Back in the nest

I picked the plane up from annual on Tuesday.  It was a good day for a post annual test flight with some wind but clear weather.  Annual had gone smoothly but the first flight after any maintenance is always an event.  No matter how good the shop is, the mechanics are human and maintenance induced failures are a thing.

This means extra careful preflights and checking all systems to make sure everything works as it should.  I am happy to report everything went well and it was a nice, uneventful trip home.  Three weeks of not flying did not seem to have impacted my basic flying skill much.  I did find my power setting was not as precise and my first landing was a bit flat but acceptable.

Friday I got out again to go over things one more time.  There was some weather down by Saint Augustine which I used to check the radar and refresh those skills.  The showers were pretty widely scattered so I could see them easily.  They were also short so the radar had to catch the moisture in a very thin slice of the atmosphere.  This creates problems imaging over urban areas.

The image above is zero degrees tilt and you can see how the coast refelects plenty of energy.  Zero tilt is fine over the ocean but over land you need to tilt the dish up at least 5 degrees when down low.  This next picture is with the radar 5.25 degrees up.

And this is what the XM radar is showing. Pretty close to the real time.  These showers were not moving too fast.  I can tell you that the big green blob in front of the plane on the XM was clear air though so a little bit pessamistic in this case.

The XM did miss that the shower off to my left was more intense than I would have liked.  It was showing just yellow but the the Radar below from a few minutes earlier as I was approaching shows clear areas of red and it looked mean visually.

A good reminder that XM and ADSB are not for penetrating storms.  Here is the case where the ground may be an issue.  Still tilted up to 5.25 degrees and the XM says a light shower. South East of SGJ.

Radar is saying it has moved more West and it's stronger.

That is around downtown Saint Augustine so is the red rain or building?  Simple answer, avoid it but, I think it's more rain.  The coast was painting strongly but at 5.25 degrees up, it is mostly gone, so at such a short range, my beam is not gonna reflect much down low and the coast farther out is not giving any ground returns.  My eyes also saw the heavy rain shower in that location and not where the XM placed it.  

The irony was that these showers were very local to the area.  The picture above is how it looked back home and once I passed the shower it looked like this.

Saturday night I decided I should reset the dates on my night currency so did a nice flight with some full stop landings to reset everything. 

The lights in Saint Augustine were quite nice from the air and Deck the Chairs even represented pretty well.  Overall happy to have the plane back and gearing up for some more adventures in 2024. 

Donuts with David and the year in review

Airplane is still in annual.  I have a tradition of inviting people over to the hangar for coffee and donuts while the plane is gone.  This year I decided to enhance the experience with a safety meeting in addition to the refreshments.  

We had about 18 people, depends if you count the infant guest.  Our topic was Back to Basics and we discussed common causes of accidents such as fuel, capability, performance and lack of planning.  Overall we had a nice talk.  The last few mornings have been cool but today it was pretty warm.  We had less coffee drinkers and I blame the warm weather.

It's been a busy year flying.  I may get a few more hours at the end of the month but so far I flew 212 hours in 2023 including 31 instrument approaches and 19.4 night hours.  We marked 12 states off in our quest for the lower 48 and took 2 big vacations and 4 small ones.  I also worked in 61.7 hours of public interest flying.

Overall it was a good year and I kept current and proficient.  I completed both a flight review and an Instrument Proficiency Check and both were good confirmation that my continuous training is working.  Looking forward to getting the plane back and  having more adventures in 2024.