Finally Back in the Air

The upgrade process was much longer than I expected. This has been followed by a marathon of bad weather. It seems that every weekend has been nothing but rain. It is now only one month until our annual pilgrimage to Oshkosh and I want to get some flight time in to check out and fine tune the new systems and to knock the rust off my flying skills. 

We recently had a couple of nice weekdays on which I could sneak out and get some flight time in. I thought I'd post a couple of pictures since it has been a while since I made a post.

It's always a little nervous getting back into the air after an absence, especially when you've rebuilt or modified just about every system in the plane.

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The weather was murky, but flyable, so we pushed her out on the ramp.

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Airborne again at last.

Liftoff

Nancy takes a shot of the plane on downwind

Taxi back to the hangar

There was only time for a few patterns, but everything works.

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With our new ADSB Out capability, Flightaware captures every flight. The details of the flight are available immediately. Kind of cool.

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Another nice night and its time to take Nancy up for a sunset sightseeing flight. 

Ready to go

Nancy's first flight this year

Beautiful reflection on the wing

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A few shots as we taxi up to the airport. It is still and the sky is turning orange.

View of the new panel and the sky

The upgraded panel

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Here's a quick video of our takeoff.

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Here are some pictures from the flight. It was beautiful and still, with some haze that was turning pink in the sunset. 

Winglet view

View out the back on the pilot side

View of the screens

Into the sunset

Flying with my girl

Sunset farm fields over Lancaster

Looking for our neighborhood

We circled the neighborhood and waved to everyone in their back yards. As usual, we immediately got texts saying hello and that they saw us go over. This is always fun. Even on return from long trips, the phone will ding as we fly over our little town as everyone recognizes the sound of our plane when we fly over. The Velocity sounds different than other planes.

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The sun gets lower as we head back to the airport

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Here's a video of our landing.

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Back on the ground. The sun sets as we taxi back to the hangar.

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I'm a happy pilot after getting back in the air with my favorite co-pilot.

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The bad news - the plane is covered with gooey bugs. I mean hundreds of them.

Gross.

Bug massacre on the leading edge.

Nancy helps me debug the plane.

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Once again, Flightaware has recorded our meandering sightseeing flight. This will be great to document long trips.

 We had a great time and look forward to some decent weather to actually go somewhere.

More to come.

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