Today we were able to get our last flight before my long IFR cross country. Things were off to a slow start due to some reported low level clouds. We were dispatched an aircraft and we filed IFR. Turns out that we only just skimmed a cloud so I didn't get to log any actual. Things were fairly uneventful until we were on final to VOR 5 at BTL. First we noticed a bee flying around the cockpit. My instructor opened the window to try suck him out. This attempt failed and just before landing it was crawling on my right hand. I couldn't do anything about it because i was trying to deal with some wind gusts. The bee did climb off of my hand about 20 seconds before touchdown, but he climbed onto the throttle. On top of this we were being told by ATC that they were receiving an indication that we were 100 to 200ft low on our approach. We double checked and confirmed that our altimeter was set properly and I was maintaining our minimum descent altitude. So after a soft landing and disposing of the bee during our taxi back to our ramp. I had the joy of telling dispatch what ATC had told us, and explaining the situation to our maintenance department. They first reacted with the typical "what did you do to my airplane" attitude but quickly turned to a friendlier mood as I tried to explain the situation. They informed me that one of the other maintenance people had just returned from a flight, overherd my transmitions and told them all about it. They thanked me for bringing the books and told me that they just happened to have the guy responsible for our pitot static testing in that day and directed me to give him the books. He thanked me and my instructor and I debriefed. Tomorrow is attempt one at the IFR cross country.
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
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