Pilot Life: A Great Friday Afternoon Flight!

Well, yesterday's scheduled flight was a bust because of some nearby thunderstorm activity so we had to cancel; afternoon thunderstorms are pretty common during this time of year especially. But today, we managed to get in the air and we had a great flight despite the moderate amount of heat we got on the ground today. It was actually quite surprising to see how the atmosphere was in working in our favor today, but I wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth! We had a late start to the flight however due to both my instructor and I running a little late due to the early Friday afternoon rush-hour traffic on the roads. And on top of that, we had to spend time pulling the airplane out of the hangar, tow it over to the fuel pumps, and top off the fuel tank! I was fine with that, since I felt that all of this was part of aircraft ownership and operations.

The one problem was that the plane I chose to fly in (I get to schedule my own flights with my instructor at Platinum Aviation!) was boxed in my two other airplanes in the flight school's tiny hangar! I started the pre-flight, but when I checked the fuel quantity, the tank was nearing empty. So my instructor helped me tow it over to the fuel pumps after we got the other planes out of the way! I continued the pre-flight inspections and then we added some fuel to the tanks. After all that hassle was behind us, we hopped in and I got the engine started. I then taxied us a short ways and did the run-ups.

Diamond DA-20-C1 Katana (N802CT) just before we re-fueled it. This is Platinum Aviation's newest addition to the flight school's fleet.

Everything looked good, so I taxied us over to the runway and we got airborne. As per the usual, we headed out to the south practice areas, where my instructor had me practice power-on and power-off stalls, slow flight, turns around a point, S-turns, followed by a simulated engine-out emergency followed by a simulated engine-out landing. We also did recovery from unusual attitudes as well as some basic instrument maneuvers, which meant I got to log some hood time as well. Satisfied, we landed back at Spanish Fork and called it a good flight lesson.