Shortest Flight Ever

...no, not because of any problem or emergency...but today's flight was considered complete from beginning to end in only 0.5 hours (including time on the ground). At issue was wind and a time constraint to be back home by dark (for non-flying reasons).

The opportunity, however, was that I would be able to take my other two kids up on one of the last decent days we're supposed to have for the next week or so. A cold front is moving in, and we have snow forecast until the weekend. The by-product was an AIRMET for turbulence due to us being in the "gears" of the tightly spaced high and low. Nevertheless, always the optimist, I kept my eye on the winds, and when they got below 10 knots, around the time that school let out, it was looking good.

There were still very strong winds just a few thousand feet up, so I planned on keeping it low and slow. I did my best not to rush through anything, since I figured that whatever time we could be in the sky was going to be worth the trouble. It was a busy time (and maybe a lot of other folks were taking advantage of the unseasonably mild weather) and we had to spend a few minutes holding at the runway. Once we were cleared, we made a smooth climb out. I had requested 6,500 feet, but as we climbed up into 4,500 it started to get a little bumpy. I amended my request to simply stay at that altitude, and we made a wide circle over town.

I was aiming for the next town over, about ten miles or so to the west. As we got about 8 miles out, I could feel the burbles of the higher speed wind above us, and I was tired of looking into the sun, so we made the turnaround and headed back. The kids (11 and 5) were having a great time, and no one had any problem with airsickness. They were surprised at how loud the plane was at takeoff, but did well considering I had to stay on the radio almost the whole time. I had a chance to explain my job during preflight and that, as helpful as they wanted to be, I had to make sure personally that everything was ship-shape and that there wouldn't be very much conversation once in the air.

The flight was summed up as "awesome" and "totally cool" by the experts. What ended up being a glorified trip around the pattern for me was nonetheless a great first flight for them. And, hey, when all was said and done, it only cost fifty bucks in rental time. What a deal! We'll hope that the weather isn't quite as bad as forecast, and maybe there can be another flight in the near future.