Saturday, December 6, 2014

A trip around the pattern

A few weeks ago, anticipating the arrival of my sister and brother-in-law to Saint Paul for Thanksgiving, I went out after work and shot some night landings to get current.

Pushing the plane back into the hangar has always been difficult because of the incline and also a wooden ramp, meant to block water from flowing back into the hangar in the winter.

If there's any snow or ice, it's very difficult and on this night there was a little snow on the pavement.

I had some ice cleats but didn't have the best ones on and as I was pushing to get another shot at clearing the ramp, my footing gave way and I went down hard on the shoulder, knocking my arm out of the socket -- a.k.a. a dislocated shoulder. I'll spare you the details but it was incredibly painful and expensive.

I took the plane out today after installing the new Whelen LED taxi/landing/recognition lights and thought it would be a good idea to use the GoPro that my friends at AOPA gave me.

This video will be interesting, probably, only to those of you who don't fly RVs and aren't sick of the plethora of RV videos out there.



And here's a little tour of my neighborhood...



After landing, although there was no ice, I still had a difficult time pushing the plane back in (the shoulder hasn't healed and won't for months). Fortunately, a crew from Xcel Energy, which is working on running new cables for a new Wipaire paint shop, saw me struggle and rushed over to help.

They were extremely interesting in the plane and I was only too happy to take a half hour (or so!) to explain how N614EF came to be.
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