Saturday, June 03, 2006

Rainy Day

Wow ! Today it poured like crazy. As the weekend approached it was clear that it was going to pour down today. And truly it was overcast at 400 with mist. So I wasn't expecting a flight today. I anyway had ground lessons so I headed out to the airport right away.

After getting of the bus stop, the airport is a good mile hike. When I got off, the weather was pleasant and there was very light drizzle. So I decided to walk up to the airport as I normally do. Just as I was around 5 minutes away from the flight school, it started pouring down like crazy :( So my decision to hike turned out to be a bad one. Well, another lesson leart, but the rest of the walk, with the grass just washed in the rain and all bright green, was worth it !! Next time, I'll just call up the school for a ride :)

So I arrive at the school, meet the instructor and then we decide to do some ground work and wait for the rain to stop. Since I hadn't been assigned much the ground school was more of going over the material. I am glad we did cause I think I have a much better idea of airspaces now.

Well so an hour or so into the lesson the rain stopped, and we decided we could go out to the plane and practice on my preflight and taxiing skills.

So off we headed to dispatch, checked out the plane. I did the preflight with very little help from instructor. This part was fun :) There was practically no activity on the airport. In the controller's words to an IFR acft "Sir, there is absolutely nothing going on at the airport!!".

So engines started and all ready, we radioed ground for taxi practice. The next 40 minutes or so were just me trying to taxi around the airport following the ground's directions, hold short of rwy 22 at bravo, follow November all the way down to rwy 9, etc. I still have to get a feel for the directional control using rudders. I think I am not sitting forward enough to get full leg movement. Towards the end I was doing a little bit better, but still a long way to go :(

Well after a fun taxi excursion around the airport, we finally got back to the ramp and towed and secured the plane. Next lesson is tomorrow evening. Keeping finger crossed for VMC conditions .. till then back to the books !

1 comment:

Prabhakar Karve said...

Hi amod,
Really it is v.exciting to read ur blog
wow u have a good style of expressing ur feelings and experience,just keep it up,one day u may publish it as a book.
all the best