Category: flying

Flight Log 2011-03-03

Sigh… I didn’t get the flight track data because I was looking at the wrong button on the side of the device.  Oh, well.  Beautiful day for flying.  A little windy, but it is March, so not really unexpected.  Not bumpy at all, which came as a surprise given the wind.  Just takeoffs and landings.  Temp -4°C, alt 30.57, wind 090@09 (windier at altitude, around 25kt), clear.

Flight Log 2010-12-23

Matt is home this week (until Christmas morning), so it seemed like a good time to go fly. When I reserved the plane, it looked like it was supposed to be clear and sunny, but that isn’t what we ended up with. Temp -1°C, alt 30.35, winds 300@09, clouds few @ 2500, overcast @ 3600. Matt actually spent most of the flight on the controls (except for in the pattern). He needed to knock some significant rust off, he did lots of steep turns, S-turns across a road, etc.  Since I haven’t flown over snow in a while (a year or more, obviously), I had forgotten how difficult it is to pick out Buckeye Lake when it is covered with ice and snow.  Ah, well, as the say “a bad day flying beats a good day doing just about anything else.”  1.2 on the Hobbs and some good crosswind landing practice.

Flight Log 2010-09-10

A beautiful day to go flying.  Temp: 19°C, winds variable @ 03, altimeter 30.07, clear.  It was a bit windy at altitude, but still a great day.  The purpose of today’s flight was to get some instrument practice with the autopilot.  I’ve used the autopilot en route before, but I’ve never actually flown a complete approach with it, I always hand flew from the FAF.  Today, I finally flew a coupled ILS (though there was a button pushing problem with me on the first one, so only the second ILS was actually coupled).  2 x ILS22 @ KZZV followed by the GPS27 @ KVTA (circle to land on 9).  A very productive 1.6 hours.  Unfortunately, I didn’t get the tracker started (and up on the glare shield) so I don’t have the track on Google Earth which I hope to start doing on future flights.  I still need to work on my checklist discipline a bit.  Ah, well, a great day flying.

Flight Log 2010-07-15

Instrument practice with a safety pilot. Temp 29°C, wind 220@06, alt 30.08, hazy and hot. I was originally going to go “in the system” and do some practices into KLCK or KCMH, but when I looked at the NOTAMs, the glide slope was out of service at LCK, one of the runways was closed for a few hours at CMH, the APE VOR is still out of service (though the TACAN should be back in at the end of the month), so I decided to do the ILS22 @ ZZV including the DME arc (it has been years since I did one of those) and the full missed approach procedure including hold, then another ILS22, then the GPS27 back into VTA. By that time, I was starting to get nauseated and was very hot, so I called it a day there. It was clear that I need more practice. I hand flew everything, my scan was pretty sad, I failed to hold altitude a couple of times and heading a few more. On the approaches themselves, I didn’t go full deflection, but I did over-correct a few times. Had it been actual conditions at my personal minimums, I would have gotten in, and I didn’t bust anything so bad that I would have failed an IPC or checkride, but I must get more practice before I fly again in (hard) actual IMC.

Flight Log 2010-06-29, etc.

Tuesday was a very busy day, but one of the results was a successfully completed flight review. My hour of ground was actually kind of fun. Harold had a couple of quizzes for me that I did pretty well on and we reviewed some of the FAR/AIM that I haven’t looked at recently. Then we went out for some air work. Temp was 22°C, altimeter 30.03, wind at the surface was reported as 070@06, but was closer to a 90° crosswind as we got going and about 100 feet up it was probably closer to 20 knots. We did the GPS27 approach and circle to land on runway 9, then actually ended up spending most of the hour on crosswind landings (which is not a bad way to spend an hour). One thing I discovered is that I’m much more comfortable landing (or taking off) with a crosswind from the right than I am with one from the left, so it was good practice with this one coming from the left. Ended up with exactly the required 1.0 on the Hobbs, so I’ve jumped through that hoop for the FAA and I’m good for another two years.

Tuesday was also Erin’s 22nd birthday and my parents had called the previous week to say they were bringing my nephew up to visit Cincinnati, so we all went to see the Reds play at Great American Ballpark. It was a pretty good game, but not the outcome I would have preferred. Joey Votto hit a 3-run homer in the bottom of the 9th to tie the game, but then Arthur Rhodes had his first bad outing really of the season and gave up 3 runs without retiring a batter in the top of the 10th, so the Reds lost to the Phillies (I suppose my baby sister was probably happy about that). Oh, well. So, all-in-all, a mostly enjoyable day. We did the traditional birthday meal at a (new) Japanese steakhouse on Wednesday instead and that was also nice.

On Wednesday, I finally (after 6 years) got my online logbook working the way I had envisioned it from the beginning, so it now pulls from the database dynamically rather than just showing static pages that I had to manually update everytime I updated the database. Unfortunately, I haven’t configured the widget at the left here to do so yet, maybe next year.

Flight Log 2010-06-10

Another beautiful evening for flying.  This time it was an opportunity to take my sister, brother-in-law, 2 nephews, and 2 nieces flying.  The first time in a private plane for all the kids.  Temp 27°C, winds 310@06, altimeter 29.98, and clear at the start, calm and 22°C by the time I got back to KVTA.  I also got night current while I was at it (although the cockpit lights in 626 suck).  So, a total of 7 take-offs and landings.  Now, I have my medical in 2 weeks and need to schedule my flight review (and if I can get some approaches in with a safety pilot or instructor, I’d like to get instrument current again, too).

Flight Log 2010-04-17

Very windy day, but I really needed to fly.  I wish I had been able to fly earlier in the week when the weather was so beautiful, but alas, it was not to be.  Not to say today was bad.  It was just chilly and really windy.  This was another of the proverbial $100 hamburger flights (and this time I really did eat a hamburger at KPHD).  I very nearly didn’t go.  After the preflight, I was sitting in the cockpit listening to the ASOS and watching the wind sock.  They were reporting winds 320@20G32 and N785SP was really trying to move even with the engine off.  The wind died down a little and I decided to go ahead and go.  Winds at takeoff were 320@14G21, alt 30.02, temp 6°C, dew point -1°C, and clear.  I took off and departed the pattern to the northeast.  It was a little bumpy, so I decided to go up to 5500′, but when I got there the cloud bases were at about 5600, so to have VFR cloud clearance I had to come back down some.  When I got the KPHD weather, they were reporting ceilings of 3800′ (AGL, which would make it about 4700′ MSL), so I decided it was time to descend to 3500′.  I called 10 miles out and another pilot was also inbound.  He saw me and said he was lower and would get in before me.  I didn’t actually pick him up until he turned final to runway 32.  Anyway, I followed him in and parked over by the restaurant.  The burger was okay, but you can’t beat the price.  Their Saturday special is $0.99 burgers and $0.99 fries, so that’s what I had (and then a slice of pumpkin pie for dessert).  I walked over to the FBO, but there wasn’t much happening there, so I got back in the plane and flew over to KTSO where I did a touch-and-go, then down to 6G5 for another touch-and-go.  My original plan had been to also fly down to I10, but looking at my watch, I decided I had done enough.  I added 3 new airports to the list.  So, back to KVTA.  Final total was 2.3 on the Hobbs.  The touch-and-go at 6G5 and the final landing at KVTA (runway 27 at both) were pretty serious crosswinds for me (340@14G25) since I hadn’t practiced any in a while, but they went very well.

Flight Log 2010-02-19

A beautiful day for flying (and in the midst of the snowpocalypse that is saying something). Today was the one clear day between rounds 3 and 4 of the continuing parade of snow storms. The temp was -1°C, wind 260@04, altimeter 30.15″. Officially, clear with 8 mile visibility, it was a little hazy horizontally, but brilliant blue when you looked up. At altitude, you could see “cloud” tops, so the haze was real. I did some soft-field takeoffs and landings and just enjoyed the day. One nice thing about winter flying, it was smooth as glass. You could take your hands off the wheel and just fly with your feet. This is why I love being a pilot.

Another day flying

I went flying again today.  It was a beautiful day to fly.  Matt and his girlfriend came with me.  I got to show the girlfriend the Longaberger Basket building.  It was a chilly -5°C, wind 330@06, altimeter 30.43″.  We flew to KZZV, then over Muskingum College, down to KLHQ and back to KVTA.  The APE VOR is apparently out-of-service.  With this, I also finally went over 200 hours total time.  It was a good day.