Today can be summarized as ‘Wind in my tyres’ and ‘Max entertainment and pressure’
If my brain had a pressure relief valve it would have been blowing this afternoon.
When the day started there was fog about and this was going to delay things at the air-school. My flight was due at 3 pm so I had time to spare (I thought). I got up, had brekkie and sorted out my flight bag. At 7:30 I called Richard about my punctured tyre and he said he would call me back. I was hoping that my bike could be taken away and brought back to the hotel with wind in the front tyre. A little while later Richard rang and said a mechanic with a pickup truck was a minute away and he would take the bike and I to NAC. OK, turn brain up to max revs, what do I need to do ?
1) I need to quickly get everything required for the today.
2) I want to meet up with DownN3Greens this morning but will be able to call him from NAC.
3) I need to go and get the bike from the back of the hotel and take it around to the front.
I did achieve most of these but managed to leave my sunglasses behind in the rush.
Russ the mechanic got the ailing bike in the back and me as a passenger. On the short ride to NAC he was talking about when he visited Scotland. I went on a camping holiday there one summer. It rained solid for two weeks. I still have the rust marks and have not been on holiday there since. Russ’ experience sounded more fun than mine.
At the school I said hello at the front desk and also met the CAA examiner who had arrived today. Yep, I managed to be here at the same time as Presidents’ Day, the CAA inspection, and the day all the charts and airport directories ran out. So my bill suddenly showed the cost of two new charts (one laminated and one paper) + a new airfield directory. Total cost $31.70 and another charge I had not budgeted for.
I rang DownN3Greens on my cellphone and he said he would be over in 15 minutes. He had posted replies on the Pprune forum and lives in Naples. He drove to NAC and then we went to Dannys’ Lunchbox for a coffee. It was not open but he knows the owner so we were soon sat out the front with a coffee. His real name is Dale and he has almost clocked up 10,000 hours of flying. A lot as a 727 captain but also as a flight instructor. We had a lot to talk about and he had some interesting tales to tell. This is Dale
Whilst we were chatting, the local emergency services seemed busy as there were police cars, ambulances and fire tenders heading in all directions with their sirens and light going. I really enjoyed discussing flying and life with Dale. We will meet up again when we can both drink something other than coffee.
Dale took me back to NAC.
Plans were changing due to the fog and now I was to go at 1pm instead of 3. So I needed to get the weather at 11:30. Russ returned with my bike and it was now operational. I adjusted up the brake which was back to it’s none working state. I am sure Russ is ace at aircraft maintenance.
At 11:30 I got the weather and was able to complete my nav logs. At 12:30 I checked out N946AC and at 12:45 Nikki had a look at my navigation flight plans. There was a problem because I had plotted a dogleg return route and it should have been direct. So I had to quickly re-do things. As per usual I made some mistakes in my rush and we ran out of time. The plans changed again (my fault) and now were going to short and soft field takeoffs and landings. Had I revised this ? Yes I said, quickly looking through the mounting pile of paperwork in my flight bag. Can you see the pressure building ? Maybe Nikki saw my comment about the difference between the sexes and was about to prove the theory about males and multitasking ?. In fact, I had inflicted all the change upon myself. A little while later we set off. Naples was really busy as all the 20 million dollar jets were leaving to fly back to their owners home. We took off and flew to a nearby uncontrolled airfield. I learnt about getting the automated weather and then switched to the local unicom frequency. The airfield was also really busy with fast twins coming and going. I was struggling to get my head around all the activity on the radio let alone the procedures for soft/short fields. We did two stop and go’s and I started to get up to speed on how to do it. However, as there was so much activity, Nikki said to head for Naples, I was just sorting all that out when Nikki pulled out the throttle and said we have got an engine failure (simulated), “where are you going to land”. I spotted a suitable field nearby and correctly trimmed the aircraft but messed up the ‘circle to rectify’ checks in the cockpit. After a prompt I did those and the ‘circle for safety’ checks. I also struggled with loosing sufficient altitude when I needed to do this. I was all good practice and something to improve on. My brain would have been venting steam at this point. Nikki took the aircraft back up to safe height whilst I relaxed for a few seconds. It was then a question of the rejoin procedures for Naples. It was still runway 23 (beware as there is also a runway 32). I was asked by the tower to make a dogleg fast approach. I could see a line of jets on the taxiways waiting to takeoff and I followed a jet in to land. Nikki said that there was ‘no pressure, but by the way there is a big jet screaming up behind us as no 2 to land’ Ha ha, I had to get the landing right as there was a big audience and just a little pressure from behind. My dogleg approach finished a few hundred yards from the threshold, I pulled out the power to lose a bit of height and put it back in when I got to the right approach angle. Moments later I was taking the power back out, flaring and touch down. Tower asked me to exit at Alpha 4 (the first exit) and I did this. Nikki said that I had made a good short field landing. Yippeeee.
Soon we were back and the de-brief covered my good and bad points.
I took a picture at the front desk.
There are a lot of Danes here. They speak excellent English.
Tomorrow morning I will do that cross country to Pahokee if I can get the planning correct. If that goes well I will do it solo in the afternoon. That is the plan. At Naples ‘expect the unexpected’.
If you are making right hand circuits onto runway 05, here is a good visual reference. The red roof is easy to spot.
There are a lot of pawn shops and churches around Naples.
Here is a pawn shop. I cycle along this sidewalk every day.
I must get a picture of a church.
Back at the hotel I cannot get the Internet working. I ring reception and they say there is no problem it must be me. I’m into IT so I struggled for another half an hour and with no joy on either laptop or PDA. I then went and joined a long queue of others with laptops at reception. OK, I have a lot to learn in flying, but do not try and fob me off on PC’s.
It is now time for this post, nav planning, emails and of course food and drink.
Will post again tomorrow after what I am sure will be another day of maximum entertainment.
Peewit
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