While he was gone I took advantage of the one really decent day to do some air work.  I won’t go into the details…usual stuff as you can see from the Google Earth plot.  I’ll change the date of this post to coincide with the date of the flight, but I’m writing this nearly a week later.

What was interesting (thinking about it now) or a little confusing (at the time) was figuring out which runway to use.  Tipton (FME) is uncontrolled and that’s worked out well so far for me, other than contributing to my inexperience at a towered field.

The runway at FME is oriented 10-28.  More than 90% (based on my usage at least) of the time the winds favor runway 28.  Given the choice most pilots would prefer runway 28 as well – if you look at this chartat SkyVector.com you’ll see BWI’s class B airspace to the east of the field.  In fact, we have a nice little notch cut into the SFC-100 B ring.  There’s plenty of room to take off on runway 10 and turn before penetrating class B airspace so I don’t see what the big deal is, but then again, what do I know?

The winds that day were favoring runway 10 but not by much.  While I was doing my preflight inspection I saw two aircraft take off – one going each way (not at the same time, mind you).  I figured that by the time I got going I’d figure it out one way or the other so I went about my business.

Launching at the same time was a CFI and a high-time pilot getting checked out – since I’m not the fastest preflighter in the world they tag-teamed the aircraft, got started, and taxied out ahead of me.  Great!  There’s my answer…I’ll just follow them!  Still, I tuned in the AWOS to be sure…I wasn’t about to follow them into the trees if they were going to take off in a horribly wrong direction.

They didn’t – the winds were alternately variable and calm and a case could be made for using either runway.  Runway 28, of course, was the runway of choice.

Drawing pictures in the sky. Next time I'm going to try to write my name.

Upon my return things weren’t any better.  The winds were still favoring runway 10, again not by much.  Sorry, I didn’t record the winds and I don’t remember them as I write this nearly a week later.  Traffic, though, was using runway 28.  Fair enough, I’ll land on runway 28 as well.

My first approach I was too high (making up for the landings I’ve dragged in before)…too high for me at least so I went around, determined to extend my downwind a bit to compensate for the slight tailwind.  You’ll see from the shape of my pattern I was also trying to account for the crosswind.  Second approach I was high but manageably so.  I slipped to lose some altitude and put in a nice landing…even heard the stall horn during the flare for a change!

And that’s that.

I’ve got less than a month until I deploy and still a lot of work to do to be ready for the final exam.  I’ve kicked around the idea of shelving the flying for now but I’m going to press on and do what I can before I go.  If I get everything done then great – if not, I’ll be that much closer when I return.

 Google Earth track

Total time: 44.9
PIC: 8.1
Cross country (dual): 4.2
Night: 2.5
Simulated instrument: 1.2
Landings: 136
Night landings: 10
Airports landed at: 54J-dirt, ANP, CGE, ESN, FME, HGR, LNS, VPS, W29
Number of airports landed at: 9