fun in the clouds

didn't end up flying last night. got to the flight school and read TSRA on the metar report. i backed up this information with a nice moving picture of a thunderstorm moving westbound over the field. god bless aviationweather.gov. anyway, we did the lesson on aviation physiology and went over night flight only to revisit it when my instructor gets back into town. the poor guy had a death in the family and will be out of town for a week or two. this leaves me with the written test to complete while he is out of town. i will be memorizing the jeppesen faa written knowledge exam guide and doing a few solo flights to stay proficient in the airplane.

i went up solo this morning in cloudy weather. the good thing was that is wasn't too bumpy and the temperature was agreeable at around 80 degrees. i took off on 36 and headed west to the practice area. i practiced a few steep turns and some ground reference maneuvers, but mainly i was just enjoying myself flying around over quincy. i headed back to the airport early to get some touch and go's in. however, on the way in approach vectored me southbound way west of the field. 27/9 was shut down to landing traffic leaving 36 busy, and i guess a student in a 172 doing touch and go's was far down the controllers list of things deemed important. i tried to pick my way through the clouds and got to 1000ft with my head just under the ceiling. i mean... i'm sure i was at least 500 ft under the cloud ceiling. so here i am flying south in the haze under the clouds with about 5-6 miles of vis at best and i still cant see the field because they told me to turn south when i was still 10 miles west of the airport. finally the controller calls my base and after a minute or two i see a faint clearing that turns out to be the field. i make my approach, do a touch and go and start my left traffic pattern. as soon as i get on the downwind the controller comes back on and tells me to extend my downwind for a landing king air, then for a b1900. i end up being asked to do a 360 before having my base leg called and once again i am about 7-8 miles out from the field. at this point i can make out the airport amidst the haze, but only barely. as i get close i called it quits asking for a full stop. i was up an hour at this point and was tired of being run around by the controllers trying to deal with a shut down runway.

no more flying for a few days. i've got school and work the next two nights. on top of that, i gotta get the written done before jason comes back. maybe i'll go up on sunday.... but definitely by next week. until then, i'm out.