revelling in the sense of freedom that it gives you.
True. We've all been there, done that, know the feeling. Reading about yet another magical flight becomes boring after a while. Unless it's first solos or somebody doing something really spectacular - you might want to read some of Sam Rutherfords post for that.
I'll just add one of those "magical, but boring" stories here. Regular readers feel free to skip to the next post...
Last Saturday my license renewal finally fell on the doormat, making me legal again - the CAA must've been busy 'cause it took them a month to process. And I needed a clubcheck anyway, so I booked the R2160 and an instructor for an hours lesson. The forecast was a foggy morning, lifting about noon. The aircraft was booked 13-15. A quick check of the NOTAMs showed nothing important, a flight plan was filed and I headed for the airport.
I got to the airport around 12 and noticed that a kind soul had already put the aircraft in the heated hangar, and the snow was rapidly melting away from the wings and fuselage. After some hellos and a cup of coffee I went to see the aircraft. It had recently gotten a new interior which had to be admired. And as much as I like a heated hangar, it's still quicker to remove the snow than to wait for it to melt. So I wiped the nearly-thawed snow off the wings, shoved it out of the hangar, closed the doors again and went back for another cup of coffee.
At one the fog was indeed lifting. Not quite CAVOK yet, but good enough for VFR flight. So we strapped in, refueled and took off in BKN020 conditions. The view at 1000' is stunning. 30 kilometers visibility. White as far as the eye can see, with all rivers and highways clearly visible.
We first head to the low-flying area for a PFL, after that to the practice area for a steep turn and a stall. I'm an aerobatics pilot and this instructor was not, so he was kind of surprised at my 75 degrees bank angle in the steep turn. 45 degrees would have been sufficient for him. And a stall with the stick to the back stops, keeping the aircraft straight with the rudder for 10 seconds, was something he didn't do too often too. "Oh, yeah, you fly aerobatics a lot, do you? Do you want to do some of them now too?" Of course. So we climbed to FL45 in what had become CAVOK conditions and I showed the instructor a loop, spin, half cuban, reverse half cuban, a barrel roll and a hesitation roll. Who said instructors are not supposed to like their jobs?
"What's next?" Well, it's been a while since I've flown on instruments, so give me some foggles and we'll see how this goes. Bad idea of course, since the AI had toppled multiple times during the aeros and was now slowly regaining the correct attitude. And the DI was out by 180 degrees too. But after we got that sorted I put on the foggles and start concentrating on keeping the dot on the line. First some S&L flight, descending, climbing, turning, climbing/descending turns, intercept a radial and then vectors to downwind. Flaps down, reduce power, downwind checks, all on instruments. End of downwind, pull the foggles off, turn to final and make a very nice landing. We vacate the runway via the only intersection that was plowed, and taxi onto our clubs apron through 10 cm of snow. Magical.
Later on we heard that Schiphol once again had to bring in 100s of beds for stranded travellers, runways had to be closed so that intersections could be cleared of snow and that it would take a long time before air travel would be back to normal.