I got in a fair bit of flying for work this week, with trips to transport people for meetings in the Cessna C550 Citation II and the Beech King Air C90A. Saturday it was clear and cool here, so late morning I headed to the airport to fly the RV-8. I planned to do some more cruise performance testing with wheel pants OFF. The data I got on January 24th looks really, really clean, and I wanted to see how well data from another flight at another altitude would match up to the previous data.
I left the aircraft to preheat while I had lunch, then did a walk around, pulled it out of the hangar, and climbed in. I strapped in, and reached down to grab the headset, and it wasn’t there. I had taken it home as I wanted to try it in the King Air, and had forgotten to bring it back to Smiths Falls. I went back in the hangar, hoping that perhaps my old David Clark headset was in there somewhere, but no luck. Drat. Drat. Drat. I pulled the aircraft back in the hangar, and pondered my next move.
It would take an hour and a half to drive back home and return with the headset, and I really didn’t have that much time to spare, nor did I want to do that much driving. I called Terry to tell her that I wasn’t going flying after all, and she offered to bring the headset to me. What an angel! Thanks Terry.
After Terry arrived with the headset, I launched. I dropped the idea of doing more cruise performance testing, as that would take more time than I had to spare. I simply flew up to Ottawa and did two practice ILS approaches, then did a few circuits at Smiths Falls, taking advantage of the left crosswind to get some practice in crosswind landings.
The ILS approaches went well, but I definitely need to get some more cockpit storage pockets. If I am solo, I can put things in the passenger footwells, which are right beside my seat. But that won’t work when Terry is along.
Lessons Learned:
- Make and use a “Going to the Airport Checklist”.
- Leave all critical items such as headsets in the aircraft.
