Annual 2026 is Done

Last Thursday the plane was ready for pickup.  It always takes longer than I like but right now there is a scarcity of maintenance professionals so if you want it done right, you have to wait a bit.  Of course the weather has been perfect the last few weeks but Thursday morning it was 200 and 1/4 mile visibility.  My plan to head down around 9 AM was replanned to a noon departure.

The wait was a good idea, the clouds lifted and it became a nice day.   Well mostly nice, there were some rain shower floating around but they were widely scattered and we left them alone and they did the same for us.

The plane was ready as advertised.  We did a thorough preflight and other than asking for them to adjust the right strut a bit higher while we were there, everything checked out.  The flight home was thankfully completely routine.  I even remembered how everthing worked.  When it came time to land, I had a very satisfying arrival.  I always think the lack of practice will make me perform worse but that does not seem to be the case.  I think I get hyper focussed and that makes me really think it through and generally get great results.

Yesterday I took the plane out again for the second post annual flight.  It is one more chance to look at everything and double check that there are no issues.  For example on the way home I did not test the de-ice boots but I did yesterday.  I was just heading out to fly local and I had studied the weather, no mention of rain.  

As I got airborne I noted some rain down South so I decided to test the radar and headed that way.  It was not tall weather and I really struggled to see any vertical development at 50 miles.  Since the weather was over the ocean, I could tilt the radar straight at the horizon.  As I was at 3500, this meant that over land I would be imaging the ground.  Since water does not reflect back the same it works.  You can clearly see below the water from the the coast.

There were two small storms that looked about the same on ADSB but one showed as barely any precip on radar while te other hid some small areas of heavy precip.  Again a warning to not rely too heavily on ADSB/XM to fly through something.  The ADSB position was also a bit off due to the time delay.

I did a vertical profile of the rain and it wa actually quite short.  Looking at the storm confirmed the radar and it was not realy a thunderstorm yet.  All that said, while it was likely flyable, I would have avoided the heavy areas.

And yes the boots worked just like they are supposed to. After a nice flight I tucked the plane back in the hangar.  I do have a list of post annual work like wiping off some exhaust stains under the wings and resealing the boots if anyone wants to drop by to help.