As a belated birthday present RTH took me up for a flight this
weekend. It made up for the fact that I’d had to cancel my planned Cross Country
on Saturday (More about that another time).
The weather has been kinda, meh, all weekend nothing outrageously horrible
but not exactly great either.
RTH and I had a plane booked for a nice little afternoon three hour
slot and we planned to go………. somewhere.
Nowhere in particular, just …..somewhere.
Conscious of the fact that this was meant to be fun, we decided on
a nice, familiar lap around Lake Simcoe. Even I’m confident enough now that I
could do this with minimal navigation issues and the Lake itself is very very
pretty. Last time I saw it, it was still frozen. It would be nice to get a
reminder that winter is well and truly behind us now.
We kept a careful eye on the weather, both agreeing that the threat
of light showers didn’t concern us to much but the forecast cloud would mean
keeping a close eye on our altitude.
We arrived to find that we’d been bumped from JES (both of us
prefer her) to JPM (universally reviled), but at least the plane was there
unlike the last few times we’ve attempted this where we’ve been waiting up to
an hour for our plane to wander back.
Fuelled up and preflighted, we got ourselves settled in and started
her up. Between me and RTH we are kind of in a weird situation at the moment.
He’s the most experienced pilot with 120+ hours under his belt (and an actual
license as opposed to a student permit) but I’m the most current. I’ve flown fairly regularly in the last
couple of years. He hasn’t.
The two are linked of course. I’m kind of stealing the “flying
money” at the moment. Hopefully that’ll change soon.
RTH in his usual awesomeness, doesn’t make me feel bad about this
at all (I still do, but hey), in fact he realises that I may actually be of
some use up there, so he actually asks my opinion of things.
We were flying along in some bump air at 2500ft, discussing the
height of the clouds and figuring out just where we might find some stable air.
RTH was asking my opinion on whether it was worth climbing or not.
Despite it being a little on the sporty side (nowhere near “feisty”
though), I wasn’t too concerned. It was the kind of weather I can tolerate flying
in but don’t much like trying to do airwork in. I could see that RTH was
wrestling a little with JPM.
Interestingly enough he was having exactly the same issues that I have
with her.
“I just can’t get this damn plane trimmed out,” he complained. “and
if I do , my airspeed is ridiculously low”
I sympathised that I’d run into the exact same issues with JPM. I
just find her, twitchy, for the want of a better word. I constantly feel like I’m
fighting her, whereas JES and, to some extent, SAR can usually be coaxed into
doing what you want them to do.
As the flight unfolded we discussed general flying type things,
altitude choices, routing, when to switch your strobes on, why the guy flying
round Lake Skugog sounded like a Dalek on the radio and so on.
We really are shaping up to be quite a team up there, mutual
respect for what each other is currently bringing to the table and the ability
to recognise when someone has a better idea than you do.
RTH agreed that I’m getting much better as a passenger now, but I
disagree. I’m not becoming a better passenger, I’m becoming a more effective
co-pilot.
When I get my PPL , we are going to make a great flying team for
sure.
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