Got back into it swinging today by flying to Sioux City, South Dakota and back. 2.0 hours in actual and some good lessons along the way
1. My plane is not water proof. water resistant would be a better phrase
2. Carb ice happens
3. It's cold up here
4. Always check the NOTAMs carefully - sometimes important stuff is hidden away in masses of unlit tower information
#4 warrants an explanation, so here it is. When we checked NOTAMs for KLNK we noticed that there was a runway closure for 18-36 and 14-32 after midnight and before 4:30 AM "No problem, we can just do an ILS circle to land 35" so we filed back to LNK from Sioux Falls, but about halfway back we got a call from minneapolis center telling us that LNK app called and said that all the runways would be closing after midnight and that they didnt think we would make it. I piped up on the radio "I checked the NOTAMs and I thought 17-35 was still open, can you double-check please?" He did, and they were all closed. Now we were faced with a couple options, either go to Omaha (1 hour drive one way, and either his girlfriend had to pick us up or we had to rent a car, and they would gouge us because neither of us are 25) or we could go to Seward (Small untowered airport with just an RNAV and NDB approach, but only about a 15 minute drive) We opted to go to Seward and try for the visual first. We were about 3 miles out when we first saw it, then we got cleared for the visual and promptly went back into some clouds and requested the RNAV 34, so I got to do my first approach in actual. Thankfully I have a WAAS GPS so I could do the LPV approach down to 400' AGL, but we broke out at about 700' AGL so it wasnt needed after all. His girlfriend picked us up at the airport at about 12:45 AM
I hope one day I have a girlfriend that will pick me up at a podunk airport past midnight.
