Today we practiced our first parallel parking. We parked the Jeep next to the hangar and Steve set up some cones behind it to duplicate another car, and we made a few runs at it. She got it the last time, but I was having to talk her through it, so I don't know that she could do it without direction yet. But that's a hard thing to learn and it was her first time, so hey!
Saturday was her vocal ISSMA contest. First up at 8:59 am was their barbershop quartet. The judge was cranky from the first time they walked in there, and they were the ONLY group who had to be in that room with that judge. Every other group went to another room where the judges were friendly and easy going and put people at ease. Kaylee's judge never once looked up from the music, to watch the girls, and part of their performance was showmanship, which they did a good job on, and he never once looked at. They ended up with a Silver. Everyone else got a Gold, including a group who should have gotten a worse Silver. I told her that's part of life, when you have judging, it's subjective, and you'll always get things that don't feel right. She said that doesn't make her feel better. Their group did get a little pitchy a couple times, and the person on the high soprano, it's a little too high for her so she's a little shrill. Kaylee was baritone, if you can hear that. So they had some things to work on, but based on the criteria of points, it still should have been a better judged performance than it was. But such is life. She then went to Bob Evans with her friends, and then we all met up at the school again for her vocal solo. She got a Gold on her solo. She stands there in the front of a room of people, looking at two judges watching her, and people with cameras pointed at her, and she just sings away. I couldn't do that, not solo. I think that takes guts of some sort!
Here are the Youtube videos of the two performances. The barbershop is super dark and I don't know why, but you get the idea.
She will go on to State for vocal solo. Coming up soon is the saxophone ISSMA contest stuff, and I think show choir ISSMA too. They must keep these kids busy all year round!
It was a gorgeous day today. Seriously pretty. Warm. Sunny. Light winds, blue skies, LAURA weather. Everybody and their brother was out flying today (which I didn't know until I went out to go flying today too). It's January 28th and it was just beautiful. Steve had a flight out there with a 'student' at 1 pm, and Kaylee and I were supposed to drive at 4 pm and then I'd take her to church, so I decided I'd go fly this afternoon. And why not make it the T-6, right? I've never been able to fly the T-6 over the winter before. It's always been apart or down, or the door was busted, or the weather was terrible. So I thought it was a great opportunity. The T-6 was in the back of the hangar, so I knew I'd have to move the 340 at minimum. No problem. The battery tender was on the airplane and the panel was off, so I had to disconnect that, make sure nothing else was messed with in there, and then get the panel back on. That panel is a bit of a hassle. Getting all those fasteners to line up properly and lock in took me awhile. But finally, success. Fuel? I have enough. Oil? Good. I hook up the T-6 and tug it out, unhook, preflight, pull the prop through 9 times, and I'm already tired. Go to get in and my stuff isn't up front. Oh yeah, I'd been in the back. So I had to get my stuff out of the back, secure the back seat, get my stuff up front. Finally, I'm ready to go, and I take a pretty picture of the pretty day out front. Everything looks good. Mixture rich, wobble pump up some fuel pressure...I said wobble pump some fuel pressure...why is there no fuel pressure. Pumping more. Nothing. Pumping a lot. Nothing. Huh. For grins I pull out the primer. No fuel. I pull it again, and now it won't even pull air in. It's not getting anything. I know the plane won't start without some fuel, it's been sitting there too long, and I don't know why there's no fuel flowing, so... mixture to idle cut-off and I get to go backwards and put all that stuff away again, after an hour and some of messing with it to get ready. I was disgruntled and disgusted. But if there's an issue I'm much happier finding it on the ground. So Steve and I took the 340 up just for a brief moment, now that he was done with his student, too. I didn't have enough gas in there to do much. We took off, and we decided to do an RNAV approach. I was going to hand fly it and at get some kind of flying in today, but Steve wanted to work with the integration of the autopilot with the GPS, as he's been doing some reading on that, so the autopilot flew us around for the RNAV 23 approach, to the start of the missed approach, and then I swung in and landed, and that was all she wrote. A little disappointing of a flying day for the weather we had, and tomorrow the temps drop and we're looking at light snow showers. But such is life. There will be another warm day some day, even if it is March. :)
Me and The Panel
Look at that blue sky, that view from the front seat of the Six. *sigh*
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