Two Pilots & an LSW: Colorado

It was a little more eventful yesterday, but not terrible. I definitely have a flat spot on my butt from sitting on it so much lately. I did a little check, and I've flown 32 hours in the last 7 days, and 67 hours in the last two weeks. That's a lot!

The Conquest won't be ready for awhile, as the autopilot people lied about how long it would be before they even LOOKED at the servos. So now we run into not having a plane for two more long trips of theirs to FL and back after I already used the Cheyenne to Colorado twice and Vegas once. Stinking S-Tec is doing terrible at customer service and satisfaction, and it seems to be a theme with companies dealing with turboprops for some reason.

Kaylee started her new job Monday while I was gone, and I haven't talked to her and I have no idea how it's going! I'm going to text her now while I type this.

So Sunday I got back home around 6:30 pm. I went to bed at 10 pm, and then woke up at 6 am, which is 3 am Vegas time, where I spent the last three days. Went to Kokomo and pulled out the Cheyenne, and had a really hard time with it because our tug isn't aired up properly right now. All my time flying back from Frankfort to Kokomo, and now back from Kokomo to Frankfort, meant I didn't have enough gas on board to get back to Colorado. But Kokomo was closed when I landed and before I took off, and Frankfort was also closed. But they have a self serve pump. So I left early and landed over there and parked and tried to use the self serve pump only to have it not pump. I had to wait until 8, I was supposed to leave at 8, and now I'm late. I'm picking up a photographer lady there, and when the guys come in at 8 I have them top me off. They forgot to open a valve on the self serve pumps so that's why it didn't work. Cool. She loads up, and we head to Colorado, uneventfully. She rides in the back for 2 hours, up front the last hour, I go around a batch of weather as usual, and we land at Gunnison no problem.

Ethan picks us up, we load up the plane, I give the fuel order, and then we go out to their trailer where the photographer gathers clothing and picks up Amity and Clay and takes them out into the mountains to do an engagement photo shoot. While they do that, we go into "town" (Pitkin) and I get a killer BLT sandwich, and we wait for the love birds to be done. While they're doing that, I'm watching the weather, because storms are supposed to start firing up that afternoon. Sure enough, around 2-3 pm, here they come, and I tell people that hey, we need to get going here before we get trapped. We load up, race out to the airport, I pay for the fuel, file the flight plan, and I go to start, and the right engine won't start. There is an IEC (Computer) fail on the right engine, so it won't start like normal. I have to remember how to do the manual start, which I attempt twice, and then on the third attempt I get it, and it fires off. Whew. Away we go, but I have to manually monitor all the torque, temps, EGTs, etc. on the right engine, which we pay attention to anyway. Off we go heading in between storm cells and behind others, to get behind the line and get out of there. Up at 31,000', after that round of storms, all was well.

Two hours and 45 minutes later, we get to Frankfort uneventfully, and I go to shut down, and the right engine won't shut down, either. The Stop button doesn't work. So I had to shut down the right engine by shutting off the fuel with the feather function. That means the right engine is feathered, and it won't start again that way. So after I unloaded everyone, I had to manually unfeather the prop, and then I reset all the circuit breakers, and tried firing it back up, and it worked. I was able to start up and shut down normally again, at least.

When I took off out of Frankfort, Ethan texted and said they were expecting a steep climb-out, so when I took off, I climbed it out like a bat out of hell. Good ole Cheyenne. I asked him if they were glad we didn't do that with them on board, and he said no, they expect to do that themselves next time they're on the plane. lol

Oh. That morning when I left Kokomo to go to Frankfort, it was IFR. It wasn't just IFR, it dropped down to 1/4 mile and fog at Kokomo. If it went that low at Frankfort I wasn't going to get in, so I had to get out of Kokomo as fast as I could and get to Frankfort before it tanked. Fortunately it didn't tank, it stayed at 500' overcast, and I was able to hand fly the approach in, which was good practice with nobody else on board.

I finally got the plane put away at Kokomo around 9 pm. I had a hard time getting the plane on the tug, but finally I got it done, and got home around 9:30 pm. We watched a movie for a couple hours, but then I was too tired to be sleepy, so I watched ANOTHER movie, and I couldn't get to sleep until 2 am. My schedule was just all messed up.

This morning I slept in until 10 am because of it, so that was nice. Met up Ty and others for lunch, came home and brushed my teeth and flossed and then had a dental appointment at 3 pm. Got my teeth cleaned, which I hate doing. I hate the feeling, I hate the polishing most of all. But I got a clear bill of dental health, so yay for that.

Came home, worked on my schedule, which takes a lot of time, and then at 5 pm drove out to Kokomo to pick up Steve and Cameron, and I drove us down to Noblesville Airport for the CAF meeting. I was going to fly down until Steve invited Cameron and now we didn't have a 4 seat airplane to fly into the grass strip, so we drove from one airport to another, which just seems wrong. IS wrong. We didn't get back home until after 9 pm again, after dropping Cameron and Steve off at the airport to pick up their own cars.

Tomorrow is a meeting with the lawyer on the lawsuit. We'll see how that goes. It's scheduled for the morning, 9:30 I think. When that's over with, I may fly with Cameron in the Citabria for him to practice some back seat stuff again. We'll see.

Oh. And Westfield Airport, the EAA Chapter there, we donated a T-6 ride to for a raffle for them to raise money for their chapter. They sent an email out that they had to cancel it because of some legalities. The owner of the airport came on and sent an email through saying this event is supposed to help neighbors not protest having the airport there and "The family will not allow gambling of any kind. Please clear all activities with me before planning such future activities on our airfield." That was such an asshole move. The lady setting it up was just trying to do something fun and cool, and nobody was trying to do any kind of illicit gambling. We donated the ride out of our own pocket, we're not making money on it. And he just slapped her and sort of us across the face with that little line. So as far as I'm concerned, he can take his airport and shove it up his ass. What do I care if your neighbors don't like the airport any more, if you're going to be a jack wagon about people who are there trying to do a good thing for it? I wrote him back and informed him that even churches use raffles and nothing untoward was happening, like I said, we paid for it ourselves, so stuff it. He didn't respond to me yet if he's even going to. But I do feel bad for Amy who tried to set it all up and just got smacked down. Guy was a jerk.

Anyway. These photos are from Colorado. So beautiful. A much better way to end a post. ;)