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Contrary to my lack of posting recently, I have been flying. I’ve spent so many frustrating hours dealing with my aforementioned webhosting disaster that blogging has fallen by the wayside unfortunately.

I’m Finally starting to get the cross-country numbers a little healthier in the logbook. Not overly long cross countries by any stretch, but far enough and full-stop so they can be logged as xcountry time.

Although I had originally planned to do this Flight on Sunday morning, and go to CNF4 (Lindsay) for breakfast, a schedule conflict with my passenger caused a reschedule for 4PM.

It actually worked out great - we ended up having the last reservation of the day for our Aircraft, so it ended being a nice leisurely flight, with an hour to spent at the airport restaurant before turning around and heading home.

All of the pireps upon our arrival at the airport suggested that it was really bumpy, and we should expect constant moderate chop. Thankfully my passenger didn’t take issue with this, so we decided to head out regardless.

The cloud base earlier in the day had been at 3000 feet, and although it was now very close to CAVOK, the bumpyness had apparently persisted through the change in the weather.

My passenger is not new to little aircraft, but he says it’s been about 20 years…and the last “little” Plane he says he was in, he jumped out of. (Parachuting). So it wasn’t a commercial jet, but it wasn’t a 152, either. This is definately the first 2-seater aircraft he’s been in, no question. He’s surprised at the size I think - the 152 is definately close quarters.

Our departure is non eventfull, but it seems rather smooth once we climb above 1000. My passenger lets out a healthy “Woo Hoo!” as we hit about 200′ AGL. It’s nice to know that the passenger is enjoying themselves, and the flight has barely begun.

At our cruise altitude of 3500, it’s actually quite smooth - nearly hands off flying on the way to Lindsay airport, our destination for todays flight. Apparently the turbulence is history. I’m not really upset about that.

There’s a nasty headwind on the way north - I’m showing about 95Kts indicated, but the GPS is showing a groundspeed hovering around 70kts. It’s smooth, but strong, and creating a noticable yaw into the wind, which even my passenger picks up on.

But, the slow speed makes for some great sightseeing, which we do plenty of on the way there. We amuse ourselves listening to a C130 Hercules fumbling through a radio call to London FSS..and fumbling some more…and more. Aren’t these air force guys supposed to know their stuff?

As I call up Lindsay unicom and get an answer. Short and sweet - a wind check, and runway 31 is the preferred, at pilots discretion.

Traffic is light - just one other plane doing a touch and go. He announces that he’s joining to the right base, which is kind of curious since 31 is a left hand pattern. Regardless, he’s turning final just as we join the left downwind, and we are shortly on final. My landing is satisfactory, but once again I fail to impress myself. My pax seems impressed, regardless.

Once we are down I call CFA to confirm that nobody has reserved behind us. The answer is exactly what I wanted to hear - nobody has reserved, so the aircraft is ours for the rest of the daylight hours.

We stop at the FBO for a few minutes to chat with the nice lady who provides the Unicom service at CNF4. She jokes that it’s been a slow day, and she has been looking out the window “rating” everyones landings. I ask her where her scorecards are, and how we rated. She says she missed our landing….that’s probably a good thing - Mid 4’s at best, I would guess. :-)

Off to the restaurant we go for an order of $100 French Fries. No $100 hamburgers today, dinner is actually going to be waiting when I get home..but the fries were too tempting to resist.

It seems that the restaurant here is a popular hangout for some of Lindsay’s senior citizen population, as clearly absolutely none of the people eating dinner there tonight are pilots. We seem rather out of place, almost like eating in a retirement residence.

It’s all rather odd, but the food is good. Trying to control myself, I resist trying out the home made butter tarts which by all accounts are to die for, and are frequently mentioned when other pilots talk about the restraurant here at Lindsay.

Anyhow, snack done, we decide to head out.

Thankfully nobody has bothered our plane. The ramp here is surprisingly open - anyone could park their car and pretty much walk up to the aircraft without anyone else batting an eye. I left FOOU with all of our gear (including my GPS) in place - and of course, being rental-aircraft, the door locks don’t work..so it was effectively wide open.

Once again, I brought my GPS along for the ride. There’s absolutely no need whatsoever to have it along for this trip, the nav could not possibly get any easier, but since I’ve gotten my ticket and have actually been allowed to use it (and am flying for periods of time long enough to actually have time to play with it) I’m hooking it up regardless so that I can get accustomed to using it in flight.

My overall impression on using a PDA for a GPS is mixed. The features are unparalleled for the cost, but I still find the screen somewhat difficult to read in varying light conditions. This is more of a fault with my Palm, as opposed to the rest of the hardware, so I can’t really blame it. The jury is still out on whether or not I’ll buy a “proper” Aviation GPS..although all of the flight planning/aviation specific software I can load onto the palm, as well as the fact that Co-Pilot and FlightMaster are *awesome* (and free) GPS utils will make it tough to switch.

Anyhow, we load back in and are shortly on our way. The sun is beginning to set, and the air is now just like glass - now this is nice - I trim out at 3000 feet and the plane flies perfectly on it’s own for about 10 minutes. While keeping an eye out for traffic, I actually get some sightseeing in myself, with the plane now taking care of itself.

Over Scugog island things get interesting. One of the other CFA aircraft (GRPQ) makes a position report and advises that they are heading to the same general location as us, and then back to YOO as well. I reply to give him a heads up, but I can’t see him anywhere.

Some time passes, and neither of us are able to spot RPQ yet. We are conversing to try to spot each other, but we still can’t see him. A third plane chimes in as being northbound, and we spot each other, but I still can’t see my primary concern, RPQ.

I make a 360, still unsure where he is, and feeling paranoid that we are a little too close for comfort. I grab the ATIS at the same time, and then track south again.

We both call into the tower behind each other, and now ATC guy seems equally concerned about our spacing. He asks me to Squawk Ident, but I have to kinly refuse…as FOOU is not transponder equipped. :-)

RPQ reports over a common VFR reporting point - the triple power lines. This doesn’t make me feel any better - we are only 1 mile or so from the lines ourself, and still neither of us can spot him. Grrr.

I ask the tower if they would like me to do a 360 for spacing, but they advise that they have us both in sight, and there is no conflict. Okay then! Whew.

As we join the downwind, we *finally* spot RPQ - just turing base. We follow him in, and I make a perfect full-stall greaser of a landing - barely felt the wheels come down on that one. Whew - I can still do those!

The sun is now touching the horizon, and the winds are dead calm. It’s comfortably warm, and it’s tantalizingly summer-like. Spring is definately (and finally!) in the air.

I help the pilot of RPQ push back into the tiedown, and then my passenger helps me do the same.

When we’re back in dispatch finishing up the paperwork my former instructor is there. He checks out my GPS and has fun with it outside for 5 or 10 minutes, seeming quite impressed with it’s capabilities and versatility. Hmm…perhaps I will keep the Palm based GPS setup afterall - it really is a ton of power for not alot of cost - I’ve under $250 invested in the whole setup.\

So, that’s about it. Another great flight with another enthusiastic passenger.

Hard to say where I’m going from here, at least for the next few weeks. We just finalized the move of our mortgage today (5 year anniversary, yaay!) and the costs to move from our bank to a new mortgage company set us back a good chunk of cash. Add that to the fact that I’m probably going to be laid off from work next week courtesy of a GM truck plant shutdown, and there may not be much spare cash floating around for a while.

…then again, the tax return cash will be due soon. Maybe a week off would be nice afterall.

And last but not least, my new favourite “flying” picture, taken by my pax from this flight. It’s one of the few pictures of myself that I can look at and not publicly exclaim “Crap, I look horrible”..so I guess it’s not that bad. :)