Friday the 13th: A good day to fly

I finally got up flying today.  It wasn’t perfect weather conditions – there were low scattered clouds around the airport, and a solid overcast up at 20,000 feet to deprive me of the sunny day I craved.  It was a bit hazy and there was a definite wind shear around 2,000 feet, with the consequent small amount of turbulence.  But it was warm enough that I didn’t have to pre-heat, and thanks to our getting cheap hangar space this winter, no messing around with wing and cabin covers.  And the weather is supposed to utterly suck this weekend, so it was now or “never”.
 The only planes available were my old buddy Lance, or the Warrior.  I much prefer the Lance, and since I pay a monthly premium for the privilege of being able to fly it, that’s what I took.

I didn’t have any plans.  I hoped to get out to visit some local airports, and maybe do a bit of playing.  I headed off first to Batavia, and did 2 not very pretty touch-and-goes there.  There was quite a difference in wind direction between pattern altitude and below, so I ended up overshooting my turn to final both times.  I also got a bit slow on final for the Lance – it prefers to fly final at 90 knots and I was down to 75-80.  But the landings were decent enough, if a bit firm.

After Batavia, I decided to head to Dansville.  Dansville is a bit tricky because it’s nestled in a valley.  Runway 14 was in use, which is quite unusual.  I don’t know if I’ve ever landed on that runway. The valley wall is a bit steep on that side, and the nominal pattern altitude is actually below the height of the valley wall.  I’m never sure whether I should do a close-in pattern “inside” the valley, or stay out the normal distance but higher, and drop down to normal pattern altitude about half way along the downwind leg.  There was a tail-dragger Cessna in the pattern landing on the parallel “14 Grass”, and he seemed to be doing the former, so that’s what I did as well.  I’m a flat-lander and not used to looking off my wingtip and seeing a house above me about a thousand feet away.

I did a touch and go and a full stop there.  When I came out from the washroom, somebody jumped out of the co-pilot side of the Cessna and sent the pilot out solo.  I asked him, and he said the pilot had just bought this plane and he was giving him his tailwheel endorsement.  That explains the grass landings.

He also said “pretty nice weather for May, isn’t it.”  I had to agree.  It was certainly spring like.

I took off thinking I might head off the Finger Lakes Regional next for my grand tour.  There is more high ground down there in that part of the Finger Lakes, so I climbed up to 4,500 feet.  And I found it very misty up there.  The visibility was legal, but only barely.  And it was that sort of mistiness that can turn into solid cloud pretty quickly.  I think that means it was an inversion layer, in which case I could have climbed a few hundred feet and be above it.  But I’m not IFR current and I didn’t want to chance it, so instead I descended into clearer air and headed North to lower ground.  Which put me getting close to the Rochester Class C airspace, so I decided just to head home.

When I called in, Rochester Approach told me twice to keep my speed up.  I was into the yellow arc, making 150 knots airspeed and about 160 ground speed, so that was easy.  I wasn’t sure why they were so concerned, because I didn’t hear anybody coming in for Runway 28.  (Aside: I was heading for Runway 25, which is the general aviation runway, but the approach path for 25 crosses the approach path for 28)  But there are two approach frequencies so maybe he was on the other one.  I called “field in sight” before I crossed the Geneseo VOR (17 miles out) and they immediately switched me over to the tower, and the tower immediately cleared me to land.  Yes, 15 miles out and cleared to land – I guess they weren’t busy.
I kept my speed until I was just about where I’d turn base if I’d done a normal pattern, and quickly dropped my speed, my gear and my flaps in that order.  One nice thing about the Lance being such a draggy unaerodynamic beast is that it’s easy to lose speed when you need to.  That wouldn’t be so easy in a Mooney or Lancair.  I heard somebody getting cleared to land on 28 – probably the reason they’d asked me to keep my speed up earlier, and did a pretty nice landing on 25.

All in all, not a perfect day, but a good “knock the cobwebs off” day.  Next time I’m not going to wait 2+ months to do this.