Waiting and Working

Kaylee came home for a little while this afternoon. She had a neurology appointment in Indy, so swung by the house for a few hours before heading back to Wabash. She's doing okay. She's a "house mom" to teenage troubled kids, and she's so small, but she is apparently keeping them in line, and some of them really like and respect her, so that's kind of cool.  She still curled up on my lap for a few minutes before she left. Always be my baby, right?

One funny thing. When she came home, I didn't know she was coming. I was washing a round of clothes, including my yoga pants. So I was sitting on my couch without wearing pants, under a blanket.  She was there for awhile before I finally said "Well, my clothes are done, so I'm gonna go get my pants on."  :D  She was like... "Do you usually sit around without pants on? Do you have underwear on? Does Dad know you sit around without pants on?"  Hahaha!

At 9 am I had an IFR cross country with Isabel. It was actual IFR, too, so she got to be in the clouds for most of the trip, hand flying of course, and shoot two approaches.  Good practice.  One funny thing--Steve tried to call her while we were at 4000' in the clouds hand flying, and because of her bluetooth Bose headset, the phone call rang through in her headset.  It's pretty funny, I hung up on him for her while she flew and texted him that he was calling her in the air.  Those headsets are awful handy though. Not for doing business, but for calling for clearances, and some people have called towers when they had an electrical failure on the plane, and had people turn lights on for them, etc.  Technology is pretty cool.

Met up with Nathan, Kevin, their worker John, Chuck, and Steve and I for lunch and then I left early so that I could drop Steve off at home and go to the eye doctor. He said my far distance script was a "notch" worse, my near vision was the same.  I learned something new though. I said I needed 20/20 corrected vision for my flight medical, with each eye individually, near and far, and he said "Oh, you're not going to get that." I have an astigmatism, and they have contacts for that, but I'm doing well with the ones I have, so he hasn't messed with them.  But the ones I have only get my right eye corrected to 20/50.  That's why I struggle so blasted hard every year on my eye exam!  With both eyes in, I can see 20/20 because my left compensates. But covering up the left, my right is always weaker, even with contacts, and that's why.  He said they could get glasses to make it 20/20 though, so I'm going to do that and hope it helps with that medical. I have always had such a hard time with the vision part of it.  Just the "below 20/40" line.  One weird thing.  He put in two new contacts for me...and they never fogged over.  I found that weird. I wore them the rest of the day and they never fogged over.  I'll be darned.  I hope they don't do it tomorrow now, when I need to actually see, to fly (er, instruct in) the T-6.

I got a back up pilot for what was supposed to be my first week on the Air Power History Tour for summer, in BOB.  I'm assuming I'll by flying the Conquest by then, and I'll need back-up.  Fortunately JP will be available to take it for me if need be.  

Glenn is coming tomorrow possibly to finish his T-6 training. Weather doesn't look great, but if it holds out good enough, it'll be windy, but we'll try to get it done.  If not tomorrow, we'll be in trouble on time. I now have a trip Wednesday to Evansville. A trip Thursday morning to Ohio.  Thursday afternoon to New Jersey/New York.  And Friday afternoon, a trip to Tennessee.  So my week filled in quite a bit in a hurry this afternoon.  Glenn only needs a little more time.  I was hoping the Nella instructors would finish it off, but they sent him back to me.  So it looks like neither of them, like most T-6 instructors, wants to be an instructor for someone in the airplane until they're already taught, qualified and checked out by someone braver or dumber.  Ala Thom R or me, basically.  I get it.  It IS slightly terrifying and always tense.

One of our rides pilots in BOB called me today. He'd landed behind a jet taking off with a bit of a crosswind and ended up doing a 270 turn around on the runway. Aka a ground loop, only one that didn't hurt anything or exit the runway, fortunately. The bad news is that he did it in front of the APHT other pilots, which hurt his pride. The tower also took down his name for a report on an incident, they called it "for the wake turbulence incident".  So I talked to him for a few minutes about some things he could have done that he didn't, and then told him I was glad nothing was hurt, and that honestly, I think these things happen now and then to keep us all in full respect of the airplanes.  Get complacent or cocky, and they'll slap you across the face.  Especially these big old heavy taildraggers.  It was a good conversation and I'm very grateful nothing was bent.

Last night was the awards ceremony for the Air Race Classic, all women's race that my student Morgan participated in through Purdue.  They had a live feed of it on Facebook, so I watched the results.  Her team won "Fastest Piper in the race", "4th Place in the Collegiate Category", and "8th Place Overall".  That's really fantastic results.  Last year the Purdue team was disqualified for something stupid and had a ton of penalties.  This year, they ran a completely clean race and came in the top 8 out of somewhere around 55-60 teams.  I mean, that's great!

A few more photos from Noblesville.