Great Weekend for a Fly

We left the house for the airport early on Friday afternoon, headed to John’s parents house for the weekend.  Route 70 was jammed, so it took us forever to get to the airport.  Once we were in the air, John wasn’t getting a response from Potomac for our ADIZ clearance code so we had to circle for a while.  By the time we left the house, drove to the airport, flew to Delaware (55 minutes flying time), and rode home with Mom & Dad, it still took us 3 hours.  No time savings, but flying is much cooler than sitting on the Bay Bridge for 2 hours.

The path we took along the ADIZ corridor took me right over the house that I grew up in, which was pretty cool.  But we did have to deal with three different planes (a flight of two, and then a single) who were at our altitude flying in the opposite direction, and obviously not paying attention.  When flying the ADIZ corridor, the FAA advises (advises, not requires) that eastbound traffic fly at 2000ft and that westbound birds fly at 1500ft so that there is a safe margin of distance.  None of these planes were doing that, so we were forced to decend to avoid them.  Could we have gone up?  Sure — but we would have risked busting Class B airspace which starts at 2500ft.  The second one was a little close for comfort.  None of them made any attempt to avoid us — I don’t know that they even noticed we were there, flying the published altitude.  Thank goodness we have a traffic advisory system in the plane and that there was no one flying the published westbound altitude at the time!

On Saturday afternoon, Dad took us to the gun club that he just joined.  He, John and his friend Andy shot three rounds of trap, and then it was my turn.  Unfortunately I had a migraine and having my cheek rattled with each shot didn’t help, so I only fired on five targets.  But I got the second one — not bad for my first try!  It was a lot of fun.  John says that it will probably be easier for me with a 20 gauge instead of the 12 gauge that we were all sharing.  John finished out the round for me.  After nearly 4 rounds, and being on anticoagulants, he’s pretty bruised.  There is a gun club about 3 miles from us that we’ve toyed with joining.  They have the trap range open to the public on Thursday nights.  Might have to buy a couple of shot guns…. .

After dinner, we ran by the airport to check out something on the airplane — John had noticed that a fairing screw was rubbing on the top surfaces of the flaps.  Looks like the screws got messed up in the last annual so there are some burrs there now.  Hopefully a bit of sandpaper will fix them.  While we were there, John took his dad for a ride down the coast to Ocean City and then back up over their house.

We left the house around 10am this morning since we needed to be home to tend to home and yard.  The flight back was really uneventful, and John let me fly the leg from Sussex County just to Lee Airport as we entered the corridor.  He would have let me fly longer than that, but the corridor is very narrow and makes me somewhat nervous.  I was really good about maintaining altitude (within 100 feet either way), but I didn’t have a perfect heading the whole time because I was busy fighting a badly trimmed airplane (I’m not a pilot, what do I know about trim?! LOL).  So, I got a little over 30 minutes of flying time.

Rodney and Bill were at the airport restaurant when we got back, so we hung out with them for the start of the Indy 500 while we had lunch.  And now we’re home.  Coca-Cola 600 is tonight.  Weather is beautiful.  The pool is almost clear.

It’s been a great weekend so far!

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