Friend Charlie sent me one of those nice texts - the sort that invites a person to go flying :-) So quite unexpectedly, I found myself heading down to San Marcos (KHYI) to meet with Charlie and his Cirrus SR20 on a very nice Sunday afternoon.
Charlie wanted to go to Burnet (KBMQ) to meet with another friend and discuss a project they are both working on. It's about a half hour's flight between the two airports.
Here's the plane ready to go at San Marcos.
The instrument panel in flight. My favourite kind of panel - enough electronics and GPS trickery to be useful, with a normal 6-pack of steam gauges for sanity!
Charlie doing a bit of flying, before handing me the controls - yay! I got to fly it most of the way there and back :-)
On the ramp at Burnet, with another Cirrus taking off behind.
You can see what a clear blue day it was. Here's Lake Travis, west of Austin. We flew out at 4500ft and back at 5500ft, and there were hardly any bumps at all; really smooth air, which is quite unusual for a warm Texas afternoon. The day had started out pretty cool before the clouds evaporated so that probably helped.
Here's a still from a video Charlie took of me flying the plane, on the way out and back. See how the Cirrus has a side stick; it takes a little getting used to, compared with a normal stick. It's a comfortable arm position, however.
And the video in question!
Thanks Charlie, that was fun :-)
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