Going back to Chicago

So this isn't really directly a PapaGolf story, but tangentially it might qualify. You see, one of my takeaways from my day trip to the windy city of Chicago last year was a desire to come back sometime when I could stay a little longer. When I found out that Co-pilot Egg was going to spend her Spring Break in Florida visiting her grandparents, well, it seemed like just the opportunity I was looking for. But... the scheduling was tight, so there couldn't be any dependency on VFR weather. Plus the Co-owner would be accompanying me and she's not that fond of the crowded conditions endemic to flight in an RV-6. And no Sky Mall catalog to skim through and laugh at the insane products and prices?? Please!

And the luggage! Where would all of that go??

So, it had to be commercial air. But if you have ever had the dubious pleasure of traveling through O'Hare (and who hasn't?) you will understand why I wanted to give that a wide berth. As fate would have it, Egg's only option for a non-stop flight (which was an absolute requirement as it would be her first time flying alone and I couldn't get my head around her wandering through a big airport alone trying to find a connecting flight) to Florida was Southwest Airlines who, in an inspired business decision, based themselves at the much less hectic Midway Airport. And against all odds there was a flight departing to Chicago a mere 15 minutes after her departure to Florida! Clearly, it was meant to be. Divinely intervened, says I.

Naturally by the time you deal with all of the time-consuming hassles incumbent in modern air travel, it ends up taking just as much time as driving would have. But the beauty of flying, over and above the fact that we had to go to the airport anyway, was that we could take a taxi from the airport to the hotel and leave it to someone else to deal with the inevitable Chicago traffic hassles. And for just $1.80 a mile! Plus a $0.50 fuel surcharge which Mr. Leadfoot Q. Cabdriver burned through in the first two blocks. But still... downtown Chicago without ever having once felt the visceral need to scream at an obstinately incompetent driver. Bargain! Which isn't to say that there weren't any obstinately incompetent drivers, mind you. It's just that the worst of them was driving our cab and it seemed like screaming at him might present a dangerous distraction.

Right after getting checked into the hotel, we headed to our room to have a quick drink to calm our travel-frazzled nerves. I can't do that when flying for myself so it was a bit of a rare treat. The hotel we're staying at is pretty plush, which any seasoned traveler can tell you means that it will have something like one tenth of the amenities of a Motel 6. Sure, they'll leave a light on for you, but it's an additional $8.99 on the bill. Per night. Figuring the room would have a mini-bar with prices on par with those of Wiemar Germany circa 1920, we (well, to give credit where due, the Travel Director) thought to bring a flask of spirits along with us. The hotel provided the glassware, though:



It's a fancy place - it evens come with a robe. Any ideas about purloining a robe as a souvenir are rapidly dissuaded after a quick perusal of the price list: $206 for the pleasure.



The Travel Director managed to get us a room upgrade which, amongst other things, gave us a "partial lake view," the word "partial" being stretched to within an inch of snapping. I couldn't come up with a better word, though, having considered and discarded various conjugations of "sliver," "illusory," and "minuscule."



After our drinks, we took a quick reconnoiter around the local area to see what was what in the 'hood. They don't feed you on the plane anymore and with a trip this short wouldn't have had time to anyway, so we also scoped out feeding spots. We hadn’t gone much further than the corner right across the street from the hotel before scoring pay dirt: awesome seafood! I selected the Mahi Mahi (they had me at Wasabi Cauliflower) from the menu pasted to the window, but we decided to walk around the block first in order to make breakfast plans for the next morning before settling in for dinner.



Once finished making my dinner selection, I turned about and captured some views of the hotel's exterior:





I'm sure there's a wise-ass observational theory regarding the odd shape of the building floating around in my head somewhere, but I just can't quite grasp it. Give me a couple days and a few more in-room drinks - it'll come to me.

One thing I can definitively say, though: it’s no secret why they call Chicago the Windy City: it is. Very. It was a bit chilly, actually. Quite a bit chilly. Still, also quite scenic. It's one of those places where the new sits in perfect comfort next to the old, and still finds room for the sublime:



Did I say sublime? I meant conspicuously commercial. An entire store devoted to Hershey's Chocolate?? Yes, it would appear so!



Right across the street from the Hershey's store:



We thought about taking a carriage ride, but as I mentioned before, it was pretty darn cold. And those carriages with their equine-methane heating system? Not for me! Not before dinner, anyway.

This is, I believe, the water tower for which the district we're staying in was named:



We eventually worked our way back to the restaurant which turned out to be pretty fancy too. It has a nice interior, although I was mistaken in my assumption that it was one of those places like Red Lobster where you get to select your meal from a holding tank. It turns out that those big fish on the walls were fake. Purely decorative. Alas.



As my luck would have it, they were out of the Mahi by the time we were ready to order. Story of my life, that. See also: Denny’s Chicken Fried Steak.

I went with my second choice, the seared Ahi Tuna. But first, a wedge salad. The wedge salad is my absolutely favorite roughage. Unpretentious iceberg lettuce (as opposed to the “mixed field weeds” so popular in trendy, "happening" eateries) topped with bacon, blue cheese crumbles, and fresh ground black pepper. Seriously, that’s a trifecta of delights I would eat without the lettuce underpinnings. Just heap it all up on a plate and let me at it!



The Ahi was sliced thin and seared only around the edges. It was served Sushi style with wasabi and sliced ginger. It was like Sushi without the seaweed! Fantastic!



The Travel Director had coconut shrimp and a chopped salad.



Chopped what? Beats me! Looked like mixed field weeds.

For desert, she went for a slice of pecan pie while I opted for something lighter: a fresh-pressed apple juice martini:



That was a fine drink. It tasted like one of those Jolly Rancher candies you had when you were a kid. You know who makes those?

Hershey's.

Who knew?

Not me - I hadn't paid much attention in the store.

Just a teensy little flight...

As a reward, you see.

I finished the taxes this morning, washed the bitter taste out of my mouth that always accompanies that job, and spent a little time on building the RV-12. The skies were clear and the winds just shy of unmanageable, so I decided to treat myself to a little flying.

The weather was okay, but that pesky 10G14 direct crosswind from the right caused me to do a little more work than I had hoped for on the landing. It took a three-quarter bootful of left rudder to counteract the heaping cup full of right aileron that kept us on the straight and narrow against the corrupting influence of the wind We approached the runway at a speed across the ground that seemed way faster than usual. That was a result of having a net zero knots of wind on the nose, I figure.

It was quite the fandango in the flare and touchdown with the wind unable to decide between the 10 or the 14 knots. The wheels were down before my eyes told me to expect them to me, but they chirped on without a bounce through the auspices of Fate rather than any modicum of planning or skill on my part. From there it was just a matter of holding the left wheel up with the control stick and the nose pointed straight down the runway with foot agility. It all came out just fine in the end. Better to be lucky than good. Sometimes. Wouldn't want to rely on it, of course.

I taxied back to the hangar and shut down the engine. With the canopy up, the cool breeze conspired with the warm sun to talk me into just settin' there a spell, soaking up the experience.

If there's one thing an RV does well, it's to convert four gallons of gas into feeling like a million bucks.

How far would you go?

For some things, I wouldn't walk to the end of my driveway. For other things, though, I'll go to great lengths. As odd as it sounds, a breakfast at Denny's is something I will go a pretty decent distance for. That is, of course, all down to its relative scarcity in my town. If we had one just up the street, the novelty would have long since worn off to the degree that I wouldn't walk to the end of my driveway for a free Grand Slam breakfast or a Moons Over My Hammy sandwich.

But we inhabit the world in which we live and in my world one has to seek out a Denny's if one wants to take half a year off of one's life in one fell swoop breakfast. I don't do it often, but now and then I like to jump in the plane and fly over to Zanesville where I have only a one mile walk remaining between me and a Denny's Classic Diner. And the one mile walk from the airport to the restaurant is bookended with a healthy one mile walk back to the airport which, in theory, returns five of the six lost months to my tenure here on the planet.

The weather was cooperative on Saturday morning, with the day dawning bright and clear with very light winds. The light winds were a bonus; I'd be flying with Co-pilot Rick for the first time in more than three months and my runway operations have yet to return to their late Fall glory. Calm air would be a boon after struggling to regain my footing on the crosswind plagued flights I've had of late. As expected, the flat, dead air allowed me to track arrow straight down the runway and give the impression that I actually knew what I was doing. You can't buy good press like that. Smooth air ensued for the rest of the ride which also bode well for a comfortable return trip, should it hold. Denny's has a way of tempting me to eat more than I can comfortably carry when the flying gets rough; calm air equals a calm tummy in the algebraic equation of breakfast flights.

It wasn't that there was no movement to the air, mind you. The eleven knot disparity between our indicated airspeed and our speed across the ground as measured by the trusty GPS gave lie to the idea that the winds were completely absent. We actually had a pretty decent tailwind behind us. That meant that there might even be some wind on the ground at Zanesville, which put me in a bit of a quandary given that there are four options for choosing which direction to land at Zanesville.

A little cloud of smoke that I saw rising from a burning brush or trash fire in one of the back yards we flew over indicated that the winds were light from the southwest, leading me to believe that runway 22 would be the best choice, but it was hard to be sure. As we crossed to the south of the airport, I could see that the tetrahedron (A device to indicate wind direction, and, in turn, landing direction. It is tetrahedronshaped—four triangular sides. This device is generally located at uncontrolled airports. The small end of a tetrahedron points in the direction of landing.) was end-on to our position, meaning that it was either pointed straight at me or straight away from me. The difference in the event would be pretty critical, but with the previous hint from the smoke, it looked like runway 22 was the winner.

As it turns out, the fact that my view of the tetrahedron was all orange was exactly the indication that I needed to confirm my choice of runway; as we taxied by, I noticed for the first time that the opposite side is painted white and black. You learn something every day!

Actually, I learned a couple of things; I've never really trusted the tetrahedron to swing in changing winds because it seems so large and misbalanced. It seems like there simply has to be far too much weight on its pivot point, and unbalanced weight at that, for it to swing freely. With that in mind, I took a closer look. While it might still be the fact that it is too heavy to swing easily, it is not an unbalanced weight. There are counter weights hanging off of the bar protruding from its nose. Fancy that!

The FBO at Zanesville was deserted, putting paid to the idea that we might be able to scare up a ride down to Denny's. Still, Zanesville has to have one of the most attractive FBO buildings that I go too. It's very tastefully decorated, yet it seems vastly underused. It might be busier during the week, though.





It was a nice walk to the restaurant and it sure worked up a big appetite; a big enough appetite to convince me to order the Meat Lovers Trio, a dish that falls just shy of the breakfast offering I have lived my life in eager anticipation of. That being, as you could have guessed, the Meat Lovers Septet. No one ever seems to get past the 'trio' level, though. I'll probably have to add The Meat Lovers Septet to my list of Very Obvious Things That Restaurants Don't Do. Also on that list is one item that simply boggles the mind with its simplicity and vast utility to a large portion of society: a senior's menu printed in a larger font. I can't fathom why they don't do that.

The Meat Lovers Trio had an issue, as it turns out, and it is one of those things that I typically shrug at and describe as the The Story of My Life: they were out of one of the meats. I order fish at Red Lobster, they're out. I ordered a sub at Subway once: they were out of buns. It happens so often that it's funny.

Well, Denny's was out of Chicken Fried Steak. And at Denny's, if you're a Meat Lover, you're there for the Chicken Fried Steak. CFS (as the waiter called it) is an odd preparation consisting of a dark brown mystery meat (laughingly referred to as "steak" - I think it's an intentional irony or something) breaded in fried chicken batter, deep fried, and covered in some kind of flavorless lard-based gravy. The waiter, utterly mortified at being out of CFS, made amends by offering me a chicken fritter. A chicken fritter is the same thing as Chicken Fried Steak, except that it uses white mystery meat instead of brown. They have to give it a nonsensical name like "fritter" because it would sound too stupid (even at Denny's) to call it Chicken Fried Chicken. And, of course, that would be too easily confused with regular old Fried Chicken, something no one eats for breakfast, for crying out loud. Not even at Denny's. It simply isn't done.



The smooth skies of the trip to Zanesville had held long enough for the trip back to Bolton. They were so smooth that I almost forgot to have Co-pilot Rick fly his leg, my wont being to save the bumpy return flight for his enjoyment. I'm generous that way. Known for it far and wide, in fact. With Rick at the helm, I was free to stare into the bottomless depth of the two gaping holes in my panel where the vacuum instruments used to be:



I need to get busy either plugging one of them with a Dynon D-6 or getting covers for them. They just look so sad all open and gaping like that.

I also was able to get a picture of a very unique bridge in downtown Zanesville:



Have you ever seen a 'Y' shaped bridge like that? Very odd.

The rest of the weekend was fleshed out with finishing my EAA workbenches (more details on that in a later article) and teaching Co-pilot Egg how to drive a stick shift. She thinks she's doing horribly at it, but she's actually learning it pretty quickly. She hasn't stalled the car once yet. It takes awhile to get the rough edges ironed out, but I know she'll be able to do it.



It's a dying art, driving a stick shift, but I think everyone should know how to do it just in case they inherit a Ferrari. You never know, right?

Great Moments in Pedometry

I started wearing a little electronic pedometer yesterday, mostly out of curiosity to learn just how far I walk in any given day. While in theory I have a desk job, the reality of it is that I am up and down all day responding to one thing or another from my user community. Life as the 'computer dude' is a lot like being the guy that owns the only pick-up truck: everyone needs your help, and they aren't shy about asking for it.

I mention this because I spent 45 wholly unproductive and extremely frustrating minutes stuck in the foyer of my office building, a victim of a recalcitrant electronic security lock that refused to recognize the authority of my key card. Repeated attempts were every bit as futile as my muttered curse words in swaying its opinion to my point of view. For that I dragged myself out of bed a little after 0500 to get to the office by 0615??

How does that little workplace drama qualify as a Great Moment in Pedometry you ask? Well, by the time the maintenance dude (whom I am never reluctant to ask for help, although he has yet to offer up the use of his pick-up truck) arrived and reset whatever system required resetting, I had toted up fourth tenths of a mile on the pedometer from pacing around in the foyer. From outside I probably looked like a fish circling in an aquarium. Minus the sucking of algae off of the bottom gravel, of course.

And here's the thing: that was the high point of my day.

It was a tremendous relief to liberate myself at 3:30, drop the top on the Miata, and head home under clear blue skies and a warm sixty (plus a handful) degrees. With the annual done and the airplane all put back together, it looked like I might be able to squeeze in a little therapy before dinner. The plane needed gasoline, so a quick trip over to MadCo for a fill-up seemed a good idea. MadCo is usually my first stop on the first flight after the annual, a habit I developed years ago when the Bolton mechanics had a propensity for not getting all of the cowl screws sufficiently tightened on my Tampico. I'd drop down into MadCo and tighten up any screws that had taken advantage of the eighteen mile flight to work themselves loose. While I don't have the same problem with the RV-6, it's still a good idea to take a short flight and land to ensure that everything that I took off with remained attached for the landing.

My end-of-winter annual inspection cycle preserves as much of the flying season as possible, but it has a down side in that it seems to always find me making that post-maintenance test flight when I'm also a bit rusty on my flying skills. That's two possible strikes against me from the get-go. I make sure to do a thorough preflight and concentrate on slowing my pace down from my normal flying season tempo. After only sporadic flying for three months, it's too easy to forget something that normally would be an ingrained habit.

It seems, though, that I never manage to convince myself to slow down my radio interactions with the tower. ATC speaking skills are every bit as dependent on regular practice as any other aspect of flying and they suffer a degree of atrophy from inactivity fairly rapidly. I realized that as I muddled through a sloppy read back of my takeoff clearance. I suspect that the tower had no idea whatsoever what I had agreed to, but he let it slide. After all, there's only one way you can go, assuming you're on the correct runway. That was just the first of what ultimately turned out to be a good half dozen flubs. Not to worry - it's a skill that recovers quickly.

There was very little wind to deal with so the takeoff was non-eventful. The flight over to MadCo was easy enough; one skill that seems to never really degrade is the actual flying of the airplane enroute. The only notable weakness after a lengthy hiatus is an inexplicable disregard for maintaining a constant altitude. That too will return to being second nature within a few hours, but for today I think I was lucky to be within 300 feet of my chosen altitude at any given moment.

Eighteen miles in an RV-6 at full tilt (well, knock off 10 knots from "full tilt" on account of my not having put the wheel pants back on yet) goes by pretty fast. It was time to get configured for the landing at MadCo just a little bit before my head realized that it was, well, time to get configured for the landing at MadCo. Long story short (too late?), I ended up high and fast on final. Both are easily rectified in a pantsless RV, though. With the wheels hanging out in the breeze and the flaps hanging down grabbing bucketfuls of air, the plane will both slow down and come down. In most planes you can't get both of those at the same time and often have to make a difficult decision as to which you want the most.

The RV-6 is happy to do both. In fact, it can be a bit of a surprise how quickly it will do those things concurrently after having been out of the saddle for a few months.

Now, I need to interrupt this narrative to point out that it's a little know fact that after changing the tires on an airplane, it is an accepted technique to deliberately make the first landing somewhat firm in order to seat the tire beads fully onto the wheel, and that's exactly what I did.

What?

You've never heard of that? Well, I did say that it was a little known fact, right?

What I didn't say is that it's such a little known fact because I just made it up. Out of whole cloth, as they used to say. A complete fabrication.

(cloth and fabric - get it?? Terrible, ain't it.)

My innate integrity forces me to come clean: I pranged that landing. It was so bad that I had to take a mulligan. I pulled off of the runway and made the Taxi of Shame all the way back to the end of the runway to take off and try for a better landing. As I was taxiing along, I noticed that I was being watched by an older guy preflighting a Cessna 150.

A witness, in other words. Inconvenient, that. Undesirable, the truth be fully told.

Had my airplane been suitably equipped, it would have been my second Great Moment in Pedometry in one day!

The second landing was better, considering, but still far short of what I would have expected on such a nice evening. As I was pumping gas, the witness pulled up in his car and approached me.

"I have a few questions for you," he said.

Now, I'm getting better about my airport paranoia. I no longer immediately assume that the questioner is an undercover FAA agent intent on yanking my license. That said, I always wonder with some degree of trepidation exactly what type of questions are going to be asked. Particularly after such an egregious demonstration of aerial incompetence, as you might imagine.

But no, they were questions about RVs.

He's an 82 year old that finds himself, after ten long years of work on a quick-build (a misnomer if there ever was one!) RV-8, only a few days from his first engine start and is starting to believe that he might actually be called upon to fly the thing in the not-too-distant future. He hasn't flown a taildragger since the late 40's when he flew SNJs, ostensibly while in the Navy. I didn't get around to asking - I'm always far more interested in talking about me. As a rule, I'm pretty much my favorite topic. I know how utterly shocking it is to hear that from a blogger, but... it's true!

His question was whether I knew anyone that would fly him through re-learning how to fly a high performance taildragger. In particular, an RV-8. I had to confess to him that I thought that was going to be a very tough person to find since no instructor is keen on taking his chances blind in the back seat and with no brake pedals to comfort him, and that the difficulty of that specific endeavor was a fairly large factor in my choice of an RV-6 over the much more desirable RV-4. It was the answer he was expecting, having previously asked the question on numerous occasions when talking to other RV folks. Still, we had a nice chat. It just goes to show you, even something as commonplace and mundane as buying gas is interesting and fun in an airplane.

My landing back at Bolton was the best of the three, but there's still room for improvement. And, as sad as it is, I also think I'm about due for a new lucky flying hat:

It's looking kind of ragged, isn't it. Just another tragic victim of a long, hard winter.

Annual inspection: done, done, and done

It was pretty easy this year. The normal chore of de-paneling was made easy with the new cordless drill that I bought for building the RV-12. Only a couple of problems were found by the inspector, none of which took more than a few minutes to fix. A leaky brake caliper was repaired with an O-ring that I already had stashed away from the last time I had a leaky brake caliper. The secret is to by a lot of things that are really cheap, like O-rings, even though you only need one at the time. It's the shipping that's expensive, so always buy more than you need! I already had the new tires on hand too, since I had considered changing them a few months ago, but decided to wait until the annual when everything would be all disassembled anyway.

It will all get put back together tonight and be ready to go by the weekend.

The weekend is, of course, forecast to be rainy.

While I have been on my extended building and flying hiatus, I have been occupying myself in the virtual world by flying combat missions on a PC flight simulator. I just recently started flying the F-86 jet that was the inspiration for the paint job on Papa Golf. It's been fun to practice formation flying in a consequence free environment. Consider this brief flight, for example:



I got a little too close to my flight leader. Vertical stabilizer? Meh. Who needs it??

Note: I am amazed at the quality and depth of that simulator, but what is truly mind boggling is its cost. Are you ready for this? It cost $9.99. Less than $10! Simply astonishing.

February

Let's face it. As it stands today, February is the worst month of my life. Not just this past February, mind you, although this one has to be near the top of the list with its "most single month snow in the last century" record (for which it seems to feel an inexplicable pride), but every February.

As far as months go, February just plain sucks.

It's March now, though, and the difference is already apparent. Today we had temps hovering around the mid-40s, light winds out of the northwest at eight knots (belying the "In Like a Lion" reputation of March, at least temporarily) and clear azure skies. "Carpe diem" being the order of the day, I hoped to get a little time in the air before having to tear down the plane for the annual inspection. My only concern was that the battery might not be up to the task of awakening the cold metal engine which, having lain dormant for yet another full, bitterly cold month, might be somewhat reluctant to start. The battery has been showing its age of late and will probably be due for replacement soon.

It's actually a bit of an untruth to say that the battery was my only concern, at least with regards to not being up to strength. To be honest, I had a different battery related concern, which was that it might actually be strong enough to wake the slumbering beast. If it was, I'd be hard pressed to find an excuse not to fly. And therein lies the rub: after a month since my last flight, which itself was the first in an equally long period and was merely a short series of touch & goes anyway, well... I suffer a large degree of trepidation when it comes time to bet the farm on whether or not I really remember how to fly.

"Nothing ventured, nothing gained" goes hand-in-hand with "carpe diem" when you think about it, so once I had finished a goodly number of weekend chores, it was off to the airport. As has become the norm, the first time I tried to crank the engine the battery only had enough gumption to get the first blade to the top of the compression stroke. With an odd mixture of relief and dread, I tried again. Three blades passed by and the engine rumbled to life. Not keen on appearing overly eager, only three of the four cylinders joined in at first, but peer pressure finally persuaded the fourth to get with the program.

My fears about flying after an extended lay-off are not limited to concern over my personal capabilities; I also tend to lose some degree of faith in the airplane itself. At the end of the runway, I held the brakes firmly while I let the engine run at 1,700 RPM longer than I usually do. The eager straining of the airplane evidenced by its nervous bouncing around, much like a thoroughbred race horse straining at the bit in the starting gate, usually alleviates some of my doubt and today was no different. When it's that eager to go, things are probably all right. That speaks only to the airplane, however, not to my personal readiness. Which, as it turns out in the event, was somewhat wanting.

The winds, as moderate as they were, had the discourtesy to be coming directly from the left. That means that the pressure they applied to the vertical stabilizer would exacerbate the left turning tendency that is normal on takeoff. I was fine right up until the tail wheel lifted from the runway, but was not prepared for the sharp lurch to the left when the rudder became the primary directional control. My right foot was late to apply a corrective force, and by the time it did it required quite a bit more force that one would like. The weight was starting to come off of the tires by that time since the wing is not at all affected by the pilot's shenanigans and starts to generate lift right on schedule. That caused quite a bit of chatter from the tires as they struggled to get a grip on the runway with so little weight left to help them force the issue. That invariably ends up scuffing off some of the rubber on the tires, leading to undue wear.

I'm replacing them during the annual anyway. So there.

Heading west, I realized that I really didn't have anywhere to go. It really wasn't about having a destination today, of course, but still... how does one know when to quit if there's no goal? I decided to just keep climbing and see if I could get to 10,000', a rarefied altitude that I've only reached on a handful of occasions. Just fifteen miles west of the airport, I reached it 10,500. From that high, it's way more than legal to fly over downtown Columbus. That required a turn back to the east and an incumbent climb or descent of 1,000' to comply with VFR altitude requirements. Having gone as far as I had, it seemed a waste to give 1,000' back so I chose to climb to 11,500'.

From my perch more than two miles over the city, I could see the entire area within the I-270 outer belt. The surrounding countryside was still white with snow, but the city snow had all melted leaving an ugly dark gray in its place. Still, the sun was shining, the sky was blue, and cruising along more than two miles above all of the day-to-day pressures gave me time to reflect on just how good I have it. I have an interesting and challenging job that provides a nice income, I'm not quite fifty years old and I'm on my third airplane (with another gestating in the hangar), my family and I are healthy, and, well, February is another eleven months away!

Thus relaxed and feeling ever more comfortable in the plane as the minutes passed, I made a slow turn back towards Bolton. I started a gentle 500 feet per minute descent as I worked my way out of the Columbus Class C airspace and over the top of Bolton's Class D and held it until I was seven miles southwest of the airport. I was still over 7,000' high at that point and needed to come down a bit faster, so I rolled into a 60 degree bank and made a pair of 360 degree turns, falling from the sky at over 3,000 feet per minute. It turns out that it is every bit as nice as having an airplane that can climb quickly to have an airplane that can come down even faster.

Bolton tower gave me a straight in approach and I was soon flaring over the runway.

And flaring. And flaring. And flaring. One of the things that's easily lost when I'm not flying is the memory picture of what the runway looks like when I'm landing. Bolton's runway is relatively wide, so when I've lost the sense of being close to the ground I tend to flare high. I just keep sinking, sinking, sinking until I start to wonder whether the landing gear had fallen off while I was flying around or if some miscreant had dug a canal down the middle of the runway while no one was looking. When it seems that I can't possibly get any lower, I get a little concerned that I'm really going to smack down hard, so I use some of the luxuriously long runway by adding a touch of power to reduce my descent rate. Just as I fed in a couple of extra RPMs today, the wheels lightly brushed the runway. A greaser!

Better than I deserved, but just what I needed.

The plane is torn down for annual now so I'm grounded again, but thankfully I was able to get a nice flight in today. That ought to hold me for awhile.

Not enough flying!

This is what happens when I don't fill my days with flying:

Meet Duke Cabot of Glenford.