I have been sweating whether we would get to go or not because of some very bad weather the day before. Parts of Dallas/Fort Worth received as much as 6 inches of rain the day before. In our little piece of the world, we only got about 2 1/4 inches. As luck would have it, the forecast I had been looking at for the past 3 days said that Saturday would be good weather behind a cold front. Since most weather men in our area can't seem to get much right lately, I was very worried. Saturday arrived and it was gorgeous.
We did our preflight and finally headed to the Runway 35 run-up area to finish all of our pre-take off procedures. Now the moment of truth. Looking at the wind sock, it said we had about a 10 knot crosswind directly from the west and we are heading north. I was hoping my first flight would have been a little less demanding. My surprise was that the wind sock is on a hill east of the runway. The west side are where all of the airport operations and hangers are. They blocked the wind so I had a very smooth takeoff. I say it was smooth but that was only the first 30 or 40 feet. Then we got hit with the cross wind and I started having to really fly then.
My wife was in the back taking some pictures until my daughter took the camera away from her. At least I got about a dozen usable shots and about 4 dozen shots of the floor, her foot, the back of my head and anything else you can think of. Here is a shot of us heading east away from the McKinney airport (KTKI):
We did our preflight and finally headed to the Runway 35 run-up area to finish all of our pre-take off procedures. Now the moment of truth. Looking at the wind sock, it said we had about a 10 knot crosswind directly from the west and we are heading north. I was hoping my first flight would have been a little less demanding. My surprise was that the wind sock is on a hill east of the runway. The west side are where all of the airport operations and hangers are. They blocked the wind so I had a very smooth takeoff. I say it was smooth but that was only the first 30 or 40 feet. Then we got hit with the cross wind and I started having to really fly then.
My wife was in the back taking some pictures until my daughter took the camera away from her. At least I got about a dozen usable shots and about 4 dozen shots of the floor, her foot, the back of my head and anything else you can think of. Here is a shot of us heading east away from the McKinney airport (KTKI):
After all is said and done, we were up for about an hour and got a lot done. I practiced coordinated turns, flying around a point and crabbing into the wind to follow a path. My instructor told me that he doesn't usually push that much onto his students but I handled everything so well that he just kept pushing.
As we were heading back on a straight in approach we flew over the town of Fairview where they have noise abatement rules that require us to be at least 1500 feet and throttled back. I have a friend who lives there and tried to show my wife and daughter but my daughter decided that she would throw up instead. She did so well until we started our descent. When we got on the ground (a pretty good landing if I say so myself), we taxied to our parking spot and I had to run down to the FBO and get some towels and some water to clean up the mess. My wife jumped in and knocked it out before I could even get the first towel wet. I really hated to dump the post flight checklist on my instructor but he understood the extenuating circumstances.
All in all, a I had a great day. I just needed to get home to a quiet environment to replay everything back to remember all of the little nuances that are needed to fly an airplane correctly. After all, the end result is to get my license so I have to do this a lot more and get it right on my check ride.
As a side note, my instructor informed me that I was on the front page of out flying club website. We had someone come out to one of our ground school classes and take pictures last Tuesday night. The photographer chose to use a picture that had me and my girth prominently displayed in the foreground of the picture. Maybe the flying club will change the picture and gain some dignity again.
Total flying this time: 1.1 hours
Total Hours - 1.1
As we were heading back on a straight in approach we flew over the town of Fairview where they have noise abatement rules that require us to be at least 1500 feet and throttled back. I have a friend who lives there and tried to show my wife and daughter but my daughter decided that she would throw up instead. She did so well until we started our descent. When we got on the ground (a pretty good landing if I say so myself), we taxied to our parking spot and I had to run down to the FBO and get some towels and some water to clean up the mess. My wife jumped in and knocked it out before I could even get the first towel wet. I really hated to dump the post flight checklist on my instructor but he understood the extenuating circumstances.
All in all, a I had a great day. I just needed to get home to a quiet environment to replay everything back to remember all of the little nuances that are needed to fly an airplane correctly. After all, the end result is to get my license so I have to do this a lot more and get it right on my check ride.
As a side note, my instructor informed me that I was on the front page of out flying club website. We had someone come out to one of our ground school classes and take pictures last Tuesday night. The photographer chose to use a picture that had me and my girth prominently displayed in the foreground of the picture. Maybe the flying club will change the picture and gain some dignity again.
Total flying this time: 1.1 hours
Total Hours - 1.1
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