Free at last

Well, not really free, just sort of free or free with limits, but free to fly alone within the local area, and today I did.

Bay Air uses an online scheduling service called Flight Schedule Pro. Last night, I received an email from Flight Schedule Pro letting me know that my reservation for today had been revised. Rob had scheduled me for an additional hour in the plane. OK, but what's up with that. Nothing like a little mystery to pique my interest.

So, we have a bit of ground school that we had planned. We reviewed airspace in the St. Petersburg area. Rob does not want me flying into Tampa's Class B airspace and getting him into trouble. Apparently, if a student pilot does something like that, it's the instructor who suffers the consequences. Then we went over some weather information. Specifically, how to get and make sense of routine aviation weather reports or METARSs. Bay Air subscribes to an online weather service for pilots and this information is available in the lobby, but anyone with Internet service can access aviation weather reports from the National Weather Service. We looked at some local weather reports as they related to my ability to fly on a given day or not. Rob increased my maximum permissible wind to 17 knots, but it will be nice to know if I am able to fly before I drive to the airport. He also gave me the telephone number for Whitted's ASOS so I can check the weather without a computer.

Ground school complete and I head out to make sure N54058 is ready to go. Rob hops in the plane, we take off and head west for the beach. There is a lot of traffic at Whitted today. Whitted is only a mile or two from Tropicana Field, where game one of the World Series will be played tonight. Rob says that a lot of people will be flying into Whitted to see the game. I guess that explains some of the traffic. Once over the water, I practice slow flight, stalls and the emergency landing procedure. Rob then slides his seat back, tells me to get back to the airport and turns his microphone off.

No problem. I've done this before. I spot the Don Cesar and turn for it. Once over the Don:

"Whitted Tower, Cessna 54058 over the Don, inbound touch and go."

I did two touch and goes and a power off landing on runway 7. The wind was at 15 knots, gusting and shifting a bit. On one approach, I looked at the windsock at the end of runway seven. Once second it would be 20 degrees left of the runway, the next it would be down the runway. It make landing interesting. I would set up for a slip and find myself drifting left. Next trip I would line up straight and have the crosswind pushing me right. I gave up thinking about it and just flew the plane, that worked better. After the power off landing, Rob got out of the plane and told me to go have fun. Cool, with an airplane to myself, I think I can do that.

I stayed in the pattern and made two full stop landings before deciding to go to the beach.

"Whitted Tower, Cessna 54058 at Bay Air ready to taxi for westbound departure."

"Cessna 54058, wind 070 at 15, taxi to runway 7."

I taxi to the runway and hold, get takeoff clearance and I'm off. The plane performs better than ever. With a 15 knot headwind and Rob out of the plane, I'm climbing like a rocket. Usually, headed to the beach from Whitted, I would climb east bound, turn north around the pier while still climbing and then turn west, still climbing. Today, I had to level off as I was turning north around the pier to avoid climbing into Tampa's airspace.

Once over the beach, I flew south to Egmont Key. I circled the lighthouse and took the photo at the top of this post. All I had was my cell phone, so don't be too critical. I didn't expect to be doing this today, so I did not bring a real camera. Next time, I'll be prepared. Then I flew to the south end of Egmont and got this photo of what is left of the old fort.

It may not look like much now, but this was an artillery battery built during the Spanish-American war to guard the entrance to Tampa Bay. In historical perspective, a Spanish invasion of Florida was unlikely. I figure that politics has never changed, and Florida just had a good congressional delegation that knew how to bring home the pork.

Alter flying over Egmont, I climbed to 2000 feet and transitioned to slow flight. It was a little unnerving hearing the stall warning without Rob in the plane, so I resumed normal flight. I could not bring myself to attempt a stall without Rob, but I did practice setting up an emergency landing. Next time, I've promised myself to practice the stalls.

My time was starting to run short, so I headed for the Don. Once over the Don:

"Whitted Tower, Cessna 54058 over the Don, inbound to land."

Nothing.

"Whitted Tower, Cessna 54058 over the Don, inbound to land."

Again nothing. We had radio problems earlier in the day. At times, I could barely hear ATC. Other pilots were having the same problem, evidenced by their request to have instructions repeated. But this was silence. I adjusted the volume on the Garmin 430 and was considering turning back toward the beach until I had radio contact when I heard:

"Cessna 54058, how do you read?"

"Loud and clear, 54058."

"Cessna 54058, make straight in runway 7 winds 060 at 15."

I was relieved to hear the tower. I know the procedure for loss of radio communications, but I didn't want to do it today, not with all the traffic inbound to Whitted due to the World Series. My landing was uneventful, even with the gusty variable winds. I taxied back to Bay Air and could not find a parking spot. They weren't kidding about people flying in to the World Series. Steve at the desk told me not to worry about parking, the flight line guys would move the plane.

Rob wants me to fly a couple more times by myself before we get together again. Fine with me. Next time I plan on flying north to the Anclote Lighthouse, then south to Egmont again. Anclote is a little more than 25 miles, but Rob says it's OK. I'll have a real camera and hope to get some good photos. After that, I plan on heading east. In a previous life, I grew oranges for a living. I had an orange grove near a little town called Wiamauma. I want to have a look at it. When Rob and I get together next, we'll start working on soft and short field takeoffs and landings. Should be fun, I want to land on grass.

Once again, you can take a look at where I've flown by opening the lesson 9 file. You will need to have google earth installed in order to open the file. I'm trying to use a site called GPSVisualizer to add altitude perspective to these files, if I can figure it out.

lesson 9 file

Statistics

Dual Instruction Time: 11.0 hours

Pilot In Command: 1.5 hours

Landings: 50