A heck of a Saturday !!!

Fleeing out of Atlanta in the morning, wandering along the shores of Lake Sinclair during a warm afternoon, eating lunch in the grass while enjoying the quietness of Mother Nature and returning to Atlanta late in the afternoon. Well that sounds dreamy, right? Well that is exactly what we did last Saturday...

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7,300ft, 80 kts and the VOR needle spot on target...

On our way out, we first flew to Stone Mountain and then headed direct to Milledgeville / Baldwin County airport. In order to avoid turbulence, we climbed high in the air reaching a cruising altitude of 7,500 ft once we cleared the Class Bravo airspace surrounding Hartsfield Jackson.

Our little Piper Warrior N4304B is seen resting and sunbathing during those first Spring days on the ramp after its flight from Atlanta.

Our little Piper Warrior is a low-wing single-engine aircraft. It develops 160hp at sea level and boosts a range in excess of 600 nm with 48 gallons of fuel. N4304B is equipped with the modified tapered wing - not the Hershley bar - and features a cruising indicated airspeed of 105 knots. Transitionning from high-wing Cessnas, the Piper seems a bit heavier on the controls and slightly less stable in roll. The low wing aerodynamics is particularly noticable during flare when the aircraft floats forever in ground effect over the runway.




After roughly an hour of flight, it was hight time for a lunch and we walked towards the shores of Lake Sinclair.

For once, the weather was with us and we enjoyed those enchanting views.

Quiet and rural Georgia may be charming. Far away from those clichés of the deep old South, one might encounter very welcoming people in these sleepy towns.

It is always good to enjoy some peacefull moments from time to time. Life in Atlanta is somewhat hectic and a bowl of fresh air is something welcomed.

Due to popular demand, I had to present this photo. Notice the organic and all-natural pine dust-sweeper in my shirt-pocket... There is an old story about double pine-needles and how they break and separate one from the other but I will restrain myself from elaborating...

Since I am a shameless person, a picture of myself with freshly collected pine needdles.

Soon enough, we were back in the air for some exercises. The overall idea was to get a feel for many of the manoeuvers that are introduced only through theory in class. It was also a good time to practise some manoeuvers with the Piper since I am not yet fully accustomed to its flying characteristics. I have only logged a couple of hours in Piper Warriors, 7.5 hours so far. From steep turns, to stalls, from phugoid-mode excitations to Dutch-roll mode excitations I think we did it all. I sincerely hope it will be useful at some point.
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During the return trip, I let my friend Alexia do most of the flying. In the meantime I was busy taking pictures and simply enjoying the view.

Seat back, relax and enjoy the flight as they say in commercial airliners... We reached 9,400ft on the way back. If it continues this way, soon enough we will need a pressurized bird...

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On our way back, we did a detour to Athens, GA so that we could practise some VMC-weather instrument approaches. And that was a real treat since we got radar-vectored to the final approach course exactly like we would in typical instrument operations. A big thanks to the air traffic control folks since this was a nice introduction to instrument procedures and communications for my friend. After the ILS approach and a full stop landing, Alexia did the take-off : congrats to her for a successfull takeoff after just a couple of hours in the Warrior...
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9,000ft over Georgia. The layer of haze is clearly visible over the horizon.

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I am glad I can take my friends for a hop from times to times. It makes me happy and sharing the joy of flying with my friends is something I both always look forward to and never get tired of. I guess it shows on my always-happy-after-flying face. And each time the story repeats itself : it takes me a while to come back to Earth and descend from those dreamy puffy little clouds where I like to hide myself.

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Flying On Top

Well today is Friday so I guess you already know what I did... As my advisor uses to say, there is no better place to be on a Friday morning than inside a cockpit and at the controls... And you know what ? The weather was ugly. I keep on repeating myself here but let me state it again : the weather is always ugly in Atlanta on Friday mornings. Still, this time there was something new : besides practicing instrument approaches, I got checked out on a Piper Warrior II.

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Here is the beast resting on the ramp at Dekalb-Peachtree Airport

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As might be seen in this picture, the aircraft is a fixed gear and features a low-wing with dihedral. It was built in 1983 by Piper Aircraft in Vero Beach, Florida. Dubbed Piper Warrior II, it's official name is PA28-160 and the radio callsign is Cherokee. To be slightly more pedantic, it comes equipped with a 160 hp normally aspirated Lycoming engine, has an empty weight of roughly 1500 lbs and a maximum take-off weight of 2325 lbs.

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Cockpit dashboard for the Cherokee Warrior. Flying at 100kt, climbing through 3100ft at 500ft per minute and heading to 050°
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The dashboard features all the standard instruments you would expect in a VFR - IFR - Day - Night certified aircraft. From left to right, from up to bottom we will find a clock, an airspeed indicator, an attitude indicator, an altimeter, an ILS receiver, an ADF receiver, a turn coordinator with a ball, a heading indicator, a vertical speed indicator and a VOR receiver. In the lower part of the dashboard lay the engine and fuel indicators whereas the communication and navigation displays are on the right. This aircraft is also equipped with a LORAN receiver which is a nice and fancy addon not commonly found in Europe.
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Just breaking out of the overcast layer of clouds.
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I did most of my initial flight training in France in a Piper PA38-112 Tomahawk (also called Traumahawk...) but I haven't flown any Piper aircraft in the last three years. It was also a return to low-wing designs after a two-year break period. So, a return to my first love ?

Low-wing aircraft call for a slightly different technique for landings since there is a lot more ground effect and the aircraft tends to float over the runway. Therefore, to reach the pilot's holy grail of kiss-landing, subtle adjustments are required when transitionning from high wings such as Cessnas to low wings.
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Cruising right over Atlanta sandwitched between a lower layer at 700ft and an upper layer at 10,000ft.
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I have always liked the design of Piper cockpits. It both looks clean, neat and a bit more airline-aircraft styled. In addition, there is an excellent forward visibility. My only grief about Piper designs would be the single right cockpit door that lacks the flexibility of Cessna's.
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5075ft, 100kt and 90° on the heading
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On the way back to Dekalb-Peachtree airport, the weather was slightly improving and the lower layer started to fragment going from an overcast to a broken layer. During the ILS-20L approach, we broke out of the cloud at 1000ft above ground and performed a sidestep approach to runway 20 Right to pave the way for a faster flying twin Cessna behind us.

Radar track for part of the flight may be found here.

Stay tuned for some more adventures...
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