Two Pilots & an LSW: Oooookay.

Holy crapoli.

I am, wow, busy.

Monday I got up at 5 am to drive to Logansport and fly the Bonanza 4.5 hours down to the New Orleans area. Got gas, picked up the family of three, turned around, and we headed back out. It was about 5 hours home, including stopping in Tennessee halfway home. So 9.5 hours in the air, plus all the ground time, plus a 1.5 hour round trip drive to the airport. I got home late, and I passed out on the couch, even with Kaylee singing obnoxiously to try to stop me. I was out. I woke myself up at 9:30, out of a dead sleep, because Ann needed taken care of and I about slept through it, and Steve was still gone on a lesson. I dragged over there, put her to bed, came back next door, was up for about an hour, and then I went right back to sleep, in bed, and stayed there all night. I was whupped.

My alarm went off this morning at 7:30, which is better, and I needed to go out to Kokomo to do the Flying Squirrels. Then I got a text that the other guy coming to help on the T-6 was a CAF T-6 check pilot, and he agreed to do my checkride. But I hadn't gotten a chance to do anything but rides this whole season, so I hadn't practiced anything, and that stressed me out. Not knowing this guy stressed me out too, because there are three ways to do things in the T-6, and you never know which way the check pilot is going to want to see it until they yell at you for not doing it their way, and most of it is personal preference stuff, not safety of flight stuff. Doug yelled at me for leaning the mixture on the ground, this fellow (John) told me to lean it on the ground when I didn't, because the last guy hadn't wanted me to. That kind of stuff. I like to smoothly fly the tail up, he wanted me to pop it up aggressively and high. He wanted me to do a wheel landing tail way high, then while the tail was up, hit the power push, retract the flaps, fly the tail down, then do a touch and go. I don't do any of that after "wheel landing". I do tail low wheel landings, less transition time. I don't retract my flaps on the runway, let alone when the tail is still up, and I don't do touch and goes in the T-6. So that move wasn't the smoothest thing I've ever done, but I pulled it off. He mentioned doing spins and I said no. Then he told me stories about spins he almost didn't make it out of. Well, that's why I said no. I can spin the Champ, or the 172, or the Cherokee, or whatever, if you want to see spins, but they're not approved in the T-6, and I don't feel like practicing bleeding, so to speak. Why risk it? The recovery technique is the same so I'll show you one in another airplane if you want. But those were the differences. We got along well, actually, he has 3700 hours of dual given in T-6s so he's a lot more experienced than I am, and he doesn't know me from Adam, didn't know I was a T-6 instructor too, so that was actually pretty nice in one way, as he didn't have expectations. He wanted to do aerobatics but I didn't have a chute back there, so instead he did aggressive stalls. We did a 60 degree bank turning stall, power off, power on, dirty, clean, steep turning stalls, all of it, and I'd recover so quickly after the stall he kept saying "let it go farther, I want to see how you recover when the wing drops off 90 degrees". I was letting it full stall, it was dropping, I just didn't let it go longer than I needed to. So for the last one I let it break hard, and it took a hot second to recover, and the engine sputtered, and then he was pleased. lol We did a short field landing, 3-point, then that weird wheel landing touch and go, and then he pulled the engine out on downwind and I did a deadstick landing from there, greased that one on. He loved how I was willing to crank it around steeply close to the ground (in a coordinated fashion) to get lined up in time to get straight and touch down. As we were coming in, he was very complimentary, told me that out of all the T-6 checkouts he's done over the years, I was in the top 90% of all of them on how I handled the airplane. That made me feel pretty good, actually. He's a former Alaskan Bush pilot, by the way, thus all the aggression on flying. ;) He wanted to go aerobatics, and wanted me to go up and practice extra slow slow rolls and such. He would be a good person for me to go up and do that with, actually, but I don't have time right now. Maybe sometime I can go down to him in FL and do some flying there. He would be a good teacher of it, and I'm confident in his ability to not let us get ourselves killed doing it, and he doesn't know me like some of the others so I don't feel that pressure to be perfect. Well, I do, but not as bad. So anyway. All in all, that was a good experience.

Next up I flew the 172 with a Flying Squirrel, and we went up for an hour before lunch, did a bunch of maneuvers, and this was only his 3rd flight. He was a quick picker upper.

We had lunch, and Erin C., my former student who went on to fly corporate and for the military, big jets now, was there to be the guest speaker for the Squirrels. It was great to see her and catch up.

Next up I stole the 172RG and flew down to Metro, where I met with Keith and Kevin to finish their checkouts in the glass panel T-6. I flew with Kevin first for 1.7, and we did more stall series, engine out, short field TOLS. He had struggled after the first one a bit, and felt much better after this one. Then I went up with Keith for 1.5, and we did the same. He bounced his first landing, his glasses messed him up, and that honked him off. lol But after a little over 3 hours of flying, they were both pretty well good to go on the airplane.

I flew the RG back to Kokomo, put it away, and drove home, where I've done the laundry so I have clean clothes for tomorrow, when I'm getting up at 6:30 am to head to OKK to take the Cheyenne plus four people to Woostah, Massachusetts, pick up a guy, then hop over to New Hampshire/Maine. Spend the day there, then fly home.

Like I said on FB, I've flown 36 hours in the last 7 days. I've flown 80 hours in the last month. I'm tired, but good tired so far. :)

Kaylee is feeling better on the antibiotics and steroids. Ann is holding her own, she's up and walking around and doing okay. Not great, but okay. Tougher than I would be with four broken ribs.