Visiting an Old Friend

N96178 - C172P - 3.2 hours

My cousin got engaged about a month ago, which is, of course, a reason for celebration.  Because my cousin's now fiancée grew up in Roanoke, and that's where they currently live, said celebration would be down there.  I decided to save myself the hassle of driving and fly down.  Excuses, right?

Sitting right seat was my buddy Aaron (from one of the several CHO flights), who was along to enjoy the flight and share some time at the controls.

In order to cut costs slightly, I booked a C172P, which is an older model than I normally fly.  As an interesting aside (okay, it might be slightly more interesting to me than it would be to you), the only C172P left at Av-Ed (JYO) is N96178, which is the plane I soloed in 9 years ago.  Since then, it's gotten a few avionics upgrades, to include a Garmin 530.  If you're wondering where the post's title came from, it's an allusion to the plane.

EMB-120 that arrived during the delay

The day didn't start off too well as Landmark Aviation JYO had apparently forgotten to order fuel prior to today, so they were out by this morning.  Because of that, the local planes were having to fuel up in Winchester (OKV), which is some 20-30 minutes away by air.  In the end, we got the plane an hour after we were supposed to depart with it.  Despite the delay, I've read enough horror stories in past issues of AOPA's magazines and other books to remind myself to always be thorough, even when in a rush.  After my normal preflight, we jumped in and took to the sky.



Of course, the clouds had dropped slightly lower, which cut us off from my over-the-mountain direct plan, so we had to fly south past Charlottesville (CHO), follow the I-64 mountain pass, and then continue down I-81 to Roanoke (ROA).  This, of course, added more time.  I can't really argue, though.  Aaron is working towards his private pilot license (PPL), so I let him take the controls for a good portion of the flight.  We definitely got to see some cool scenery, though.  The weather being nicer, people were all over the rivers and lakes, too.

After calling Roanoke Approach up, they vectored me inbound for an approach on Runway 6.  If you watch the video, you an see that the flight path follows I-81 for a while (prior to and after ROA's vectors).  From there, we flew west of Tinker Mountain (the twin-peaked mountain in the picture at left), then over Carvins Cove Reservoir, and onto the downwind.  Approach turned me over to tower, who cleared me to land midfield on the downwind.  In an effort to get in a little quicker, I turned base way too close to the runway and ended up having to slip to kill altitude all the way down final.  The approach was salvaged, I landed pretty well all considering, and made my intended taxiway, so all wasn't lost.  Tower sent me to ground, ground got me pointed towards Landmark ROA, and after parking we set off towards family and food.


The way back also had clouds in the way of my intended more direct route, but this time larger breaks allowed a slightly more direct route than the way down.  After departing ROA, I asked for flight following and in the 1.6 hours that followed we had a few traffic calls, mostly as we got closer to Dulles (IAD).  Nothing too incredibly interesting happened otherwise.  Sorry for the relatively boring narrative for the way back, but sometimes, things are just simple and that's all you can say.

Hours:
Pilot in Command Cross Country (PIC XC): 3.2 - 61.4 (of 50)
Actual/Simulated Instrument (Act/Sim): 0.0 - 6.6 (of 40)