It was a nice day today, so I took the opportunity to go for a flight. First time flying alone since August. Mighty fine.
When I got up this morning, the weather forecast was predicting that the current low clouds would dissipate by noon. So I booked a plane for noon. When I got to the airport, there was still a layer of clouds at 1500 feet. I didn’t really want to go scud running, since that’s no fun (and can be dangerous). So I waited and dinked around with the computer in the ops room (ran an “apt-get upgrade” among other things).
After a while, the clouds were quite thin, so I departed for Batavia. I didn’t really want to go to Batavia, but I wanted to get a look at the clouds before deciding what to do. Sure enough, on the way to Batavia it was quite apparent that what had been a cloud layer was now just a layer of haze with clear sky above. So I terminated radar services and went exploring. First I climbed up to 4500 feet, where the sky was much clearer and the visibility better.
I like being up in the middle altitudes – when I’m below 3,000 feet I see lots of other planes, but hardly ever above.
Up in the clear blue sky, I headed over to check out the windmills near Warsaw New York. They look very pretty – I wish I had my camera. From there, I headed over to the railway trestle in Letchworth Park. There are a couple of waterfalls there, and it’s also quite spectacular. After that, I headed up to Perry Warsaw to do some touch and goes. I’ve actually never landed there before – it’s got a very narrow runway with a displaced threshold.
When I switched to the advisory frequency for Perry Warsaw, it seemed like every plane in the country was on that frequency, but all at different airports – it didn’t seem like anybody was at Perry Warsaw.
I did 4 touch and goes at P-W, while only one other aircraft landed there, and then finally went home.
It was nice to fly without a goal for a change. Had some fun, knocked the rust off, and enjoyed a very beautiful day.