DAY 3

So because our plans changed and we're no longer flying up to Maine (my younger brother moved back to KC this past spring), so I'll have a free day to go wherever. Originally, I was hoping to go to a punk show in Chicago on Saturday night. I was thinking I'd fly up to Midway in the morning and grab a train into downtown, grab a hotel, and enjoy some 90s punk rock.

 
So that plan IS DONE. Honestly I really didn't feel like doing an urban Chicago adventure by myself (I've done too many rock shows solo and am kinda burned out on it). So we decided that pending the weather, this day may be a good oppotunity to take my brother's son Will on his first ride in a small plane.

We got up on this day to find the weather a little better than expected, so we chilled out in the morning and made plans to head to the airport in the afternoon.

Dan and Gary during coffee. I was content with half a Monster leftover from the night before.

Will was pumped to go flying. After lunch, Dan and I went for a walk to the local park that has some exercise stations so we knocked that out in the early afternoon.

We headed to the airport around 3pm, did a preflight, and decided to top off 201SR so it would be ready for our trip to NC on Sunday.

Dan and Will next to 201SR at the Huntinburg airport

Will was pumped. I went through my preflight, the run-up, and taxiied over to the active runway. I pushed the throttle forward and after pulling up off the runway he shouted "are we flying yet?"


I told him "yes, look to your right. We're 100 feet off the ground." We had him sitting on his booster so he could see out the window, but evidently that wasn't quite high enough. Regardless, I could tell be his grin how excited he was.

Will was ready to rock.

The flight started off well and within a few minutes we were over the small city of Jasper, Indiana.


My brother's wife and in-laws were outside waving to us, and my sister-in-law got this pic of my plane:

 We did a loop around his grandparents house in Jasper, Indiana (only about a 5 minute flight), turned around just north of the city, and came directly back.

Doing circles around their house upset his stomach a bit so I didn't want to push it. I had a great landing back at KHNB into a 5-10 knot direct crosswind out of the north. So that helped my mood a bit because it's always a bummer when my passengers aren't feeling well.

We came back to the house after that and got some dinner and are just generally laying low this evening. I'm doing some weather briefing stuff for tomorrow and it looks like we'll have a window from the late morning into the evening to get into Jacksonville, NC. About a 3.5 hour flight.

I'm really looking forward to this flight tomorrow. It should be VFR departing Indiana, but I'm going to file an IFR plan that I'll plan on picking up in the air.

DAY 4