Oh, the places you'll go!

(With apologies to Dr. Seuss)

N211LS and I went on our second cross-country trip to practice visual pilotage on Friday. We had initially planned to do the whole trip on Memorial day, but on the first leg, a short 40 mile trip to Ennis (obligatory King Missle reference) when unforecast thunderstorms cut the trip short. So, on Friday, off we went to finish the trip. Grand Prairie - Hillsboro - Cleburne - Grand Prairie. All in all, bout 80 minutes of flying.

The best part, however, was getting to relax and enjoy the view. I've spent so much time training, focusing on perfecting landings, holding altitude and airspeed in steep turns, that I hadn't been able to focus on the view and joy of getting from A to B. Since this is why I wanted to learn to fly in the first place, it was sweet. The grin on my face was there all day, even after going back to the office.

During the flight, I noticed that 1LS required a lot of elevator to rotate on takeoff and the nosewheel hit firmly on landing. Turns out that this was a nose strut with low pressure in the nose oleo and put the aircraft down for maintenance. So, Saturday's trip was scrubbed.

But I'm still smiling.