For the month of March and April, the weather has conspired against me. Gusting winds daily have cancelled most of my flights. I typically schedule 3-4 times a week and recently, I have been lucky to get in one flight. So… This has been me lately.
Today, however, there was a break in the wind and I got in a round robin cross country flight to KEXX.
Everything was working out fantastic, TAF’s predicted sky clear, winds variable 3kts. As I was preflighting, the wind picked up substantially. I checked the AWOS and it was saying winds were gusting to 10. The saving grace was that they were right down the runway. My instructor walked out to the plane next to mine with another student and asked “Are you paying attention to the winds?”. I replied to the affirmative and let her know what I last saw. She seemed pleased that I was on top of it.
The trip was really uneventful except for a couple of things to note. As I was fueling up, someone from the FBO came running out. Evidently, I was trying to fuel from a pump that was reserved for farm equipment. It was 100LL fuel, so it was the right fuel but for some reason that pump was reserved for farm equipment. I needed to open up a big silver box to find the pump that I was supposed to use. The problem was, the big silver box looked like one of those things that was reserved for maintenance people or authorized people only.
It was only the second time that I have ever fueled a plane by myself, so I chalked it up to a learning experience. I had a nice chat with the guys at the FBO and then I was on my way.
The next bit was that Greensboro approach notified me that they were having radar issues and it took them a while to pick me up and give me a squawk code. 15 minutes later, they lost me again and had me squawk VFR. I listened in to the frequency in case they mentioned to someone else that an unidentified plane was converging with them.
I hit all of my waypoints on both the trip to and from. Felt good to be back in the air. Next I still need to get in that night cross country, so far 10 scheduled flights have been canceled. Then I need to do my long cross country, which is a flight of greater than 150nm.
Here is my cloud ahoy track to KEXX. Not the straightest flight that I have made but…https://www.cloudahoy.com/debrief/?key=Oibh37XGpWCahJM2E