immelmann
Actually got in the air today for the first time in a couple of weeks. It’s just been too rainy and/or windy on the days I was scheduled to fly, and even today was borderline with a gusty 15 mph wind out of the northwest, but I made the executive decision to go up anyway. I thought we’d just do some ground reference maneuvers and fly back to the airport, but we ended up flying all the way to Winston-Salem. I got some good practice with Class D airspace communications and a chance to land at their nice, wide runway. Didn’t hurt that the prevailing wind was blowing straight down the runway, either. Made my life easier–no crosswind to wrestle with. Landing at Sugar Valley was another story, though, since the runway doesn’t exactly line up with the wind and the surface is only 25 ft wide to begin with. And even just flying back from Winston… I had to crab into the wind darn near 45° just to maintain a constant heading tracking down I40. We flew 9899J, the only plane in the fleet with a GPS, and with it we could view our groundspeed–it was close to 70 kts with an indicated airspeed of 105-110. ‘Twas interesting. But I did well.
Mmm… Gotta do dry cleaning.