Well, it has been a while since my last post.  I haven’t been able to fly much as the winter weather and holiday busyness get in the way.  Over Christmas, the family traveled back home to Arkansas and I was able to fly the day after Christmas with an instructor at Central Flying Service at KLIT (Bill and Hillary Clinton Little Rock National Airport aka “Hillbilly Airport” or “Adams Field” to the locals).  I checked out in one of their Cessna 172’s.  The 172 is the four seat version of the 152 that I trained in.  It weighs about 700 pounds heavier and had a 180 horsepower engine as opposed to the 110 horsepower in the 152.  The weight difference was noticeable.  The takeoffs required more force on the yoke to get the nose up.  It was also much more stable in the air.

After getting practice using the radio since Little Rock is a Class C airport where the pilot has to communicate with Clearance, Ground, Tower and Departure to go anywhere, we flew to Carlisle to practice landings in the 172.  On the way, we practiced the usual steep turns, power-on and power-off stalls.  On the way and at Carlisle, I noticed that the 172 flies similar to the 152 with the biggest differences being your speed is higher throughout the pattern and you keep “power” through final instead of just gliding onto the runway like the 152 usually requires.  It took some getting used to, but I caught on fairly quickly.  After about an hour of flying, my instructor said that he has seen enough and we could fly back to Little Rock.  I am now “checked-out” to rent a 172 at Central Flying Service, for what that is worth.

Other than that, I worked as an ambassador at Wings of Carolina during the January 11 Second Saturday cook-out.  An ambassador shows guests around the club and answers questions.  The weather was HORRIBLE and a severe thunderstorm rolled through Sanford around lunch.  The storm contained the 2nd strongest straight-line winds ever recorded at Raleigh, beating our every hurricane except for Hazel.  The strongest winds were clocked at 86 mph!  The wind scooted all of the airplanes across the tarmac until it took up all of the slack in the chains.  It was quite the sight!  We were also trapped at the club  for a couple of hours since several trees were knocked down across the exit road.

Seminary starts back this week so studying begins again.  I hope to be able to continue training towards my instrument rating as the money becomes available.