Justin’s Pilot Reports (PIREP)

A huge grin describes it best. Voicemail from my friend Brad Marcum. Words like “let’s go flying” and “Mooney”.

Brad obtained flight privileges to a 1980 Mooney M201. When I met Brad at Security Airpark at the San Antonio Intl Airport the anticipation was high. This would be my second flight in a Mooney - my first was a few years ago with another friend and his gorgeous Mooney M-20J (which he subsequently sold to a lucky guy in South Texas).

This is an excerpt of Shooting the traffic pattern in a Mooney M201.
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I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. It’s March. It’s supposed to be windy, right? Late Friday evening I canceled a cross-country overnight flight to Dallas, TX after reviewing a bundle of weather information that all agreed that flying on Saturday in a small airplane in Dallas wasn’t going to be fun. Winds were forecast from the Southwest 20-25 knots with gusts up to 32. With an abundance of runways facing Southeast, crosswind calculations painted an unpleasant picture.

So we were scrubbed for Dallas. San Antonio turned out to be windy on Saturday as well. I was beginning to believe that flying this weekend just wasn’t in the cards for Mr. Moore.

This is an excerpt of The pattern, the wind shear and the blue sky.
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Eager to earn more actual instrument time, I reserved and flew Skyhawk 321WF on Friday. “One Whiskey Fox” is a 2001 Cessna Skyhawk C172R from Wright Flyers that has a nice Garmin 430 IFR certified GPS unit. It’s a 160 horsepower Skyhawk versus the 180 horsepower SP version I often fly.

Skyhawk 321WF - a 2001 Skyhawk C172R

This is an excerpt of Solo IFR flight - 1/2 hour of IMC….
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