Tuesday Morning Summary:
I wanted to get up in the air early in the morning, so I scheduled a 7am flight time with the DA-20. I asked a cubicle co-worker if he wanted to go, and he said sure, so I gave him some information and directions. We both arrived about the same time and I began the preflight while explaining to him what I was checking and doing. Winds were calm, and there were some rain showers scattered to the North of the airport. We took our time and went through all the checks, then departed Runway 6 into the clear blue sky and smooth air. We flew around the local area and around the one rain shower, and then decided to land at Pottstown-Limerick to break up the flight a little. Went from there, back to Wings, for another good landing. Both were very smooth and right on centerline. Couldn't have started the day better,...well, yes, I ended up sitting in traffic on the schulkill for 20 minutes,.. just didn't seem right after covering Bucks and Montgomery Counties at 112-115 knots for the past hour.
My co-worker thought it was cool, but didn't seem overly excited about it. He made a lot of comments about things he could see, but it's not like he would take lessons or anything, maybe a lunch run with me sometime.
Tuesday Evening Summary:
I readily left work at 4:15 to quickly get over to Wings for the second part of the flying day, and to experience the G1000 for the first time. I arrived a few minutes ahead of Lee, my "former" PP Mentor who wanted me to fly Safety Pilot as he did some approaches. I've never flown an approach in a plane before, although I did have a try at the ILS RY 1 at KILG on the Elite Flight Sim earlier this Year at Brandywine Airport.
We went out to the plane and began the preflight. On the way out, we saw Dave Fischer preflighting the Cirrus and spoke with him for a few minutes. He's enjoying the Cirrus training and transition to the glass panel. Over to the G1000, and the plane is the same essentially as I have rented before, except for the Avionics package, so I walked around the plane myself and checked things out while Lee continued his preflight and explained some of the nuances of the G1000 preflight. All set, we spoke about the Safety Pilot expectation and the plan for the flight. First, we would start off with the Autopilot following the approach for the ILS 36 at Reading (KRDG). We would leave wings at 2600 to the Pottstown VOR and fly the transition route along the 275* radial to the HUMEL intersection and then down the chute to the runway. Everything went well, and I can see how important the understanding of the Autopilot is when operating the G1000 system. To many buttons to push for me at the moment, I'm still looking for the standard guage here and there. We went missed, flying the runway heading and climbing to 3000 feet while accepting vectors to begin another ILS 36 approach, this time hand flown with Lee under the hood. Accepting Vectors, they brought us back around to pretty much the same point we transitioned to the HUMEL intersection and then down the chute again. Wind corrections back and forth, as we were fighting a 18-22 knot wind from about 10 o'clock position,... nicely displayed on the G1000 Screen infront of me. The integratid Traffic systm helped me alittle, but there were some that didn't pick up if we were down low or something.
Went missed again, and then accepted Vectors out of Reading and to begin the VOR RY 9 to Perkiomen (N10), where Lee was previously 'based' and where I did my Private Pilot training. This was a simpler approach, and placed us right on the numbers at Perkiomen. We broke off the approach again and turned south, so we could setup and then fly the RNAV GPS 6 approach into Wings. Approach loaded on the MFD, and we could see the turns depicted on the screen, and even the countdown on the PFD in seconds to begin the turn at the fly-by waypoints.
Entered the pattern at Wings at 1500 feet, and brought the day to an end. So we thought,.. first landing was a little fast, so we had to improve on that, two more times around the pattern and Lee was satisfied and we returned to the Ramp.
(GPS Tracks on Google Maps to post later, meantime, drool over the G1000
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