CAF Day

I flew this morning at 9 a.m., and it was one of those rough wind days where no matter what the AWOS says, it feels a lot more squirrely.  When we took off the winds were 220 gusting up to 17 knots, and our runway 23 is closed at Kokomo now, meaning we got to use 14, which is pretty close to a direct crosswind.  Since he's working on the pattern, we went over to Marion to practice, because Marion had a runway pretty much right into the wind.  We were over there about an hour, and the winds were really picking up, and he was worn out, so we headed back to Kokomo, and when we got there we now had a direct crosswind at 25 knots.  He got us around the pattern, and then on final it was obvious it was a problem, the gusts were big and swirly, and at first I was just helping, but then he just put his hands up.  I had to work it pretty hard too, it felt more like the 30s than the 20s.  I get it down after some work, and as I'm slowing down, he says "Well, that was nuts."  It was definitely a sporty day, and the thought that ran through my head as I was wrestling it around was "I'm glad I'm not in a taildragger right now."  Today was supposed to be my checkout from the back seat in the PT-26.  The winds down there were only a 70 degree crosswind, not a 90 degree crosswind, but it was enough.  The majority of the checkride is various takeoffs and landings.  Short field, soft field, 3-point, wheel, aborted takeoff, go-arounds, normal.  That's a lot of time to be spending wrestling winds like that if you don't have to.  So it's rescheduled for next week.  I wanted to actually fly it longer than for the couple of takeoffs and landings I've done in it thus far, but it is forecasting to rain all the way up until next week when we're supposed to go, and I can't go by myself, so I have to drag somebody else out there for ballast, which makes it harder to get done.  Oh well...

Tonight I had a CAF meeting.  It started at 6, but it was down at Metro, and I drove, which meant I had to leave at 4:30, and I didn't get home until 11 p.m. We went over the regular meeting info, then we went over the Warbird Expo "things to do better/differently", then we took a group photo in front of the PT hangar for Warbird Digest.  I really dislike having my photo taken, but what are you going to do...