Reminds me of one of my contract trips that turned into a flight review scenario.
Flew the owner to RCV (Del Norte, CO). Walked around town for hours waiting. Found out they have locally produced honey during the summer, so I bought some.
Ever since then, one of my favorite flight review ground training scenarios is "we're flying to RCV because I'm addicted to honey and we're going to fill the plane up with as much as we can carry." This discussion usually ends up filling up the whole hour of the flight review because:
- It's a high altitude airport (7955 MSL)
- It's warm (density altitude)
- We need to run the performance charts carefully, not just for runway length but for climb gradient/terrain.
- We look at the obstacle departure procedure for guidance.
- The runway has a slope. How does this affect takeoff and landing performance? How about optical illusions?
- If the wind is from the west, do we take off with a headwind, uphill, or accept a tailwind but take off downhill?
- If it's a twin, how is our single engine climb performance? Do we even have any? Don't make me offload my precious honey!
- And then of course on the way to and from there is high terrain to cross, so we get to talk about mountain passes, weather, turbulence, etc.
) and one of them landed on my cheek. I instinctively went to brush her away, and she nailed me. I did get to look at the stinger under the microscope after I dug it out of my face, so that was cool.
)
