I was scheduled for 3:00 to 4:30 in N733NB (see picture above). To begin with, I had to help my brother move some furniture from his old apartment to his house this morning. At first it was a great idea but as the day started to wear on, I was getting concerned. We finally got the last load to his house at 1:30. I had not even had breakfast or lunch. I had to get something to eat quick, get to the house, grab my bag and head out to the airport (it is 15.5 miles away). I made it to the FBO at the airport by 2:45 and sat around waiting for my instructor to show up for the next 15 minutes. I knew he was somewhere because I saw his car outside but I couldn't find him. So at 3:08 I called his cell phone and sure enough, he was on the North ramp so I went out out see him.
We just had a lot of bad luck today. My headset is not working (I found the problem this morning) so I needed to use one of his. Of course his spare was in his car at the FBO. So I started the preflight. Luckily he had a key for the airplane so I could get started. I checked the fuel and it was low so we had to have the fuel truck sent out to us. By the time we finished the preflight and finished our checklist, it was already 3:42. We started our taxi and called the tower and asked for permission to taxi to the north end. This was my first time talking to the tower and it is a little intimidating. We got our clearance and ended up number 3 during an extremely busy period at McKinney. By the time we started our takeoff roll, it was 3:54. I only had 36 minutes left before I had to turn the plane over to the next person on the list. Nothing like rushing a little.
We finally got airborne and flew to Murphy and did some more turns around a point. I flew around that water tower circle 5 times. Next we did some S turns following a road. As we were heading back Richard said that he was getting bored that I was catching on so quickly that he wanted to do a couple of things before we landed. I got to do a low level pass across the runway then back to the pattern. We got a curve thrown at us as we applied power to go around. When Runway 17 is the active runway they use left hand traffic (all left turns). The tower asked us to follow another plane for right hand traffic. OK, whatever the tower wants, the tower gets. This time we do a touch and go. After this one, we followed the normal left hand traffic pattern. To tell you how busy it was, we were number 4 for landing behind a Lear jet and 2 other Cessnas. We got in and taxied straight to our spot, did our post flight inspection and was walking to the FBO and the guy who had the plane after me, was walking toward us and we just handed off the keys.
What a great start and a beautiful weekend. I'm trying to get my friend Bryan interested in flying also. He is starting to sniff the bait but he hasn't bit the hook yet.
Total flying this time: 0.9 hours
Total Hours - 2.0
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