Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater

Wed, 20 Jun 2007

A little light practice

The weather was so nice today that I dropped everything, and headed for the airport after work.

I took a Cessna 152 up, and practiced steep turns. I also flew over Harvey Field, trying to find it again by pilotage (no GPS; shocking, I know). I found it, partially by aiming for the hot air balloon:

I found myself over Harvey, and snapped a few pictures from the air for the heck of it. None of them turned out very well, but this one is kind of clear:

Then I flew back to Paine, and flew some touch-n-goes. I must have been distracted for a few of them, because my patterns sucked and my touch-downs sucked. When I actually paid attention, I was able to set the tires down without a problem, but a couple of those landings were atrocious. 5 landings, with only two of them worthy of the name. Ah well, I got other stuff right. It didn't help to hear the grinding noise wind up as the tires got up to speed -- them's some dying bearings.

After I got the plane back to its spot and tied down, I was struck by the casual symmetry of all these airplane tails alternating down the line:

It was a pretty nice flight. Landing goofiness aside, I did well. Thinking about it consciously this time, I definitely think I would have enjoyed the flight more if I'd been in an open-cockpit plane. I'll have to work on that.

Link to all the pictures from that flight

Posted at 23:33 permanent link category: /aviation

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Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater