Summertime safety piloting

Plane: Cessna 182 RG
Route: MGY, Local 
Weather: Clear, 74 degrees, wind 300 degrees at 4 knots

This summer has felt and looked a lot more like fall. That trend continued today with extremely comfortable temperatures and great visibility; I'm pretty sure you could see 50-60 miles from a couple thousand feet above the ground. Mike needed to shoot some approaches and we originally planned to fly tomorrow morning. However, we'll both be busy biking the Tour de Dayton, so we pushed our original plans up and went flying tonight after work.

Flying over my office in the Miami Valley Research Park

Kettering Fairmont High School, where Gina teaches

We took off from Wright Brothers around 6:00 and headed north. Mike made a teardrop entry into the approach for Runway 23 at Middletown. There were skydivers in the pattern as usual (there's a very busy skydive outfit at MWO) and I kept them in sight as Mike flew under the hood. He went missed at decision height and I told him to climb slowly at first - there were still open parachutes nearly directly above us.

Soon we were again level at about 3,000 feet and lined up for an approach to Runway 33 at RID. Mike had already knocked off a bit of the rust and this one was quite stable. I took some photos of the lush, green farmland surrounding the airport as we shot down final. The pattern remained completely empty as we again went missed and pointed the nose back towards Dayton.

Great Miami River and one of the bike trails I regularly ride

Long final for Runway 33 at Richmond Municipal Airport

Everything is seriously green out here right now!

Shadows cast across a golf course near Richmond, IN

A blimp was flying over Mason, OH (I believe for the Western & Southern Open, a tennis tournament) that lined right up with our initial approach fix; we flew directly at it and it slowly grew in size as we got closer. About five balloons had been getting ready for takeoff when we took off from Wright Brothers (what I assume to be) some of them were visible on the horizon.

That's a hot air balloon about a mile off the right wing

Short final for Runway 2 at Wright Brothers

Two or three other planes called in on the CTAF as we flew the approach to Runway 2, which is roughly 10 miles straight in. Everyone had landed by the time we were on short final and Mike touched down softly a little past the numbers. All told, we spent about an hour in the sky. He's now current and, for me, the view was certainly worth it!

Flight Track: Google Earth KMZ File 
Today's Flight: 0.8 hours (SIC)
Total Time: 312.3 hours