Southern Style

I’ve apparently gotten a case of the clumsies lately.  The other day I was walking over to take care of Ann, and my foot went out from under me on her step, and I went down like a felled tree.  Whammed down on my knee and my other shin.  Zero stars, would not recommend.  Then yesterday after we landed in Cape, I dropped my iPad.  My less than a year old, expensive, fancy iPad.  Shattered the upper right corner, smashed the glass in.  So when we get home, I guess I get to take it to the repair shop and see if they’ll replace the screen and how painful that will be on the price and if that will actually fix it, or if it’s hosed.  It still works so far, at least.  But ugh.

The flights yesterday were interesting. We took the Aerostar, and brought Ann to the Nashville area first. She did great on the flight, as usual, no problems.  One weird thing we learned while she was packing for this trip is that she may be using Bounce Drier Sheets as undergarment protection.  Cathy is going to try to get to the bottom of that while she’s in TN.  She also doesn’t sleep in a bed any more, and she’s sleeping in a bed in TN, so we’re wondering how that’s going too.  But the only thing she was a little unsure of was when we left her there, and she thought we were going to stay there with her, even though we said we weren’t. She didn’t want to let go of us.  She feels safe with us.  But we need to be able to go do things too once in a blue moon.

Coming into TN, we had to shoot an RNAV in, but a Falcon got there first.  So I got my first real “hold” clearance in years.  Go direct to such and such intersection, 4000’, hold south, expect further clearance such and such. I was like…I’ll be darned!  I only ended up having to go to that intersection, do the hold entry, come back around, and the Falcon did me a favor and canceled IFR when he broke out, so ATC let me go inbound from there.  While I was on the approach, the lady at the FBO got on the radio and started talking to me about where to park when I got down there. The time to talk to a pilot about where to park is after they land, not while they’re in the midst of their approach in IMC.  

After we dropped off Ann, we did a 30 minute hop and skip over to another place in Tennessee to visit with Steve’s cousin Jeff.  Had to shoot an approach into there, too, this time an ILS.  He cleared me to go down to 3800’ and go direct to the Final Approach Fix, and not cleared for the approach until “established”.  That was 1300’ above glide slope intercept, and the glide slope was full scale deflection “down”.  He didn’t establish me ahead of time, just dumped me right on it, way high.  So my choice was to go missed and make him re-vector me around, or drop the gear, drop the flaps, pull the power, come down like a brick, get re-established on the glide slope, and be ready to go missed if it wasn’t going to work. The nice thing about flying these days vs 30 years ago is the GPSs.  You can see where you are, where the runway is, how many miles away, what your groundspeed actually is.  You can tell whether you’ll make it or not with a lot more confidence than the old days.  I broke out, had the runway in sight right on the centerline, and made a perfectly nice landing out of it.

We visited Jeff’s new apartment, went out and had Japanese for lunch (it was really good, too), and then headed for Cape.  This time the clouds were gone by the time we got here.  They cleared me for a left downwind for Runway 10, and I’m high and fast, but no big deal with a pattern coming up. Then they clear me for a straight in for Runway 28. Which is 3 miles in front of me and way below me.  So once again, non-stabilized approach for the win.  Pulled the nose up, power back, got into flap speed, dropped some of those,  got to gear down speed, dropped that, got to slower flaps down speed, dropped those, and ended up landing in the first 500’ of the runway anyway. The Aerostar does a nice job, and it’s very maneuverable.  ;)

Getting out of the plane is when I dropped my iPad which I’m still not over, and then we were off and relaxing for a couple of days here.

Kaylee called, where she is is getting hit with Covid, and people are getting locked down.  She may come home early—her roommate and her close friend in there both got Covid and are out and isolated. She’s been hugging them, around them a lot, and says if she gets isolated out there in a concrete room again, she’ll go nuts.  So…she’s going to see if they let her go home instead of lock down…

Mom and Ernie have two big boy cats. They’re rescues, their previous owners having passed away, at least one from Covid, and they’re older, 7 and 11 years old, and very sweet.  I’m used to girl cats and these boys look big to me, but they’re just…boys.  lol

Well, time to go plug in my busted iPad for awhile.  I have some photos to add but it’ll have to be later when I have my laptop.  

Later!