Not a good day for flying.

I called the airport this morning and was able to reserve a plane for noon. I checked the weather reports and everything looked great. Westover had the winds at between 6 and 8 knots out of the north. Like a little kid running downstairs to open Christmas presents, I gathered up my stuff and packed it into my flight bag.

I have some new stuff that I have been looking forward to trying out. I built a ADS-B receiver that I've only been able to test on the ground where it can't receive the tower broadcasts from the FAA. I wanted to see if it did it's thing and picked up the weather as well as the other aircraft in the area.

I arrived at the airport at 11:45 and quickly discovered that Westover is full of crap.

The wind was about 13 knots with gusts to 18 and it was variable, swinging between west & north. This meant I had to deal with a changing cross-wind to head-wind on takeoff and landing.

I executed a decent takeoff but it was a bumpy ride from the surface up to 3,500. When it's bumpy at 3,500 that means there is wind shear and turbulence. Neither one of those things is fun to fly in so I decided to return to the airport.

I aborted my first landing when two other aircraft set up at the end of the runway to take off. I felt that having them on my left with a right-side cross wind was an invitation to either looking like a moron or crashing into one of them so I told them I was going to go around the pattern while they departed.

Once they had departed, I brought the plane in for a landing and breathed a sigh of relief because it was a struggle with the wind. I won't tell you it was a great landing because I bounced it once but given the ever-changing wind, I'm not unhappy with it.

All-in-all I was only in the air for a half hour and I only got one landing in but that was more than enough for a day like today.

Oh, and in case you wanted to know, my homemade ADS-B receiver worked like a champ. Not only did I see all of the aircraft in the sky around me, I also saw the weather and all pilot reports about turbulence.

I will say that it's not the kind of thing I'll be using when I'm just flying around the upper valley but when I decide to make a trip some where, I'll use it in conjunction with ATC and that will give me a nice view of what's happening around me.

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The Red Sox are still in first place in the ALEast which is a good thing. They lost today so they are now 4 games ahead of the Yankees.

Unfortunately, the Indians have been on one of those, "Holy crap! No one can beat them!" streaks and are now tied for first place in the AL with the Astros.

You can pretty much bet that the Red Sox will not have home field advantage for the playoffs but that's okay. I'll be happy if they make the playoffs.

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Here's a couple of links for you:

• Random Pile Of Cubed Ham would be a fantastic name for 1980's punk band.



• Yea, it's kinda creepy.