Taking the opportunity

After I went flying with the instructor yesterday, I checked the weather forecast and it looked like today and tomorrow were going to be rather crappy. Though I wanted to go for a solo flight in Ariel as soon as I could, I resigned myself to the fact that good flying days are not as common as we would like in the part of country, and at this time of year.

So, when I looked out the window at about 2:00pm this afternoon, I was surprised to find that it wasn't raining and, while it was overcast, the ceiling appeared to be plenty high for VFR. I double-checked the conditions at Paine Field, which is near Harvey, and the ceiling there was almost 4000'. I decided I was going to take the opportunity to fly if I could so I told my wife I was heading to the airport, got my stuff together, and drove out there.

When I got there, it did indeed look like the conditions were sufficiently good. There were several aircraft in the air already, some flying the pattern, others heading out away from the airport. I decided I was going to at least fly around the pattern a couple of times and, if it looked good enough, I'd head out away from the airport and tool around the sky.

I had several goals I wanted to accomplish. The first was to put fuel in the plane. Harvey has fuel truck service, but it also has a self-serve fuel station for GA aircraft. As I'd never used it before, I went into the nearby maintenance office, spoke with the gentleman there, and made sure I understood how to go about fueling up. I then went to the plane, performed the preflight inspection, started it up, and taxied over to the fuel station.

Fueling the plane was pretty straightforward and I finished up without any issues. Once I was done, I pushed the plane back a short distance, got back in, started it up, and headed out to the runway.

The next goal was to try out my ADS-B receiver and my iPad mini. I got everything set up and it looked like everything was working well. I'm currently using FltPlan Go, as it's free, but I'll probably switch to Foreflight, FlyQ, or similar in the future. More on that later.

I took off and headed out to the south. I initially climbed to 2000' and flew around for a while. I then climbed to 2500' and then 3000'. The ceiling was still well above me so I stayed at 3000' until it was time to come back. While flying around, I noticed that my tablet was dark. After a bit of time working with it, I realized that FltPlan Go would crash after a couple of minutes if it was displaying traffic information from the ADS-B receiver. If I was just displaying the chart with my location, it worked fine. I don't know if this is a known issue, or something specific to my particular setup, but I think I will try one of the subscription-based apps the next time I use it.

Another goal was to try out the Bluetooth capability of my Lightspeed headset with my phone. I connected the phone to the headset, then used it to make a call to my father. I spoke with him for a few minutes but I ended the call because, every time a transmission was received, it would mute the call. I know this is something I can configure but I don't know if I'm going to change anything right now.

I did run into one technical issue, and I still don't know exactly what happened. On the way back to the airport, I realized I wasn't hearing anything from the radio. Harvey has an automated weather broadcast that you can trigger by keying your mike four times. I did that, but couldn't hear anything. Or at least I couldn't hear anything in the headset. I thought I could very faintly hear something, but I wasn't sure if it was real or not.

Normally, when you speak into the microphone of your headset, it echoes your voice back to you so you can hear what you're saying. This was working fine. However, when I would transmit, I could not hear my voice like I was supposed to. And I couldn't hear any transmissions the radio was receiving. It turns out that it was behaving as if the headset wasn't plugged in, and the transmissions were playing over the speaker in the ceiling of the cabin. I could hear it only faintly because of the active noise reduction capability of the headset. I tried various things; unplugging the headset and plugging it back in, switching to the second radio, trying out different configurations on the comm panel. Eventually it started working again. It was still not working intermittently but the pattern was empty other than me, and I could transmit, so at least I could broadcast my position and intentions. As I got closer, it seemed to work better. I will need to check on it more the next time I go out there. I will also bring my David Clark headset in case it has something to do with the Lightspeed headset. For example, maybe there's an impedance issue or something that causes the comm panel to think the headset is missing when I'm transmitting.

And finally came the landing. Well, the landing attempt. Everything was pretty good but the plane seemed to be floating a bit after the rollout. I did touch down briefly but I wasn't comfortable so I opened the throttle and went around. I had considered doing a practice go-around anyway so I was prepared. The behavior of the plane was quite nice in that situation. I didn't have the hold the nose down as much as I was expecting to and she climbed back out quite nicely. It was good practice, and I'm glad I did it to get the experience. I flew another pattern, and tried again.

The second attempt was much, much better. I was a bit off of center, but the touchdown was very smooth. It was, to be honest, one of my best landings. I was also lucky that there was no crosswind to speak of. I'm sure I'll get my chance to practice crosswind landings soon enough.

And that concluded my first solo flight in my new plane. Other than the comm issue, it went pretty much without incident. Hopefully the comm issue isn't something chronic that will require a repair, but something simple like just making sure the plug is properly seated in the jack and making good contact. Next time I go flying I'll spend some time going over the system configuration and making sure it's set correctly. If I continue to have issues, I will probably have to call the shop and have them take a look at it.

To get back to the title of this post, and summarize, today demonstrated the most important benefit of owning your own aircraft, which is the ability to go flying when the opportunity presents itself. There's no way I would have been able to schedule a rental on such short notice. But, because she's mine, I was able to go flying today after all. There's a wonderful sense of freedom that comes with that. I think I can get used to it.