Two Pilots & an LSW: Snapshot

Sunday, December 15, 2024

Snapshot

Friday early morning I drove to Frankfort, met up with Ethan, and we went down to Indy. Hopped on an airline flight first class to Denver. Had a huge breakfast on the airplane. Hot rolled washrag, and breakfast I couldn't finish that was bacon, eggs, croissant with butter, fresh fruit in a bowl, Greek yogurt, coffee, two hashbrowns...what else. It was a lot, man! Landed in Denver, got on the next flight that was a 45 minute hop from Denver to Grand Junction, CO. No food because of the short trip and the turbulence, they had us all stay in our seats including the flight attendants. But it wasn't that bad, honestly.

We were supposed to leave at 1:30 pm with the Conquest. They found a leak on the pitot static system. Long story short, we spent the next 6 hours waiting for them to fix that. Finally everything is ready to go, and Ethan and I load up in the dark to head home for a late night. We get off the ground, hand flying, engage the autopilot at some point, and it points us down to the mountain. Disconnect, try again. Same thing. Disconnect, try different modes. IAS, VS, straight and level, all of it. Nothing. It dives out from under you. So I call back in and we go back to Grand Junction.

Get a hotel room and a rental car. Ethan gets an airline ticket out at 7 am the next morning, and I stay behind to fly the plane home, we hope.

They put the old pitch servo back in there, and finally it's ready to go. I test fly with an approach locally, it works, so I pick up my IFR and have another 3 hour flight home. Plane works. I don't feel great, and worn down even though I sat most of the day.

Get home from Colorado and landed at Frankfort, and realize I have the rental car keys in my coat pocket. UPS is closed so I go to the Post Office to do an overnight, but the closest I can get is Thursday. That isn't going to work, so I go home, drop off my overnight bag that I'd packed thinking I wouldn't need but was grateful to have in the end, changed my shirt, and went out to the hangar where we were having our CAF Christmas party. Stayed at that until 8 pm, and then I was done. I was worn out.

Drove home and crashed. Woke up with a headache (not a shock), went back to sleep until 9:30 am (THAT was a shock), still didn't feel good. So I've been resting up a lot today, as it's a busy week coming up and I don't have time to not feel good.

Tomorrow is New Jersey, Trenton, with bad weather/rain/low clouds. I'm bringing Morgan along as a back up because I'm not 100% and it's a crappy weather day.

But now am home. Kaylee's fine, Steve's fine, we're trying to figure out what we're doing coming up, we don't have anything decorated and I wonder if we will at all. Dunno...