I was on a roll

The year started slow flying wise.  Last year I flew 154 multi hours in the 10 months I had the Baron.  This year started very slow as the plane was down 7 weeks for an upgrade.  Then I had some other maintenance that took out a few more weeks.

I had recovered though and was on a hot streak, in 3.5 months flew 84 hours.  That pace is around 300 hours a year.  My goal is 160-180 hours per year to stay sharp so I was on a roll and then last week, I did go by the plane for various reasons but did not fly.  Early in the week I had just flown and then later in the week the weather was not cooperating when I had the time.  Yesterday we tried to fly but the morning weather was not  quite what I wanted.  I was pessimistic about today's forecast but surprise, other than some offshore rain, it was a nice morning.

CC and I headed out for some sightseeing.  In reality I just hate to have the engines sit without running.  They stay healthiest when the oil gets hot and drives of the moisture.  There was plenty of rain off the coast to watch.  This is a good example, the picture above was to our right and the below shot was too our left.  You pick the weather you want.

We cruised around a bit looking at the showers the landmarks like the Saint Augustine lighthouse.

It was another good day to work the radar and practice separating the ground from the rain.  Down low you need to be aggressive on the tilt up but that means only the closest storms paint accurately.

Over the water we don't have the clutter issue as water doesn't reflect well unless the waves are really big.  We had rain South of St. Augustine and it was interesting to compare our view, the live radar and the ground based signal.  As usual the ground based showed the big picture but was out of date.  

We didn't penetrate any weather today and soon it was time to return home as rain was popping up close to home.  CC flew us back to the initial approach and I took us in from there.  We had a small shower over Mayport but it floated away so we stayed dry.  We also heard someone call a water spout out at the beach which a friend of ours saw.  Overall a nice day to get back on a roll.