When the human malware situation hit last March, my company told us all to go home and to work from home until further notice. When it became apparent that "two weeks to flatten the curve" was going to last a lot longer than that, they instituted a policy where Friday's would be devoted to learning new information and skills, that the workday would end at 1:00, and that we were to take the afternoon for ourselves.
The weather yesterday morning was marginal, but it improved as the day went on and, by the time 1:00 rolled around, it was actually pretty nice. So I did what you might expect if you're reading this and I took Ariel up for a couple of hours.
The first thing I did was to go around the pattern a couple of times. After the porpoise incident during my previous flight, I posted about it to the Beech Aero Club forum. I received some good advice on how to improve my landings in this plane and I wanted to put it to use. I'd been thinking about just what I did wrong and I think there were a couple of things that contributed to messing up that landing.
First, I was trying to reduce the amount of float I'd been experiencing. I suspected I'd been pulling up a bit too early so I let it come down just a bit more before pulling back on the yoke. It turns out I either waited too long, or didn't pull back enough, or both. The nose wasn't quite high enough and the nosewheel touched first, and touched firmly, resulting in the porpoise bounce.
Second, I think I've been under a misconception on what my speed should be at various points on the final approach. The Book of the Airplane says the approach speed should be 68 knots. However, I was maintaining that speed all the way down. What I should be doing, and the advice from the BAC forum bears this out, is start out at 68, but I can slow it down as I get closer. Get it down to 65, and even a bit lower, before pulling back. By the time I touch down, the yoke should be in my lap. Ideally, the stall horn is sounding as the mains make contact.
Following that advice did improve the landings. The biggest difference was considerably less float before touching down. When landing on runway 15 at Harvey Field, a good landing is one where I can exit at the taxiway and don't have to continue to the end of the runway. I still have room for improvement, but I think I'm on the right track. I can make successful landings; I want to get to where I'm making pretty ones.
After two landings I took off again and headed out to the north toward Arlington. I passed to the east of Arlington airport and headed up the valley along the north fork of the Stillaguamish River toward Darrington. I didn't want to go too far up that valley as that lead up into the Cascades and I haven't (yet) had any training in mountain flying. I flew until I was in sight of the Darrington airport, then turned around and headed back.
As I was flying back down the valley, I realized that I was going to fly past this:
That is the scar left by the 2014 Oso mudslide. I was acquainted with two of the people who lost their lives in that disaster. A former coworker of my wife, along with his wife, were spending the weekend at their vacation cabin near the river. It was located by the bend nearest my position where it gets closer to the highway, and was near the limit reached by the slide. If they'd been even a hundred yards further away from where the slide began, they might have survived.
Flying over the site reminded me that our time on this planet is limited. It can end at any time, and for any reason. While it is wise to plan for the future, such as by putting money away for retirement, we shouldn't do so at the expense of living in the present. I sold some stock to finance the purchase of my airplane. I could have kept the stock for later, or I could have put the proceeds into an IRA. But I've worked hard to build up retirement savings, so I could afford to spend this money on this endeavor, and even had some left over from the stock sale to save for the maintenance costs to come.
As I've gotten older, I've come to value experiences rather than things. I'd much rather take a trip to another country than have an expensive art piece to hang on my wall. There are, however, things that facilitate experiences. I own a car that's engaging to drive because, if I have to drive somewhere, I might as well enjoy it. One of the things I like to do is take the day to drive around the Olympic Peninsula (it takes around 11 hours with stops for gas and food) and it's even more enjoyable in this car.
And now I have this airplane, and I bought it for the experiences that owning it will enable. I've already had some great ones, and I look forward to all the ones yet to come. Not only am I enjoying flying, but I'm constantly learning, about this plane, and about aviation in general. My airplane is a thing, but it's a thing that makes experiences possible that I otherwise could not have. From a strictly financial standpoint, it was not wise to buy it. But from a life standpoint, it absolutely was.
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