Mt. Comfort

Saturday was an off and on busy and enjoyable day.  I am Really glad I flew the T-6 over Friday evening instead of doing it Saturday morning, though.  As it was, Nathan and the kids and I flew the 340 over to Mt. Comfort Saturday morning, and we hit at the wrong time.  It was a zoo.  I was flying and Nathan was keeping track of the traffic, of the towers, of when and where was a good time to S-turn or break out or whatever we needed to do.  We were #6 or #7 coming down final, everyone doing S-turns to try to gain some spacing, and you'd see people head on with other people who were too tight on downwind, and there was no different path for fast vs slow airplanes, so of course we were behind slow ones. There were airplanes off both sides, and above us, and in front of us, and I was already low so I couldn't go much lower...we had nowhere to go if we'd have wanted to (and frankly for a few minutes there I definitely wanted to.)  I had the power back, flaps in, wallowing around out there in a mid-sized twin trying to not catch the guy in front of me without falling out of the sky.  Stall horn chirping a couple of times during the s-turns...it was lovely.  I wouldn't have cared to do that without a second pilot over there, either, because maybe I'm getting old, but that was a handful.  After they finally parked us (in the grass, where we sank, which required an impressive amount of power to get back out of), I shut down and we just sat there for a second to take a breath. That was worse than Oshkosh, because Oshkosh is organized, has separate arrivals for different speed aircraft, and because most people know about the NOTAM and how to follow it.  None of those three things were in play here.  They said they had 600 airplanes registered to come, and about 100 came the night before.  That's 500 airplanes arriving all in a few hours, and those are just the registered ones--a lot of folks didn't know they could or should register, or that there was a 29 page NOTAM, and just came in willy nilly.  For awhile there, it really was chaos.  When I asked the AOPA lady in 'charge' about it, she said they didn't get a temporary tower because it cost $20,000 and the required spacing would have meant they couldn't get all those airplanes in.  I told her that spacing would have been a really nice thing to have out there, and that a stall-spin accident or mid-air collision would be a lot more expensive.  It's an AOPA SAFETY seminar, and they are just danged lucky that us Joe Blow pilots didn't blow it under those conditions.  If they keep it up like this, they will be worse than Oshkosh or Sun-n-Fun which usually has at least one stall-spin accident, and those are much better organized than this was...  Just sayin'.

Having said that, we had a nice time once we survived getting in there.  :)  We sat under the wing of the T-6, I gave one ride to a guy who had always wanted to fly one, we had a huge lunch with a ginormous tenderloin, corn, cole slaw, large potato wedge fries, etc, for FREE.  Good stuff.  They had seminars, and hangars with vendors set up in them, and did a nice job on the ground with aircraft parking, shuttles, and so forth.  Their weak areas were the arrival/departure procedures and the rides program procedures.  Otherwise it was well done.  The weather was beautiful, we just hung out and ran into flying friends from all around, and had a very nice day. 

I ended up having to leave for Kokomo at 3, for a MBros trip to Harbor Springs, Michigan.  Steve and the kids came back with me, and Nathan stayed behind to offer any rides that may come up, and fly the Six home.  I got to Kokomo, got the 340 out and ready, and left for Michigan at 4:30.  I landed back at Kokomo after midnight, and got home around 1 a.m.  That was definitely a long day, but I'm grateful that the weather cooperated throughout the whole day at least.

I also don't always like talking about other people without telling them first, but the other day was Richard and Ann's 60th wedding anniversary, which they spent together...with Richard going in for a round of chemo for several hours.  So Happy Anniversary to these two lovely people, and I ask for prayers for Richard as his body is fighting off cancer and the chemo both.

This is the onboard traffic system on the 340 BEFORE I got so busy I couldn't look inside or take any more pictures.  This was still 15 miles out.  You seriously should have seen the pattern.  (I'm lower than they are because I like being able to look up and see them clearly in the sky vs trying to find them in the ground clutter.)

 

On the ramp at Harbor Springs, getting ready to head home.

 

Line up and wait--for a shot.

 

On our way home, Lake Michigan off to the west, under a sunset.

Mt. Comfort

It was a pretty messy day, for Steve more than for me, but I didn't get away clean either.  My cellphone got a serious workout all day.  Steve's phone was dead by noon, but mine has a battery case on it so it lasted until 9 pm.  ;)  We're still not really having fun though.

Today was Kaylee's last day of 7th grade.  They had an awards ceremony at 12:30.  Last year she came away with 12 or 13 awards.  This year she came away with two, and we all felt like she'd been robbed a little bit. She has killed it on grades, is in three honors classes next year, etc., but she wasn't nominated for any of the class awards for some reason.  I felt bad for her, and she was sad and disappointed too.  Kids I know get worse grades than she does did get the awards, so I don't know if they made a mistake or if there's some other issue, but I wanted to ask what was up.  She got an Honor Roll award and an Excellence in Band award.  Then they had a magician come on stage.  Kaylee got picked to be his assistant for one gag, and she did great.  She got up there and cracked jokes and did her thing with him.  Her teachers later told her she was a natural up there, and the magician let her keep his wand.  That brought her out of the "all my friends got awards in things I should have but didn't" funk and she was in good shape from then on.  :)  The lighting was terrible in there and I didn't get any good photos of her up there on stage...

I drove her home from school and stopped at Scoops for our traditional "school is out double scoop".  Normally we sit outside and chat for an hour, but today I didn't have time, so we hit the drive through and I took her home, dropped her off with Steve, and ran back out to Kokomo to take the T-6 down to Mt. Comfort Airport, with Ty picking me up in the Viking.  We got back to Kokomo around 6 pm, which was just in time for me to run home, pick up Kaylee, and take her to an overnight birthday party camping thing that started at 7.

When we pulled up at the house, a whole group of 13 year old girls came running out of the house, yelling "KAYLEE!!!!!"  They ran up and gave her hugs, and they were off and running, laughing, having a great time right away.  She has a pretty good group of friends, and that makes me happy.

School's out for summer.  :)

Another cockpit...

Almost to Mt. Comfort on a pretty day

 

Selfie.

 

The ramp at Mt. Comfort.  The T-6 is in the grass in between the two concrete ramps, front row, second from the right.  Yes I know my tailwheel isn't straight.

The Day of Not Happening

We woke up this morning to IFR conditions.  Both Steve and I had 10 a.m. flights that we pushed back and back and back until the students ran out of time to push back any more.  Right about noon it became a beautiful VFR Day.  We both also had students at 5:30 p.m.  His went, mine didn't, after finding a maintenance issue that wasn't a safety of flight issue but did bugger up what we needed to work on.  The last aviation thing to do that day was with the PT-26.  Nathan and Jon were working on it, trying to get it ready for it to give rides on Saturday at the AOPA Fly-in down at Mt. Comfort airport.  If it's not ready to go, then we need to use the T-6, and that messes up our plans too.  We were pre-selling rides down there for the next weekend, June 7th, at the Warbird Expo at Indy Metro.  If we give rides at Mt. Comfort for the CAF, it'll reduce the rides by a lot that we'll be able to do for ourselves at Metro.  But after much working today, the PT just wasn't cooperating, and by 6:30 pm or so, the towel was thrown in for the day.  Jon has a few things to try tomorrow, but it's not overly hopeful, and at this point we're hoping it'll be ready for the Metro weekend.

Kaylee had two finals today that she thinks went well.  She studied for one of the two finals she has tomorrow for a whole 35 minutes, and then said she felt pretty confident about it.  She has one more morning to wake up for school, and then she's done with 7th grade for good.  No more 6 a.m. wake-up calls for any of us for awhile!!  Woot!  :)

After school today I took Kaylee shopping to pick out a birthday gift for a friend of hers who is having an overnight birthday party tomorrow night.  She walked around quickly, saw two things, picked them up and said "This is K.  She'll love these."  What a great skill to have.  We were in and out of there in less than 20 minutes.

Just found tonight at 10 pm that we are to be at Mt. Comfort no later than 7:30 a.m. in the T-6 to give rides.  By "we" I am pretty confident that I mean "me".  ;)  Rides are to go until 7 pm.  And then also at 10 pm tonight I got a text from MBros asking what I was doing Saturday because a couple of them want to run to Michigan for a few hours.  It's not business, so they are flexible on time, meaning Saturday is likely going to be one seriously long day.  And they will hopefully be okay with one hot, sweaty, stinky, mussed-up looking pilot that late afternoon/evening.  They work with poop on a daily basis, so I presume both the husband and wife will be okay with it.  My biggest problem?  To be there no later than 7:30 a.m., I have to get up at 5 a.m.  That blows my Friday night too. I'd rather fly down the night before, but that is tomorrow, with a lot of other things going on, and I don't know about getting that worked out in time...

Me running up the PT-26 this afternoon.

 

Nathan running up the PT-26 later that afternoon.

Mid

I had a flight this morning with a young man, it's his 3rd or 4th time total in the pattern, and he GOT it.  All the way around, without me saying a word, he went all the way around the last two or three times, all the way through to a full stall flare and touchdown, without me touching it or saying a word.  Daggone kids, that's just disgusting!  He's not solid or perfect on it yet, and we still have crosswinds to do, but man, nobody gets the level off and flare after 3 or 4 days. If this wasn't a fluke, and he keeps progressing like this, he could solo pretty soon here, and he has like 5 hours.  You used to hear more of that when the instructor would take a guy up on a Cub on a grass strip and after a few hours of nothing but pattern work, on a nice day, would set them loose for a first solo.  Now days we have 16 things we legally have to cover before we can send them on their own, and besides, I'd  rather they know a little more than a monkey before they are cut loose in one of our planes.  ;)  But this kid is really good.

Painted my nails today, and promptly buggered them up sitting in the T-6, trying to get a folder out of the map compartment.  That was annoying but okay, and better than what I did next.  I was trying to snap a photo of the Letter of Authorization for us to give rides in the T-6 for an upcoming event, when my phone slid out of my hand and dropped to the floor of the T-6, where it then slid on down at a high rate of speed all the way to a "thunk" in the belly.  I grabbed the grabber and crawled in the back seat and spent 10 minutes trying to retrieve it to no avail.  I called Jon over figuring he might have to take a panel off, but fortunately he's gotten good enough at this that he could wiggle his way down there and figure out where to grab it.  He made me swear not to take photos of him down there with a lamp on his head pretty much upside down, but I couldn't anyway since my phone camera was in the belly of the beast.  ;)  I figure that's an official start to T-6 season there, and I'm just glad it didn't go shooting out of the open canopy again or something.

Kaylee thinks her first day of finals went fine, and she has another one tomorrow in Science that she was studying for a little bit tonight.  She also got a band award, a gold medal that you can pin on a jacket if you have one.  She had Taekwondo tonight, and they worked her out enough she came out red faced and sweaty, saying her whole left side had cramped up.  I told her it's good for her.  I got that look again.  One of these days she'll be able to beat me up, but not yet!  She's staying busy but doing fine.  Friday is a school end of year awards day.  I know she won't win attendance awards as she was ill a few days.  Not sure what else they hand out.  Maybe ISTEP awards from the previous year.  We shall see...

Tuesday Stuff

I see my originality and creativity is back in full force today!

This morning I had a student out at Glenndale in the 172, doing pattern work and takeoffs and landings.  It was only his second or third time in the pattern at all, his first time out of Glenndale, and we had a direct crosswind that started kicking up by the end there, so he was doing pretty well there!  It was a work-out though, and after an hour he was ready to hang it up, which was perfect timing for me since I could make lunch on time then.  ;)

This afternoon I went and got my hair curled.  I cut it off myself at home, and after I did that I saw that I'd cut the rest of the old perm off, so off I went.  It looks funny and smells terrible as usual, but it'll get better.  I had the same conversation I always have with hair stylists when they do a perm on me.  She holds a chunk of my hair up and says "Are you using the same color you did for the last perm?"  I say "I don't color my hair."  She says "This is just sun?" (suspiciously)  "You know the perm can react with some hair dye."  I say "It's just sun--there are no chemicals involved."  At least they're getting faster; I was in and out of there in 2 hours.  Now if only I didn't have to wait two days to wash my hair.  :o  Gross.

I've spent the whole evening at home with Steve and Kaylee here.  Tonight Kaylee hugged me goodnight, then ran off to Steve talking about how much my hair stank.  He said "Why would her hair stink?"  He had no idea I'd gotten a perm, and then still had no idea I'd cut off about 4-5" of hair.  He tried to pull Kaylee aside and tell her that as his daughter she had the responsibility to help him out a little and give him a heads-up and keep him out of trouble.  It was great. :D

Kaylee got word today that she was accepted into TILT camp coming up, so she was pretty excited about that.  She only has three more days of school, and she has finals those next three days too.  A few more days and we'll see if she can pull out all A's.  (You know you're not supposed to put an apostrophe after "A", but if you don't it says As, which looks like as, which is confusing.)

Here are a few photos from Kentucky.  They aren't in great order because of the names of the files, and I'm not going to take the time to put them in order for once.  The weather was beautiful, I'll give it that, not too hot, not too cold, light breezes...

 

I love this picture.

 

 

 

This was a large storm off on the horizon. It was headed away from us, no worries.

 

Neeeear, Faaaaar...

 

In the back of the RG on the way down.

 

Flying down Kentucky Lake

 

A lovely young lady on the ramp in front of the RG

 

The marina from the air.

 

Another view of the marina from the air.

 

A view of the marina from the water?  No, just the water.

 

At the local Catholic church where they were having a chicken dinner and a lot of lovely flowering trees.  :)

 

Kaylee and I on the way home, Steve...relaxing!

 

Kaylee flying us home.

 

A picture Steve took of Kaylee and I up front.  :)

Time

It's been a few days, I guess.

A few things happened over the weekend.  The Indy 500 (which I didn't watch), Steve and my 18th wedding anniversary, Memorial Day weekend, and a quick trip to Kentucky with Steve hand-flying the two hours there without an autopilot (le gasp), basically.

When we landed, he added a little power and rolled it on, keeping the nosewheel off to pull a wheelie down the runway, showing off, until Kaylee popped his balloon when she said "Is it just me, or was that a really weird landing?"  I started laughing, told her he was just showing off, but it still sucked some of the fun out of it for him.  On the way home, Kaylee and I flew up front.  The deal was Steve would give up his seat if she'd do some of the flying.  So she flew for about 35-40 minutes, and then flew the last 15 minutes through to the landing.  Her flying in the air is actually pretty good.  We fought over her using both hands on the yoke, which is a habit I don't want her getting into, but holding her altitude and course, she kept it pretty tight.  When we did the landing, I did the power, and she controlled the pitch/roll and did the actual landing.  She's a little behind on all the stuff to do in the more complex airplane, on what to look at and what to do when, but she follows directions quickly and precisely, which helped her pull a pretty nice landing out of it.  :)  She's getting old enough we want to get more serious about teaching her, but it's always a trick finding a good consistent time and way to do that with everything on the schedule.  But I'll say again that I'll plan on trying to get up with her more frequently once she's out of school here.

I have some photos, but no motivation to go any further tonight.  Here's one that cracks me up though.  I'd just told Kaylee again to take her left hand off the yoke and sit on it if she had to, and she shot me this look.  I'd just gotten my camera out to take a picture of her, but I didn't see exactly what look she gave me until I looked at it on my computer.  I'm not sure that's an appropriate look to give your mother.  ;)

Hola

It feels a little unnatural that the sun is up so high and the day is so bright at 7 a.m.  It feels like it should still be dark, but it does make it a little easier to get going, anyway.

I took a young fellow with me over to Burlington, Iowa today.  It's on the east edge of the state, so not that far over there, took about an hour and a half to get there even with some pretty good headwinds.  I let the other guy fly once I got us leveled off and stable, and let him fly us  home, as the person in the back seat didn't know the difference or care.  We got into a little IFR and a little rain with some light turbulence, so that made it extra tricky for him, but he enjoyed the challenge.  :)

When we landed, I had time to run into town and grab some "lunch" before coming back out to fly with a student who hasn't gotten to fly in a month thanks to weather and his schedule.  We went up and did the basics again, and he was glad just to get back in the air.

I posted this on Facebook, which Kaylee didn't want me to do, but I did anyway.  She's worried her friends will see it, so I compromised and just blocked her school friends on it. We got a letter in the mail today from her school, and they said that they offer three honors classes for 8th grade; Language Arts, Algebra, and Spanish, and that based on her ISTEP tests, her grades all year, Acuity tests, and teacher recommendations, Kaylee qualifies for all three honors classes next year!  In two of the three classes, if she keeps her grades above a B-, it will count towards High School credit, too. Something about giving her an easier Senior Year too.  She's been doing so much hard work this year, balancing multiple plays and Taekwondo and tennis for awhile and singing lessons for awhile and still keeping her academics up. She makes me tired sometimes just watching, okay, and running her around to all this stuff too, but she's doing great.  We're proud of her.  :)

Mid-Week

The weather has been iffy, sunny and warm and humid, but a little windy and bumpy for some folks.  We're still getting in most of our flights, but I'm not sure about one I have this afternoon.  They just issued a Thunderstorm watch and all the TAFs are calling for storms, but so far everything is headed south of us.  Wait and see, as usual.

Dug into the ATP a little bit.  Yawn.  Serious yawn.  We only have two full months and 10 days to get ready for the written, at the busiest time of flying season.  I wouldn't place odds on how many of us go ahead and do it, but we shall see.  :D

The flight this afternoon did go, for .8, with a big ole line of storms just to the south of us, turning the sky dark.  I stayed close to the airport, as the weather was unstable to say the least.  We came back in and started working on the pattern for Runway 32, but on downwind we got hit with turbulence enough to toss us up in our seats, and he didn't much care for that.  The winds swapped around to 23, so I had him go to 23 and come in and land for good, figured that was good enough for one day for a pretty much brand new guy.

Kaylee was the only one in band who played eight scales, she did it with zero mistakes, and she won an A+, a donut, a Coke, and a sign or badge that says "You're a BEAST".  She doesn't like Coke, so she is swapping her Coke with a donut from another girl who does like Coke and doesn't care about donuts.  So what we're saying here is that her school is giving kids Cokes and Donuts during the school day, and mine will be getting two donuts.  They also have an ice cream machine at lunch.  No wonder kids are getting fatter these days.  Not that I want Michelle O's school lunch plan in place.  I would like my kid to not eat two donuts and ice cream during the day, but I used to eat 4-5 candy bars after school while I was watching cartoons or reading a book, so I can't say much!

Tomorrow is an early start for a flight to Burlington, Iowa.  I'm bringing a student along even though I'll have a 2-3 hour ground wait, but I told him to bring his own entertainment as I'm not going to sit and small talk that whole time.  ;)  At least the weather is supposed to be nice.  I like nice.

DC And Beyond

Monday morning at 4:35 a.m. my alarm went off for my trip to Maryland Airport in Indian Head, MD, inside the "Serfa" (SFRA), at the edge of the "Freeze" (FRZ) in Washington DC.  I still find that a little interesting; what can I say, any place that'll send F-16s after you if you goof up is interesting.  ;)  We arrived around 8:15 a.m., and there was a weird black C-414 there on the ramp, black and gray with blue lightning drawn on the tip tanks.  Ugly, man.  They said it was a Cessna convention--they aren't used to seeing a lot of twins in there, and in one day they had two C-340s and a C-414.

I had a good time at the airport this time.  There was a whole group of old guys hanging out there most of the day, telling stories and joking around, and it was like...home.  Two of them even commented on my age, and when I said 42, said they wouldn't have guessed close to that, and that made me like them more.  ;)  I was there from 8:15 a.m. until 6:30 p.m., so I spent a lot of time out there. 

One of the guys gave me his car to go into town and get lunch, because the MBros guys needed the courtesy car as their rental car didn't show.  I wanted to do something different--there was a seafood place, so I tried there first, and they were closed.  So was the diner, and so was the third different restaurant nearby.  So I ended up at Burger King.  Gah!  ;) 

I went for a couple of walks during the day, to get a little exercise and give me something to do with a bit of fresh air.  It was a beautiful day.  The old guys wanted me to take them up flying.  I said no way, I'm from Indiana, I don't know what I'm doing out here, and I'm sitting in the middle of a SRFA, so I'm coming in IFR, I'm going out IFR, and other than that I'm sitting on the ground minding my own business.  They said they'd get me a code, but I said forget it.  Instead I took them out to the plane and gave them the sitting-on-the-ground tour.  ;)

One of the guys said that there have been 3-4000 pilots violated in the DC airspace since it went into effect.  He said several local guys who have been based out of there for years have ended up accidentally squawking 1200 when their IFR flight plans were canceled, and ended up violated.  You know how many terrorists have been caught in the airspace in that same time frame?  Yeah.  Zero.  But let's make sure to trap a whole crap load of innocent people.  He said that they're pretty relaxed out there about time frames, about flying in general, with one exception: if you squawk 1200 while in the air, or take off with 1200 squawking, they will scramble the F-16s, and you will be violated.  Do you know how hard it is to not hit the "VFR" button when they cancel your IFR in the air?  It's habit, it's ingrained, and there, it's dead wrong.  They were catching so many innocents that they started reminding all pilots to leave their squawk alone until they have landed, which is good, because I'd have been caught the first time in there too, even though I took the course and read not to do that.  My finger was headed for 1200 when he said "Retain your squawk until landing, IFR canceled at this time."   And that's what's so scary about the whole thing.  They make it not worth your while to even risk it, which is their point, I think, and will be the death of General Aviation out there, which is just dang sad, and unnecessary.

I walked in the door around 10 pm, a long day, but a decent one.

Today I had two flights, one in the morning doing takeoffs and landings at Glenndale, and one in the afternoon doing hood work and takeoffs and landings in some more gusty winds at Kokomo.  I kept up my logbook on my online thingy, and will catch up my paper logbook whenever I feel like it.  That works, I think.

The CAF wanted to see if I would do a photo flight for Warbird Digest magazine in their PT-26, but to do it with the CAF airplane I have to have a FAST card.  I could be the photo ship, but I couldn't be the pilot of the CAF airplane.  Of course I don't have a FAST card, so I can't do that, which I had to tell them.  But the guy who IS going to do it bought a Stearman recently, started formation training this Spring, and is taking his FAST card checkride with the Stearman group on June 21st, after which he'll be able to do the photo flight. He's had a month or so of formation training in a Stearman, with only other Stearmen, but he'll be legally able to do the formation flight in a PT-26 with a T-6, even though he's never done that before, while I've been flying formation for Four and a half years, with every kind of different aircraft out there, but don't have my Formation Card, so I'm the less safe and not acceptable option.  And while I'm at it, I can't get the one group to answer me on getting together even though it's almost June now, and the other gets together formally twice a year very far away from me, costing a fortune to even get there.  So many other airplane types out there have an easy way to get this done.  RV's, Bonanzas, Fighters, Jets, Stearmen...I wish I had a type of airplane available that I could just use to go do the stupid weekend thing and be done, or somebody willing to just write me the thing like they do for other people out there with less time both flying and formation than I have.  It's not like I'm trying to join the Blue Angels or something.  ;)

No Kaylee news.  Well, she was working on her scales tonight on the saxophone.  If she can do seven of them, she gets an A+, a donut, and a badge that says "I'm a Beast".  Tonight she did eight and counting, so she'd better come back from school tomorrow with an "I'm a Beast" badge, or I'll be mad.  ;)  She did a school paper on the time I dyed her hair dark red so she could be Ariel the Mermaid, and even though it was temporary dye, it stuck permanently and left her with pink hair.  I'm sure the teacher will think I'm a great parent, since she forgot the part that it was really temporary dye that stuck in her light blond hair and instead said it was permanent and I'd mis-read it.  Oh well.  If that's the worst thing I do as a parent, I'm not doing too bad.  ;)

Here are a few photos from DC:

Sunrise climbing up to FL210

 

Headed into the big bad DC area.

 

Maryland Airport, 2W5.  Old hangars, tall grass, old airplanes...

 

Deserted aircraft out in the field...

 

A pretty little Piper Super Cruiser with a nice little panel, sitting in the weeds...

 

The end of the runway that isn't used any more out there.

 

A taildragger taking off on Runway 02.

 

The C-340 next to a visiting C-414 with IMO Ugly paint.  Look at the engine nacelles and tip tanks...who thought of that?

Poker Run

Kaylee spent the night with her friend, slept in until 10 a.m., being the last one up (that's a shocker!), and then they brought her out to the airport after lunch, where she finished the day playing with a group of kids outside, getting dirty, playing hide and seek, and doing good solid outdoor country-ish fun. You have to like that.

It was supposed to be a really nice day today, but it didn't quite get the memo.  It started off okay, got a little sketchy, then cleared off beautifully--after the whole event was done and most folks had headed home.  :)  It was a bit lighter of a Poker Run than we had the last few years, and we had way too much food, but participants had fun anyway.

Steve got out there really early, and I got out there at 8:30, which is still pretty early for me. Today was Armed Forces Day at Frankfort Airport, so around 10 a.m. Nathan and I went over in the T-6, me in the back, had a pancake and sausage breakfast, then headed over to Delphi to say hi to them for their fly-in breakfast, than back over to Kokomo just in time for lunch.  :o  At 3 p.m. there was a fly-over at Grissom's Museum, and this time I flew from the front and Nathan rode in the back.  I originally wanted to go up and do some aerobatics too, but the ceilings were low, and the mood just didn't strike to work to get above them, I guess.  Another time.  We had all sorts of wonderful food, and the poker run participants wandered in and tried their hand at winning, so to speak.

I walked outside late in the evening, and the sun was going to be going down within the hour, and I thought it looked like a beautiful evening to do a little bit.  Steve went with me this time.  It took him a little bit of effort to get himself situated in the airplane, but finally we got to go.  ;)  We didn't stay up long, he did some flying from the back seat, and after the sun went down the cockpit and gear pins were starting to get a tad on the dark side, so I decided that was good enough for one day.

The Day

Kaylee is down in Noblesville staying overnight with a friend, after having gone to an Indians (baseball) game and doing a meet and greet with a Disney star doing some kind of event.  She spent today on a field trip to the Children's Museum down in Indy.  Kaylee's a busy girl!  :)

Tomorrow is the Poker Run, and Steve's got a ton of stuff he's been doing to get ready, so my job today was to get most of the food/drinks.  Soupley's was an easy first stop, and it was even on sale.  I ran that out to Kokomo so I could leave it there and check the fridge to see what condiments and other supplies I needed to get.  While I was there, I checked the fuel on the 340 to know if I would need to top it off tomorrow while I was out there tomorrow, in preparation for Monday's pre-sunrise departure for Washington DC.  When I popped open the fuel cap on the left aux, fuel came geysering out of there.  It hit me in the chest, and completely soaked my right arm from the elbow down on my sweatshirt before I could get the cap back on.  I wiped down the plane, soaked up as much of the fuel as I could out of my sweatshirt with paper towels, then decided that rather than going right to the store to pick up the food, I'd better go home and get this sweatshirt in the wash.  Besides, walking around the store smelling like 100LL would probably make people nervous.  My arm started to burn a little bit too, so that was the deciding factor.  ;)

I was driving home, and it was a chilly day, gray, rainy, and dreary.  Earlier that day I'd been thinking about Devon, because today would be his 16th birthday.  So it came as a surprise to me when I was almost home from the airport, and I realized that for the last 15 minutes of my drive home, surrounded by some pretty strong Avgas fumes, I'd been smirking, smiling, and daydreaming about various fun feisty flying adventures from the past and future.  That's when you know you have a problem.  Surrounded by the smell of gas, you start daydreaming about flying.  Earlier today we'd joked about addiction, but it does seem to fit.  My name is Laura, and I am an addict.  It has been ten days since my last fix.  Tomorrow I plan on falling off the wagon.  Repeatedly.  And hard.

After taking one last whiff of my sleeve and throwing it in the wash, it was time to pick Kaylee up from school and drive her down close to Noblesville for her evening adventure.  She was off and running, and Steve and I had the afternoon/evening to get a few more things done.

I hit GFS (bulk store) and picked up a bunch of food we needed, then met up with Steve, Nathan and crew for dinner, on to Meijer to pick up drinks, then out to Kokomo to unload all this stuff while Steve set up tables and chairs and got things organized for first thing in the morning.  We didn't leave until just after 9 p.m., so it was a busy day...

Another Day

I think I've run out of things I'm willing to catch up on for now.  I got everything done I wanted to get done, plus some I hadn't planned on originally.  When you're on a roll it's nice to have scuzzy weather days so you can act on it. 

On the other hand, it's time to get back in the air now.

Rollin'

"This Girl is on Fiiiire" is the song that popped into my head tonight.  The weather stopped my 3 pm flight, so again I had the day to get some work done, and I got so much done Steve asked me where his wife went.  I even organized a few things I haven't looked through in years. I'm still not completely done, but I am feeling pretty snazzy at the moment.  Tomorrow morning I have a student, but again the forecast is calling for IFR, so if that cancels, I will attempt to finish up two more things that require paperwork, and I should be in fairly decent shape.

What I need to do after that is kick in on my studying.  I need to re-study the PT so I'll be ready when the guy from Virginia comes back for my "Instructor Pilot" checkride.  I need to study the ATP materials.  I got the book out tonight and just crossed out the sections I don't need to know, quickly looking through the rest.  Bleh that's a Whole lot of info.  I need to look back over the Yak 52 materials so I'll be ready when that is back out of the prop shop.  I need to start looking over the Cheyenne info.  That's gonna be another big one.  Last but not least, I need to dig into the Twin Beech info.  That's the other big one.  I have at least some info on all those planes printed out plus the ATP book sitting next to my chair in the living room, along with Kaylee's logbook, which I am going to try to fill in and catch up next.

Steve mostly caught up his logbook too.  He needs to fill in a few things, but he got his hours added up, and he's somewhere into 11,000 hours (I don't remember the exact number).  I'm at almost 7900 hours.  I've caught up to him a bit, but he still instructs too much for me to catch him for a long time to come, if ever, which is probably his plan.  ;)  He's hitting the electronic logbook too, just finished plugging his numbers in and getting that ready to go.  It really is nice finally having everything caught up and having a digital option too for insurance forms.  Like I said, I may go back in and add in specific airplanes as they come up or as I think of them and want them in there, but for now we're feeling pretty good about it.  It's one thing to transfer over a couple hundred hours.  It's another to get organized on 11,500 or 7,900 hours.  Shew.  Now I haven't flown since May 7th, which is 8 days and counting, and that's just not right for May.  Saturday should be nice, and at some point during that day I will be looking to take the T-6 up and actually fly it, more than the two takeoffs and landings I did when it came out of annual.  I think I'm going to bring music along, too.  And maybe stick a little piece of duct tape on the map compartment door so nothing could happen to fall out of it for any reason.  I'm feeling feisty.

Oh, one other thing came up today that I thought was pretty neat.  A young-ish man south of here who had a T-6, and still has a Twin Beech, who let me fly it once a couple years ago, emailed me today and offered me the use of HIS airplane to do my C-45 checkout in.  It won't work like that most likely, because this one we're getting requires 25 hours of time in IT, not just time in type, something about it being a Limited Category for exhibition and thus requiring that.  And I think he was thinking what we were all originally thinking--a handful of hours to get comfortable in the plane and pass a checkride, not 25 hours.  But in his email he said he wouldn't offer that to many people, but he had flown with me several times and knows how I am, and he's flown with my check pilot, Doug R. several times, and he trusts us with his airplane, basically.  I think that's pretty darned cool!

Pleased

My two flights for today were canceled for rain/low clouds, so instead I worked on stuff all day, and I feel pretty darned good about it, too. I got some payments sent off, some other bills paid, got my logbook caught up from January, but best of all, and the part that makes me so pleased, has to do with a digital or electronic logbook.

It all started with the CAF.  They wanted me to re-do two forms, one of which asks for every airplane I've ever flown and how many hours I have in each, how many landings in each, how much complex and taildragger and just every question you can ask, in the last year and 90 days.  I was working off of my old form from last year, but then I had to update my logbook, and then try to go back through and make the numbers match, and I just got frustrated.  So I pulled up Zulu log, which I'd started plugging things into, but at some point they had gone to a "You can't do this without buying a Premium Subscription" platform, so I couldn't utilize any tools to see what any totals were.  This was annoying too as you can imagine.  So I went on the hunt, and on a pilot web board I found a bunch of people all using and liking the same free site.  I thought maybe I'd look into it, see if I could start the long, horrible process of getting all my time transferred over in giant inaccurate blocks but at least use it as a jumping off place, etc.  By 9:00 pm tonight I've got everything entered, all my flight time matches my logbook, and it compiled for me the columns I didn't have totaled for cross-country and CFI time. 

I started out in easy chunks, adding in airplanes and time that I have to track for insurance purposes.  The 340, the Aerostar, the T-6, etc.  That was so easy I added in the ones I already knew the totals to from before.  The Baron, the Citabria, the Cheyenne, and so forth. That was also easy, and after I was through I had more than half my flight time already entered.  Hmm.  So I went through from my last CAF form and added in all the other main planes I flew or had flown, and I made one starting entry for each.  I made one generic entry for Champs/Chiefs, one for 172s, one for Cherokee 180s, etc.  I ended up leaving out several types of airplanes I've flown over the years.  140s and Arrows and 235s and so forth, but most of that shouldn't matter.  I doubt insurance is ever going to care how much Cherokee 140 time I have, and if they do, I can get close, figure it out and then adapt the original numbers.  I thought it would bug me more to not have every single airplane logged, but it bugs me much less than having to hand add up my logbook multiple times a year.  So far I'm good with it, and if something comes up and I want to adapt it, then I can.  That's the power of digital over paper. There is of course an iPhone/iPad (or Droid/Windows 7) app that I downloaded and can plug flights into directly too.  They claim they will always be free, but even if they weren't, it's pretty hard to beat. I'm just grateful that it was so easy that I could get a reasonable jumping off place with pretty accurate numbers accomplished all in one evening.  That almost made me downright cheerful.  ;)

Kaylee, for the first time in ages, had Nothing to do after school today except homework.  It felt like a vacation for all three of us!  She submitted her application and essay to TILT camp, the "Teens In Leadership Training" camp she attended last year and hopes to attend again this year.  She's only going to one week of camp this year, which will also help all of us, but she's looking forward to it.

I still have some things to accomplish tomorrow if I can, and I don't have any flights until 3 pm if weather allows even then, so I'm looking forward to knocking a few more things off of my list of "I let this go too long".  ;)

So...

This morning Kaylee's friend was dropped off at our house so she could go to the school bus with us.  I never saw her, because I crawled back in bed and went right back to sleep while Steve drove them to the bus stop.  ;)

Today at school they had their "Living Biography" day, covering all of 7th and 8th grades. The choir did four songs from "Grease" to start off the day, and then one at a time, every one of the kids went to the front of the auditorium and gave a little blurb about their "Senior Adult".  About half of them had their biography person with them that day, who walked up with them, and then would make a little comment after the kid gave their speech.  There were a Lot of kids.  I was there for over 2.5 hours listening to everyone's spiel, and they broke for a cookie and punch for awhile, and then back in for the next round of kid speeches.  The little blurbs only last 30 seconds or so per kid, plus adult comment time, plus walking up and back time.  Finally it was Kaylee's turn, and she marched up there and read off her little speech about her Living Biography person, Nathan.  They had the kids stand on the floor, not on the stage, and they were in the dark, so I couldn't get any video or photos of her down there, but she looked lovely, with matching blue dress shirt and shoes.  :)  We sat together and kind of goofed around for a long time, and it was lunch time by the time we were all done.  She has a copy of her paper to give to Nathan, maybe Saturday if we remember.  It's really an interesting project to have the kids do.  They mostly have to spend a fair amount of time interviewing someone in their lives that is older and wiser, they have to have at least 50 questions, they have to write a whole 4-5 page paper on that person, get a photo of them together and separately, and then introduce them to everyone and explain who they are, why they are special, a few words to describe them as a person, something funny or interesting they did, and why they enjoyed getting to know more about them, and get up and do a little public speaking on it.  One of the "seniors" (I keep putting that in quotes because some of them were no more "seniors" than most of my friends, who are not old, thank you!) told us that when he heard the questions he was being asked, he told the young man that he wished he could go back and ask his grandpa these same questions.  Another woman, she was bent over, frail, and very, very old, barely walking, she was a young man's great-grandmother, and she could barely talk even with the microphone, but she stated very shakily how much she loved him, how proud she was of him, and how she hoped that he lived with Jesus in his life and heart for the rest of his days.  He helped her back to her seat, and it took them a long time to get there, and people clapped most of that time for them.  It was sweet.  The local historical society was there too.  The school had submitted nine papers that meet certain criteria, including the person had to be from that county/area, lived there their whole lives, etc., and the top five were given certificates, got their photo taken for the paper with their "senior adults", and their papers were submitted as research/historical information for families in that area.  They take this project seriously!

The afternoon was full of winning productivity.  I got so much stuff caught up that I'm feeling pretty snazzy.  I got several things done for SMA Support, got some important banking stuff set up, got paperwork done, got some important MBros stuff caught up and sent on to them, and that's just some of it.  I have a bit more, if it continues to be cruddy weather tomorrow, otherwise I'll be flying.  If that happens I hope I don't end up running out of steam before the next rainy day, because I still have some stuff to accomplish.

Kaylee had Taekwondo this afternoon, and I was so busy working on stuff that I left her there.  I was almost 30 minutes late picking her up.  She called me on her teacher's phone.  Normally I don't answer the phone if I don't recognize the number, but I knew by then I had left her and that the call was probably about her.  Sure enough...they were all standing outside waiting for me, leaning up against their truck.  Doh.  I apologized, and then when Kaylee got in I apologized again and said I was working.  She said "You went to the airport looking like that?"  I said no, I was working at home, but glad to know that I looked bad enough to be commented on.  ;)

It really doesn't feel like Spring ever arrived still.  It feels like it's still on hold, waiting.  I took the T-6 up for two landings right after they finished the annual, but I haven't really flown it.  It's mid-May and I haven't flown any formation since last Fall, about 7 months now.  I haven't been up in a Champ or anything else with a tailwheel also since last Fall.  I've still been doing training and trips, just like the rest of the winter.  Normally there's at least a hint of the season in March or April, and here we are in the middle of May still in Neutral. We haven't had or been to any events, no fly-ins or anything yet.  (Well, we did have the Bonanza formation clinic, but I had trips Friday and Saturday and they went home Sunday about when I got there.)  This weekend is our Poker Run though, so that'll be one of our first flying features of the season.  I haven't complained about the warmer weather, though!  Even though I had my first time of the season getting hot and sweaty in an airplane, I didn't complain one bit, because I'm still not completely thawed out from that winter.  I will not complain, not for a long time!

On that note, tomorrow is technically here, so I'd better get some sleep, because I either have more productivity or more lessons to accomplish.  :)

Mom Day

Normally I steal today, sleep in, ride the motorcycle, go out and fly the T-6 if it's available, and have a little Mother's Day my way.  Today I slept in, and the rest of the day I was going to Kaylee's play, going to the after party, getting dinner, going to the store, getting gas in the car, and you know, this is the most deserted I've ever seen that grocery store.  Apparently most women refuse to go the store on Mother's day. No lines?  Works for me.   ;)

Ann and I went to Kaylee's play together today, and Kaylee's friend Maggie and her mom came up from Noblesville too, so that was neat.  Kaylee did a really nice job today, projected nice and loudly and in tune.  Many of the kids did better today than Friday--they had a good showing to end on there.  There will be no more plays for awhile for Kaylee.  School will be out, so none there.  Curtain Call has no more auditions until the end of August, so summer is "off" from acting.  It seems like we should suddenly have much more time again now!  Her Taekwondo will be firing back up, but that's only Monday and Wednesday at least...

Kaylee wrote me a poem for school and gave it to me a couple days ago:

An unborn child in a mother's womb,
cheers and happiness throughout the room.
As the parents wait excitedly for the baby to arrive
the doctor comes in with an exasperated sigh.
The doctor says that the baby will die.
The parents wipe their eyes and cry.

A few months later, they wait again
in that room where it all begins.
The nurse comes in with tears in her eyes,
crying and crying while this new baby dies.
The parents are poor, having spent all their money
buying machines and medicines for their sweet little honey.

The parents go to the doctor again after awhile
waiting anxiously, as they are expecting a child.
The doctor arrives and huffs a big sigh,
the parents look devastated and begin to cry.

After a few years, the parents go again
waiting for it to happen all over again.
The doctor arrives, and the parents begin to fear,
but the doctor smiles, and says "Come here!"
The parents finally get to be happy
and in no time they are cheering and clapping.
They look at her and say that she is their shining pearl;
they finally got their beautiful girl.

She frowned and said "It sounds kind of narcissistic, but that's not how I meant it."  She also said that she thinks she's good at writing but bad at poetry and even worse at songs, but hopes I like this one.  As if I wouldn't.  :)

Tomorrow starts off with a friend of Kaylee's being dropped off at our house early, to go to the bus stop with us, then moves on to her having her "Living Biography" day at school.  I'll talk more about that tomorrow, but it's her paper that she wrote about Nathan...

New

Kaylee had her two play performances today.  I took her at noon, and she got home close to 11 p.m.  Tomorrow she has her last performance, there by noon and home around 5 or 6, and then she has homework plus e-learning Saturday to make up for school before she goes to bed.  Busy girl still.  She came home happy today, said she'd hit her high note on key and sang loudly today.  I'd suggested she project as loud as she could, and she said she did well with it for both shows today.  I wish I could've seen her! We'll go for tomorrow...

This afternoon Steve and I went to a lovely wedding at a small farm outside of Sheridan.  They ended up with a beautiful day to have an outdoor wedding, and afterwards was food and dancing inside a room that the bride and her family had decorated themselves.  The wedding was for Nathan's son Tall James and his long-time girlfriend Alexa.  I'm happy for them, I wish them well, and I think they're great, I really do.  :)

The funny part was us getting ready.  We'd procrastinated until the day of to figure out what to wear.  Steve was looking through his dad's clothes as well as his own, and I pulled out every dress I had, and what isn't awfully out of style is mostly too tight.  Except one dress I had...that I wore to Devon's funeral when I was pregnant with Sidney back in 1999!  Fortunately it wasn't something that goes out of style, and fortunately I could Spring it up.  Our bedroom looked like a clothes bomb went off in there!  We decided that we need to just go ahead and get at least one nice outfit to wear ahead of time to such things...don't you think?  :)

My head's going again, so...time to hit the hay and hope for a good day tomorrow.  Lots to do...

A Fish Named Kaylee

An online acquaintance from a pilot board who lives in Texas but has family up here in Indiana landed at Kokomo last night, so I invited him and his family to come to lunch with us at Glenndale.  They were able to make it, and spent an hour or so here, before heading down to Indy.  You can't say you can't meet real people off the internet any more.  I met him, his wife and his mother-in-law.  :)

I left Glenndale after doing just a little bit of helping Steve with the Poker Run boxes, cutting out stuff, stuffing envelopes, that kind of thing, went right to the store and picked up the cookies I needed for Kaylee's opening night party tonight, picked her up from school, got her some dinner, ran her home to take a shower and grab her stuff, and then drove her to the play.  We were both supposed to be there at 5 pm, her to get her hair and makeup done, and me to start working on setting up the after play party.  That wasn't as easy as expected.  One of my jobs was blowing up balloons with a helium tank, and no I did not inhale any of it, there were too many kids around and I would have been over-run and in trouble by the rest of the adults there.  First I had this stuff I was supposed to squirt in the balloons and squish around that is supposed to prevent the balloons from losing their air quickly.  The first two balloons I did, even with helium, sank instead of floated.  The stuff to go in the balloons was a thick goopy sticky gel.  I finally got down the right amount of goop, but my fingers were covered in it, and it was really tough to tie the balloons off or get the ribbons tied.  I also have fingernails again now, and they are a pain.  Aside from poking my eyes when I try to get my contacts in and out, I was stabbing and scraping the skin off my finger every time I tied a balloon.  I did that for an hour and a half.  My finger still hurts.  I was supposed to help set up the decorations too.  This is not really my strong point, but I did my best.  In the end, I was hot, sweaty, disheveled, but the thing was ready to go, so I ran inside and found Steve in the front row in our seats, and we settled in to watch Kaylee's play.

The play is "The Frog Princess", a Russian screenplay, having nothing to do with the Disney one, and it's a musical.  Kaylee plays a fish who helps a Prince after he spared her life, and she is in three songs as well.  She has to sing her lines, she has blue face paint on, a 6" fin sewed into her hair, a blue sparkly dress, and blue lipstick usually.  I think they were out tonight.  I hadn't yet read the script or seen any of the rehearsals (on purpose, so I could watch opening night all new).  It was a cute script.  The Tzar of Russia has three sons, he tells them all they have to get married and he was then going to pick one to be his successor.  The sons find their wives by shooting arrows and leaving their travel to the winds, and whichever woman finds their arrow, they marry.  Two brothers find harpish but normal women, the third prince's arrow is found by a talking frog that is really a pretty princess under a spell.  And the story goes from there.  I did enjoy the play, it was one that kept you watching to see what would happen next.  The musical part of it was...well...  The pianist, flutist and violinist did fantastic, they had their own little orchestra there and sounded like pros.  The kids, well, the kids needed either louder music so they could hear what notes, or key, that they were supposed to be hitting, or no music so that the rest of us couldn't hear what notes, or key, that they were supposed to be hitting.  I'm not being mean, the play was great, the kids did a really nice job with the acting, the props were great, the costumes were great, the singing...just needs a little strengthening there.  Kaylee needed to be louder with hers, as did many of them, but I can only imagine how hard it is to project when you don't have a mic and you're competing against music that does come through speakers, but if you belt it out and it's a high note, that's really hard.  I know they've worked hard and that part of it is just really tough!  They had fun, they did well with the play, and opening night was successful.  Nobody forgot their lines or sang the wrong song, like they did during the last practice run with an audience on Wednesday, so that's a win!  :)

Afterwards we went to the cafeteria for the after party, had cookies and cupcakes and punch, and watched the kids mingle, sign autographs, talk about how it went, etc.  Kaylee was one of the last to get ready to leave, but Steve stuck it out and stayed with me which made it much more pleasant and less awkward for me than usual.  ;)

Tomorrow Kaylee has two showings, at 2 pm and 7 pm.  We have a wedding to attend Saturday so I'm not sure that she'll have anyone in the audience for her for either showing on Saturday, but she seems okay.  I've never missed one of her plays yet so it seems kind of wrong to do so now, but I will be there Friday and Sunday...

Here are a few photos from tonight:

Dressed and waiting for hair and make-up...

 

Having her hair braided and a six-inch fin literally sewn into her hair.

 

Hair is done, now onto make-up.

 

She does her own blue, and then...

 

Someone else draws the scales on her face.

 

Back right corner, singing to the sad prince.

 

The prince hasn't eaten in a long time and wants to kill the fish for food

 

The fish begs for its life and asks for kindness.

 

Actually the fish Sings, asking for mercy.

 

The wild haired girl on the left is one of Kaylee's good friends in real life.  :)

 

The curtain call at the end, bowing to the audience.

 

At the after party, the Fish is with a blue mechanical fish.  Happy opening night!  :)

Agenda

My agenda failed, and I was sick all night.  Finally around 4 a.m. it started getting better, but I was still awake by 5, I'd go in and out.  I woke up at 8:30 feeling like the imprint of the license plate of the truck that hit me should be visible on my forehead, so I canceled my two flight students for today, and have spent the day trying to rest and recuperate.  This means that I have nothing to discuss unless you want to know what happened with some of the TV shows I caught up on today.  Yesterday I got it done no matter what, but I'm older now, and I didn't enjoy paying for it.  :o

This afternoon Kaylee fell asleep on me for almost two hours.  She's almost as tall as I am.  She weighs over 100 pounds.  I could only move my lower hands, kind of like a T-Rex.  My legs went numb.  I couldn't take a deep breath.  And I couldn't bear to wake her up.  If I wasn't her mom it might be creepy that I watched her sleep off and on, but I couldn't help it.  She sleeps with her eyes open a crack, like her Grandma Chiles does sometimes.  She's still happy and sweet and peaceful.  I'm glad I sill get an opportunity to cuddle.  :)

Tomorrow's another day...

Back

My head is pounding still so I'm going to list my day in one most unfascinating paragraph and go close my eyes again.

After having trouble getting to sleep last night, I got up at 6:15 to get Kaylee up, then got ready around 8:30 myself and headed out to Kokomo where I flew in KS and did various more advanced stalls and recoveries with someone. When we landed, I had time to go to the post office and next day air mail something for Steve, then go to the store to pick up milk and cereal for Kaylee and drop it off back home, before going to lunch.  After lunch I made a bank deposit, then was back out at Kokomo flying with Steve's new primary student.  It was gusty and windy, but we stayed in the pattern and worked on that for a little over an hour.  I landed from there, ran home and grabbed my iPad, went through Arby's, then picked Kaylee up at the bus stop from school.  I took her right over to play practice where she ate her dinner on the run, and I walked right into the Greenroom, where I spent the next four hours babysitting/monitoring 25 kids, loud, wound-up kids, for four hours straight.  Finally made it home around 9 pm.

Trying to kick the three-day headache is next up on the agenda...