I met with a woman named Liz Ann, who is building her own T-6. Restoring her own T-6. She's doing it one piece at a time, and I appreciate the work she's putting into it. She wants to get checked out in a T-6 too, so that's why she's coming to me. I explained what I do and don't do, and how, and she's on board with all that. She also has some trauma from a few things, including a student her husband was instructing and she was doing ground school for who crashed and died in a CAP airplane. She's nervous about people, about pilots, about instructing, about maintenance. She wants to look over our airplane, panels off during annual, before she flies in it. We don't have anything to hide, she's welcome to look, if she finds things we probably will be happy to fix it unless it's cosmetic. She commented on reasons she fired her unsafe first instructor and it included things like him talking to her on the runway or not caring that a pitot tube was still in the plane somewhere and not back on the pitot. Those were from her military training. I warned her that things are a little different in the GA world and that I would probably talk to her on the runway, etc., but did tell her that if something bothered her to let me know. She's former Air Force, was medical'd out, and now has a grass strip, married, two daughters, and Nella the T-6 has stalked her for many years in many ways, so putting together her own T-6 and getting checked out in T-6s is her next goal, and to hopefully start flying next season, with an end goal of piloting Nella too. We'll see--there's a lot of potential for things to not run smoothly here. If she doesn't like that I don't fix a missing rivet or she thinks something is bad or wrong that we're not concerned about that she is, or she doesn't like how I instruct, she may not want to stick it out. But I'll do what I can to help her and hopefully we don't end up in a bad place over it.
Next up I had a guy doing some Wings credit in the Citabria. He wanted to do an IPC but we don't have an instrument airplane right now while the RG is down for maintenance. Then he wanted to fly the Champ, but it's down for maintenance for a month too. So I put him in the Citabria for an hour and a half.
Steve and I went out to eat with Kaylee for dinner, came home and I've got a bunch of prep work to do, emails, phone calls, scheduling stuff, and then I'll get up at 6:15 am tomorrow to go to Little Rock. That also changed a bunch of times. First it was me and Nick in the Cirrus to LIT. Then it was me and Nick in the 340 to LIT because Ethan wants the Cirrus. Then it was me and Nick and a guy going to LOU and then LIT in the 340. And then at 8:30 pm it was just me and Nick going back to LIT again. This is ONE of the many trips and things coming up in the next few days. They often all do that, switch around last minute locations, people, planes. It can be hard to juggle it all sometimes.
But in case I didn't mention it, I'm still glad to be busy again. :)
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