They Just Hand Me the Keys Now

N329ME - C172S - 1.7 hours

Since my friend Jeanne is in town, she's been running all over Washington DC, exploring places I haven't been to in my entire life of living here.  One of the places she had yet to explore was the Udvar Hazy Center, which is an extension of the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum.  Since my roommate Mat is a volunteer there, we all piled into a car and used his badge to avoid the $15 parking.  As we were walking around, I got the idea that we should all go flying somewhere to get dinner.  I really wanted to take Jeanne flying while she's here, and I figured it was a good opportunity.  Standing in the midst of so many aircraft really wasn't helping my addiction, either, to be honest.  My dad and I had also planned on going flying today anyway, but we opted to wait until Sunday in hopes of avoiding the strong winds that were supposed to rip through.

After we left the museum, we headed home to grab flight stuff and set off for the airport.  Since it was after hours, I got the keys from our flight school's lock box, and had hoped to find the extra headset I had asked for, but someone forgot to throw it in there.  Thinking they left it in the plane, I went up to preflight and explain the whole process to Jeanne, while Mat checked the fuel and explained anything I hadn't.  When I preflight, I tend to get into a 'mode' of sorts, so I can get pretty short since I'm concentrating so much on making sure everything is in order, which makes me a poor communicator of the finer aspects, unless I really try.  As I was making my final checks, Mat looked around to see if the headset was sitting around inside the plane, to no avail.  In the end, he gave his set up for Jeanne to use.

Jeanne at the controls

The departure was standard, out what I call the Southwest Exit, defined by Upperville Airport.  Heading directly south puts you in conflict with the SFRA, and also puts you too low over some terrain, so I head west first, and then south.  From there, once we were away from the airspace around Dulles, I let Jeanne take the controls for a while.  Surprisingly, she did pretty well, though the setting sun wasn't helping her see the horizon, which in addition to the turbulence, made keeping the plane level difficult.  In any case, we didn't dive, climb steeply, or bank too hard, so I'd call it a success.

Getting closer in to CHO, I called the tower and made a straight in approach to Runway 21.  After landing, we walked in to Landmark and picked up their crew car for a trip to grab burgers at the ever-so-awesome Timberwood Grill.



On the way home, Potomac helped speed up the return immensely as ASPER was able to clear me into the Bravo airspace so I could remain a little higher to better take advantage of the tailwind.  It was very nice of him since he had a departure push going out on Dulles' Runway 30, which meant they would be aimed right at me.  I set a new speed record for myself, getting from CHO to JYO in 0.7 hours.  For those averse to the concept of math, that's 42 minutes engine on to engine off.  Not bad.

Hours:
Pilot in Command Cross Country (PIC XC): 1.7 - 37.2 (of 50)
Actual/Simulated Instrument (Act/Sim): 0 - 4.2 (of 40)