Kaye
Line Up and Wait
I found this morning's events interesting as to how ATC handled me with the compass leak. At the time, I didn't know what was causing the leak, and since we had the strong storms yesterday, my initial thought was water, which was also baffling and some concern. After I got to cruise and determined the leak wasn't going away, it wasn't water, maybe compass fluid maybe not, but I couldn't hold a towel there for the rest of the flight (not that I would), I called up ATC and calmly told them I needed to return to JYO as I had fluid dripping on my avionics and I needed to check it out. No emergency was implied.
I didn't pick up on it at first, but soon realized I was given priority treatment back to JYO. When calling me, ATC always repeated my call sign, and they never gave me frequency changes (i'd already gone thru 2), which would have been normal. They gave me direct and kept me at altitude as there was IFR traffic that departed right after me and were below. But once I got my descent and with the screaming tailwind, I ended up over JYO at 4500'. Got to do a spiral down to pattern altitude.......not something you get to do very often in the ADIZ.
I didn't pick up on it at first, but soon realized I was given priority treatment back to JYO. When calling me, ATC always repeated my call sign, and they never gave me frequency changes (i'd already gone thru 2), which would have been normal. They gave me direct and kept me at altitude as there was IFR traffic that departed right after me and were below. But once I got my descent and with the screaming tailwind, I ended up over JYO at 4500'. Got to do a spiral down to pattern altitude.......not something you get to do very often in the ADIZ.