Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Still around

Well, by the look of my last post its been over two months since i've written anything new. I had been busy graduating from college and doing the family thing around the holidays but now im back and ready to go. Got to do a little aerostar flying while i was home for the hollidays. Did a nice SUA-FXE-TPA-SUA trip and actually got a little left seat time. It was the first time i flew the her as an actual pilot. Damn she's fast...

Back to reality.
I went up in Nasty Mike today for the first time in a while. The airport was slow, and the weather was great untill i started doing the preflight..... Information Yankee says winds are 340 @ 8, altimeter 30.07. Sounds good to me, but i'm feeling something a little stronger now that i'm taxing to the run-up area. After i finish playing with my check list and doing the run-up i call the tower and get clearance to take off on 36. We have lift off.

After my first quick trip around the pattern (closed traffic today.... short on cash, and i wanted to practice a few landings) the tower controller says, "734NM cleared touch and go runway 36. Winds 340 @ 11kts gusting to 17kts, altimeter 30.05" Wow! that was a big difference than what the ATIS said while i was on the ground no more than 5 minutes ago. Oh well, here we go! The second trip around got a little worse with the wind shifting to 310 @ 12Kt G 18Kt. Ok I thought.... a little cross wind practice. Thats why i came up today. Well who would've guessed that on final at 65Kts about 20ft above the runway here comes a strong gust of wind out of 310 that instantly picked me up, slowed me down, and tossed me right of the center line.

On the next trip around the pattern I was instructed to make right traffic and to extend my downwind to make way for an A-10 that was in the area practicing instrument approaches. That was a pretty cool sight as he passed me on the right at 1000ft no more than a mile away. ( I got a few good shots of him with my phone as he dominated the traffic pattern with some very steep banked turns and equally impressive steep climb outs.) after following him in once i got vectored out again to make way for the same A-10 in the pattern. As the controller called my base 6-7 miles out I politely told him I was going to call it a day. "734NM cleared to land 36" I was done. It was nice to get up in the old Nasty Mike again but man, I forgot how slow these 172's are. I miss the aerostar.... It even looks like it goes fast.
This is a great shot of a PA-60 taken by the famous CitationKid.