Survival of the Fittest: One circuit in the pattern

Monday, August 1, 2016

One circuit in the pattern

All I managed to fly today was one circuit in the pattern. Two things caused me to cut my flight short:

On takeoff, I noticed my seat was more than a little loose. As a matter of fact, the latch that locks the seat on the forward/backward track seemed to be having some issues and as I was accelerating down the runway, I started sliding backwards.

Fortunately I had my wits about me and I grabbed the dashboard to stop from sliding backwards instead of using the yoke. If I had treated the yoke as if it was a car steering wheel and held on to it to stop the backward slide, I would have put the plane into steep climb that would have resulted in a power-on stall.

That is a bad thing. A very, very bad thing indeed.

The second thing that made me put an end to my flying was once I reached pattern altitude, I noticed a rather ominous looking storm cell moving towards the airport.

The seat problem was more than enough to make me bring the plane back to the parking area and the storm cell was added incentive to get out of the sky.

So today I ended up with about ten minutes of taxiing time and ten minutes of flying time which is twenty minutes better than no time at all.

On the upside. my parking job was brilliant.

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The Red Sox acquired a reliever from the Twins today. His name is Fernando Abad and I'm struggling to learn his strength.

I'm not sure if he's a long reliever, a one-pitch wonder or a possible occasional closer. According to what I can find, he does have four pitches so at least he's got that going for him.

I'm hoping he's a long reliever because the way the starting rotation is going, some of those guys aren't going more than 3 or 4 innings and they need someone who can step in and give them a strong 3 or 4 innings in relief.

I can tell you right now that I won't be staying awake to watch tonight's game. 10:00 is going to be way past my bedtime.

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I found these links for you: