Double Block

Today was another long day, but very productive in the same instance too. It was another double block of lessons from 1030 - 3. It started off a little hairy.....we were originally planning to make the first flight out to another airport, but what we didn't realize was that there was a poker run going on today, with Norwood Airport being one of the stops. So, not only on top of the weekend flyers, there were also the crazies that were partaking in the poker run! There was a ton of airplane traffic out there today. Both leaving the airport area, and coming back to, we were constantly being given warnings by the Air Traffic Controller to watch out for traffic. It was nutty! So, today we went out to the practice area again and did some stalls, slow flight, emergency simulation, and back to the airport for a couple take offs and landings. All my skills are progressing nicely. Since there was a lot of traffic out, we didn't spend too much time doing take offs and landings. It was ending at 2, and the last meetup point was down in Plymouth, so we were hoping that they would clear out by the time we headed up for my second lesson. We took a break around 1245 to go grab so lunch at Subway and relax for a bit.

Then we went back up right around 130 for my second lesson. Sure enough, the traffic had cleared out and things were starting to calm back down. All in all it was a nice day with light and variable winds with scattered clouds making it a smooth day for lessons. This time we decided to add some extra altitude once we got out of Boston's reach of airspace, since all my previous training has been done around 2500 feet. This time we broke above the scattered cloud layer up to 4000 feet. It's really amazing how smooth it is up there above the clouds. Not a bump at all the entire time we were up there! Here are a couple pictures I took today, we wore our serious faces this time, and just a picture looking outside dead ahead at the blue sky and clouds and ground below.

From here we practiced a few more maneuvers and did some basic instrument flight simulation. Josh even demonstrated an emergency decent from 4000 to 2000 that was much more like a steep roller coaster hill with some clearing turns involved. Pretty interesting stuff to know if you ever needed to attempt to put an engine fire out. Then we went back to the airport and practiced my take offs, flying the pattern making most of the radio calls to Norwood Ground and Norwood Tower, and landings (which still need a little bit more work). Overall, still a really good day and really productive lessons!