Right Round

Tuesday. First up were the Flying Squirrels. I had two flights, in the Champ. First up was the same kid I had last week, who almost threw up on me. He did better this time, and we went up and had a little more relaxed fun than we did on the last lesson. He is not very good at this yet and has like 12 hours, and still doesn't know how to level off or do anything that you don't tell him to do. Second kid I had, he did a good job. We went up and did our Champ flight, and then I even had him land, and he did pretty well with it all told. From there we had Chick-Fil-A delivered for lunch. It was funny because the Moms set up lunch each week and this Mom had Chick-Fil-A delivered, except the Kokomo store doesn't do deliveries apparently, and either neither does Door Dash or she didn't know how, so she had it delivered from MUNCIE. The van shows up from Muncie to the airport in Kokomo. I asked if the driver was tipped and she said not that she knows of. Gah. I felt bad about that, but I didn't do it and I couldn't catch the driver afterwards, so...it just has to go down as a bad deal and we all move on. The Lord's Chicken was good as always, however, still nice and hot.

Next up was the CAF FEB meeting. Now that was just great. It lasted three hours. It was Not Fun. Jordan B and JP flew up from Terre Haute, people called in from several other states, and Doug sat there while everyone discussed the situation, and it was contentious at times, logical at times, but it went on and on. The problem came when we dismissed Doug and discussed penalties, and the first penalty on the list was "is not fit to fly" and should never fly for Indiana again. It was discussed, and 13 people agreed that was unnecessary. One guy was a hold out, who said that he "wasn't there", and nothing anybody said was going to get him there. Now in this room were Instructor Pilots, Check Pilots, Airline Pilots, NTSB investigators, Rides Pilots, Safety officers, all manner of people/pilots. The one guy who was a hold-out? Isn't a pilot at all. He has no freaking clue what he's talking about, and instead of listening to people who DO know, he just drew a line in the sand and said he wasn't happy. So now people are trying to find out what will make him happy. And three freaking hours later, here we are with this stupid long evolved unnecessary plan of punishment and monitoring. He also called two guys yahoos, said 'shame on us' for going easy on one guy, and basically this was shots fired at me for reasons too long to explain on here. That lit me up, and I went after him. Steve ended up cooling me off there a bit, and we continued. But I didn't appreciate that at all.

Steve's angry, I was angry and I woke up at 3 am thinking about it, which makes me angrier. Sleep is precious to me any more, now that I've felt what life was like without it. So waking up at 3 am thinking about this guy and why he's a tool just made me madder. Steve has decided he's going to make a move and push, and either that guy goes or he goes. He is declaring war on the guy, and plans on telling him to his face that he wants him out. So, I guess we're about to have a little internal war in the CAF, ready or not.

This morning I was able to sleep in until 8:30, although I didn't sleep in until 8:30, but I at least didn't get out of bed until then. ;) I met Brennan at Chuck's place, and we were taking the Citabria up. Brennan wanted to get his spin endorsement. So we talked on the ground first about spins, what causes them, how to recover from them, what students can do to put you into those situations, etc. Then we went up, went over to Kokomo, got gas, and then climbed up and did all the things. Normal stalls, uncoordinated stalls, turning stalls, then getting more aggressive until we did stalls/spins out of a slip, out of a skid, out of a steep turn. Left and right spins, fully developed spins in both directions of at least 4-5 turns (the second one took him out, he was done after that one lol), spins where you recover with PARE, or spins where you recover by just pulling power out and letting go, we did it for over an hour, just all the things. It was fun. Did a couple landings at Glenndale, and then we put it away. It was a fun flight. Brennan did a nice job with it!

Afterwards, Chuck, Steve and I met up for lunch, and then I had an afternoon flight with Josh in the Champ next. We did one-wheel landings mostly, he started working on those. His wheel landings are still a little wobbly most of the time, so the one wheel landings were a little wobbly too, but he's getting there. Then he asked if we could spin the Champ, so I said sure, and we went up and did several to the left and right in the Champ, too. We ended up doing about 4 or 5 spins.

Landed from that after almost 2 hours, and met up with Cameron, Ashley, and Steve for dinner at Pastarrific. While we were there, Ashley said that we were scheduled to fly the Champ tomorrow, and asked if we could do spins too. Hahaha--sure. I told her sure, and it's scheduled. Sort of funny, I guess it is Spin Week at OKK. :D Fortunately out of the probably dozen spins I did today, it never got to me/bothered me, even the fully developed ones. I've had times last year where it felt like it got to my equilibrium a little bit, but not today, so I was glad for that.

Steve was going to go tailwheel flying with me today, but Josh took too long, so we just skipped it and went to dinner instead. I'll try to get him up flying tomorrow maybe. I was supposed to go to Nebraska, but that got moved by a week, so now I'm here tomorrow. Flying with Ashley and hopefully him. He wants to get more back into it, and I want him to too.

I'm going to be taking Brennan on a couple Cirrus flights. First one next week. Get him back in the IFR system, see the airplane, get used to trips, start winding him up to be able to build time and get ready to take on Cirrus trips himself in the future. He's excited, and that's always fun. He's a good kid, I like him. He's almost the next Spencer. :)

Nothing new on Kaylee, or Steve, or Molly. I'm still doing the additional weights, I don't do a ton but I'm consistent, I've doubled the sad amount of weight I'm using, and I'm feeling decent about all that. 

My ring tells me I'm stressed out a lot, my cumulative stress level is "high" and "chronic", but you know, a lot of times I do not feel stressed when it says I am. This morning, however, they purged the hydrant in front of our house and we had no water pressure and the water was spraying across our driveway and my ring said I was stressed, and I was "agitated" about it, tis true. Later on when I was up doing spins with Brennan, I pulled up my phone and looked at that, out of curiosity, and it said I was doing a good job being "relaxed". I thought that was so funny. I'm up spinning an airplane over and over and over, and it tells me NOW I'm relaxed. But really...I pretty much was relaxed. It was fun. But I took a brief 20 minute nap after lunch before going out to OKK to make up for me waking up at 3 am and not getting back to sleep quickly, and during my nap it told me I was stressed. I was not stressed, I was asleep! Anyway. That aspect of the ring may be stressing me out more than helping me, as it tells me I'm too stressed and that's stressful. ;)