-by at Indian Hills where Jim was having dinner.  I knew Steve had gone to it, but I was kind of late; the doors were open but the cars were gone by then.  My passenger had no clue he participated in a fly-by, he didn't wake up until I turned final to land at Kokomo.  Perfect.  :)