Comin' to your ci-tay

So, its been a while since I have posted on here so I figured Id do a recap of what I have been up to. Ive been a busy guy. I started working the desk at the flight school. Hoping to get a student lined up soon. Between my day job, working at independence air and the flight school...I havnt had much time for flying. But I did take some pretty cool IFR flights. I went down on 9/11 to see my hokies play Ohio Univ for the home opener. The game started with a b2 flyover...that was pretty cool. The flight down was even cooler. We departed VFR and picked up flight following down to BCB. Potomac approach cleared us up to our cruise altitude and into the Class B airspace. We were at 6500 and over some 4000 ft mountains. Always makes me nervous flying over mountains but its a calculated risk. I was in the right seat and Dan was in the left. His wife erin was in the back. We were about 30 miles SW of JYO and could see we couldnt maintain VFR, so i asked for a popup clearance from approach. The cleared us to join Victor airway 143 which goes from \CSN vortac to MOL vor. After some confusion and the inability to pick up the airway we ended up going GPS direct to BCB. We were in and out of the clouds and had a really nice sunny flight on top of most of the crud below. Some convective stuff made our ride interesting with some bumps, and flying on instruments from the right seat was interesting. Its all good though.

The flight home was interesting. We had to wait for the VA TEch police to let us into the airport since we came back after the FBO closed. We did a preflight and everything looked good. We taxied out and did a run up after we got our clearance back to JYO. after the runup and right before takeoff we got a low voltage light on the annunciator panel. So we taxied back, advised ATC and did a quick trouble shoot. We found a popped breaker and reset it. the warning light went off and we did another runup. the breaker held and we departed uneventfully. I later found out that this is a common problem and about half the time the breaker will pop again. I guess we were just lucky that night.

We were cleared up to 7000 but we at max gross wt, and had a hard time gettting up there so we stayed at 6000, much to the shagrin of ATC. I was PIC and made a decision they would have to deal with. The rest of the flight was normal. ATC had us relay a clearance to an aircraft on the ground at shenandoah while we were abeam the airport. A couple of "time-builders" heading out for some IFR training. My night landing left a little to be desired, but we all made it home safe.

Last weekend we took a cessna out to harrass the Gold Cup horse races inVA. We found the event and did a few laps while we watched the partiers below. We headed back to JYO and were greeted with a direct xwind at 15 knots or so. I need to get out and work on my xwind landings, especialy from the right seat. Always learning.

I am headed back down for another game in Blacksburg this Thursday. The hokies are playing tough and they have a big game against Boston College this week....shoudl be a good flight and a great game.