AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

This day didn't go as planned on my end.

Gorgeous, gorgeous weather.

The guy showed up to do spin training. I have him go back into the big hangar at our table where we'll do some ground ahead of time. My first question is to ask him about his aviation background. Usual Purdue student answer is "I haven't flown anything but the Archer and I have 250 hours and I need the spin endorsement to get my CFI". His answer was "I have always been interested in airplanes and I was just wondering if I should work on them or fly them." He was there to take a Discovery Flight, not do spin training. He had never flown before! Isabel wrote "spin training" on my schedule. It's a good thing these things come with talking on the ground first, or that would have been a much more exciting Discovery Flight than he was expecting!!  LOL

Afterwards I took our Citabria up to do a relaxing, nice flight. I was only up for 5 minutes or so, decided to do some takeoffs and landings.  I was on downwind and saw our Cherokee 180 land, head for the left side of the runway, then totally skid around onto Runway 23, tires smoking, spinning around.  I'm kind of mad, because people hitting the brakes to get off are a big pet peeve of ours, and we tell everybody to stay off the brakes. So I decide I'm going to land and talk to them right then.  I land, pull up, and they've shut down the engine on the taxiway. When I get out, the two guys get out.  He says there was a crosswind and he landed crooked and on all three wheels and they went left and he hit the brakes (locked them up actually cause I saw it).  There is some damage to the plane.  First of all, the winds were 110 at 6 knots, on Runway 14 that's a 3 knot crosswind component at the most.  That's not a crosswind problem. So if you landed crooked, it wasn't the wind.  Secondly, landing flat is our first biggest pet peeve.  Landing flat and fast means you land with too much energy, and that's how things like this happen.  And I flew with him in the Cessna so I KNOW he knows that.   Third, standing on the brakes is our 3rd biggest pet peeve (2nd is giant patterns).  He did everything we teach everyone not to do, all in one flight.  *sigh*  The plane will be out of commission for at least a few weeks, we'll be down the income from it of course, plus expenses.  His buddy said "oh well that's what insurance is for", but it's not, actually, it won't go to insurance, and insurance wouldn't cover down time anyway.  I want to dig into the instructor who checked him out in it, but Steve doesn't seem to be as interested in doing that as I am, yet, so we'll talk about it more later and see.  Meanwhile we're not talking specifics about it with anyone, so since only two people read this blog, don't blab it around or discuss what I said. ;)

Steve, AE, Chuck and I went to dinner at Pastarrific, Kaylee was doing homework, and Nathan was bringing home fried chicken.  Good meal, expensive tonight because Steve got two appetizers, two "old fashioned" whisky drinks, two meals (steak & shrimp and sea bass), and two desserts.  Living large tonight I guess.  Tomorrow we have leftovers and eggs.  ;)

I was going to go back out tomorrow and fly the Citabria but now I'm not sure I'm in the mood.  Maybe stay home and do nothing, instead, before Monday's work week begins.

The photos are from "Be Real", which went off while I was up flying. This was in the 5 minutes before I came in to do some takeoffs and landings and only got one in because of another incident, so was the only fun part of this flight.  lol