Bad Weather Strikes Again

My membership at Stick & Rudder Flying Club is official and yesterday was my first session with one of the club CFIs.  Since I haven’t been flying lately, I want to get some dual time in addition to getting checked out in the club aircraft.  According to the club rules, by checking out in any of the airplanes, I am also automatically authorized to fly any airplane of equal or lessor performance.  I, of course, want to be able to fly all of them.  So, after talking to a couple of the CFIs, I decided I am going to get my complex endorsement in the club Cessna 172RG .  The rules require a minimum of 1 hour of ground, 10 hours of dual, 25 landings and 5 go arounds in the Cutlass RG to get the endorsement.  By doing this I will get the refresher time I wanted, a new endorsement and be qualified to fly any of the current club aircraft.

Yesterday was supposed to be my first flight in the Cutlass but, the weather just would not allow it.  When I checked the TAFs and METARs in the morning, Waukegan was still IFR with a 900 foot overcast but, Milwaukee and O’Hare were marginal VFR.  It looked like there might be a chance the weather would improve enough to, at least, get some pattern time in.  It was not to be though.  The beacon was still on when I pulled into the parking lot at 10:30 AM and it stayed on the whole time I was there.  But, we did get the ground training done so the day wasn’t a total waste.

After the ground session, I talked about instrument training with the CFI (I forgot to mention this blog to him so, I didn’t get his permission to use his name.  Hopefully, I will remember to ask next time).   I liked the answers he gave to my questions and his attitude about how the training should be conducted.  I plan to jump right into that after the complex endorsement.

The Cutlass is booked up for all of next weekend so, my next try at flying it will be December 18th.  Here’s hoping for better weather.  In the mean time, I will continue to study the POH and the Garmin GNS 430 manual since this airplane has one installed.