denverpilot
Tied Down
I'm embarrassed to say I didn't fly at all in December. Wow.
Work, family stuff (multiple "Christmases", the joy of divorced parents, etc.), other holiday stuff, and God-awful cold conspired to keep me away from the hangar.
Today I finally had a day where I wanted to go flying. And I did.
Lets just say the battery on the plane was quite weak, as co-owners didn't get a chance to fly much in December either. Ouch.
Messing around fixing the generator (it's fixed... re-gapped and cleaned spark plug, fresh fuel, and a little magic starting fluid... Ha!), dragging a giant 70 Ah UPS battery along just in case I needed it, and eventually realizing that jump starting the airplane with the Yukon (ughhhh!) was the best option, took many hours.
(No I never left the cockpit while the engine was running. The idea was to get it started and let it charge a bit more on its own. Parking a Yukon next to a 182 with two sets of chocks and brakes set is still nerve wracking. Not my favorite thing to do. Not recommended if you're not paying very close attention.)
Not to mention a nice long extended pre-heat, even though its been warmer/ish lately. Wanted the engine as toasty as possible.
That kinda sucked. But...
The good part? Well it wasn't originally planned to be a night flight but it got dark. Determination had set in and I still felt up for it.
So... Around the pattern for six stop and goes. Also tried a couple of power off 180s to a chosen landing spot. Ummm... That's harder that it sounds. Will be doing some more of that. At least I wasn't coming up short.
Airplane flew great and ammeter was zeroed by run-up. Charged pretty heavy during taxi. Poor battery. I may spend some quality time at the hangar this week letting the generator/charger combo put some more electrons into that chemical beastie. Cold and disuse was good for it. Can't let that happen again.
Tower was handling all services when I departed. ATIS didn't have the usual special procedures but they still asked for them. That was odd.
On the last landing they announced a new ATIS while I was just starting base turn. I tuned it on Comm 2 and already had a clearance to land and acknowledged it. Apparently I bumped the volume all the way down on Comm 1. Exited runway and didn't hear anything about "all services on Tower" on the new ATIS, so stopped and called Ground. Tower controller's voice on Ground freq says, "Didn't you hear me calling?" Hmmm.
He'd cleared me to parking but I didn't hear it. Another clearance to cross Alpha to parking and I apologized, then found the problem and asked how he heard me on Comm 1. All good. He sounded annoyed. Sorry dude. I wasn't anywhere I wasn't cleared to go and wasn't blocking anyone on the taxiway. So not harm done. Just wasn't my favorite way to end a flight. Didn't start great either, but after an hour of driving around to get stuff to fix generator and charging stuff etc...
At least that middle part, the flying part, was good!
I didn't add in the story of the cluster**** my annual radio inventory for CAP turned into today, which I had not planned any hours for today, but ate up three of them... Or the flight would have still been a day flight.
Not even worth going into how that came to be. That one is a case study in **** rolling downhill.
Sometimes stubbornness comes in handy. Within the confines of being willing to call it all off if it becomes unsafe. If that battery had been any weaker it would have needed a visit to a bench.
Work, family stuff (multiple "Christmases", the joy of divorced parents, etc.), other holiday stuff, and God-awful cold conspired to keep me away from the hangar.
Today I finally had a day where I wanted to go flying. And I did.
Lets just say the battery on the plane was quite weak, as co-owners didn't get a chance to fly much in December either. Ouch.
Messing around fixing the generator (it's fixed... re-gapped and cleaned spark plug, fresh fuel, and a little magic starting fluid... Ha!), dragging a giant 70 Ah UPS battery along just in case I needed it, and eventually realizing that jump starting the airplane with the Yukon (ughhhh!) was the best option, took many hours.
(No I never left the cockpit while the engine was running. The idea was to get it started and let it charge a bit more on its own. Parking a Yukon next to a 182 with two sets of chocks and brakes set is still nerve wracking. Not my favorite thing to do. Not recommended if you're not paying very close attention.)
Not to mention a nice long extended pre-heat, even though its been warmer/ish lately. Wanted the engine as toasty as possible.
That kinda sucked. But...
The good part? Well it wasn't originally planned to be a night flight but it got dark. Determination had set in and I still felt up for it.
So... Around the pattern for six stop and goes. Also tried a couple of power off 180s to a chosen landing spot. Ummm... That's harder that it sounds. Will be doing some more of that. At least I wasn't coming up short.
Airplane flew great and ammeter was zeroed by run-up. Charged pretty heavy during taxi. Poor battery. I may spend some quality time at the hangar this week letting the generator/charger combo put some more electrons into that chemical beastie. Cold and disuse was good for it. Can't let that happen again.
Tower was handling all services when I departed. ATIS didn't have the usual special procedures but they still asked for them. That was odd.
On the last landing they announced a new ATIS while I was just starting base turn. I tuned it on Comm 2 and already had a clearance to land and acknowledged it. Apparently I bumped the volume all the way down on Comm 1. Exited runway and didn't hear anything about "all services on Tower" on the new ATIS, so stopped and called Ground. Tower controller's voice on Ground freq says, "Didn't you hear me calling?" Hmmm.
He'd cleared me to parking but I didn't hear it. Another clearance to cross Alpha to parking and I apologized, then found the problem and asked how he heard me on Comm 1. All good. He sounded annoyed. Sorry dude. I wasn't anywhere I wasn't cleared to go and wasn't blocking anyone on the taxiway. So not harm done. Just wasn't my favorite way to end a flight. Didn't start great either, but after an hour of driving around to get stuff to fix generator and charging stuff etc...
At least that middle part, the flying part, was good!
I didn't add in the story of the cluster**** my annual radio inventory for CAP turned into today, which I had not planned any hours for today, but ate up three of them... Or the flight would have still been a day flight.
Not even worth going into how that came to be. That one is a case study in **** rolling downhill.
Sometimes stubbornness comes in handy. Within the confines of being willing to call it all off if it becomes unsafe. If that battery had been any weaker it would have needed a visit to a bench.
