Pilot Life: Looking for Elk out of St. Anthony! (Not Logged)

This morning, my uncle invited me out to go flying with him. How could I refuse the offer? I checked the weather (via the nearest automated weather reporting station, which happens to be Rexburg!) and I checked for AIRMETs and SIGMETs in the area; there weren't any that was going to affect our local VFR flight! My uncle pulled his Mooney out of the hangar and he and I went through pre-flighting the airplane together. Afterwards, we hopped in got ready for flight. My uncle let me fly from the left seat and operate the radios while he did all the complex stuff like handling the landing gears and propeller pitch. We got started the engine started, taxied out to the open ramp area and my uncle walked me through the run-up procedure. After run-ups, we taxied to Runway 22 and took off.

The good ol' "Moon-Dog!"

My uncle had me do a left cross wind departure and we flew northbound towards Ashton. My uncle also had an ulterior motive for the flight; he and another one of my uncles have been hunting elk for the past week and they've been getting skunked every time. So what better way to look for them than from the air?! And that's where I came in; my uncle wanted me to fly the plane while he looked below our flight path. I also looked a little here and there when I had a spare moment between flying and monitoring. We flew towards Ashton and buzzed the Ashton Hill with a couple of passes (from a safe altitude of course!) looking for elk. Like the hunts my uncles have been on, spotting them from the air ended up being a bust as well. So we headed back south towards St. Anthony.

My uncle and I set up for a landing on Runway 4 by coming in on the left-45 on the downwind. I made my base turn and then to final approach, until we touched down; it wasn't my best landing since I still wasn't used to the handling characteristics of a Mooney. I throttled forward and made a touch-and-go and got airborne again to work the pattern. We made the second landing a full-stop. Again, we got set up in the pattern and we came in for a landing. We taxied back to the hangar, shut down, and called it a successful flight (albeit, un-logged for me).

Always a blast flying with my uncle!