Still Productive

It was a cloudy, rainy, windy day, which was perfect for someone working on their instrument rating who was ready to get into the good stuff.  So we went to Greencastle and back, and it was raining along most of the route, but the ceilings weren't all that low. But the visibility was bad enough in the air with the rain that it was good IMC, good practice.  I enjoy those days, actually. It's fun to take someone up in weather they'd never have messed with (smartly) as a Private Pilot, and show them the options they have, how the weather works, the difference between yellow when it's rain and yellow when it's convective, how to tell the difference most of the time, etc.  So that was first up this morning, for 2 hours.

Steve's mom had a good morning, took her meds, ate her breakfast, was cheerful and even singing a lot today.  Sometimes you just don't know, you know?

This afternoon while I didn't have any other trips or students until later, I filled out the insurance form for the Cheyenne for the year, lost it, filled it out again, and sent it in to them.  I've flown like 880 hours in the last 12 months, which is a record for a long time.  I have done 1000 hours in a year, but not in a LONG time.   As you know, been a busy girl. ;)

This evening I met with Morgan out at the airport to do ground towards her multi-engine rating.  She has a 23 year old instructor from Purdue in a Seminole.  We told her, you just need him to know this airplane and teach you that, and you'll get a lot more experience and stuff with us.  How bad can it be, right?  It's pretty bad. He doesn't seem to know the plane that well, he tried to go around and add full power without putting the props forward and didn't know what "that noise" was, teaches to do steep turns by never looking outside, and he has his students "verify" the dead engine by pulling the OTHER throttle back, then gets mad when they try to feather the wrong prop, so he has them do the mixture first, because they can't figure out their left from their right.  Which makes no sense. Or maybe it's because you're having them pull the wrong throttle so they pull the wrong prop too, buddy.  That's just bad.  I told her she should discuss this with him, or someone over his head, because...no.  All sorts of no.  He wants to go into the airlines.  So the airlines don't have props and mixtures, but you still verify last I heard, and verifying by pulling the wrong "lever" back isn't going to win him any prizes in their world either.  And people wonder why I'm bothered at the students coming out.  Anyway, so other than the Seminole specific stuff which I don't know, we talked about multi-engine stuff, critical engine and why, factors of Vmc, etc.  

Steve, Morgan and I went out to eat at Pastarrific afterwards, had a nice evening, and once we got home I had to prep for a flight to Marco Island tomorrow.  I think it should be okay. I could take someone along but I'd have to sit next to them and chat for 7 hours total, and there aren't too many people I like to spend that much time with at once.