How to Exercise Your Airplane

Fly it.

I planned  to do a "Twofer", by flying N905SC in the early morning then return and fly N674PS immediately after. The preflight for 5SC went well. I had cleaned the battery terminals after my last visit. The start and ground procedures went well. Light traffic in the pattern, I was surprised that one of the schools based at the airport was still flying students. However the volume had gone from 4 or 5 in the pattern to 2 or 3.

The weather was good. A scud layer at about 3000' was no factor and the visibility was fantastic. I enjoyed the view of the Tampa skyline as I exercised the avionics to insure all systems were working properly.

I flew south along the east side of I75 staying away from my "nightmare towers" as I played with the Skyview autopilot. Then went over to Plant City to see if the runway construction was completed. It wasn't. Then back home for about 0.8 hours. Plugs and covers and tie-downs completed. No gripes.

It was good to see Sally again. We had plenty of gas in the tanks. Engine burped after 30 pulls with oil 2/3 up the stick. The previous work on the right main tire looked good, the left was fine, but the nose tire was low.

"Every 20 minute job is one broken bolt away from becoming a 3 day ordeal." Anonymous

I fired up the compressor and unwound the hose to reach the nose gear. I rolled the plane back to get the valve stem aligned with the cutout on the wheel pant. But the stem was at an odd angle and I couldn't get the hose to attach. I only played with it a few minutes before deciding to take off the pant to investigate further. The tire was not low, it was flat. So my twenty minute job just turned into a 2 hour ordeal. I'm a slow but meticulous mechanic. Simple Green found some bubbles near the base of the valve stem. Fortunately I had a new tube in stock. (Thank you Certus!) It was mid afternoon by the time I was ready for a maintenance check flight. She rolled nicely out of the hangar. We did two touch (just barely letting the nose gear kiss the runway) and goes and a full stop on RWY23. I let her run the length of the runway and took the last taxiway before returning to the hangar. No shimmy, no wobble. Returned to flight flight status.

A severe cold front came through ruining any chance for flying for the next few days. When it finally cleared up we had a cool clear day to get some more exercise with Sally. Preflight was uneventful (yay!) and I decided to go up to Crystal River. It was a nice smooth flight up. Again visibility was unlimited. After I made my position report a Piper Cub replied that he was setting up for an entry to RWY36. I hadn't considered that! So I took interval on him and made my way around the pattern to a beautiful low approach about a foot off the turf. Next I turned my downwind for RWY36 into a crosswind for RWY27 to practice a crosswind landing on the asphalt. Just one T&G, it was time to go home.

I fly a VFR airplane so rarely bring up the procedures page on my 696 GPS. Also, the landing pattern a KVDF is usually so full it doesn't lend itself to practicing instrument approaches. Now that the pattern isn't so busy I decided to dial up a GPS approach just to see if I could remember how to do it. Turned out to be a lot of fun. I just may have to do this more often.