Navigation, Charity, bumped head. Never a dull moment.

This morning at 7:00am I was due to do my first Navigation flight - a dual with Gilbert from Goodyear - Pierce - Gila Bend - Mobile - Goodyear. I made a note last night that my flying buddy Mal was also due to do the same flight but at 5:30am. I arrived at the airport for 5am, giving myself enough time to get the current winds aloft data so I could calculate my route, and then be able to back seat Mal on his flight. I met Gilbert in the crew room and when I told him about Mal having the same flight he was a bit worried, as he hadn't warned Mal about the Navigation and therefore didn't expect him to have anything prepared. Gilbert went off to Dispatch and cancelled Mal's flight... meanwhile Mal arrived with all his route pretty much planned out (with some help from Toddy). Gilbert came back and rather sheepishly told Mal he'd just cancelled his flight..... oops.
I decided to offer Mal my 7:00 flight - I was more than happy to back seat and soak up the scenery, so the two of us sorted out our route data then had a briefing from Gilbert on filing a flight plan. It was nice and relaxed, and at 7:00 we got the keys to N268ND and headed out to pre-flight together. Mal got us off the ground a little while later, and he got stuck into the flying really well. Gilbert was great as usual at pointing out things as we went along, and the three of us had a really pleasant time. After a hard touch and go at Gila Bend, we headed over to Mobile where I got a really nice shot over the wing of the runway below.

We then headed back into Goodyear for tea and medals, Gilbert tried to demonstrate how to do a proper landing despite our complaints about the sticky yoke in this aircarft.... unfortunately he wasn't quite on the numbers, but still impressive. Video clip HERE (84.7Mb). When we got back into Dispatch I noticed I had a solo General Handling planned for 4pm. Still feeling charitable, I offered this slot to Mal as he is quite a bit behind on solos now, whereas I only have three slots left before PT1 and I want to leave at least one for just before the test.
This obviously meant I didn't actually fly today, but I did get to spend the rest of the day with Clare and Georgia. We decided to head over to Tempe area to a childrens play place called Toy Town - only when we got over there (30 miles trip) the place was shut. Gutted. Fortunately Arizona Mills (huge shopping mall) was just up the road so we went up there. Not as great a place for Georgia, but we did our best to make it nice for her: treated her to chocolate Malt at Johnny Rockets, a ride on the carousel, and generally just letting her charge around a lot. We all had a great time - Clare treated herself to some new clothes, and I treated myself to some nice daddy-daughter time. Well, it was nice up the point where Georgia fell over her own big feet in a toy shop, giving herself a heck of a bump on her head. Poor little girl - cursed with big canoes for feet like her dad. I spotted some nice little Dora the Explorer toys, which helped distract her from the pain a little.



All in all it's been a really nice day. I'm scheduled to do my Navigation flight at 7:00 tomorrow, so I've been doing a little practise on Flight Sim this evening. Compare the fly-by at Mobile on flight sim to the real thing, it's not too shabby, especially considering I'm running it on my laptop.




Anyhoo, enough geekiness, I'm off to catch some shut eye so I can get up early and re-do my flight plan in the morning.
Ciao

Simon