calm before the storm

Today has been a fairly calm day. The sun was out most of the day, and no wind to speak of. There are no planes on the tarmac at the field. Pretty much nothing anywhere. Campus is really quiet, a bunch of people have left for more northern territory.

By mid morning tomorrow everything should be back to normal. Forecasts show it about 20 miles off shore on the east side about 2 PM.

For the night, we’re just kinda waiting it out, hoping for a good show!

wilma

Looks like she won’t be here untill Monday/Tuesday ish. Possible down to a catagory 2 by that time…

Should be sunshine here 🙂

hurricane

If you haven’t noticed, Wilma, came back from bedrock to slap us around. This image is a few hours old, but it shows pretty much how close we are to the mess. It has been upgraded to category 5 now, with the lowest recorded pressure in an atlantic storm.

The school has decided to evacuate planes tomorrow. Which means they won’t be back for at least a week. Plus weather will be horrible for all that time.

Life is about to get a little wet here.

solo

After some touch and goes with my instructor, I went up solo for some full stop-taxi backs.

The flight was mostly uneventful. I rushed myself too much, and forgot my takeoff checklist once. I immediately recognized it, and did the important stuff from memory, and verified once I leveled off in the pattern. After that I slowed myself down some, and got back into the flow.

The landings we're all pretty good, I was on the little runway here, and so I tend to come in high all the time. Wasn't really a problem on any but the last. I would just idle the power on final, and glide down to glide slope, touching on the numbers. On the last one, I was really high for some reason. Idled the power, and pitched up to slow, but would have put me too far down the runway. I entered a forward slip, and got it down a little past the numbers.

I should have stopped here at three landings, but I didn't. 🙂 I did one more on the big runway.

Then I called tower when I should have switched to ground for taxi clearance. I laughed.

I have a picture of me and my instructor and the plane coming- I will post it when I get it.

weather

Did some touch and goes this morning, but was unable to go up solo. There was a broken cloud layer at 700 feet moving over the airport. Which is below the minimums required for me to go up solo.

Had some good touch and goes though…

We're going to try again Monday morning.