With things under control at work, I got to take a vacation day last week for a trip to Maine for lunch with Dan, Gloria and Michiko. Michiko and I knew it was going to be fun when we pulled into Bridgeport and found Snoopy 1, the MetLife blimp, getting ready to launch! You can’t look at Snoopy dressed as the World War 1 Flying Ace and not get a grin on your face!
Gigi flew in to KBDR while I was filing our IFR flight plan for Bridgeport to Wiscasset (KIWI) and getting a 20-minute long very thorough briefing. After a quick pre-flight and settling into the airplane on a very steamy tarmac, getting the big fan up front started helped to generate a little bit of a cooling breeze as I finished getting the rest of the cockpit set up for our flight. Since it had been almost three months since I had flown Gigi, Dan helpfully reminded on switch and instrument locations.
Our clearance was slightly different from what I had filed, and we (later) found a couple of hiccups where the routing ATC gave us didn’t actually connect to the airways we were traveling. Taxiing out, we used the full length of runway 24 for our departure and were very quickly cleared all the way up to our cruise altitude of 9,000 feet, where it was nice and cool. (So cool, Gloria complained her toes were getting chilled!)
After not flying (besides the short RV hop) for over a month, I was feeling really rusty, and just keeping up with the airplane at the outset was making me tense. I was glad Dan was watching over my shoulder and backing me up. But jumping back into the mix, including the navigation and radio work, etc. was good for me—I love a good challenge!
Eventually, I started to feel a little more comfortable and once we were at altitude and trimmed out, I found my instrument scan coming back to me and could join in on some of the conversation while keeping an ear out for controller handoffs, although Dan caught a couple that I almost missed. There was no turbulence and while the visibility was pretty hazy, it wasn’t too bad.
As we got up towards Maine, we found that the weather along the shoreline was becoming more overcast than broken. At Wiscasset, they were calling it overcast at about 1,500 feet. As Gigi is not GPS equipped and the only instrument approaches into KIWI are GPS, we asked for the ILS 4 approach at Auburn/Lewiston (KLEW), which would allow us to get down below the clouds and see whether we could then proceed VFR to KIWI (or just land at KLEW and rent a car)(we’ve done that before at KLEW).
The descent was a bit rocky as we came down through a small layer of clouds on the ILS and got bounced around a bit. I was a little bit right of centerline as we broke through the clouds. Once through, however, visibility was at least 10 miles with a ceiling of about 1500’ overcast, including towards the east where KIWI lay. So we cancelled our IFR and flew VFR the rest of the hop.
Approaching KIWI, Dan walked me through getting Gigi ready. I slowed up enough to drop the gear, which added some extra stability. Setting up for the right hand downwind for runway 25, I went through GUMPS before making the base leg turn and then the turn to final. It felt like a steep approach (Gigi always feels like a steep approach to me, though it’s not—still trying to get used to that visual picture), but the descent was okay and the airspeed was okay, albeit a little fast. In the end, I pulled out power late and started to flare too high, which would have dumped us very unceremoniously onto the runway. Luckily, I caught the error and the quick developing sink by adding some power that was just enough to make a squeaker of a landing—but none of us, myself especially, felt at all good about the landing. For only my second landing in Gigi (and that last one was 3 months ago!), it was not too bad, but could have been MUCH MUCH better.
So, very happy to be on the ground in once piece, we taxied in and tied down Gigi and then worked on getting transportation into town. There was no crew car available, and getting a cab turned out to be a bit of an adventure on its own, but we finally secured one from Bath, the next big town over. Luckily, with the heavy traffic on Route 1, our cabbie knew some back roads (will have to remember that route next time we drive up!) which brought us around to Water Street, just across Route 1 from Red’s Eats.
We had the normal 1+ hour wait on line to order our food, but it was much cooler than in CT/NY and for whatever reason the bugs weren’t biting. As is always the case, the food was SO worth the wait! The lobster rolls were delicious, as were the battered and fried onion rings, zucchini sticks and mushrooms. Dan even got his Whoopie Pie. While it’s not a place for dieters, Red’s Eats is a rare enough treat that is FAN-tastic!
Unfortunately, then we had another 1 hour wait for a cab to return for the ride back to KIWI. We had been keeping an eye on some thunderstorm activity while we had waited on line for food and during the wait for the cab, so by the time the cab found us, we were getting a bit anxious to get back and into the air on our way home. Dan filed as we drove back and then we fueled up quickly.
Dan took the takeoff from KIWI and we quickly passed through the layer of overcast to sunshine above. He handed the yoke back over to me and we climbed up to 8,000 feet for the trip home. Keeping an eye on the weather, it looked like the approaching thunderstorms would reach the Manchester and Gardner VOR areas right about the same time we would. Boston Approach helpfully worked us around the storms, routing us south shortly after Kennebunk VOR, straight over Pease International (KPSM) and then providing radar vectors down past Lawrence and Hanscom Fields to the BOSOX intersection where we joined V1 and then resumed our own navigation back to Bridgeport.
The landing back at BDR was a bit better. Still not great, but much better than the KIWI landing! Practice will eventually make perfect on Gigi.
In all it was a terrific day catching up with Dan and Gloria and enjoying their company, getting some fantastic food, doing some flying, and not having to be at work!
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