Cartersville, Georgia

I received a notice from the Flying Club stating that "Currency in aircraft type AA5B will expire within the next month." I had spent so much time and effort learning to fly the G1000 that my first love had been neglected. It was time to go have some fun.

The local weather hasn't changed much. It is, maybe 10 degrees Cooler, but we are still in the summertime cycle of hot, hazy mornings turning into dark noisy CBs in the afternoon. I scheduled the Tiger for an 11:00 (L) go to bounce in the local area for about an hour. There were no applicable NOTAMS, and nothing else in my planning indicated any reason not to play hooky and go flying.

Objective of the flight: re-familiarization with the Tiger.

Ground procedures all went well, and my comfort level was high. Even after a month away this airplane still felt like home. I decide to depart to the Northwest and try the new GPS approach at Cartersville (VPC). Runup and takeoff were normal. There was a thin cloud layer at 3000 ft due to the power plant stacks, so I snuck above it and leveled at 4500 ft. It was very smooth air, trim it up and hands off kind of flying. I dialed up VPC in the GNS 430, pushed enter/enter and followed the purple line. Checked the AWOS, (no surprise,) and found a Robinson helo and a Baron were inbound to the field when I checked CTAF.I did my calculation to figure out the holding entry, then reported outbound at DACEG (probably mispronounced it), about 10 miles north of the field. The GPS confirmed my entry (teardrop) and I did my 6 T's. One turn in the pattern was good, so I decided to opt out of the approach and dial up the LOC 19 instead. This was interesting because the frequency has changed, and I wanted to confirm that the new freq was in the updated data base. (Yes, I'm still a skeptic.) It was, and I flew the rest of the approach as a straight in.

Another lousy landing. I HATE THAT! The truth is, I gave up on it and allowed myself to 'drop it in'. Not horrible, but when you can do better you should. That was just plain being lazy.

Departed there and headed for home. Just for completeness I dialed in KRYY in the GNS430 and drove down the purple highway. ATIS was 'November" and they were still using 27. Once I got south of runway centerline I called the tower and was surprised with a RIGHT downwind "call 1.5 from the field". So, I dropped the left wing to get north of the field and descended down to 2000 (pattern altitude). I was number 2 behind a Cessna (company traffic) on a 2 mile final. I haven't flown a right hand pattern in awhile (or left hand for that matter...Shooting approaches are mostly straight ins), so my spacing wasn't great. However my airwork was good, found my traffic in plenty of time and made a great (finally) landing back home.

AA5B
Time = 1.0

*Update; The 96c is in Olathe getting tweaked a bit. Hopefully I'll have tracks and stats on the next update.