One of the facts of life when it comes to flying is currency. Since I've been flying regularly since I had my biennial flight review (BFR), it hasn't been much of an issue. I haven't been flying much lately in order to save for a trip to Italy in two weeks. I needed to fly before the trip, though, in order to keep my currency with the flight school. If I didn't, my currency would've expired in the middle of the trip, requiring me to fly with a flight instructor the next time I went flying, to meet the flight school's requirements.
As I mentioned in my last post, I used this excuse to schedule a short flight out to Winchester (OKV), except this time the wind cooperated.
The preflight was one of the coldest excursions I've been on lately, but it was somewhat negated by new gloves I got for Christmas. As I got everything set up inside, I tried to set up the ContourROAM on the headband for my head lamp, but the band wasn't strong enough and it got in the way of my headset. I left it there and got some video from it, but nothing interesting came from it. I'm thinking of hooking it to my headset somehow for future flights. A daylight flight wouldn't hurt, either.
I ended my experiment when I realized I was at 5000' only 15 miles away from OKV. Closer in, I lined up with the runway and brought it in. You can actually see a glow around the approach lights because they're reflecting off of some snow that had melted and frozen earlier in the day. Later on, as I was in the middle of my flare, I apparently had a subconscious thought to get the nosewheel up, which you can see in the video. That caused me to float, which I luckily salvaged by adding a little throttle. I have to say, I'm actually kinda proud that I got the nose up.
After fully stopping - the FAA requires three full stop landings at night, after all - I went around for another landing. The second landing wasn't nearly as good as the first. If you watch the video, make sure to have the sound on so that you can hear a sound an airplane shouldn't make. As I cross the threshold, some wind kicked the plane around a little. I didn't think much of it after that because it hadn't been gusty, but as I was in my flare and settled on the runway, another gust pushed me to the right some, sideloading the right tire. It wasn't a pleasant noise.
The flight back home was amazingly quick, mostly due to the wind that was now at my back. I hooked in from the northwest to land on Runway 35 and call it a night. This one was much better than the second landing. I touched down on the aiming points, and vacated at the first available exit. I'm not sure why I chose to jump off so quickly, but I did.
Luckily the planes on the row behind the spot for N96178 weren't there, so I was able to just pull the plane through. In the end, the flight was only 0.9 hours, which surprised me. The Hobbs meter's last hours digits were 64 when I left, and when I landed it was still 64. I thought the Hobbs didn't even record the hours until I realized that I'd gotten back within an hour, having left at 64.0 and gotten back at 64.9.
So, now I have my my night currency, flight school currency, and sanity back. We'll see what 2013 brings.
Hours:
Pilot in Command Cross Country (PIC XC): 0.0 - 74.2 (of 50)
Actual/Simulated Instrument (Act/Sim): 0.0 - 9.6 (of 40)
