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Surprise flying

I woke up this morning, looked outside, checked the weather forecast, and realized that I could actually go flying today. So I did.

Today's flight had three main objectives. The first was to see if the comms still worked. The second was to do some pattern work and practice landings, and the third was to continue becoming familiar with the plane. I'll address these in reverse order.

I'm definitely becoming more familiar with the plane, and with the procedures for flying it. I was told this plane would make me a better pilot and I feel pretty confident in saying it's doing exactly that. I'm a lot more comfortable with it, I'm learning it's features and idiosyncrasies. For example, I've figured out where to set the trim for approach and landing to get the correct speeds. Like a 172, if you have the trim set correctly on your downwind, all you have to do is lower your flaps at the right times and you'll be at the right speed for each phase of the approach.

I'm getting better at landings, too. I performed six total landings today. All were acceptable, and I'd say three were pretty good. There was a slight crosswind so I got to practice crosswind landings as well. I did go around twice due to being too high on short final but that's also good practice.

Finally, the comms. The other day, I went out and tested them and everything seemed to be working correctly. Today, I encountered a possible problem, but I'm not sure if there was anything wrong or not. When I called for a radio check, I didn't receive a response. I was hearing other transmissions just fine, and I was able to trigger the automated weather response by keying the mile four times. I was clearly transmitting at least the carrier frequency. Following the troubleshooting steps I'd come up with earlier, I turned off the intercom. When I did that, I no longer heard sidetone when I was talking to myself, which is as expected. However, when I called for a radio check, I did hear sidetone from the radio, and I received an immediate response. I left the intercom off for the flight. It's possible it was working fine with the intercom on, but I left it off just to be sure.

After that, everything worked fine. There was one instance of a transmission that I heard over the speaker in the airplane, but it was cutting out in my headphones. I don't know if this was another symptom of a larger problem, or just due to the transmission being somewhat weak and not overcoming the squelch to the headset. All other transmissions I heard loud and clear and it was clear from listening to other aircraft that I was transmitting successfully and clearly.

So I'm still not sure if anything's wrong or not. I will definitely be asking the shop to test the comm system when I take it in for the other repairs I'll have done. I should also have my backup radio the time I go flying again.

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