Shack, Rattle and Roll

     There are days that bring me back to my flight training times with my CFI Durand Branch.  Sometimes I miss those days, yesterday was not one of them.  It was time to depart Lynchburg and head home.  I had some business responsibilities and the weather didn't look to bad at all.  It would be VFR all the way home, even though I filed an IFR plan just in case, but the wind kept haning in there from a cold front that had come down from Canada the day before.  A constant look at the weather charts kept calling for the winds to settle down as the day would progress.  Unfortunately that was just wishful thinking.
     After a nice lunch with our youngest daughter, Dawn, we headed to the airport to prepare for our departure.  926GZ was sitting out on the hard top and looked ready to go.  A Standard briefing revealed clear skies but a report of moderate turbulence below 10,000 for our home area.  With all our luggage nestled and ma and I in our caps, we started her up for a long cross country hop.  Lynchburg cleared us for runway 22 and off we went with a slight crosswind as we climbed.  I planned to go to 5,500 for the ride home hopeing that would be better since the winds were really blowing above that.  Lynchburg switched me to Roanoke Approach and as we reached 5,500' we realized we were in for a ride.  Although the flight was rocky and rolly, we were never out of our seats but just never could get comfortable either.  Our GPS started acting up below Washington, giving us reports of GPS Signal lost and to use dead recogining and then would go right back to working without a problem.  It's possible we have an antenna wire loss.  Something else we have to watch.  The turn from Pautuxent slowed us down a little, but not really a whole lot.  We were now into a quartering head wind, but our ground speed kept up at 133 knots.  Over the Delaware, New Jersey was looking nice as we were switched to Philadelphia approach for the home stretch.

     I began a nice easy descent into South Jersey and as we approached we turned crosswind, to downwind to base for 26.  Final gave us a little bit of a crab as winds were 290 at 12 with gusts to 19.  OH Durand, it felt like you were sitting right there with me once again.  With only two notches of flaps, I waited for the trees to block the wind and we settled right down to the runway.  HOME at last, Home again.  I told Lynn, "You have to take the good with the bad".  Her comment to me was, "I was fine, I just would have preferred the good!"  Until next time, fly safe and keep practicing, you never know when you'll need it.