Saturday Fly Day

So yesterday I had planned to depart Pontiac at 9:15, in order to meet Mr. B. and Eaton Rapids Joe at Jackson for a breakfast get together.

I arrived early at the airport, entered the hangar and the lights would not turn on.   Strange.

More importantly, the hangar door would not open either.  Not good.

It turns out that all the hangars on the north side of the field had no power and maintenance was coming by with a generator to open hangars in the order that calls were received.

So, I had plently of time to preflight the aircraft with the man door open for light, and to even wax the leading edges of the plane wings, cowling and stabilator using a wax suggested by Mr. B. to make bug removal easier on my return.   Turns out it's not just good stuff, but fantastic stuff, great for your car, too.

9:15 was clearly not going to happen, so I waited patiently, got everything ready to go, and finally at around 10:10 they came by and I was able to open the hangar door, pull the plane out, close the hangar door and get on my way. I already had the ATIS for Pontiac and got moving in very short order.

I was finally airborne at 10:20. Clearly not going to arrive at the planned 10 am time.

I got flight following from Detroit from a very helpful and friendly controller and who helped me and a jet keep separation routed around some glider activity which was helpful.

See the jet in the picture? We had been on a much closer and converging course before he carefully adjusted our flight paths.  This is why flight following pays off.

Running at 130 knots indicated and 146 knots ground speed,  or a lovely 168 miles per hour, I got to Jackson in good time, and arrived to hear Mr. B's callsign on the radio.

The airport was pretty busy and the controller was doing a great job of coordinating aircraft coming in from all sides.

I was setup to land on Runway 7 and Mr. B was slotted in right behind me.  He courteously let the tower know he'd do his best not to collide with me, being a friend and all that. This was comforting.

I landed, coming in with a bit too much speed trying to move along and keep separation, so it wasn't the best landing, but I got off the runway quickly and headed to the terminal parking area, and Mr. B followed right behind.

We met up with Eaton Rapids Joe and had a great breakfast and conversation.  Always good to see them both.

Then I and Mr. B. both took off, I back to Pontiac, and he to Mr. B. Land.  We took off after a cheerful departure from Jackson Tower - the controllers there are really great folks.

I then got flight following from Great Lakes Approach that lasted for some traffic advisories for just the immediate Jackson area, and they held me at 3,500 feet to avoid traffic for a bit, and then they dumped me as VFR with no further radar services.    No handoff to Detroit or anything.  Great Lakes must have been busy with IFR services and were dumping  their VFR traffic (VFR flight following is a as available service - and  a very useful one for everyone's safety but it is as controller workload permits) as they did it to a few other planes. 

I then came into Pontiac VFR, was given a downwind entry to 27L and did a darn nice landing.

Thankfully, power had been fully restored by my return and all was well.

The bugs came off a lot easier after the wax application and I saved a fair bit of time cleaning the plane. 

It was a  gorgeous day for flying, and a very good time having a great breakfast with two real great people.

That's 1.4 and 2 landings.