New York, CAF

Friday I didn't do a whole lot. I was very tired and dehydrated, and with the 3 hour time difference, a little jet-lagged too. I did household stuff, basically, and prepared for Saturday's stuff, dealt with a couple of people on upcoming flights, all that good stuff. 

This morning I got up at 5:30 am, drove to Frankfort, which wasn't open yet, so I had to pull the Conquest out myself. Frigid, but not hard now. Bigger problem was the pile of hydraulic fluid on the floor under the right engine. Bad timing. Worst case scenario would be no flaps and emergency gear extension. It has a "low hydraulic fluid light", so I started it up and that wasn't on. I took off, retracted the gear and flaps, checked everything out, it seemed fine, so I headed to White Plains, NY. I did a partial flap landing, both places, just to save hydraulic action. Sent the photo of the mess to the owner to call the maintenance shop, and grounded the plane when I got home. I'll have to take the 340 to Illinois and Iowa Monday and Wednesday instead. *sigh*

The trip out to NY was FAST. I think I broke a record of having 158 knot tailwinds. I got a photo at 157, it went up, then I was leveling off and talking and by the time I got un-busy, the numbers had dropped off some. That's some serious wind though. Over 400 kts groundspeed for awhile. It took me about 1.5 hours to get there at 35,000', the only time I've ever had that plane up to its max ceiling so far. It struggles the last little bit of that but once it's there, it does all right. I picked up Andy, and on the way home, the winds were so bad, it would have taken me about 4 hours to get home at 34,000'.  So I went home at 14,000' and it still took 2.9 hours to get home. Double the time, almost. Unreal.

I was originally going to drop off Andy and then fly the Conquest to Kokomo to attend the CAF groundschool. Except now I didn't want to add an extra two takeoffs and landings, so I left it at Frankfort and drove to Kokomo, which made me an hour later than I was. Sat in on the end of the PT-26 groundschool and the CRM training. I'm not sorry I missed some of it. Except I also learned that nobody is doing the C-45 training. I'd said I didn't want to, and Laurence was doing the BT and Ray doing BOB. Except Ray backed out and JP whom I thought picked it up, didn't, so nobody was doing it. I texted JP about doing it and he answered me until I basically asked if he was doing it and then he didn't answer me any more. So I got home and went over the presentation and the quiz, adapted a few things over the hours, and I guess I'll do it after all. *double sigh*. It's someone else's turn. I've done it every year since we've had BOB and I haven't changed much of anything, so we need fresh blood. Plus I'm tired of doing it. LOVE having it dropped on me the night before, too, but hey.

We had Thai food with Kaylee tonight, and then it's bedtime for me, since I have to get up at...6:40 am. To fly to Terre Haute to spend the day doing BT-13 and C-45 ground school. Before Monday's trip to Illinois, before Tuesday's Cheyenne trip to N Carolina, before Wednesday's trip to Iowa in the 340 now too. And so on. Pictures tomorrow....