Richmond for Dinner

N80399 - C172M - 2.5 hours

Prior to this flight, there was some talk among the Clipper Crew to take the DC-3 out for a bit, but those plans got delayed, and I really wanted to take advantage of the weather. Phil agreed to sit right seat so that I could log the never ending simulated instrument time to help chip away at that requirement. Along those lines, at some point during the flight, he asked me how long it had been since I actually flew a plane by looking out the window. Apart from short flights and takeoffs and landings, it has been a while.

We chose to fly down to Chesterfield (FCI) to meet up with his brother and sister in law for dinner. The flight down was simple, and Phil kept me out of the way of some other people taking advantage of the nicer weather, to include someone doing aerobatics down near Warrenton (HWY). Once we were down at FCI, Phil coordinated with his brother to get us a ride to dinner. The Cracker Barrel isn't exactly gourmet dining, but I think we all appreciated it. I definitely ate too much. Oh well.

The flight back was slightly calmer, and we finished it off by taking a few laps around the pattern in order to keep night currency. These landings were witnessed by a few members of the Clipper Crew who had been working in the hangar, so I got a ribbing from them via text as we were putting the plane back in its spot.

The Lights of Richmond

The only debrief item I noted for the flight was that I should be more mindful of allowing other people to rush me. The Runway 16L runup area is closed for expansion and nearby taxiway work, so the controller asked if I would be ready upon reaching the runway as there would be another aircraft behind me. Instead of saying no, or coming up with an alternate solution, I simply agreed, ran the engine up very briefly on the taxiway, and then called ready. While I checked the engine briefly, I should have given it my full attention with a complete run up. The controller would have understood, or at least given me an alternate instruction had I said no and opted to take a moment to check things over before departing.

Hours:
Pilot in Command Cross Country (PIC XC): 2.5 - 114.5 (of 50)
Actual/Simulated Instrument (Act/Sim): 1.6 - 28.8 (of 40)
Dual Complex: 0.0 - 5.0 (of 10)
Total Time in Aircraft: 2.5 - 183.2 (of 250)

Anyone Available for a Ferry Flight? Yep.

N950ME - C172M - 1.4 hours

There are some times during the weekend where you simply find yourself with nothing left to do. Granted, this doesn't happen often for me between my day job forcing a lot of my activities to the weekend, my PMDG job contributing to that, PMDG Flight Ops activities (flying around in a DC-3, obviously, usually takes priority over just about anything else), and various other activities like visiting family and keeping the fridge stocked. To be clear, I have nothing against any of those things (besides maybe my day job), but it does mean that I'm rarely simply sitting there trying to come up with something to do.

Luckily, today was one of those days, and I saw an email go out from the school I got checked out with back in April. They needed a pilot to help chase an aircraft from Manassas (HEF) to Stafford (RMN), in order to bring him back from his ferry flight. I immediately called the school to offer to help out and was told to head down to the field and coordinate with the other pilot.

Once there, we waited out some isolated, typical summer storms and set off to RMN. The weather on the way over was still pretty hazy, and there were still isolated rain showers in spots, which was an interesting experience, and offered some pretty cool sights.

On the way back, the other pilot offered to let me log hood time, both to help me get the time, and to help him log time and not just sit there. We were nearly all the way back to HEF when we decided to see if the controller could give us a practice approach to the field, which actually took us all the way back over RMN. It was extra time, though, and time that I needed, so neither of us complained.

After bringing the plane back in and getting it tied down, we added our entries to the logbooks and then headed home. I, of course, stopped by to say good night to the 3 on the way out.

Hours:
Pilot in Command Cross Country (PIC XC): 0.0 - 101.4 (of 50)
Actual/Simulated Instrument (Act/Sim): 0.7 - 17.8 (of 40)

Renting from Redshirts

N950ME - C172M - 1.3 hours

For Christmas, two of my friends got me a gift card for flying time at a flight school one of them uses. While it is a competitor to the flight school I've used for nearly 12 years now, said other school has a location at Manassas (HEF), while my long time flight school does not. The convenience here is that the DC-3 got moved to HEF, and there have been days when we've returned from a trip and I stop and think "you know, I really want to go flying on my own now." Until recently, that would have meant driving all the way up to Leesburg (JYO), but these thoughts usually came at a time too late to request that the keys to one of the aircraft get left in the lock box. With a checkout at HEF, it would mean walking across the ramp and right into a plane.

With that in mind, I scheduled a checkout with one of the instructors at the school to get checked out in their C172M. The checkout itself was the standard flight school checkout of taking the plane out, doing some slow flight, stalls, landings, and then bringing it back in. The addition of the flap 40 setting in the older M model was now, along with the flap toggle instead of the flap lever. Other than that, the main challenge was the wind of 21015G22 at Culpeper (CJR). Bringing it back in to HEF was a little more challenging as the wind of 19014G22 meant a 30 degree crosswind. I forgot to hold the crosswind correction in on the rollout, so the wind came up a bit, but the reminder from nature was enough to get me to do it from then on.

Nice and simple, and now I'm set and ready to use their aircraft to build time and enjoy some flying of my own after the DC-3 trips.

Hours:
Pilot in Command Cross Country (PIC XC): 0.0 - 98.5 (of 50)
Actual/Simulated Instrument (Act/Sim): 0.0 - 16.6 (of 40)