Eblo

The weather's great! Now what?

So I got to the airport today under clear blues skies and a SLIGHTLY gusty wind right down 27. I though it might have been a little windy for my 3rd supervised solo, but my CFI had mentioned getting started on hood work, so I figured if nothing else, we'd work on that.

I started my preflight, checked the right tank, saw it was past the tab, and went under it to sump out some fuel. And nothing came out. I tried a few times, and eventually, a clot of gunk came out that at first looked like cork, but turned out to be mud. I showed my CFI (and the A/P) and he said to drain some more fuel out and see how it was. After a few more times, it seemed fine.

I checked out the engine, and then the prop. The prop had three fresh stone strikes on it. CFI said they weren't bad, but he'd squawk it when we got back. The rest of the plane checked out OK.

As we hopped in, my CFI joked with me that landings were going to be tough today because the winds were straight down the runway (see my recent post about greased crosswinds). But he declared that I'd knock out my last supervised solo today, so I was stoked. I ran through the checklists as he wired up the intercom. I put the key in, set the mixture and throttle, primed the engine, checked the area, called "CLEAR!" and cranked the engine. And cranked. And cranked. And stopped.

We tried priming it. Leaning the mixture in case it was flooded. Pumping the throttle. Letting it sit for a bit. We eventually dragged the A/P out and he tried starting it, with no luck. He was thinking it might be a bad magneto but his quick tests gave no joy. The odd thing was, in the 15 minutes or so we tried starting it, it never coughed once - it was dead.

I don't know if the problem was a magneto, or was related to the funk in the right tank, but since the other bird was checked out, my lesson was scrubbed today. I'll be curious to hear what the problem was.

Something/someone didn't want me to fly today. Ah well. Just practice with that patience thing.

"Better to be on the ground wishing you were in the air than in the air wishing you were on the ground."

If anyone sees that Murphy b@$=@&>, kick him in the junk for me. ;-)