Fourth Flight Day

Finally got my butt back out on the flight line Saturday after a month of heavy work at the office.

Bob was already over at the airport in the hangars with one of his students and some friends from the EAA (Experimental Aircraft Association). That's basically crazy people building their own planes (usually from kits). There were 5-10 folks hanging out BBQ'ing and talking planes. Here's some pictures I snapped:


This one is a real beauty, even without it's final paint job. Not sure what kind of plane it is, but it's fast! It's got a turbine engine that runs on jet fuel, and with that streamlining, it's quick - .6 Mach at altitude.



This one is in the next hangar, a Vans RV-6, I believe. This one is acrobatic certified side-by-side.


One of my fellow students is a partner on building this one, a Vans RV-8 tandem (one person behind the other). It's got an eastern European engine in it, with about 5 years of construction time in on it so far... The second picture is the wings, which have the paint job on them now.



After a burger and a coke, Bob and I hit the sky in my humble looking C-152 :)

We flew up toward Columbia County airport near Hudson. Bob's seat broke loose on the way, so we had to land and do a little ad-hoc seat maintenance with a borrowed wrench from the FBO there.

The radio was really busy up there - there's no control tower so you have to self-announce your plans over a CB radio style common frequency - it was hard to get a word in edgewise. There was traffice from Kingston Airport and Columbia County on the same channel.

Here's a nice picture of a lighthouse in the river up near Hudson.


Good picture of Hudson, NY from the air.


Here's the Kingston, NY airport from right over the Kinston-Rhinecliff bridge.


And my favorite picture from the trip, a picture of Kingston up the Rondout Creek.



Overall, I did pretty well on this flight considering I hadn't been up for 30 days. I'm a little rough on making small turns, believe it or not. I nailed the steep and moderate rate turns on holding speed and altitude.

There was some rain back at Dutchess when we came back - but a nice landing anyway. The rain really rolls off the window well at 60Kts + prop wash!

After the flight, we went back and had some more burgers & hot dogs. Bob sicc'd me on Eric my fellow student who hasn't started his book study for the written test yet. I showed him around my stuff and we agreed that we're going to try and work together on studying for the test. He's ahead of me on flight work - he made his first solo last week, but I'm ahead on the book, so it will work out nicely.

Bob had a night working flight scheduled in our company plane - I need to get some pictures of it after the remodeling job. After a quick schedule check, I was on to fly second seat up to Utica and back. It's a really quick plane - Navajo Chieftan with two props and 8 seats.

After a quick run home to feed the dog and watch a little TV, it was back to the airport. We took off for Utica and almost immediately flew into IFR cloud conditions. It's a bit eerie flying through the clouds - we turned most of the lights down so that you don't get vertigo. My job was to watch the engine performance gagues and the outside temperature, as well as monitor Bob's comms and feed him radio frequencies and other data from the navigation charts. I think it's a good idea to have two people for IFR flight, especially at night - there's lots to do. We flew out at 6000 ft with a strong tailwind; temperature held just 1 degree above freezing the whole flight so we didn't need any de-icing procedures. You can check the wings easily with a flashlight on this plane. Total flight time there with the tailwind was about 40 minutes.

Bob is a great pilot - let me just keep repeating that... smooth landing and flight both ways. We landed IFR at Utica, waited for a cab with our passenger, and checked the weather.

After that, we took off through some fireworks for the flight home. We had a strong headwind - 30kts, and more clouds, but a smooth flight. We just popped out of the clouds on the way down from 7000 ft in time for a VFR landing at Dutchess. It was a bit longer on the way back - 55 minutes - a 15 minute difference due to the headwind. Poor Daryl has to come out to the airport - it takes three people to push back a plane that big.

Overall, a much better second and third cycle than my first cycle in this plane :) (Remember the whole near death experience from my first post?)

I think I made great progress toward overcoming my misgivings about night time VFR flying. There really is a lot more to see up there when the weather is clear than I think my gut was telling me. I was immediately able to recognize I-84 and Poughkeepsie after we descended out of the clouds, and I think I spotted the airport beacon before Bob did (I do have younger eyes though). I know that I trust my instruments over my senses, so that part of night flying won't be a problem for me. Overall, a good learning experience.