What’s Up
A touch of winter, but great air to encourage flight. That
was last week's favored conditions, allowing most aerial plans to proceed.
Friday's dash of snow took up a few hours, however. Monday the 12th
dawned a little freakish. I took off eastbound and was greeted by white snow
cover laying across a diagonal line from south of Butler to just west of
Clinton. All else was dry brown, and the snow was gone when I returned that
afternoon.
Mucho traffic came and went this week, such as several Piper
Cherokees, a Cessna 182, a Cirrus and a homebuilt Van's RV. A hulking North
American T-28A Air Force trainer, circa 1950's, parked its 800-hp bulk here for
a few days, in the process of being ferried to a new owner in Virginia. This
one was painted in U.S. Army Vietnam-era colors, but I doubt that the Army ever
owned T-28's. The A-model was used by the USAF for advanced training into jets,
while the T-28B and C had 50% more horsepower and was used by the Navy.
Locally, CFI's Christian Tucker and Eric Eastland were out
with the Mooney M-20 and Cessna Skyhawk, respectively, while Les Gorden's Piper
Twin Comanche and Beech Bonanza saw action. Jeremie Platt saw to his Grumman
Tiger's needs and I extracted the Aeronca Champ from storage.
A brand-new Private Pilot joined the ranks last week, as Bob
Plunket of Clinton passed his practical exam for the rating. Bob moved up from
Nashville 15 months ago and promptly set to work on achieving his goal. Now he
can transition from the Cessna 150 into a Piper Cherokee and Aeronca Champ in
the family fleet. Congratulations, Bob!
“Is it pretty cold up there?” is a common interrogation, to
which I can respond, “Not in the cockpit, but outside it's pretty chilly.” The
standard temperature decline is 3.5 degrees per 1000-foot increase in altitude,
so 70 degrees at sea level becomes 35 at 10,000 feet. But things are seldom
standard in one particular air mass; inverted temperatures, with warmer air
aloft, are common in wintertime. So, when it's 10 degrees on the surface we
might find it in the 20s a few hundred feet up.
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