I spent the majority of last weekend at the local airport...
On Saturday, our Civil Air Patrol squadron hosted the Andrew Jackson HS Jr AFROTC Cadets. The squadron flew six missions with 12 cadets. We entertained their families, who were outstanding in their support of the kids. We cooked dozens of burgers and hot dogs.
One of our new squadron members, Judy McCoy, who happens to be the new director of the Amelia Island Museum of History, made a wonderful pitch, both for the AFJROTC program and for the museum, as a result, 20 of our visitors went for a tour of the museum.
The kids and the families seemed to have a great day.
The day started early for me, 0730, helping set up the two squadron tents in front of the trailer, clearing out and cleaning out the hangar and icing down the drinks. Both our squadron safety officer and our deputy safety officer were unavailable on Saturday, so the unit commander asked if I was willing to step up and fill in, which I agreed to do. This meant that I was responsible for conducting the unit safety briefing, the pre-flight safety briefings for all of the cadets, and ensuring the safety of the cadet movements to, around and from the aircraft on the flight line.
Most of the kids had never been in a small plane, and many had never been in a plane at all. As I performed the pre-flight safety briefings many of the kids, despite the high school bravado, were obviously a bit nervous. It was so gratifying to see those same faces after they stepped out of the aircraft after their rides. To a one, you couldn't have wiped the grin off their face with a brush.
Most of the kids in this school come from (at least) economically challenged homes. It felt really good to help to provide a fun day for them, and to maybe offer some of them a glimpse into a possibility for a promising future.
After all of the guests had departed, and we had cleaned and cleared up, the unit commander flew the Craig unit's aircraft back to CRG, and I flew our unit's aircraft as chase plane, then flew the both of us back to 55J.
By the time we got the plane back in the hangar, it was around 1900 - definitely a long, but very rewarding, day.
On Sunday, I went out to the airport for our regular Sunday morning pancakes, coffee and conversation. This was followed by the monthly flying club meeting. After the meeting was finished, I flew with one of the local instructors, Keoki Gray, to get a sign-off to fly the club plane to and from grass strips. The grass strip we used for the practice / checkout is the "grass strip" at 55J. This "strip" is the section of grass two thirds of the way between runway 8/22 and taxiway Alpha, bordered by taxiways Bravo and Charlie. It is two thirds of the way because the first third (next to taxiway Alpha) has three large drainage grates. Depending on who you ask, it is between 1600 and 1800 feet. All things considered, I did pretty well. To make things more exciting, my last three (of the total five landings) were simulated engine out landings, with Keoki controlling the throttle. This made it interesting, as rather than the standard "cut the throttle abeam the numbers," he would make throttle changes to varying degrees at various points. Oh, did I mention there was a cross wind? We flew for just over an hour, and by the end, I was soaked with sweat and ready to be done.
After I got my debrief and sign-off from Keoki, I got the airplane cleaned and put away, and headed home.
Jeanie and I had planned to go to Jacksonville to do some shopping at Costco, but Jeanie wasn't feeling well, so we just stayed home and talked.
As I was logging my flights, I noticed that my night currency had less than 30 days before it lapsed, so I decided that since the night was forecast to have beautiful weather and a full moon, that I would go back to the airport and renew my night currency with three takeoffs and landings to a full stop in the CAP airplane.
So, I headed back out to the airport around 1930. By the time I had dropped off the recycling (it's on the way to the airport) and preflighted the airplane, it was o' dark thirty. I ended up taking off right at 1 hour after official sunset, and made my three circuits. My takeoffs and landings weren't horrible, but they weren't my best either. My guess is that was due to being a bit tired, and having a cross wind - which is very unusual given I have three runways to choose from. It was such a beautiful night, that I thought about leaving the pattern just to fly around and enjoy the view, but I decided I had had enough flying for one weekend (never thought I'd type those words) so I just did the three and called it a night.
All in all, it was a nice weekend. The only thing that kept it from being great was that I didn't end up getting to spend much time with Jeanie.
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Posted by David at September 15, 2008 07:35 AM | Categorized under: A day in the life, Flying