Long Day II

I went to bed early, because I had to be up by 5:45 am.  Instead, I was up at 4 am, and just gave up and got up at 5:30 am.  I was checking the weather for and with my student for her checkride this morning.  The weather was either sketchy or fine, depending on which forecast you believed.  And the winds were supposed to be up too high for my student too.  She decided to go for it, and passed the oral, and then decided to go for the flight, too.  She had one pretty crappy landing, she said, but he passed her, and she is an official private pilot.  I was so tense. I hadn't slept, I felt behind because I WAS behind, I was sure she was going to be a good pilot, but I wasn't 100% sure she'd pass a specific checkride with winds gusting up to 20 knots when she hadn't dealt with that really before.  Fortunately she did, and I was so relieved for her.  

Next up I was supposed to have a T-6 flight.  The winds were pretty bad, but at least they were fairly close down the runway.  It was turbulent and gusty, with ceilings around 3800', and the guy said he was nervous. He isn't a pilot, just wanted to give it a shot.  We started off straight and level, then shallow turns, then I had him fly it for awhile just to get a feel of it.  He picked it up fairly quickly, and then he was ready for me to yank it around a little.  I did a couple increasing steeper turns, until he laughed out loud, and basically it was "on".  So I cranked it around, up, down, floated him, all that good stuff.  Ceilings were high enough that I felt okay doing a roll, but not high enough for me to loop it, so we stayed with just a roll.  Flew by Glenndale, and came in for a gusty landing that I nailed.  He had a great time, left with a smile, said it was totally worth it.  And that sort of woke me up, too.  I hadn't gotten a lot of sleep, I'd been nervous and tense all day, with the checkride, and the weather with this T-6 ride too.  Now that both those things were done with, I felt like I could relax a bit.  My last flight of the day was a dual cross country, from here to Rochester.  It was a direct crosswind up there, over trees, and we got tossed around like crazy on landing over there, and takeoff too.  In fact, the takeoff was aggressive enough that we got thrown back to the ground with the nose up, at full power, and I had to push the nose down to keep it from stalling out, even though we almost re-visited the ground.  It was a surprisingly rough takeoff for just 22-25 knot winds.  Those trees really whipped things around.   She did a good job with the cross country, and we did flight following, she talked to tower, did transponder code changes, all that good stuff.

Finished that up and made it home. Ann is staying with us while they fix some things next door, not sure how many days that'll be.  We have coffee, so that's good.  :)

I got back from my cross country around 7 pm, and Steve is still at an EAA meeting here at almost 9.  Well, hanging out afterwards, anyway.  I'm not watching Grey's Anatomy with Ann here, my luck they'll do gay bedroom scenes or something.  So Hallmark Channel Day Two it is.  ;)

This video was taken by Joyce H., when I went by earlier.  She got the last little bit of me going by and was laughing, which made me laugh.  I didn't take any other photos today.  Guess I mostly wasn't in the mood for some reason.  Tired, haven't had any down time in a few days, can't sleep in tomorrow either but hopefully I won't be awake at 4-5 am again!  Anyway, this little clip made me smile.