Tuesday

We stayed up until about 1:20 a.m., heard nothing from the imaging people, and went to bed.  Back up at 6 a.m. to get Kaylee ready, and I was supposed to start this flight at 7, but of course couldn't without the appropriate software.  Steve got hold of them again early in the morning, and they got it worked out, and finally I had the software downloaded onto someone else's iPad and was walking out the door by 7:45 a.m., which put me pretty late by the time I got to the airport, plane out, finished hooking up what needed hooked up, got in and got going.  I hadn't had time or an easy ability to even know where I was going.  The software tells you where to go but it's not an aviation map, and it's photos of fields, so I couldn't really figure out where I was supposed to be, just get in and go and look for obstacles and airspace as I go.  With more time I'd have broken out an aviation map too and tried to see about where I was going, but I just didn't have time.  Steve C. came along with me (it's his miniPad), and we got in and started flying, and you can't do this if it's a cloudy day, and north looked cloudy, so I headed to Areas Two and Three to the south first (there were three areas in the one mission, one north, two south).  It cleared up just as we got to our first area, which happened to be right off the end of Terre Haute's runway, at the edge of their Class D airspace.  There are also two pretty nice sized towers over there by the field I was doing, taller than I was flying anyway, so I had to keep an eye out for those and not get distracted on situational awareness.  Which wasn't a problem because I don't like towers, so they were never far from my mind.  ;)  Next up we went south even farther...and ended up right outside the Class C airspace for Evansville.  That field went easier than the first, which went easier than the one I did last time.  It's still not super easy, it's tiring, and if you lose focus for a second you blow the track you're on and have to redo it, but it's getting easier quickly.  My passenger found it a little rough, but wants to go again on Friday, and since I'm still going to be using his iPad, that sounds fair.  The north field was clouded over, so I had to skip it, and we just came home and landed.  I had a few moments of heart-sink, when I "finished" the mission on the iPad and it said ZERO percent of the fields were recorded.  The next bad feeling was when it said the mission I completed hadn't even been started.  Both times I texted my tech support guy, from the air even, and he got back to me asap and let me know it was a software glitch and all was well after all.  Whew.  I thought I'd done all that for nothing and would have to redo it.  Glad that wasn't the case.  It ended up being 4 hours of flight time and a few more hours of prep time.  I'm supposed to do that 3rd field plus some others on Friday.  I don't know when, where, or for how long yet...and I have a student's long IFR cross country that day too.  Gonna be a long day.

Steve took Kaylee to school this morning at 7:30 with all her bags, and she was off and on her way to Knoxville.  They didn't arrive until almost 8 p.m.  Apparently there was an accident on the interstate and it took them at least 3 hours to get five miles.  That's a long day of traveling with a group of teenagers.  I bet the chaperones sleep like dead people tonight.

Steve and I had (too much) dinner at Grindstone Charley's tonight, and now we're both so tired we're ready to pass out on the couch...

Here's a photo from the IFR cross country the other day.  A rainbow circle surrounding the airplane.  That just goes to prove that airplanes are the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.  Or that it costs a pot of gold to fly airplanes.  Something like that.