Kaylee is home for the weekend. She is feeling uncertain and nervous about jumping in at her new internship in dealing with actual clients, afraid she’ll say or do something wrong, and is working through those nerves and fears. It’s a great opportunity, and they want her to dive in, and I hope she takes a breath and jumps in soon. She’ll be good at it. :)
Yesterday morning first thing was the T-6 groundschool via zoom with the Wisconsin Wing. I did my 8 page quiz the night before, so sat at the table on my deck in a big sunbeam with a beverage and did 3 hours of groundschool. Finished up, emailed them my pdf of my quiz, updated the CAF website with my current groundschool status, and beat it out to the airport to fly with a guy in the Champ who hadn’t flown since September. The winds were light and variable, which is actually almost harder, because you get little puffs from the side, any side, or behind you, etc. Not strong, but enough to be annoying. He did well though. We put that away, and I went up with JP in the C-45 to do my “602”, which is my annual checkride with the CAF. I got him his instructor qualifications in it, and now I have to go up with him as my instructor. Feels a little odd, and I did make a mistake (how DARE I) on the restart after I fully shut down an engine, read the checklist wrong on prop lever position on restart and didn’t think about it. Dork. I didn’t make a mistake on proper procedures for identifying, verifying, feathering and securing the engine quickly, though, so that’s the most important part. ;)
We did some maintenance checks on it too, came in and landed a couple times, went inside and did my paperwork and sent it in, so I’m officially “Green” in RallyPoint, the CAF tracking website, on the Beech and the T-6. The only one left right now is the BT-13, I need a checkride in it. I’ll have to do it with a guy I also set up as an instructor in the plane, a plane I’ve flown a total of like 4 times ever. *sigh* Worst of all, I think my T-6 CAF flight currency expires in 3 months, and I hate doing that checkride. I have almost 1000 hours in a T-6 now and I’m known in the community for being a top T-6 pilot so when I go up with someone else I hate the high expectations. It’s so much easier being underestimated and under the radar. lol
After we put away the planes, Steve, Chuck, AE and I went to Pastarrific to eat dinner and watch the Purdue Final Four game. It was a good game, and they won fairly easily, got ahead and stayed ahead the whole game. It’s been 55 years since Purdue went to the National Championship game, and I think 80 years since they last won it. Something like that. So they have one more game to get through, and I hope they can do it. I’ll be watching that game. Today I’ll be watching the women’s championship game. I will admit I’m a fair weather basketball fan. I normally couldn’t care less. I only care because 1) I’ve flown around the coach of Purdue enough now to get to know him, which puts a personal spin on watching the games and 2) They’re actually doing well and that’s always more fun than when they’re sucking. As far as women goes, I also don’t normally care about them, but you have to live under a rock to not hear about Caitlin Clark, so I watched a game, and I found it interesting, and Iowa is also an underdog in all this, and I like Iowa and I like underdogs and I was impressed with the distance of a lot of the 3 pointers that CC was hitting, and then I started noticing some of the other players, and I thought…you go, guys. So having watched these playoffs, though, I don’t know that Iowa can beat S. Carolina. (The GAMECOCKS? Whose stupid idea was that for a mascot?) S. Carolina has been like a machine, and Iowa goes hot and cold. They start off cold, get behind, and then rally and win, sometimes barely. They start off hot, get ahead by 12 points, then go cold, fall behind, then rally and win, barely. S. Carolina just pounds it out, gets ahead, stays ahead, and wins. If Iowa comes out hot and stays hot, then it’s gonna be a really good game. If Iowa had a period where they go cold? S. Carolina will stomp them, unless they uncharacteristically have a cold streak too. We shall see. That game is today at 3. I’m rooting for Iowa, I like their team camaraderie, they have multiple very talented players, nobody hogs the ball even though CC is what everyone is focusing on, she’s passing the ball a lot, all the teammates are getting in there and getting it done. I hope they pull it off.
Indiana is in the middle of the eclipse totality. Kokomo is divided. The north half of the city is “partial” and the south half is “totality”. We were supposed to be headed to FL Monday, but now we’re leaving super early Tuesday morning. I read that Cape Girardeau had about 120 planes who made reservations to fly in there. Kokomo Airport is north, so it’s in the “partial” eclipse part, which is perfect because I don’t think we’ll get swamped with people flying in there. They’ll go to Indy airports, Terre Haute, the airports smack in the middle of the path. So I plan on taking an airplane up and flying a couple miles to the southeast, and I’ll be in the middle of the totality area without having to deal with traffic on the ground or probably much traffic in the air, either.
I am concerned about the Sun-n-Fun thing though. We’re supposed to be there Tuesday morning but we can’t, so we’ll be there Tuesday afternoon. We may have to leave at like 5 am, and even that will be close on getting us to a fuel stop then Florida, in time. We lose the first day’s ride revenue. I don’t know that I have enough gas to get to the first fuel stop. We’re meeting up with Jordan in the air in his C-45, but he is starting off 50 miles closer than I am. I don’t know where to go at Sun-n-Fun. I haven’t packed yet. The weather for Tuesday does not look great, and if we can’t get down there, well, we need to get down there. Can’t take the plane IFR. Not sure I would if I could. Well, clear on top, sure. Low IFR approach? Absolutely not.
Those thoughts and more are what woke me up at 5 am out of the blue. I couldn’t go back to sleep, so I just got up and started my day…
BOB on the Sun-n-Fun Website, across the whole screen. That’s cool.
Me sitting on my deck in the sun doing T-6 groundschool via Zoom on my iPad (since I don’t have a laptop yet).
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