Vent

I'm going to warn you right now that much of this post will be nothing but a "Make Laura Feel Better" rant about my flying day.  So first I'll hit up anything new or exciting with Kaylee.  She's staying up too late, sleeping in too late, reading too many books, went to see a movie with a friend the other night, has an 80's themed birthday party down in the park tomorrow evening (we're still debating on whether or not she can walk down there by herself), and tests for her orange belt Saturday.  She's enjoying too much food and not having parents organized enough to make her come out and work at the airport with us yet.  Her summer break is probably thus far pretty darned good for a kid, and she'll get busy enough soon enough.

Richard is working on gaining some weight and dealing with the effects of the chemo, and hopefully will be on the upswing soon!

Steve was up until past 4 a.m. working on some computer problems, and since I had to be up at 7 to take my trip, I haven't seen him since.  I think he's still alive as I've gotten an occasional email or text from him, but I'm guessing that his night will be over as soon as he hits the couch and relaxes.

Tuesday the guy from Virginia is supposed to come up and check me out from the back seat of the PT-26 for the CAF to approve me as an instructor pilot for our local wing (after 2 years of trying to get it done).  I haven't ever flown that airplane from the back seat, so if I can't get a flight in before he gets here, my first time may be for a formal checkride, but it's not exactly the most complicated airplane in the world, so...so be it.  It'll be fine.

So Why My Day Was Annoying.

Originally I was supposed to have a student this morning and then fly down to Washington DC area at 10:30.  Then he wanted me down there at noon instead, so I canceled my student.  Since it was just one guy, I asked to bring someone along with me as a fun trip, and that was no problem--until 30 minutes before I was supposed to leave and got the text that now there were going to be four of us, which is about one too many with full fuel as it is, so I had to cancel the guy who was going to come with me.  Bummer for him, but not a huge problem, that's life.  On my way down to DC, the XM weather never came on, and I was too high too fast for a text to get out, so I turned on my ADS-B back up instead, only it didn't work either.  I'm going into an area of lowering ceilings and pop up storms without weather, which is annoying, but it's not terrible yet, because you still have the old fashioned way of checking weather along the route as best you can as you get closer.  Eventually after a reboot I did get my ADS-B weather to work though, so that helped a lot. The airport I was originally supposed to go into doesn't currently have any instrument approaches valid into it, which means you have to be able to visually get the airport from their minimum vectoring altitude of 1500'.  Well, the ceilings were calling for 400-600' overcast now, so that wasn't happening.  I had left early enough that I hoped I could get there, take a look for the airport, go missed and go over to my alternate, fill up with fuel, and be ready by high noon when they wanted to leave, giving them enough time to see which airport I ended up at, too.  They came early, having seen me leave early, and they went to my original airport, which I couldn't get in to, and then had to drive a long ways to get to the airport I did end up at because they jumped the gun a little bit.  They sent me a text once that the clouds were breaking up there, but it still wasn't enough.  I ended up shooting the ILS into my alternate and broke out around 400'.  Finally they made it in and we loaded up, and the one guy who claimed to be 230 pounds?  *I* am probably closer to 230 pounds than he is, in the opposite direction.  He was a big boy.  I hadn't put full fuel in, to compensate for the additional weight, but after eyeballing him, I'm pretty sure we were still over, which I hate. Because of the delay in getting there, the storms were really starting to build up, scattered stuff and lines forming quickly.  When we departed, we had to turn away from one pretty heavy cell and go the wrong direction for a little while before turning on course, and then the fun began.  The XM weather still wasn't working.  D couldn't ever connect his ADS-B.  Mine was working slowly, but ATC was forcing us to stay down around 8000', for 45 minutes of the flight, which was the worst time to be down there because it's where all the weather was.  We were going in and out of a lot of buildups with two green passengers, onboard radar that can't see past 20 miles, no NEXRAD, and one ADS-B receiver kind of coming in grainy, dealing with embedded stuff, which is my gosh darned favorite thing to do.  They told us we could deviate as we wanted, gee thanks, but had to stay down at 8000', gee THANKS, and would try to tell us where cells were, but their radar is off on time as well, and there were so many cells out there that you could easily wander into one when you couldn't see.  So we played dodgeball.  I had largely pixelated ADS-B for big picture stuff out there, and the on board radar set to 20 miles, and as a cell would pop up there, we'd deviate around it.  A couple times we had to get fancy with a line that popped up and didn't leave us much of a gap.  Every once in awhile we'd break out, I'd look around visually and find the path of least resistance, and then we'd be back in and going off the equipment again.  It was fine, we had enough open space, and the weather wasn't fully developed yet, so you could still maneuver safely.  It was just a pain in the butt.  After we worked through the weather for 45 minutes, then ATC cleared us up to 16,000' where I could see the few buildups that high and easily maneuver around them, but by then we were out of the bad area of weather anyway.  It was handier having two pilots for a bit there when he would keep the dirty side down and I would analyze the weather, tell him where to go, when to turn, etc. At least going in single pilot, while I was busy with weather in busy airspace, it wasn't as built up as it got later.  Anyway, don't get the wrong impression, this wasn't death-defying or anything, but having three weather systems in the airplane and having none of them working quite properly on top of ATC forcing us to stay down in the middle of the buildups for that long made for a really annoying trip for awhile there...

Coming into Kokomo then, a two-ship was talking on the radio to each other about how they were going to depart 23, head east, and then switch frequencies.  So I got on the radio and announced we were 10 to the east coming into land on 32.  The one didn't seem to pick up on that so I watched on the traffic system as they departed and turned right towards us, and made another radio call with our distance, direction and altitude.  Again, nothing, until I saw him coming right at us, our altitude, head on, right down the path for the runway's final approach, and the second plane said "Watch out for that twin who called on final."  "Huh?  Where?" says the first plane, as if he'd never heard of such a thing.  Right HERE, in your WINDSHIELD, kid.  We dropped down, he climbed up, and we landed shaking our head.  Situational awareness at its finest...

Now, I'm done complaining.  ;)  In fact, I think I'm going to find a nice beverage and snack, kick up my feet, look over some study materials, and relax with Kaylee, who seems to have this relaxing thing down cold right now.  ;)