I was out at Kokomo by 6:50, took the tug off the Cheyenne, put it on the 340, pulled out the 340, preflighted and in the air by 7:15 am, in Terre Haute by 8 am. It was a beautiful, calm morning, but IFR at Kokomo and misty and hard to see down there, too. I met Paul and Dennis, and we sat in the hangar and went over ground stuff. Tips, tricks, procedures, T-6 stuff. Then Dennis pulled it out because the line guy didn't know how to tug out a T-6, and I stood on the wing while he did his first start. Went well, so I hopped in, and we did some taxi practice. He's a little jerky on the throttle, brakes, rudders, etc., but he was getting the feel for it by the end much better.
Takeoff was exciting. By now the winds were gusting up around 22 or so at a 60 degree crosswind. He only got the power up about halfway when his canopy slid open. He looks over and reaches for it...at half power, on the takeoff roll. He then tries to take off his hat so it won't blow off. Which knocks his headset off. We are off the ground, low power, low airspeed, crooked, so of course I grab it, straighten us out, lower the nose, get the power in there, and away we go. We then discuss gently why you focus on the take off during the take off and Fuck the canopy, (pardon me), let it go, an open canopy is fine but a power on takeoff stall would kill us. Go up and do some flying, some maneuvering, and then he goes to do a power on stall. I tell him to ease off on that for a bit, and let's work into it. So a power off stall goes fine, do a few of those. Then a "dirty" stall with a little power. Gear down, flaps down, stall, and bam, over we go, upside down. He lets the nose down a little too aggressively and my cellphone pops out of the map case to my right and goes floating by my head. I see it in the air, and this time I reach out and I grab that thing from the air. I still got it. I tell him to get the power back out, we are already pointing straight down and going at the speed of stink and do not need to add power to that. He then recovers the rest of the way, and we climb back out. My right hand is bleeding. At some point during that, my right hand got sliced up in three places on the back of it. Maybe the metal box to my right? I dunno. But that was good enough practice on that stall. He recovered. Let's not do that in the pattern, is the take-away there.
From there we came in for a landing. By now the winds were gusting up over 25, 30 degrees off. He did pretty well on the initial touchdown, then it went squirrely and I had to grab that one. We went inside and had lunch at the Corsair Cafe, which actually ended up having some really good food for being the house of the enemy. (The owner is Not a friend of us or our friends and I've avoided eating there before, but if Paul wanted to eat there I wasn't going to refuse.) The unfortunate part was that I had one of the best BLT's I've had in ages, with buttered texas toast and a garlic mayo that was delicious. I may dislike the guy, a lot, but the dude has good food at his restaurant.
We talked, he wanted me to fly his airplane around in the winds that are now 29 knots and a crosswind, and "show" him some takeoffs and landings. I haven't flown the T-6 since December, and hadn't flown it before then since October. So no flights in a T-6 at all in 3 months, one flight in 5 months, hadn't flown in the back seat in 8 months, and he wants me to demo how his takeoff and landing is supposed to look, from the back seat, with 29 knot gusting winds at a 30-50 degree crosswind swapping around. I said no, we will reconvene next time on a nicer day. So we wrapped up, put the plane away, and I flew back home in the 340.
Kaylee is home and wanted me to pick up McCalister's for her, it wasn't ready, so I sat in the parking lot for 20 minutes. I was SO tired. It had been a stressful, exhausting, early start to the day. It ended pretty well, but I definitely rescued the thing multiple times from pretty sketchy stuff, was awake around 5 am or so, had to do social interaction, hard core, with a multi multi-millionaire, dance around each other, get to know each other. It's exhausting. Good but exhausting.
So now I'm watching Equalizer, and then I'm going to bed at 9 pm so that I can get back up at 4:00 am to be out at OKK by 5:15 am to be wheels up by 5:30 am. Gah. Horrors!! Dustin, when he texted me about this job, asked me how I'd feel about a 5:30 am departure, and then said "you know you have missed me!" I told him it was wrong, very very wrong, but we could do it. He said "lol, you're the best!" I did not miss their butt-crack departures. I'm too old for this. 4 am is not a wake-up time.
Chocolate bar I had to try
Sunrise in the 340 this morning
The back of Paul's head in the T-6
Steve & Kaylee at Pastarrific last night
Me in the back of the T-6
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