Mandy and the Tiger

A long cold front stretched from the Great Lakes down to Atlanta and then back up to the Northeast giving New England floods of 'biblical proportions'. The precip wasn't quite so bad in the south but we had unstable air and wind gusts higher then 25 kts. Even when right down the runway, that's getting out of my comfort zone. My flight the previous night was cancelled due to high winds and very powerful isolated storm cells which moved through like freight trains.

METARs were still reading high winds, but now they were in the teens and forecasted to subside. No reported thunderstorm activity so I thought we could give it a try. On the drive to the airport we saw a few little puffy ones, and the winds seemed to be much better. We arrived about 4:30 local and watched some light airplanes taking off which just confirmed that we could go.

Mandy helped me take the cover off and do the walk around. Just back from a 100 hour inspection, everything seemed to be in order. Still some mix up with the avionics shop, so no new equipment to play with. Startup took a few extra cranks, I suppose because it had been sitting for awhile. After she started everything looked normal.

Ground told me to follow a King Air out taxiway bravo to the end of Rwy 27. As I got out of the ramp area a King Air was just about to take the runway. I mistakenly thought he was my traffic. Another pulled in behind me. No issue as I had room at the end of the taxiway to do my run up and be out of his way, but I'll remember to look more carefully next time.

It was a busy day. We watched a number of planes land including a Citation, a C172 a few helicopters and a an RV. Lights, camera, action and we were ready to go. Smooth take off and climb, I planned to go up to 4,500 but passing 3,000 she had a problems with her ears. So, I went back down to 2,500 and headed toward Cartersville (VPC). After a few minutes she felt better so I continued a gradual climb with no further problems. I let her fly a bit and she made a beautiful 360 degree turn. Later we headed up to Rome for a couple of T&Gs. She liked it.

Departed there and headed for home. As we got close to our housing development I circled to see if we could find our house, but no joy. So I called the tower, entered the down wind for a visual and made 'squeaker'. I like the Tiger.

We flew 128 miles, 156 mph over the ground and got up to 4891 ft on a beautiful clear day.

AA5B
Time = 1.5