June Flying Recap

Total hours flown in June: 12
Total hours flown year to date: 46.7

The weather at the beginning of the month was a little cruddy, but that gave me plenty of time to get all of my signs and pictures hung up in the hangar.

June 9th: I didn't log any time today, but I spent the day flying to Richmond (RIC) and Hampton Roads (PVG) with my buddy Dave in his C210. I took this on short final to RIC; the tower kind of messed up the sequence between us and a jet, then sent the JET around. Oops.

June 10th: 2.3 in the C172. Mark and I flew back to Falwell (W24) to pick up the paintings we bought when we visited in May. We rented a U Haul pickup again and had a nice afternoon wandering around town before heading back to HWY. It was a pretty hazy flight; apparently the jet stream was set up just right to bring down a bunch of smoke from wildfires in Canada.

June 11th: 0.7 in the C172. This was just a quick solo flight to double check a few things. It was hazy and mostly smooth, except when I flew over one of the nearby power station things. The thermals coming off that were so strong I thought I hit something!

June 12th: 1.6 in the C172. I don't have any pictures from this flight because I spent most of it under the hood! I'm working on getting IFR current again, and this was the first lesson toward that. Let's just say I'm rusty...but improving.

June 13th: 1.3 in my mechanic's Piper Cherokee. What a nice change of pace to fly a low-wing plane! He needed a flight review, and we lucked out and had a nice morning. He flew really well - it was a lot of fun!

June 16th: 2.9 in the C172, We had a long weekend, so we flew to Ocracoke; you can read more about the trip in my previous posts. We made a stop in Manteo (MQI) to refuel, then flew down to Ocracoke (W95) and spent a couple days hanging out. It was a really nice trip!

June 18th: 3.2 in the C172. As nice as it would have been to spend more time in Ocracoke, we had to get home. It had rained overnight, but by the time we biked out to the airport to load up the plane, the sun was out and the ramp was drying off. We made a stop in Currituck County (ONX) on the way home for fuel, then made it back to HWY about an hour before the storms started popping up.

June 28th was our annual Women Can Fly event. It was IFR and rained the whole day, so we didn't get any of the rides up, but we still had a really good turnout!

I also found out that I fit perfectly in the front seat of a T-28.   :)

***

So, since it's already halfway through the year, I figured it would be a good time to review how things are going toward reaching my flying goals for the year.

Goal: 240 hours total time for the year
Actual: 46.7 hours total time for the year

Um.

A number of things have gotten in the way of flying: more overtime than usual at work, broken airplanes, the weather, and even myself...there are days when I'm too tired or just don't have the motivation to go to the airport, even if the weather is beautiful and I have time to fly. With that in mind, I've decided to revise my goals a bit for the rest of the year.

New goal: 100 hours total time for the year, including 10 hours of tailwheel time

It will still be a little bit of a stretch to make this goal, especially since the C172 has been down for the past few weeks with various squawks, but it's achievable enough with a little effort. I'm tentatively scheduled for a lesson in my C120 next week to get tailwheel current again, and I'll hopefully have my C172 back next week, too, so either way, I'll be back in the air again soon. I'm getting antsy being stuck on the ground!