Shaking rust off

I recently added an airplane multiengine land rating to my pilot certificate, and the school I trained at rents their Duchess (and another operator on the field has another BE76, albeit not quite as nice). My single engine currency had lapsed, and I don’t want to go too long with no SEL time logged (insurance renews in the spring), and a local flight school - where I did my PPL years ago - has a retractable Mooney M20B on the line that’s actually a pretty nice little cruiser.

So, the past couple of days was getting back into shape. Monday, I headed out to the Inland Empire to do a couple of trips around the pattern with an instructor; the school has mostly stopped renting to anyone, but because I’ve driven Mooneys (including a bunch of hours in this plane in particular) and well known there, the owner okay’d renting to me, but wanted me to demonstrate I still knew how to swing the Johnson bar gear. My first landing wasn’t pretty (it was gentle, but a bit long, and a little to the side), but by my third I was happy as a clam again, and now I’m legal to carry passengers. 0.8 on the tach, 1.0 billed, time and money well spent.

Oh, and if anyone’s wondering how to mount an iPad in a “vintage” Mooney, this was the setup that worked in this B-model:

That setup is: RAM-B-121B Yoke Clamp Base / RAM-B-201U Double Socket Arm / RAM-HOL-AP20U EZ-Roll'r™ Cradle for Apple iPad mini 4 & 5 / RAM-B-202U Round Plate or RAM-B-238U Diamond Ball Base (alternately, the yoke clamp base, double socket arm, and base, can be found as the RAM-B-121-238U kit). But I digress.

Yesterday, a friend of mine and I headed down to Palomar for dinner at Landings, taking the Duchess. He and I have known each other for about 20 years now, and he recently got his license training in Cirrus SR20s and is now starting his instrument rating in an SR22T he’s “renting” from a friend. We flew IFR on a gorgeous VMC day, so he could follow a long a bit and so I could get less rusty there, too (my last real IFR flight was June 20th, two approaches in actual IMC conditions, followed by an approach (legitimate missed) that included a hold I flew in a Cirrus in July to keep my currency, um, current). A 1980 Duchess with a Century III autopilot and GNS530W is certainly no Garmin Perspective glass cockpit Cirrus! Anyway. My first approach into Palomar was a bit ugly; a bit too high and unstabilized, it would have been an “okay” VFR landing, but was below the standards I set for myself flying IFR.

On the way back, the weather was threatening to be borderline (a marine layer was moving in at Palomar, and the satellite view in ForeFlight suggested that our home - coastal - airport might be soggy by the time we got back), so I again filed and flew IFR, even though it ended up being a nice VMC evening. The autopilot works well enough, even coupled to the NAV signal so it will hold (but not steer into) a GPS course.

My second approach was a thing of beauty. Hand flown and never a full dot deflected laterally or vertically, setting down gently on the center line right at the 1,000' markers.

The skills degrade quickly, but it doesn’t take that much to refresh them, thankfully. I definitely need to fly more, though! I’m 36 hours year to date, and I usually fly just shy of 150 hours in a year ...