Two Pilots & an LSW: Thurs & Fri

I had a 7:30 am wheels-up trip to Raleigh, North Carolina yesterday. It was an easy and smooth flight in both directions. I had a couple of motion sensitive folks on board, and they had no trouble, mostly even slept both directions. While I was there, I was sitting out front by all the windows, but finally decided to find the pilot lounge and see about chilling privately. I get there, and the room is dark, so I walk in thinking I'm alone. Quite to the contrary, every seat was taken in there except one. I was already in the room pretty far, and leaving felt weird, so I sat quietly in my one seat and tried to be quiet as everyone around was napping or reading quietly. In the dark. Suddenly I hear "What are YOU doing here?" I look up, and it's Brian, a corporate jet pilot who eats out with us Wednesday nights, from the Noblesville/Indy area. Talk about a small world, we both left close to the same place at the same time, and ended up at the same place (me after him, of course). I sat in that room for awhile, but typical pilot lounges full of typical pilots are depressing. Dark, people all tired, and I didn't want to be tired, so I got up and got the crew car before they all woke up and wanted it too, and went to Chick Fil A for lunch. I had a good salad, but there was a birthday party going on there and I really wanted one of their cupcakes. ;) When I got back, I decided to go for a walk, where I ran into this overlook area. It's a kids' area with sand, swings, climbing things, and on the grass were two little runways that mimicked the runways that the overlook, well, overlooked. There were poster things up that explained how airports, ATC, airplanes, all sorts of stuff worked. Up on the overlook was a bunch of plaques in a row that described most of the jets that people might see landing there. Lear, Hawker, Beech, Boeing, Airbus, Citations, all of them. No pistons made the list, I didn't think, until I got to the other end and saw one for a Bonanza, of all things. I think that whoever paid for the plaques must have owned a Bonanza, or there are a bunch of them based on field or something. ;) Brian said he heard me on frequency on the way home, so I hope whoever he actually heard didn't sound like an idiot, because I wasn't doing the radios on the way home. I guess there must have been another girl pilot out there that day. ;)

When I got home, I waited out at the airport for Doug and Kim to arrive in a Rocket from Dallas. That's a type of airplane, by the way. ;) They ran late, and arrived around 8:45 pm, so I had a couple hours to spend out there. A guy I knew landed in his taildragger and needed gas, but was unable to get the self-serve pump to work, so I gave him some gas and read a book and that took some time.

When Kim and Doug arrived, I put their plane in a hangar, then we met Steve at Half Moon for a late dinner. It happened to be our anniversary dinner, too. :) Twenty-two years. Whipper snappers, right? ;)

Then last night I couldn't sleep. I woke up at 3:15 am, looked again at 4:30, started playing with my phone at 6, and got up not too much later. I had a flight this morning, and got a text that there was a school shooting in Noblesville. That's a little close to home. Learned that the science teacher was a former football player who tackled the kid and was shot three times while swatting the guns out of his hand. Fortunately the teacher survived. The word hero is overused, but I think that qualifies as well as about anything.

After lunch I had two more flights, and it was now really bumpy and hot. It got up to 88 degrees today, and by the last flight I was already over it. I take a water bottle in the plane with me to stay hydrated, but we totally skipped Spring here, folks, and it's Summertime Hot. Ick.

The guy I recently checked out in the T-6 had another checkout flight in a different T-6 with a different instructor. He gave me a PIREP (Pilot Report) of how that went. He said the first takeoff and landing were awful, but it was because he couldn't move the gear, flaps, the throttle, all that stuff was different and had to be beaten into submission. Finally he got a better feel for it. From there, everything the other guy had him do differently than I do, I disagree with. He wanted wider patterns. I like tighter patterns. Dragging in a T-6 down a long final isn't the best idea. He wanted partial flaps then full, Doug had me do full flaps all at once and I've come to like that better. Less to mess with, and you're stable on the base to final. But that one's fine, I don't care. And "no three point landings, only do tail low wheel landings." Screech. What? He says the Air Force quit teaching pilots to do 3 point landings and their accident rate went down. I've never heard that. I'm looking for verification of it. I HAVE heard from multiple sources that repair shops have never repaired a T-6 for a ground loop that had been 3-point landed. But he does want tail low wheel landings at least. So anyway, I'm going to look more into it from a few folks. Won't likely change how I do anything, but I like having information.

Today was Kaylee's last day as a Junior. I know she was concerned about her pre-calc final and the effect it would have on her final grade, but other than that, she hasn't said much about her finals. She had a party tonight where they burned a lot of their done assignments and such, an end of the year tradition. Steve is out back with a huge bonfire. I'm in here working on...stuff. And I have a new Stephen King book to read too. :D