Well Kent came down to Ames today for supper. He supposedly left Madison at 3, and then at 6, but finally made it here at 9 PM. I dropped him off at the restaurant and left to enjoy the fireworks. saw him again at the airport as we both were leaving for home.
Yeah. Thanks go to Matt for letting me use his car, even though I never saw him! (You've gotta call me when you get up in the Madison area to pick up the Fly Baby.
)
It was a good trip - First time I've really done pure pilotage and DR in quite a while. Sure, I follow along with my finger on the chart most of the time, but it's been a while since I actually put down a pencil line, picked visual checkpoints, etc. I'll be darned, that stuff still works!
My times on the way down were all within a minute except when Joe handed me some Foggles and said "You just flew into a cloud!" (Dammit, I want to GET THERE, not do a 180!) He pestered me with lots of questions for the oral to keep me busy too.
I wanted to get a grass strip claimed for the ConUS challenge, but the one I'd chosen, Traer (8C6) was a bit dicey. The Arrow IV is a major runway hog. We went around the pattern once, buzzed the runway (which looked very well mowed), around the pattern again for a T&G to see how it really was... I thought it'd be doable, but Joe didn't like it too much and I figured I'd rather just get to Ames anyway. Oh well, next time.
Tony was at the airport when we arrived, standing next to his "Cute" red Ercoupe. We fueled up and headed into town. Tony went to watch the fireworks, but we had more pressing needs, like food. I also wanted to get home as early as possible because I still had to drive. After an excellent burger at Wallaby's, it was back to the airport. We'd taken a lot more time than I wanted to. Tony took off in the Ercoupe (BTW, that thing looks BAD ASS at night with the dual landing lights mounted on the mains!)
We launched into the darkness and... The gear wouldn't come up. I *think* it's the left main that's finicky sometimes, but I couldn't tell for sure this time. I ended up having to extend and retract it again. I do not like this airplane.
Ah, night. Night's interesting. It's a bit harder in some ways, easier in others. Especially in northeastern Iowa, there's not a whole heckuva lot out there. During the day, though, you can easily see N/S/E/W with all the roads and section lines making a nice grid on the ground so it's easy to see what orientation things are to each other. At night, that becomes more difficult but you can see the cities from a much greater distance. So, as long as you keep very good track of what's what, it's OK. I did a lot of CTAF clicking to light up fields as we went by to verify position. (73C, Lancaster, WI did not come on - Or at least I never did see it. I saw where it should have been, but there was nothing there.)
In fact, I think I heard Tony calling base to final at Greencastle. Tony, is IA24 on 122.9? Didja get there just after midnight?
Since we did have to make sure we got in 2.0 to get the requirement done and we ended up with a bit higher than expected tailwind on the way home, I was watching the hobbs fairly closely toward the end of the flight. I'd been somewhat surprised that Joe hadn't pulled the engine on me on the way back (he did as we were arriving at Ames), and when he made some comment about our arrival at Madison I said "Awww, aren't ya gonna pull the engine on me?" He said "OK" and down we went.
I managed an almost perfect glide to Morey, but rather than set it down he had me do a go-around at the absolute last instant (probably would have touched down a second later). It was good to practice a night go-around.
We hopped over the lake to Madison, parked, and shut down. 2.1 on the hobbs for the return trip (2.2 down). And, all of my requirements are done for the commercial. Well, except for not sucking at lazy 8's.
Thanks again for all of the excellent suggestions! I have a few places to go now.
