I slept great last night, not as long as previous nights, but woke up feeling pretty good. I think I finally caught up on a little sleep deficit. I was going to bed at 9:30-10:30 pm and sleeping until 8:30 am or so, until yesterday when I wasn't tired until 11:30 pm, stayed in bed awake until after midnight, and woke up around 7 am, which is all a more normal time for me. Waking up without the stuffy head, or the grogginess. Wheeeew.
I've been contacted to start flying the CAF C-47 called "Ready for Duty" known as "R4D" out of Dallas Ft. Worth. I said I don't have airline travel privileges and do have a busy schedule, but the head of it, Joe, said he would love to have me on board, that they want to build a group of experienced pilots for it, and even though I'm not experienced in C-47s yet, I'm experienced in warbirds, tailwheel, multi-tailwheel, CAF, rides programs, etc. SO I'm kind of excited about that. I feel stagnant in flying. I see a lot of people around me advancing, moving into all sorts of planes, fighters, even people I taught or who came way after me. I don't want to disappear off of the warbird or flying scene yet, so I think this might give me some more momentum in that arena too. We talked some tonight and will be talking more soon, and I THINK this one will actually pan out. This is what it looks like:
Steve, Chuck and I hit lunch at Grindestones, and then Morgan showed up at 1 pm, and she and I drove down to Indy Exec to go fly the Cirrus for the first time by ourselves, without the instructor.
We get there, and a lady at the desk was worried about letting us take it because the winds were high, and the max allowable winds are 20 knots sustained. They were like 17 gusting 22. RIGHT down the runway. She was concerned, but she let us do it. It didn't have gas, so we had to get that topped off, and then I had Morgan start off in the left seat. She did the start up, taxi out, take off, and we went up in the air and mostly we were button pushing and figuring out screens. Then I took the controls and went up to 5500', as high as I could get, and I left some power in, and turned off the "save you" controls called ESP, that does the rudder for you and won't let you bank over 40 degrees, etc., and I did a power on stall, and I didn't coordinate it, and I kind of yanked it and 'accidentally' hit a rudder right when it was stalling, and whoop, there it is. It went into a right spin entry fairly aggressively, more abruptly than I figured it would. I immediately recovered, and as I was pulling up, the airplane yells "AUTOPILOT ENGAGED!" and it took over and leveled the wings and leveled off on altitude too. It was behind--I already fixed it before it took over, but hey, it got there eventually. :D I did not and will not let it get into a fully developed spin, but it will enter and exit a spin entry just like any other airplane, which honestly I'm glad to know. I don't like not knowing the envelope of the airplanes I fly. I'm also anti-authority and hate to be told what not to do, so that's a thing too, but...I still wanted to feel the airplane out anyway.
Oh chuuuuute! ;)
We were going to land at Kokomo, but the winds were stronger than 20 knots sustained, gusting over 27, so we listened to Marion's weather, and it was 19 gusting 25, so I went there instead. Morgan did 3 crosswind takeoffs and landings (50 degrees off), and then we pulled up and shut down the airplane. Switched seats, and I did a hot start, I did 3 crosswind takeoffs and landings there, then we went up and did a little more button pushing and wandering around before heading back to Indy Exec. The winds were still not 20 knots sustained, but reeeeally close, but also still right smack down the runway. I brought the plane in for a really pretty landing, so I was hoping my instructor was watching from his office. ;)
When we brought the keys back in to the office, the lady collecting the keys sounded nervous, she asked "Is everything okay? Did everything go okay?" We were like "Yep, no problems!" I don't think they get a whole lot of pilots who fly in close to the 20 knot winds, apparently. ;)
It was a good flight. We stumbled through some of the buttons and screens, because our instructor would hit some of the buttons for us, and it's hard to know what you don't know if you're not the one doing it. So I think we made good progress today. We're going to go flying some more next week and go on a trip, I'll do one leg, she'll do one leg, and shoot approaches on both ends, and just see if it's all sinking in and if we're feeling good about it. That was just my 3rd flight in it, so hey...
On the way back, we were hungry, stopped at Applebees for dinner, and then I'm home for the evening and trying to catch back up.
Ethan with 7 others is flying out to Vegas this week via Southwest Airlines, to save hours on the Conquest, then on to Marco until March 9th.
Guess that's about it for today...
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