Lesson 13 - Friday March 26th

Flying Traffic

At last!  I finally get to fly again, after a hiatus of 18 days where the airport has been fog bound or too windy,  or raining, or something else, we finally get a day of good weather and I can take off.

Since it's been a while, this is pretty much a refresher lesson.  In fact Tanya takes me back into the classroom at Justice, and we go over the various procedures for slow flight and stalls.  I'm kind of hazy, but it kind of comes back to me.

It's a busy day out there, must be lots of people taking advantage of the good weather.  Plus it's Friday, so probably lots of people leaving for the weekend.  I see several planes taxi by as I start our plane up (8148H).

When we arrive at the Southeast Run-up area, there are actually two planes there ahead of us.  A new record! (there's only four spots).  I park on the #3 spot (getting quite good at that, ever since I realized Tanya was NOT actually helping me steer, and I had to do it all myself).

Everything goes normally for the run-up checklist. WE get cleared to taxi to the runway, and there's plane ahead of us.  He takes off, then we get cleared, and very quickly take off after him, so we are following him out to sea.  Tower tells us to say off shore to avoid incoming traffic, so we do this, just following the Cessna.

we fly up the coast, the Cessna flies inland a bit, then flies parallel to us, so we have to keep an eye on him while we climb to 4500 and head north.  While doing this several other planes come into view, and fly by, some quite close.

Back to the grind, we do some slow flight and stalls, some turns, and head back, nothing new, but it felt really good to be back in the air again after so long.  It was a beautiful day too, sunny, but not too hot.  Air perfectly calm up high, with nary a bump, but still with a useful headwind down at the runway.

Heading back to land, Tower informs us of some traffic heading our way, but we don't see him, and he passes us (a couple of miles away, and 2000 below us, but it's still good to keep an eye on your nearest traffic).

We enter the normal right pattern, and fly downwind, Tower tells us we are #2 to land, and we look for the traffic to follow (the other plane that we are to land behind).  When I see the other plane, I tell Tower, and they clear us to land.  Then we go though the usual madness where Tanya tells me to do various things and we kind of land the plane together (but really it's all her).

Taxi back.  A very nice flight.  I realized I need to memorize the procedures better, as I waste far too much time just trying to remember what to do next.   If I can cut that out, I can get into the actual flying a lot quicker.