A Man and His Airplane

It's cold outside. It's currently 7:30pm and, according to the little weather widget in my Windows taskbar, it's17 degrees Fahrenheit outside. The weather today was nice enough to go flying, apart from the cold. It's also been snowing so it's likely that there is some snow on the paved 'driveway' between my plane and the taxiway. Even if the airport removed that snow, it was probably still icy and it would have been difficult if not impossible for me to pull the plane out of the hangar. I don't know when the weather will permit me to fly again. It's very unlikely to be before the end of this month, and there's a good chance I won't be able to do so in January of next year. It's not impossible, of course. I was able to fly in January of this year after all. But here in the Northwest, the weather during a particular month one year is a very poor predictor of what it will be the next year. Thing is, I'm over 50 years old now. I don't...

The other day I returned from a week-long trip to Arizona to visit my father for his 90th birthday. This is why I hadn't flown my plane since its first post-overhaul flight that lasted only half an hour. Before I came home, I called up the shop and was told that they had indeed taken the plane in and checked it out, and that it was good to go for the full break-in process. Yesterday the weather was quite nice. It was cold, but still above freezing. So I took the afternoon and went flying for a couple of hours. Since I'm still at the beginning of the break-in period, I flew it at 75% power for an hour, then varied the power between 65% and 75% for another hour. Once I was done I landed and put it away. When I was pushing the plane back into the hangar, I noticed that one of the screws holding the spinner on had worked itself about half way out. I tightened it up as best I could with the little multi-tool I carry around, and planned to tighten it fully the next time I was out the...

Although the most important event that happened last weekend was flying my plane for the first time after the overhaul was completed, I also had my bi-annual flight review. On Friday, I spent some time with the instructor going over knowledge, such as reading a chart, knowing about the different types of airspace, and other stuff that pilots need to know. On Saturday, we went up in a 172 for an hour or so to practice basic maneuvers, stalls, landings, and so on. Basically to determine that I still know how to fly a plane safely. We were originally going to do both the ground and flight portion of the flight review on Friday, but there was an issue with scheduling an aircraft. Snohomish Flying Service has six 172s, with two of them being older 172N models, and the rest being newer 172S models. Well, one is a 172R but it's so like the 172S that it makes no practical difference. I've only ever flown the 172N. Neither of the 172Ns was available on Friday so we'd scheduled a 172...

It's been a long and sometimes difficult road to get to this point but today I flew Ariel for the first time since last March. It is difficult to describe the emotions I felt after I stopped in front of the hangar and shut her down after the flight. I about broke down crying. I've waited for this for so long, and had to deal with so many frustrating setbacks that it sometimes felt like I'd never fly her again. Following the instructions from Preston, I flew her for half an hour at 3000' feet over the airport in case something went wrong. I ran the engine at 75% power (maybe a bit more, but that's okay) for as much of the flight as I could. The engine started right up, and I thought it sounded better than it had before. It seemed smoother, somehow. When I took off, I had one notch of flaps in, and she flew off the runway on her own without me having to pull back on the yoke. It was as if she was eager to get back into the sky. The flight was completely uneventful, as...