Long Day

Five-thirty a.m. was when  my alarm went off today.  That's not really right.  There were four of us in the plane today, headed to St. Louis.  The sunrise was behind me, so I couldn't get a good picture, but it was beautiful.  We also had 55 knot headwinds, right off the nose, so it took us a little while to get there.  As we were coming up on the city, the sun was casting a golden glow over everything.  It was pretty.

When I got out of the plane, the line guy there was a familiar face.  He smiles, all the time.  On foggy days, rainy days or sunny days, he has a big smile showing most of his teeth, every time.  He seems to be in a perpetual good mood, and not in a fake way, but legit.  You can't help but smile back at him.  When I got out, he looked at me and said "Hey, girl, you lost weight, didn't ya."  I said I did, and he said "You lookin' good!  Not that you didn't look good before, you understand."  I laughed and said I understand and appreciate the compliment.  When I got inside, I was pretty sleepy, so I grabbed some coffee and sat down for awhile.  About an hour later the lady behind the desk said "Not going walking today?"  I told her I was going to go walking after lunch.  It's funny and interesting the people you interact with, when  you fly to the same places and you come to know them and they you.  If I didn't want to walk today I'd have half felt like I was disappointing her!  It was cold out there though, with some fairly high winds, so I didn't stay out as long as normal. My ears were burning with cold just from about 3/4 of a mile.  So I did a little walking in the pilot's lounge with the door closed, until two guys came in to join me, at which point I figured marching and jumping around probably wouldn't be professional or cool looking.  ;)

On the way down and on the way home, D was going over a bunch of systems and maintenance info with me.  He'd been to a 3-day seminar on the 300-400 Cessna series, and he was sharing what he learned.  I have to say, Louis, who did my 340 transition training, did do a very thorough job.  Most of what D was telling me, I already knew and remembered.  But he did get some good stuff from the guy on some important maintenance things, and we'll be looking into several of those asap.

I wasn't supposed to be back until 6 pm, but I actually got back at like 4:30 instead, which gave me time to stop at four different places on my way home, stay home for an hour and a half, and then turn around and go back out to the airport for my night flight.  We did a night cross country to Shelbyville, so we'd fly past Indianapolis at night, which is always a pretty view.

Kaylee wanted me to bring her some chicken on my way home, and of course the place she likes the best is clear on the other end of town from the airport, but...she really works hard and gets a lot done and is a good kid, so I didn't complain this time, I just got her chicken.  I was already late and tired, what's another 20 minutes at that point.  I made it home at 9:45 pm.  So I guess that makes a 15.5 hour work day, door to door.

My student tonight had his mom come along.  She is getting hooked on flying, herself.  She loves the view, thinks it's all pretty fascinating, and has mentioned doing a Discovery Flight of her own.  I think she ought to do it.  Tonight I was discussing the lights indicating glide slope, and told him what the colors meant, then threw in the old saying "White over white, fly all night, red over white, you're all right, red over red, you're dead."  Then I paused and said "Sorry Mom".  She burst out laughing.  I told him what we were going to do next time we flew, and she said "Oh, that sounds like fun!  Can I go?"  :)  That's pretty cool, actually!

St. Louis on approach early morning.

St. Louis Downtown

Pretty bird on the St. Louis ramp, tower behind it...

KayJo

More wind, more rain, more low clouds, all student cancellations for today too.  My trip was also canceled, as he would rather drive than get jounced around in the airplane.  I basically accused him of being a sissy, and he said he was pretty sure he left something halfway there and needed to drive so he could stop and pick it up.  Uh huh.  ;)

Tomorrow is more wind.  I had three students, one I had to cancel already, one I'm giving to Steve, and the third I'll be doing at night, which is going to make for a long day.  I have to be up at 5:30 a.m. to take a trip to St. Louis, will be there till 6 pm at least, and then I'm supposed to fly 7:30-10 pm, which means getting home closer to 11 pm.  Long day.  Very long day.

Kaylee's marching band had another "Community Night" where you bring cookies, they perform for the parents and whomever else they can get to come, and then everyone has hot chocolate and cookies afterwards.  I stopped at the store and picked up my requisite cookies, which nobody knew I brought, but at least I know.  I didn't even eat any.  Steve and I went out to eat while Kaylee was at practice, then I dropped him off at home and I went out to the school and watched the performance.  The kids are out there in the dark, and the 25 knot winds, and the 50 degree temps, marching over and over for hours.  So much work...

Kaylee says she liked the spirit poster I did.  I was trying to tell if she really did or not, and I think she does.  It keeps falling off the wall though, even with a bunch of poster tacky stuff on the back.  I may need to go back with some serious tape or something to make sure it sticks.  Saturday, on Halloween, they go for semi-state finals.  If they're in the top ten, they move on to state.  Fingers crossed for them.

Kaylee also found out tonight that if she does Destination Imagination again this year, it will conflict with ISSMA (music state competition) and a musical for the school.  She wants to do DI because she says it looks good on college applications for high school after school activities, and she enjoys it, but she is going to be swamped as it is.  She asked what I thought, and I told her I thought she should let DI go this year, that not doing it wouldn't hurt her any for the year, but doing it very well might.  She's chewing on what she thinks about the whole thing, and then we'll decide if we step in or not based on what she decides.

Kaylee had requested a pumpkin to carve.  Did you know we are having a pumpkin shortage?  I went to four stores before I found a pumpkin.  For real.  But it's home now, and if we ever get an evening without stuff in it, we'll carve it up and cook up some seeds.  And then we'll let it sit on the counter until Thanksgiving.  ;)

There's a story about a prosecutor who got so irate at the fake spiders in his office that he pulled a gun and said he wanted to shoot the spiders.  Now he didn't have a clip in his gun, (I'm not sure why he was wearing it then) and he didn't wave it at any people, but he's in trouble for scaring three secretaries at the office.  I can't decide whether to laugh or not.  I thought I hated spiders, but I can't say I've ever been so upset at them I had the urge to pull a gun on Halloween decorations in an office before.   He wins!

Rainy Day

Four students, all canceled thanks to Mother Nature.  I didn't actually mind the rainy day, though, I had plenty of other things to do to keep busy.

Kaylee had band practice at 7 a.m. today, then was released from school at 1 pm to do a choir performance at Tipton High School.  The actual performance wasn't until 7 pm, so they spent six hours getting there, rehearsing, and getting ready.  Tipton for the last five years has had Eastern come and share a concert night with them.  So both schools have an all-girls choir, and both schools have a premier guy/girl choir.  Four groups all performing, with one number at the end where they all perform together on stage.  That's a lot of kids on one stage, too.

I was glad I couldn't fly with my last student, because that meant I could go to her performance, and I like going to her performances.  :)

Tomorrow's weather looks cruddy too, which of course means I have an MBros trip.  ;)  That's okay, the weather is cruddy enough my students wouldn't be going anyway, but not so cruddy I can't make a trip.  It is forecasting 50 knot wind sheer at pattern altitude where we're going, in the midst of the IFR approach I'll be shooting, which should be...entertaining.  The fellow going may not want to go if it's too unpleasant, may rather deal with a 5 hour round trip drive than a 1 hour round trip flight if it's too rough.  We'll see.

Reminds me of the person who says they want to fly for a living but doesn't want to practice flying in anything but calm air now.  Because that's how this works, right, you only go when it's super nice? Good luck with that.

We could all use a little extra sleep I think.  We'll see what tomorrow brings.

Second row from the bottom, second from the right.  :)

Back row, right side.

All four of the school's singing groups on stage for one number.  Eastern's Starlets are first group from the left, and third group in red and black.  Tipton's groups 2nd and 4th.  Kaylee's face slightly visible.  Good luck finding it.  ;)

Accomplishment

I was lying awake last night thinking of all the things I didn't get done that I needed to get done, so today I formulated a plan of attack, which somehow all went as it was supposed to.  So I got my walking in for an hour and caught up on a TV show at the same time, went to one bank, made a deposit at another bank, got stamps and the mail and sent off the billing, then drove out to Greentown to put up Kaylee's "Spirit Poster" in the band hall.  She doesn't know it's there yet, but she should see it first thing tomorrow morning. One of the band guys was there when I was doing that, and commented that it was very decorative.  I hope she likes it.  When I left there I went to Lowe's, where I got 4 copies of a key made for our new office at the FBO terminal.   Stopped from there over to Marsh where I picked up three things we needed for the house, and pulled into the parking lot at Grindstone Charley's for lunch at exactly the right time.  Boom.

I was supposed to fly at 2, but he didn't want to fly unless it was very calm, so instead I worked on a few things around the house before picking Kaylee up at the bus stop, dropping her off at home, going out to Kokomo, getting in the RG, and flying over to Marion, where I met up with young J and flew in his Cub with him.  We had winds gusting to 16 knots, variable from 070 to 120, which isn't super smooth in a Cub, particularly on a concrete runway, so we didn't do a bunch of take offs and landings.  We flew until the fuel stick was bouncing on the "30 minutes left" mark, then came on in for a landing and topped it off at the self-serve pump.  I got the RG back before dark, and got my second-to-last errand done for the day--I got my eyebrows waxed.  On the way home I decided to top off with gas, because I passed a station that said $1.91, and a lot of other stations were up over $2 again.  I get to the next station and it's at $2.29.  So was the next--I turned around and got in line at the one remaining gas station that was saying $1.91.  Beat it for once.  I got home just in time to turn around and pick up Kaylee back at the school for a Starlets practice she had.

Like clockwork!

Cubbing it.

This lousy cell phone photo at least kind of shows you how huge the moon was tonight.  I couldn't get a good picture for anything, but it was very large and bright, almost looked like a sun out there.

Sunday

I signed a student off for a solo cross country today, his first.  At his destination he had a crosswind gusting up to 15 knots.  That's more wind than I allow to usually send people on their first solo cross country, but this guy has demonstrated both good judgment and ability.  So off he went.  He made it there and home, no problem.  Mission accomplished.

I had a few errands I wanted to run, two of them weren't even open after all, so I guess I'll have a few to run tomorrow.  Instead I did laundry and dishes and ran to the store and out to the airport and to pick up lunch for the family and so forth.

Kaylee cleaned her room, Steve hooked up our new fireplace-style heater on the deck, and I did "stuff".  Tomorrow is Monday for everyone.  Back to school, back to it...

Saturday

Kaylee woke us up at 2 a.m. saying she didn't feel well at all.  When she woke us up though, she ended up scaring Steve half to death, which caused him to flail and fight the covers, which scared the pants off of sleeping me, and we were all messed up.  ;)  The problem was, after that I never could get back to sleep properly.  Then my head started hurting.  Kaylee had a band event she was supposed to go to from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m.  Marching Band is a little different than a lot of activities, in that it's enough of a group effort that when you're not there you create a hole and a problem for the rest of your team.  She told me it's like drama/plays, in that if somebody's sick, they may have a barf bucket off to the side they can use if they need to, but they're expected to show up and make it happen.

After some going back and forth on whether one of us should stay behind in case she got too bad to stay no matter what, and a phone call to the band director telling him to keep an eye on her, and a phone call to a friend who agreed to be there and come get her if we were gone and she had too much trouble, she headed off to band and Steve and I headed off to the airport.

At one point I texted her and asked how she was doing.  She said "okay", to which I replied "In other words not great but you're hanging in there" and she said "yeah".  I am pretty sure she didn't want to bother our trip to Tennessee and that was a good part as to why she didn't want one of us to stay behind just in case.  Fortunately, around noon she said she was starting to feel better.  She had thrown up a little bit, once, and then started feeling better after lunch.  She was supposed to go over to a friend's house Sunday, but I didn't want to expose the friend or her family, nor did I want Kaylee to do anything but rest right before school starts back up again here Monday.

Speaking of school . We got Kaylee's updated grades for the week.  She had no missing assignments, nothing late, and no score below 95% on anything on any class she had.  She has held straight A's, mostly high A's, this whole time she's doing this before school, after school activity stuff.  We talked about it last night, and I told her I was proud of how hard she's working and how well she's keeping it all together.  She said she used to think she couldn't do straight A's, so she didn't really try super  hard, but that last year she realized that she could get them, and that she almost feels bad because other people work harder than she does but don't get as good of grades, and she's not sure she deserves them.  That led to another conversation about different kinds of smarts, and I told her that she deserves the grades she gets, but that it should give her an appreciation that this is just one type of smarts, and that other people may not be able to get A's in school, but that doesn't mean they can't be incredibly gifted in other areas.  Mechanical, Electrical, Physical, all-around-problem-solving, Computers, being organized and running a home efficiently, that there are just tons of ways in which a person can be smart and talented that have nothing to do with getting good grades on spelling tests or history quizzes.  And by the same token, getting A's doesn't mean you're brilliant at everything, either.  ;)  Anyway, proud of the good job she's been doing.

After I dropped off a semi-sick kid and two Sam's Clubs crates full of chips for the band kids, Steve and I went out to Kokomo, met up with Nathan, and went to Knoxville Downtown Airport in TN for a Beech Talk fly-in.  Steve wanted the back seat where he could stretch out and nap, which he did successfully in both directions of the trip.  :)  We both had some head problems going on. Sinus and/or headache, and I was glad I have a thing of Tylenol/Advil in my purse, because I went through a lot of it.  But it didn't stop us from enjoying the morning.  There were a LOT of airplanes down there, mostly Bonanzas, but several other Beech products as well, including the first Twin Bonanza(s) I'd ever seen in person.  Those things are big, tall, wide.  Interesting.  There were two long rows full of airplanes, plus two other ramps that had several as well.  We ate food, good chicken and BBQ and sides, and met a few people, and enjoyed walking the ramp and checking out the different airplanes, paint jobs, etc.

Flying on the way down and back, the Smoky Mountains were in full color, and it was beautiful.  I wish I could have been flying over them at the right time of day with the sun out instead of under an overcast, because they were already beautiful as it was, and it's dull in comparison to what it is in the right lighting.  We also found four very tall towers on our way into the airport, one of those where you look over and your eyebrows go up and you get a little chill as you contemplate shooting an approach out there and wandering off course and altitude by not that much.  Yikes.  The airport itself was a neat little place right on the river, very busy, lots of ramp space, good view of downtown Knoxville right off the end.  Neat airport.

We got back in the early afternoon, Kaylee didn't get back from band until 11 pm,, and by the end of the day we were all feeling okay for the most part.  Her band got second place, and they tied for first place with "best visual" and won a $20 gift card.  Richard has been dealing with a nose bleed that's bothering him, but hopefully that has decided to leave him alone now.  Part of it is the aspirin, but the benefits of aspirin outweigh the negatives, so he may have a few of those now and then.

Today it's actually Sunday.  I have a student I have to meet with at noon, and a couple other errands to run, so it's not really much of a day off, but that's how it goes sometimes.  Tomorrow Kaylee goes back to school and we're all back in the early morning grind after two weeks off.  Whew!

Pretty Norris Lake

Four towers I'd rather not see sticking up that high when you're at 3000'.

Nathan has a gathering of folks interested in Gumby at a Beech convention.  :)

A line up of airplanes going as far as the eye can see almost.

Tails and Row Two

You can see Knoxville downtown on the horizon over there.

Taking off, a section of the ramp filled with airplanes.

Flying home, over the Smoky Mountains

Like I said, overcast, grey day and you can still see the amazing colors.

I see a dimple.  :)

Playing

Marching

This one gave us all a laugh.  That's a judge who is standing right next to Kaylee.  In other photos he is walking right up to her, or standing with his back right to her.  I didn't know they'd wander around in the formations like that.  I would have a terrible time concentrating with a judge standing there staring at me right in my space!

Quickly

My first flight this morning was a Discovery Flight with the friend of the student I just soloed yesterday.  He was eager to go, an Air Force guy who works at Grissom as a tech, had played with the KC-135 simulator quite a bit.  My student M sat in the back seat and recorded video clips of us flying, and had asked me to "scare" his friend.  I, of course, don't believe in scaring people in airplanes 99.9% of the time, which I told him, but his friend was eager to try a few things too, so after awhile I did some extra steep bank turns, a couple stalls, a nice slip, and a wing-over to end on.  They loved it.  The new guy said "I didn't expect to feel Gs in a Cessna.  I was wrong."  M had kept saying "Are you scared Joe?" before we went--so after that I said "So are you scared M?"  He said "Yes!  I'm not flying with you any more!  I'm flying by myself!"  (A joke on him just soloing).  I talked the guy through a landing, it was a bit of a crosswind gusting up to 17 knots, and he did pretty well following directions, until we went to touch down and he shoved the nose down to pin it down.  In the KC-135, that's what they do.  In the Cessna 172, that's very bad.  ;)  Anyway, I got a text later, some thanks, they had fun and I guess Joe wouldn't stop talking about it today.  So, that's always fun.

Lunch at Glenndale was very good, and we had a bunch of people there today.  I left there after about 35 minutes, and flew for another hour with someone, then did an instrument checkride prep flight lesson for an hour and a half.  I then ran to Sam's Club to pick up a bunch of chips to take to Kaylee's band thing tomorrow, then home to pick her up and run her to her voice lesson.  While I was sitting there, I folded and stuffed billing envelopes.  I was supposed to fly 8-10 pm too, but we canceled, which was good because Kaylee's voice lesson lasted almost twice as long as it was supposed to.   We picked up some food, and came on home, and I was home at 8.  At that point I was sleepy enough that I'm glad I didn't have an 8-11 night flight too after all.  Some days you're in the groove and ready to go, but today I was kind of done.

No pictures today.  :)

Thursday's Things

Another productive and good aviation day.  First flight this morning I was able to solo a guy in the 172 at Kokomo.  That's always a good start to the day!  We finished in time for lunch, after which Ty and I went in one Cub that needed exercised and flew it to Marion so we could take up another Cub that needed a maintenance flight.  Both flights went really well.  Cub #1 ended up with a light layer of oil on the windshield, but other than that it was fine.  Really!  :)  Cub #2 performed great!  Oil pressure stabilized where it was supposed to, and the mission was accomplished.  As we were taxiing in, my 4 pm student was there preflighting the 172, and we spent an hour and a half in the pattern doing take offs and landings on a nice, calmer for once day.

Kaylee is currently making chocolate chip cookies via FaceTime with a friend of hers.  She made cupcakes the other day.  I'm not sure what we're going to do with all the food, but she's cooking something, and having a good time at it, so hey.  ;)

Tomorrow is another busy day.  I'm scheduled from 10 a.m. through to 10 p.m. solid with one hour for lunch, and the 10 pm will be a night cross country, which means it'll be probably 11 pm or later before I get home.  At least I don't have to get up super early though!

Steve has just been buried with MBros stuff, computer stuff, and he's digging in and making what progress he can.

Me with my newly soloed student.

Open door, wing pointed down towards fall foliage.

Hmm, we're too high and it's the wrong time of day for the best light.  But it was still pretty.

Fly Day

Kaylee sent me a text saying she would like to go practice tennis with her friends today at 1.  It was pretty funny, because I told her I'd be later than that, but I ended up only being 10 minutes late.  We then sat out by the tennis courts for 20 minutes before she texted her friends and said "Where are you guys?"  They said "We're not playing tennis until tomorrow!"  She'd looked at her phone after midnight and saw it was Wednesday, so assumed the morning was Thursday.  Whoops!  So she goes back tomorrow to actually play for real.

My day was about flying, from sunrise to well past dark.  A fellow scheduled me at 8 a.m., which meant I was up at 6:20.  He had trouble waking up and didn't get out there until 8:20.  it was 8:45 a.m. before he was done preflighting and we were fired up and ready to take off for the first time.  I could have used that 45 minutes in sleep, thank you, but I did get to watch a pretty sunrise, and I did get to assist Ty with the Westfield Champ, so it worked out.  The guy I was flying with is probably ready to solo if the winds cooperate tomorrow.  We'll see.  Next up I was in the RG doing someone's first Instrument lesson.  So we did hood work, radial work, VOR tracking, climbs, descents etc. holding a specific airspeed, and so forth.  Landed from that and went to lunch, which I left early to take Kaylee to a tennis match she didn't end up playing.  ;)

I went back to Kokomo and had a guy run me to Aurora, where I picked up the 340 and brought it home.  It had two cylinders replaced and my flight was the break-in and test flight.  I had two pages of instructions to follow on the procedures, and I had to read through them several times, printed out a copy and took it with me.  Part of it was that you're supposed to do all your radio and avionics work prior to starting up, then start up, run up while you taxi, and take off asap, no ground delays.  I'm at a tower controlled field, so to comply with that, when I was #2 to take off, I asked ground if I could stop at an intersection, and requested to go first at the intersection, which they permitted.   I wasn't supposed to use full power for takeoff for anything but a real emergency, so that was one of the slower takeoffs I've done in there.  Circled around and gained altitude over the field while making sure everything looked good before I started heading home while doing the process it wanted, which included things like adjusting the prop every five minutes.  Even the descent was very specific...set up a 300 fpm rate descent, lean it out to hold the same EGTs as it was showing during the cruise phase which was an exact setting, etc.  It was interesting, but I kept reading it and double checking, because you don't really want to goof up the first flight there.

The last flight of the day was a night flight, where we did the usual fly around for a few minutes and enjoy the view, and then start in on the required takeoffs and landings, which I like to spice up with various failures of landing lights, panel lights, flaps, and one at the end that has the runway lights as low as they'll go and all the above at once.  In other words, as complete of an electrical failure as I can.  I leave the nav lights and beacon on, since, you know, legal and safe and such.  But the rest go. That's always a lot more fun for me than it is for everybody else, who are mostly disturbed but kinda like it too, secretly, especially after they realize they can do it okay.  :)

I got home around 9:30 pm, precisely 14 hours after I first left the house this morning.

Yawn.

This was on my TV today, on the news.  I don't know why.

Sunrise dead ahead 

The Champ at Sunrise.

The colors are starting to pop pretty well in central Indiana.

Travel-Wise

I went to Walgreens today and got passport photos taken, and I was in and out of there in 10 minutes flat.  Next stop was to the post office to submit my application.  Did you know they keep your original birth certificate with your application?  You can't even give them a copy, you have to give them the one real deal and they send it back to you with your passport.  What could POSSIBLY go wrong?!  Yikes.

Since I was the float balloon, the canary in the  mine, and it went so well, I came back and grabbed Kaylee, took her to get her photos taken, then met Steve at the Post Office, since both parents have to be there for a minor's passport application.  I paid another check, gave up another original birth certificate, paid extra to have hers expedited since she has a trip coming up the end of next March,  Now we wait, for her passport to hopefully not have a problem and arrive in a timely manner, and to see whether or not they like which of my two birth certificates I sent in to them.  Mine isn't expedited, since I'm not actually going anywhere, so it could be 3 months before mine comes back or doesn't.  We'll see.

Kaylee and a few of her friends wanted to get together and practice some tennis, so I drove her out to Eastern's tennis court and left her there to get some practice in.  She'd like to try out for the High School Girl's Tennis Team in the Spring.  You know, because she's not been busy enough.  ;)  By then Marching Band will be done at least, if she gets on the team.  But for today it was "knock some rust off" day, and she and her friends had fun.

Before she went she wanted to wear yoga pants to practice in, but hers are high water pants now and look goofy.  So I gave her my smaller pair to try on.  And they fit her just fine.  They're slightly loose in the waist, but other than that, they fit, perfect on length and everything else.  She said "Hey, you're a skinny mama!"  I said "They DO stretch, you know."  She said "They don't stretch THAT much!"  She's half right and half wrong.  They really do stretch.  But I enjoyed hearing her say that anyway.  ;)

I left her there and went to the airport, was supposed to have a flight at 5:30.  He wasn't ready to go until after 6 pm, and then we went and did a dual cross country, to Plymouth, IN.  When we got there the winds were 70 degrees off the runway at 20 gusting to 30 knots.  That was fun.  ;)  On the way home we had a nice sunset, and ended up landing back at Kokomo in the dark.  This will be one of the last flights we can do at this time slot after he gets off work, as we're losing our daylight.

We got back at 8 pm, and I went through the drive through at Steak-n-Shake.  They were so slow I could have been seated inside and served by the time I got through there.  I was in line almost 40 minutes, only about 4 cars in front of me.  Unbelievable.

When I got home, I smelled something wet and hot/burning.  Apparently our garbage disposal caught on fire, actually shot out flames and all.  It's been a couple hours and I STILL catch whiffs of it.  We're hoping nothing is smoldering in there and I think Steve is going to shut down power to that part of the house just in case.

Kaylee's up there on the phone with her friends, laughing her head off.  It's fun to hear her just having a good time.  :)

Sundown halfway home.

Grissom AFB's runway and the prison to the left.

Grissom's runway and the prison from a different angle.

Bump

Everyone slept in this morning, and it was nice!  Kaylee had a long day yesterday, and I couldn't get to sleep before 2, and even Steve didn't get up super early.  It was a nice, quiet morning.

I was  watching "Criminal Minds" the other night, and one of the profilers said that the woman biting her nails was showing psychosis (and various other bad things).  So apparently nail biting isn't just a habit started during a youthful time of nerves, it is instead a sign of a mentally disturbed person.  So now we all now.  ;)

I also was watching "Code Black", when a man was informed that his brother was dead--and it was his fault as he'd been driving drunk.  He started hysterically crying, and one of the interns asked if she should sedate him.  The head doc said "No.  Make sure he doesn't harm himself.  This is grief.  This is what it looks like.  Leave it be."   I thought that was pretty insightful.

Kaylee is at a party tonight at a friend's house, until 10 pm.  It's a Fall get-together, and I'm glad she has something to go do and enjoy outside of relaxing at home and doing band activities.  Next I need to take her jeans shopping.  I'm hoping I can do it locally vs Indianapolis...

I had an MBros flight today, just to Ohio State and back.  It was Rough.  The skies were clear, but It Was Rough.  Even to me.  Poor guy in the back.  I climbed higher than intended and got out of it for most of the way there, but once they made us descend at all, we were in it, and it was very turbulent, enough that I slowed down some.  I started hunting up front for a sick sack just in case, and couldn't find one, and when I looked in the back he had his eyes closed so I didn't want to disturb him by having him look in the seat pockets.  But I was nervous for awhile there, as he's gotten sick before and I'm not kidding, today was ROUGH.   As in I bit my lip, spilled my drinking water down my face, hit my head on the ceiling, and had trouble hitting buttons on the GPS and the iPad, even hanging on to them.  Fortunately he did not get sick, well, he did not throw up anyway,

I wasn't there long.  They tried to charge me a $75 landing fee, which I balked at, until they realized I was not a turbo-prop.  When I went to the bathroom, they piped in the football game so loudly in the restroom that you couldn't hear the door open or anybody else come in,  Only at Ohio State University have I ever had football piped loudly into the women's restroom.  :D

I had a double GPS failure today.  Fortunately it was severe clear.  Also fortunately, I had the mini Pad already tracking and my iPad nearby too, which isn't legal IFR direct flying, but on a severe clear day, good enough I'm not notifying them of the failure and hassling with it.  Last time this happened it was a bad antenna on the 340 that took out all the GPSs in that plane, at a VERY inconvenient time and place in actual IFR in very busy airspace with a complicated departure procedure.  After that, this is a big yawn.  ;)  I figured out which one was causing the problem and eventually got one GPS back up and running.  It was so bumpy I had trouble hitting buttons and getting things done, but it worked out.

When I got home I set up and shot the ILS 23 into Kokomo to see if it worked yet.  It did.  Then we had a no radio Cub in the pattern, a malibu, me, and some other high performance single.  One landing, one top off with fuel, one pit stop at Wendy's, and home in time to pick up Kaylee and take her out to her party.  Not exactly a day of rest, but not a bad one either.  I got paid, anyway, and found a possible avionics problem when it was nice and VFR and clear instead of at a less convenient time, perhaps.  That's fine by me!  :)

I like how the GPS tells me to go back to Dead Reckoning.  I thought it was "Ded Reckoning", as in "Deductive Reckoning".  Hmm.  I've slept since then and I'm tired.  May have to look that up...

Kaylee's Day

Yesterday and today I (and Steve some too) worked on Kaylee's "Spirit Poster", a collage of photos on poster board that will go up in her school's hallway, for the marching band.  Each parent can do one, they were low on parents doing them, out of 52 kids they only had 10 posters, so they sent out an email.  Had they done that in the beginning, us new-to-this parents might have known to do it earlier too.  But hey, better late than never.  Anyway, today at the airport I finished it up.  Gold sparkly trimmed white poster board with photos on it and her name in gold, etc.  I hope it turned out well enough that she'll like it.

Today Kaylee had to get up at 6 a.m. and be at school by 6:50 a.m. to practice and then head west for a regional band competition I won't name so this post won't be overly searchable on Google.  There were 15 bands there today.   The school is not allowed to announce how they placed, the students nor their parents are allowed to post on social media how they placed, per state rules.  This blog gets read by 4 people, so I'm going to risk it.  Out of the 15 bands, only three were awarded gold.  Judging was universally called very particular and harsh, with one band getting "participation", which I didn't even know they did.  Ouch.  Kaylee's band was awarded a silver medal.  Apparently it's the first time the band has gotten less than a gold.  However, the part I'm not supposed to share, they also placed 4th out of 15 bands, they were the first silver, they missed gold by less than 1/2 of a point, and were only 3 points from first place.  Argh.  Back to what I can share, they are moving on to the state semi-finals.  All they're allowed to publicly announce is that they got a silver and are moving on to semi-finals.  I think that stinks, they should be allowed to state where they placed!  They did really well!  They've really been working hard, and they've improved SO much.  They're starting to kick butt.  :)  Here's a picture of the saxophone folks practicing ahead of time.  In case you can't tell, Kaylee is the one in the center wearing the plume hat.

Yesterday I brought the Aerostar back home, and it was close to sunset.  Justin G took some lovely photos as the chase pilot in the RG.  I cropped in the Aerostar photos so you could see the plane better, but it was a pretty evening with the sun going down.  :)

The three of us had a nice time at Applebees tonight after I picked up Kaylee from school at 6 pm.  She'd had a long day, but after a tasty BLT and some strawberry lemonade, she was ready to come home and go to bed.   :)

Justin Byrd took this one as I taxiied by on the ground, and you can tell he bumped up the vibrance/color, but it was a pretty sunset!

Today

I'm trying to come up with something interesting from today, but unfortunately I'm a bit shy of interesting.  I had a lesson, lunch, worked on passport paperwork, two more lessons, home around 8 pm, watched two TV shows.  Steve went to our last EAA chapter meeting of the year, and Kaylee had a band practice until 9:20 pm or so.  Right now she thinks I ate her last chocolate bar, which I didn't actually do but I'm not telling her that yet because it's more enjoyable that she's annoyed at me for it.  She said it was like having an annoying little sister stealing her stuff, except it's her MOM.  Heh. 

It was a windy, gusty day.  It made for some fun engine out practice with one guy, crosswind practice with another at Glenndale, and on a cross country we went to a smaller runway surrounded by trees with a direct crosswind very gusty, and ended up with an approach and landing that actually got my pulse up a little bit at the end, but ended well.  It was good practice for everyone though, a challenging day for all including me.  :)

This was a sunbeam or two shining through on our cross country this evening...

Day Off!

Kaylee is off for Fall Break!  We're not going anywhere, not doing anything interesting, she has band stuff to do over her Fall Break (which seems pretty lame to me), but not today.  Today we all slept in a little bit, and today she had nothing she had to do but sit and relax and watch TV and veg out.  I think she enjoyed that.

My morning guy canceled, so I just had one flight this afternoon.  Unfortunately he's sick, been sick off and on for a couple weeks now, and it's moving down into his lungs.  I cringed when he said that, cause man oh man do I not want to catch what he's got, nor pass it on to the rest of my family.

Other than doing some paperwork, walking on the treadmill, doing some communication stuff, etc., it's been a fairly quiet day.

Monday Funday

This morning I took the 340 over to Aurora to drop it off for some needed TLC.  The winds were pretty high so it took awhile to get there.  My chase plane was the 172RG.  When I hopped in the plane to come home, shortly after we started up I looked up and realized our radio had TX on it, that we were transmitting, like a stuck mic.  I tried clicking on all the PTTs, and it wouldn't stop, so I switched frequencies to get it off of ground.  No luck.  I tried Com 2.  No good.  I tried rebooting both the avionics.  No good.  I disconnected the rigged up PTT totally.  Still transmitting.  We're at a tower controlled field, so I had the chase pilot shut down, I called Steve to see if he had any ideas I hadn't thought of yet.  That would be a negative, so I got out, went inside and asked the FBO for the tower's number, called tower and told them my conundrum, and asked for light gun signals to get out of there.  They said no problem.  So for only the second time in my flying career, I got light gun signals shot at me.  :)  Those things are pretty bright and hard to miss even from a distance, for the record.

Later that afternoon I had an instrument lesson.  It was nice and windy and gusty, made for an interesting day to do holds.  :)  This evening I had a ground lesson on planning cross-countries, out to Arby's for dinner, and home, the end.

After school I took Kaylee to an eye doctor appointment.  She'd said she was having trouble reading the board in her Geometry class.  Her school had sent a paper home that a quick screening showed she may have a slight deficiency.  The eye doctor looked her over, had her read charts, etc., and she came out of there passing with 20/20 vision.  How did blind Steve and lazy eye Laura end up with a daughter with 20/20 vision at 14?  She said she struggled to read the last line a little bit, but she could read it, she has no astigmatism or anything else.   She's in the back of her math class so apparently the board is a little far to see well.  I told her we could get her some readers to use if need be.  She was a little leery that she had 20/20 vision, but wasn't sad to not need glasses, I don't think.

Kaylee is on Fall Break, no school tomorrow.  My morning lesson canceled, so I don't have to get up early either.  I'm sort of excited about that, actually!  I do need to work on getting her passport done though.  And a few other things.

Over and out!

Usual Suspects

Today was work around the house day.  Trash, vacuuming, some dusting, cleaning a room, doing about 7 loads of laundry, bedding, dishes, cat vomit, decluttering, watering the plants, all sorts of stuff.  While I was doing that, I also started watching "The Player" and "Code Black", which seem to be pretty good.  Steve made it home later this afternoon, with a bit of a headache, but home.

Kayleigh in the back of the 340, me and Justin up front, photos by Trevor G.

Final for Runway 5 at Kokomo

Landing

Me and Trevor in front of the 340

Eagles

Kaylee and I were "thrilled" to wake up early this morning so she could spend all day at a band camp.  She came home with a good attitude though, and I really am proud of her for that.  We're both looking forward to not doing a darn thing tomorrow, except some light housework and she's planning on going to church.

After I dropped her off, I went to Hobby Lobby and picked up a few craft items.  I am going to be making a poster for Kaylee for band.  I need some time and I need to be able to finish it quickly so I can get it to school. I just hope I can do a nice job with it.  :)

Next up it was time to get to Kokomo for our Young Eagles event.  Several of us got everything set up, but by 10:30 there was no sight of anyone else, and we were supposed to eat and meet at 11.  Finally they started coming, which was a relief.  :)  Ty flew me over to Glenndale in the Chief, and I picked up Jerry's Champ and flew it back to Kokomo.  Ernie and a friend brought in a C-150 and swapped it out for a C-172 after a quick brat/burger, and headed back to Missouri to hopefully arrive before dark.  That's a long day in those two airplanes!  At least the weather was lovely.  :)

The Young Eagles day was slow, I don't know how many we did total, but I do know it picked up at the end.  I was a back-up, and I just had one flight, a young girl whom I took up in the Champ.  She had a great time, and I had her do most of the flying, and she was pretty good at it!  I know one of the other guys did six.  Not sure on how many everyone else did.  We had a ton of planes and pilots ready to go, which was great, just wish we had the kids to fill them all!

I went up in a 172 with someone for insurance and currency.  Went up in the Champ and enjoyed a little relaxing flight for awhile,  When we landed I thought the tailwheel felt funny, along with shimmying.  I looked later on, and the tailwheel was very low (on air).  I couldn't air it up, so when I took it home, I kept the tail light or up until takeoff, did a wheel landing and kept the tail up until I got by the hangar.

There's a beautiful J-3 Cub at Kokomo owned by a man who spends a lot of time in a foreign country, and he wants his Cub flown regularly.  So I took it up for the first time this afternoon.  I had to hand prop it alone, so I tried something else new.  Hand propping alone without a rope to tie the tail down, especially on concrete, is not my favorite thing to do.  So I chocked the right main wheel, and this time I pulled the prop from behind, instead of from in front.  I'd never tried it before because I'm never alone, I've never been alone with a Cub, I always have a student with me, and usually people around, and I don't want to try something for the first time in that scenario.  So today was the day I could pull the prop through from behind, and it worked fantastic--it fired off with the first pull.  I yanked the chocks, just put them in the front seat as I wasn't going to walk away from the un-chocked running airplane, hopped in, and off I go.  The winds were calm, so after I took off and flew for a few minutes and made sure the oil temps were nice and warm, I did about 5 takeoffs and landings, using all four runways.  So I'd take off on 14, land on 23, take off on 23, land on 32, take off on 32, land on 5, etc.  It was a win/win situation.  He wants his airplane flown, I got some practice in, which believe it or not, I actually needed, I had fun, and it didn't cost me any of my own 100LL fund.  Best of all worlds!

Next up we had a gentleman's first ride in any airplane.  He got in a 172 with someone else, but felt too tight and closed in in there, and couldn't do it.  So instead I suggested he try the 340.  The front felt too tight still, but he said he was okay in the back.  So he got in the back with a friend, and two of us sat up front, and we took off and just flew a wide pattern around the airport to give him a chance to acclimate to it.  I think he liked it--he's still pretty uncertain about the whole thing, and I think has some things to overcome on it, but I think he saw the cool factor too.  :)  The sun was going down as we finished up, and that's when I had to get the Champ home, and hitch a ride back in the 172.  The sunset at that point was beautiful and I took several photos of it.  What a beautiful day/evening.

So to recap, I flew in a Chief, flew the Champ four times, flew the Cub, flew in a 172 twice, and flew the 340.  That's a nice afternoon.  :)

Justin G was a huge help with set up, cooking, and clean-up.  When I got back from dropping the Champ off, the whole big hangar was cleaned up and put away.  In fact, we had a lot of good help today, lots of pilots, workers, people bringing food, folks doing the paperwork for the kids, some ground crew, the whole ball of wax.  AE even had vests for the ramp workers.  Everybody was on top of their game today.

Steve said that he and the other boys had been on a roll, though it didn't finish up as one today.  They got one engine running, but the second isn't running well.  That means another delay of game as they probably have to have a part rebuilt, and then reinstalled and put on the plane.  That's a bummer, as it's expensive to go back and forth, and time consuming, and tough, and we needed to get the plane out of there before winter moves in again, and are running out of time.  But at least they got half of her running.  I bet that was a fun moment, when the first engine fired up and ran.   They'll be home tomorrow afternoon.

Cub

 

 

Champ

 

172

 

340