It was that time again…time for me to get up flying or lose my currency with the club. I decided that today was the day (actually the day chose me – it was day 30 since my last flight) and luckily the weather cooperated.
I asked my coworker Gregg T if he wanted to go, but he’s not crazy about the thought of flying in a small plane so he turned me down. Then I asked Chris Foo, who I’ve been meaning to take up for a while now, but he was busy. So then I asked another guy from work, Paul Smeulders, and he jumped at the chance.
We arrived at the club just after noon and the plane was waiting for us. After doing a walk around we got the plane fired up. I tried to check ATIS but wasn’t hearing anything. I checked other frequencies and the radio was working fine so I called up clearance and told them I wasn’t able to get the ATIS. They informed me that it was offline for maintenace. Good – I was hoping my radio wasn’t the problem.
There was quite a cross wind today but I didn’t have any problems with take off. We headed out to the practice area and Paul had a look around. I practiced a few stalls, some forward slips and steep turns and then headed to CYRP for a touch and go. Luckily the wind was more in line with CYRP’s runway 28 which made the touch and go much nicer. After that, it was back to YOW where I opted to land on the big runway, 32, partly because of the cross wind (285 @ 11 gusting 17) and also partly because I thought Paul might appreciate landing on the same runways the big boys use.
So now I’m good for another 30 days. Paul talked about taking his video camera up with him next time so I’ll definitely have to take him again.
P.S. I flew over the new house today and could see the guys putting the plywood down for the first level floor.