Yes, Charlottesville Again

N172DR - C172R - 1.7 hours

The last time I flew with my buddy Phil was back in college.  That's way too long in my book, so we tried working out a flight over Thanksgiving, but that fell through.  Since he's back here for Christmas, I figured it would be a good time to finally get that flight in.

Originally, we were going to keep it to a shorter flight but since Phil's brother's fiancee lives down near Charlottesville, we ended up settling on that as the destination, and Phil's youngest brother James would also be joining us.

Phil on the preflight

At the outset, it was an interesting morning with higher winds and lower clouds, but neither would be problems for the departure.  The forecast said the clouds would lift some, but the wind would continue.  Here at Leesburg, it was straight down the runway, but the forecast at Charlottesville showed an increasing crosswind as the day progressed.  In any case, it wasn't too worrying and we met up in Leesburg to get everything set.

In the time between my last flight in October and this flight, the FAA changed procedures out of Leesburg where we no longer need to file a flight plan to fly in the Special Flight Rules Area (SFRA), which saves me a little time.  In the end, it really saves me the worry of forgetting to file.

Departure shot

When I first got back in the air back in July, my goal was to start to pick up better habits that I'd never really concentrated on in my private training.  Part of that was to always use the correct control positions for the wind during taxi, and I definitely used that taxiing around today.

The flight down was a little bumpy, made slightly worse by being kept low by clouds.  We talked to Potomac TRACON on the way down, and since Phil had requested a quick circle around his brother's fiancee's house, when Potomac dumped us on Charlottesville tower, we told them what was going on and that we'd give them a call when we were back inbound.

Circling the house, Phil and James got video and photos of their brother Francis and his fiancee Andrea running around the yard with one of the family dogs.  In the process, I was brushing up on turns around a point, with moderate success.  After a few laps, I called the tower to tell them we were back inbound, and he cleared us to land on runway 3 since we were the only traffic at that point.  As we got closer, though, a few departures had an opportunity to get out, so he extended our downwind and re-cleared us.

At the airport, we waited a few minutes for Andrea and Francis to show up.  They had apparently made the wrong turn and ended up at the terminal.  It's all the same at the small airports, right?  We figured it out though, after a quick walk from where we were over to the parking lot over by the terminal.  As ever, our destination from there was Timberwood, where I'd have an opportunity to change it up and get a Chuck Norris burger, instead of my usual Clint Eastwood.

Switching from ASPER to JYO CTAF

After paying for the fuel, Phil got the ATIS while I gave the plane a quick shakedown.  Ground got us out to the runway, and tower gave us the usual "climb on course, cleared for takeoff."  This time, however, there was more than the usual amount of traffic being called out.  A Cessna and a Colgan SAAB were both inbound to the field, coming from the north.  We ended up spotting the Cessna, but the SAAB was further out, and was well enough right of course that it wouldn't be a problem, so we switched over to Potomac and talked to them all the way back up to Leesburg.

Middleburg, VA

The landing was a little flat - as they almost always are with me - but I thought it was pretty good.  Phil got video of it (Phil also has video of one of my worst landings ever), so we'll see what that looks like when it's up.

I ended up getting 0.7 hours under the hood on the trip down and back, thanks to Phil also being a pilot, so there's some of the 40 down, though I still have a good bit left.  Hopefully, I'll get the long cross country with multiple approaches taken care of soon to wrap up the XC time, and burn some hood time.

Hours:
Pilot in Command Cross Country (PIC XC): 1.7 - 41.9 (of 50)
Actual/Simulated Instrument (Act/Sim): 0.7 - 4.9 (of 40)