Why work...

when you can fly? :)

After a solid month of rain and a scrubbed flight to Florida, the weather finally cleared and we enjoyed a glorious week of unlimited visibility! In case you're not familiar with Huntsville, that's extremely rare - as in maybe two weeks a year. Most of the time the haze is so thick you can hardly see your neighbor's house. It's conditions like these that make me go stir crazy for the cockpit, so I scheduled a lunchtime flight on Thursday and invited my buddy Charles from church along for the ride. He's a pilot too, but hadn't flown in a small plane in about 7 years so he was pretty pumped!

Thursday arrived with another beautiful sky and a blustery cross wind and neither of us could wait for lunch time. We both arrived early and after preflighting our trusty Cessna, started taxiing past the small jets, military trainers and commercial airliners scattered about sleepy Huntsville International. The strong crosswind was evident as we were taxiing and was even more apparent at takeoff as our nose smartly crabbed into the wind about 30 degrees relative to the runway. Around here wind and turbulence is usually the price paid for beautiful clear skies.

We headed south of the Arsenal then turned north following the parkway. We spotted the church and flew over downtown on our way to Madison County Executive for a couple of landings.

This was the first real crosswind I'd experienced in about two years and it showed. With another pilot for a passenger I proceeded to produce my two worst landings ever, practically dropping the plane onto the runway from about 10 feet up. Ugly. Charles was quite the good sport. Rather than closing his eyes, holding his breath or crossing his fingers he reassured me that he had done even worse in front of all the instructors at this flight school no less.
Putting those embarrassments behind me we headed back to Huntsville, knowing that the conditions weren't going to be any better. At least I'd have a long runway and plenty of time to setup a stabilized approach to figure out the winds this time.

However, while still about 10 minutes out we were told - twice - to keep the speed up and proceed directly for the runway. For some reason our sleepy airport seems to become a beehive of activity when I'm trying to land and that was the case this time with faster traffic behind us and a planeload of spectators on the taxiway waiting to takeoff. The stabilized approach I'd been hoping for would now be flown at high speed with a sharp turn near the runway threshold leaving a few seconds to settle onto the runway in a strong and gusty crosswind. I must thrive under pressure because it turned out to be a greaser of a landing. Pointing the nose down the runway and holding a bank to counter the wind, the left wheel gently made contact first with the other two settling onto the runway in quick succession. We then made a hasty exit to the taxiway and returned to the ramp.


I know you probably came here to read about Jack and have long since forgotten who I am, so as a way of saying thanks for sticking with this post here's a new picture of Jackson: