Back to Flying

After several years of not being able to fly consistently, I've been blessed to have my friend invite me out with him for a couple cross-country flights. We've had a blast.

Our first cross-country flight together was last Sunday, and we started at Republic airport in LI. We had lunch on Block Island (RI), and then the last stop was Hartford-Brainard Airport, before we headed back to Long Island. We flew a beautiful Cessna 172, and Bry allowed me to fly a good portion of the level flight. After getting use to the plane a bit I was surprised after so many years of not flying that was able to keep good heading, altitude, attitude and coordinated turns. The day turned out to be fantastic; loads of fun.

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Our next flight was this past weekend in a magnificent Piper Warrior III; we decided our first stop would be KILG -New Castle Airport Wilmington, Delaware.  After landing we had to wait a bit for the fuel.

  

We headed off to VA, when we got closer to that airport we heard on the frequency that it was closed, so we just kept flying to our next destination Martinsburg, West Virginia, MRB -Eastern Wv Regional/Shepherd Field Airport. We parked our bird, and headed in for some chow. Turns out the EAA chapter 1071 group was having their Christmas dinner.   

We took our time enjoying the ambiance and relaxing after dinner, before we headed out. Our plan was to re-fuel again, as our trip back was about a 3 hours. Unfortunately though, once we got outside to our plane, we found that the entire airport operations had shut down for the night and there were no fuel trucks to be found. 

We looked at the aeronautical charts and found an airport nearby; KHGR -Hagerstown Regional-Richard A Henson Field Airport, so we headed off to this destination.

 

Things got a little interesting on this leg. Not 5 minutes in, I started to smell oil, and the engine sounded a bit rough. I started praying nothing too eventful would happen like; like the engine would quite.

We made it without incident to Hagerstown Regional airport, and were greeted by a wonderful lineman, who not only laid out the red carpet (literally), but treated us to tea and cookies (which was much appreciated at this point as the weather had really dipped down).

 After tea, refueling and checking the oil we head back to KFRG - Republic Airport. The rest of the flight was uneventful, and with a nice tail wind, our time back was cut by a half hour. We were back at our car at 12 Midnight.

We had started out some 12 hours prior and now the day was done; shucks time at work never passes this quickly.

If weather holds out, we are planning another flight this weekend, stay tuned.