Days

One thing Facebook is good at is reminding you of good or fun or important things from previous years.  Today I had 9 years' worth of posts from this date, and 8 of them were about National Aviation Day.  Seven of those I was in the T-6, at an event, or doing something with it. One I was on a trip. Today I only flew once, BOB, and I'll talk about that later.  But the last date anniversary post on my FB page was this.

"My grandma raised 8 kids in a 2-bedroom house, survived the Kansas Dust Bowl, the Great Depression, the loss of a 34-year old son and a baby girl, for starters. She was the single most no-nonsense woman I've ever known, and I mean that as a compliment. She passed away peacefully in her sleep this morning just shy of 97 years old.  God bless, Grandma...and thank you..."

So, just wanted to shout out to my Grandma too.

My one flight today was with a retired airline pilot who just joined the CAF and wants to fly one of the planes, but isn't sure which one he wants to fly, so he wanted to go on a flight on both. It was super hot and muggy today. I was sweating like a horse as soon as I got in the plane.  He's not supposed to touch the controls without being officially a student, so I had him in the right seat. Then I let him taxi it to see how he did, which was pretty well. So I did the run-up, and then I decided he'd be able to do the takeoff, and I should be able to rescue that if he had trouble.  He did the takeoff all right, we went up and did some maneuvers, I did some instructing in it, and then I made the decision at the end to let him land. He had good control, and after he landed, we got it stopped, pulled off the runway without too much problem, he said "Were you scared?" I said no, and he said "You should have been. I was."  That made me smile, and I said "Good".  A little humility never hurt anyone. I told him I wasn't scared, but I was definitely on alert, which is true. I was nervous and alert, because...he's the first brand new person I've ever talked through a landing in that airplane. He doesn't know that or he'd have been even more scared.  :D  But he did a good job responding to my direction.  What bothers me is that I've never had one of my own landings go very wrong in there. They've all been fine.  I'm not worried about the plane so much when everything's going fine, I'm worried about it when it goes wonky.  But I'm sure not going to wonky it on purpose just to see how hard it is to fix. I'm not stupid, either.  ;)  I felt pretty good about the flight though.  The next step in my progression of is coming along.