Bluster and Bluff

Spring has one issue--allergies.  I never had to worry about that until the last couple years, but boy I can feel it now, and poor Kaylee is in bad shape again too. Freeze or Sneeze.  *sigh*  I suppose summer would then be...Fabreeze.  To cover the odor of hot sweaty airplane.  ;)  Fall is just nice.  Um..."Ease"?  That's stretching it...

I had three flights today, only ended up doing two of them.  The second one, the winds had picked up, and it wasn't just a little breezy, it was rough.  Our first takeoff, we had only been in the air a few seconds, probably only about 50' in the air, and the left wing dropped hard, the nose flew up, and I gave it a boot-full of right rudder, had right aileron in, shoved the nose down, and it seemed to take awhile to straighten back out.  The poor guy in the left seat was all :O.  This was his 10th flight ever, and he found it exciting.  ;) The third guy is brand new, and Steve talked to him and he decided he didn't want to try to learn straight and level and deal with that level of air lumpage.  So he's rescheduled for another time.

My first trip to Washington DC has been scheduled for Monday afternoon, overnighting and coming back Tuesday afternoon.  It'll be my first flight to that area since the SRFA airspace was put in place out there.  It's no big deal IFR, just another IFR trip, but it's still kind of different from where I usually go, and I'm interested in different.

I had talked about our Indiana chapter of the CAF getting a Twin Beach. This one is actually a 1943 Navy SNB-5 that was re-designated an RC-45J after the war. It has actual history, which is pretty cool.  It's also in the "Experimental Exhibition" category, which is both neat, as it's the only other plane besides the Red Nose P-51 who is in that category and is approved to give rides in a program, and a problem, because you have to have SO much time to be allowed to fly it that right now only Nathan and I would qualify to operate it.  This isn't a terrible thing for me personally, but it won't stay long if it's relying on me to keep it funded.  ;)  This plane is coming to us because the wing it belongs to in Utah now can no longer support it.  It's not a shock as to why they can't.  It had an engine failure at a show in Wyoming, and then sat outside all winter.  The annual is due and there are a couple other things that need fixed.  They are going to swap out the dead engine with a different high time 985 so that we can get the plane back to Indiana.  Because of its category, each pilot who does qualify has to have 25 hours in that airplane before they can be signed off as PIC in it.  That's a loooot of time.  So to help mitigate that, I've asked one of the main CAF guys if he'd let me fly it back from Wyoming with him so he can start the process of officially checking me out in it, killing two birds with one stone.  Or more like one bird, since it won't take 25 hours to get it home.   It's going to be a pretty big project to get this here, get it up and running, and get people checked out in it.  It'll be pretty neat when it's done, though.