Treating a Sick Pilot

Last Wendesday, I flew over to Newark, OH on a wonderfully warm day (32°C & 2700'DA) to pick up Beth on our way to visit my friend Steve, who had previously hangared an RV-6 in his basement. Unfortunately, said RV-6 had recently been sold (no royalty payments for riveting to the writer, mind you). In the absence of having sole ownership of a high-performance aircraft, Steve was afflicted with a severe case of "Yokeitis". Steve had many terrible tales of having to fly an yoke-equipped Archer (coincidentally rhymes with "farture") and exalted dreams of finding the perfect Mooney for under $30,000. I thought that the best therapy for his malady was a little stick time behind a glass display. Of course, when he grabbed control of the stick, I was more than a little worried. I suddenly had a flashback of Terry Thomas in "Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines". After wrenching the stick from his hands, we taxied out and took off to show him that some planes can fly themselves! Yup - nothing like a KAP140 autopilot crabbing into the wind following a GPS nav trace to make a pilot's mouth drop wide open. "This is so cool!" I know, and it's good to be continually reminded of just how cool the DA40 is (I still dream about flying it.....alot). I'm truly blessed to be able to fly it, and it was really fun to let Steve play around with it. We only logged 0.6hrs, but hopefully we'll swing by sometime this summer for some more fun. Maybe next time we can take Amelia, an aspiring pilot like her daddy, for a ride in the Diamond! You can see the results of Diamond therapy below.

Incidentally, I passed the 100hr mark on this trip - I'll post more stats, when I have a chance to crunch the numbers.