I have been spending quite a bit of time at the flying club these past couple of weeks.  The club has been running a rebate program to get people flying again after the winter lay-off.  Today, I wanted to get some cross-country time in and some crosswind practice so I flew a Warrior from KTTA to KCRE (North Myrtle Beach).  Even though I didn’t leave the airplane, it is still nice to see the beach every now and then.  Unfortunately, my crosswind practice was not as productive as I had hoped.  Winds were pretty blustery at the coast but straight down the runway!  They were picking up to a nice crosswind back at TTA, though.

Anyway, I spoke with an instrument instructor this past weekend to create a training strategy for the instrument rating.  He said to get about 10 hours of cross-country time in and then we would start training on the simulator.  I found that I can count cross-country time that is used as instrument training to knock-out two items at once!  That will save some time and money.

On another note, I take my 9 final hours of masters classes this summer and then potentially begin my Doctor of Education work in the fall.  I am certainly a glutton for punishment!

Believe it or not, Saturday was the first time I had flown since my last post.  I was able to log 1.8 hours of flight time on a gorgeous Saturday morning.  I took my daughter up for about 45 minutes and then took my son up for about an hour.  They enjoy completely different aspects of flying so I had to plan my practice to cater to them.  My daughter loves for her “belly to tickle” so I would do the more roller-coaster maneuvers with her.  However, she gets really bored practicing landings and pattern work.  When we started performing those, she said it could be her brother’s turn.

On the other hand, he “likes flying, but not falling.”  I performed a stall for the first time with him in the plane and he grabbed the yoke!  He let go very quickly but I gave him a hard time about it for the rest of the day.  However, he likes pattern work so I did short-field and soft-field take-offs and landings.  I was high on final for one approach into Siler City (Aunt Bee’s hometown) and performed a forward slip to lose altitude.  He looked at me and said “why are we flying sideways?”

After flying, we stayed for the Second Saturday cookout and watched all the other pilots and students take advantage of the great weather.  I am finishing up another semester of seminary and hopefully can begin training for the Instrument Rating this summer.