Two Pilots & an LSW: Winging It

Saturday, April 08, 2017

Winging It

I stayed hopping today, and it was busy at Kokomo all day. I stopped at Dirty Dan's Donuts to try to pick up, well, donuts, and they were already sold out by the time I got there at like 9 a.m. They open at 1 am, and there is often a line down the block, especially on Friday nights. Apparently they sell out very early and don't make more. That's my question. Why be open all morning if you're sold out before 9 am, and why not make more donuts? *sigh* So anyway, I stopped at Meijer instead since we don't have a Krispy Kreme and Dunkin Donuts went out of business this year. Grocery store donuts it is.

The CAF fellows all came out to Kokomo today to do a mandatory annual flight training day in the PT-26. I rode in the back and did check flights with five guys, which takes longer than you'd think. I did four official check flights, then a fifth flight with a guy who is still checking out in the plane and isn't ready to be cut loose in it yet. Steve was at the hold short line on this fellow's first takeoff, and thought that we were about to wreck. For a second I thought the same thing, but fortunately the PT is forgiving and I'm still pretty fast. I'll say it again, the tailwheel stuff has given me the most grey hairs. It's one thing to take off and land yourself and fix your own little bobbles, it's something else when someone puts the aileron the wrong way then stomps the wrong rudder then boosts in power in one fast move, making you go faster towards your surprise almost ground loop. I got it under control before we got to the runway lights, thankfully, but my heart rate took a few seconds to slow back down as we taxiied off, talked about it, and went back for another, less eventful try at it. Even the forgiving ones go bad fast in the right circumstances.

After I finished them up, they all ran for home while I was still flying with the rest of them, and then I flew Nathan over to Muncie to pick up Gumby. We were in the 172, which took awhile, but not as long as it would have in the PT. :)

Once Gumby was home, I ran home and picked up Kaylee. By now it's 5 pm. She preflights and we do just under an hour worth of flying, in the pattern. This makes lesson #4, officially, and the second time we stayed in the pattern. She has down the procedures fairly well, not quite perfect on airspeed control in the turns, but holds a nice steady final all the way down. We haven't done the landings still, just the pattern. She was mad because it was a crosswind landing, and even though she held the nose straight with rudder all the way down final, and kept us pretty close to the middle with the aileron she didn't touch down as soft as she wanted, deemed it "horrible", and was disgusted with herself. She's definitely a pilot personality--her own harshest critic, and Type A perfectionist when it comes to stuff like that. She's doing well.

When we got home, Steve still had a flight to do, so Kaylee and I watched The Sound of Music in the living room together. She kept giving me little factoids about the movie. "Did you know the nun couldn't hit the high notes so her songs were dubbed in?" "Did you know that Gretyl actually swallowed so much water when the canoe overturned that she threw up on her sister who carried her out of the water because Julie Andrews was supposed to grab her, but Julie fell on the wrong side of the canoe when it tipped so she didn't get to her in time?" "Did you know her wedding veil was 14' long?" "Did you know Christopher Plummer turned down another movie to do this one and was so disappointed, hated this movie so much, he spent most of his time drinking on set, and was drunk when he sang the last song?" Every few moments she'd fill me in on a little tidbit like that. lol That's a long move, like four hours...and still a good one.

Now everyone else is in bed, my throat is scratchy and I'm beat, so I'm glad to have tomorrow off. I hope.