Saturday, July 22, 2017

Flying Lesson #141 - Really Quick Up And Down

I was scheduled to fly at 2 but my instructor called and asked me to come in at 12 as he had a cancellation. I said fine as I'm helpful that way. Big mistake.

This is because at 11:30 the skies open up with rain, the clouds fall to marginal VFR conditions and rain comes on nicely.

Once I arrive at the airport the rain has stopped but the clouds are low.

I preflight N5337F, an Archer I haven't flown in much if at all, and discover the seats are way low and do not adjust upwards. We actually both require cushions to see sufficiently over the nose. One main landing strut is way taller than the other but its fine and good to go.

I start it up and it wants to be a pain and it takes a few tries to get the motor to catch. We get clearance to taxi and takeoff and we're going to do pattern work as it is a damn low ceiling. As it turns out, its lower than that.

We takeoff, get to pattern altitude and it's cloudy with a chance of a little visibility. Not particularly good, as in IFR condition at the pattern height flying through clouds from crosswind to and in the downwind.

So we do the pattern in these serious clouds on downwind, I cut in a short base to keep the runway visual and I do another nice landing and that's it for this lesson.

Of course, as I sit here to type this it is now the time for my original flight and the clouds have cleared and its nice out. Sheesh.

0.3 and 1 landing. The only upside to this is it gave a perfectly round number for total hours for my logbook, the down side is that total number is ridiculous.

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