Well...

Let's see.  I took myself off work today to recuperate, but really it was a pretty busy day anyway.  I had a Mavrx flight first thing this morning, and it took a little while to get it going.  But once I did, it was smooth and seamless, not a cloud in the sky.  It's probably one of the if not the last Mavrx mission we'll have this season, and if so it's a good one to end on.

When I landed out of that, I'd missed lunch, so I ran past McDonald's, and stopped at home to do some quick work I needed to do, communications, etc.  I also got a text that if I was available, I  was needed for an overnight business trip to Baltimore--leaving at 6 a.m. tomorrow.  Which means leaving the house at 5:30.  Which means getting up at 4:30 a.m.  Gah.  His text was, and I quote, "6 a.m., and I will bring chocolate!  :)"  He'd better mean that!  It's going to be IFR out there too, which means actually having to, you know, WORK a little bit at that time of the day.  Harrumph.  ;)

After getting some work done, I went back out to Kokomo and pulled out the T-6 again.  You'd think after almost 6 hours yesterday I'd have had enough, but I had a different mission today.  The airplane is going down for an annual soon, and will probably be down awhile.  I am getting ready to check out another guy in his own T-6, an airplane that hasn't flown at all in 4-5 years, which doesn't thrill me, as airplanes don't like to sit and I don't like to be in them the first 50 hours or so after they sat that long.  You can be sure I'm going to be hanging out right over top of the airport for awhile there at first.  But anyway, he is putting me on his insurance for his T-6, and would like me to fly with him and get him back up to speed in it. I'm all current on different types of landings and such, so today I emptied out the baggage compartment of the T-6, secured the back seat, put a piece of painters tape over the "glove compartment", tightened down the parachute (sorry Nathan), tied my hair back, went up to 7500', and hit it.  I started with some rolls, went into slow flight, minimum controllable airspeed, then moved into stalls.  Did 7 or 8 regular stalls, and then did another half dozen stalls where I yanked it or held it a little too long and let it get "worse".  You end up upside down anyway most of the time.  I'd also find that even on the stalls where I tried to recover asap and not let it get too far out, I'd still lose 1000' poste haste, and on the ones where I'd let it go more aggressively, I'd lose about 1500'.  Just boom, down.  I  bet I could get that down some with more practice.  But it reminds me of the aerobatic wannabe who went for his first ride in the T-6 who, when I asked what he was doing as he was flying and pulling power to idle and pulling up, said "I'm just going to do a quick stall here".  We were 800' above the ground at the time, and he thought I was a wuss for stopping him.  He didn't know a thing about the plane.  Not sure what kind of idiot decides to do something like stall a plane he doesn't know 800' above the ground without even asking or telling the actual pilot what he's doing.  I can say that folks like him have made me veeeeery vigilant when I'm giving rides at pattern altitude.  :)

When I finished up there, I was coming into Kokomo, and as I was turning final I heard a crop duster call a two mile final behind me.  I hit all the flaps, slowed down to 80 mph (short field speed), chopped the power before the numbers, totally greased on a three point landing, as in even I was impressed, and taxiied off at the first intersection.  I felt briefly like The Man.  ;)

Looking in the mirror afterwards, I have determined that I sort of look like a witch when I get out of the T-6.  My hair gets wiry and frizzy and sticks out all over, my face is haggard enough these days, with circles and bags, and put it all together with having been sweaty and wind blown, and I'm sort of scary looking.  I have a few more things I need to do in the T-6 to get myself up to speed...soon, hopefully.

Well, it's time for me to go to bed.  After I file a flight plan for "You have to be kidding me" o'clock.  And pack a bag.  Talk to you from Baltimore, most likely...