Head in the clouds

Tim and I made up Thursday's flight today. The AI in 50G was fixed and works flawlessly. I was a little worried about whether or not we'd end up flying today---when my alarm went off at 6 the winds were 330 at 20, gusting 25. Got to the airport and they had slowed down a bit (just a bit)...Flight Service was calling the cloud bases at about 3500, and the freezing line was about an hour west of us, so we were a go.

Tim had designed a little round-robin course for us. I'd turn 270 climbing out of McGregor and then intercept the Waco VOR outbound, pick up the Temple VOR at the Moody intersection, overfly Temple and turn outbound for the Bosel intersection, track back to the Waco VOR station and then fly the full procedure for the VOR 17 approach into McGregor.

We got to about 3500, and sure enough, I could see the glare change outside from under my foggles (I promise I wasn't cheating!) and could see that we'd entered the clouds. Awesome! It's one thing to work on your instrument scan in clear air, but to get in the clouds and know "it's all me" is a really neat feeling. I feel like I did really well. Even made a really nice landing in gusty winds once I got out from under the foggles.

This instrument thing isn't going to be bad. Not as much fun as tailwheels on grass strips, but I do think I'm going to have fun with it.

Next flight is tomorow morning at 0800...we're going to get a little ahead on the timeline this weekend, which is no problem by me. I know I keep saying it, but leaving my old job was the best thing that's ever happened to me.

Blue skies!