Challenger Dusk Flight

It was a busy week at work. I stayed overtime Thursday and Friday evenings to help get airplanes out. AC207 was still in the hangar from Tuesday's phase check, AC416 was Thursday's airplane. Both went out Thursday, and I did the ground run on AC207, while Dan did the run on AC416, right after I did mine. At the same time, an Embraer was being run after an engine change, so we had three airplanes running, just after midnight. On Friday, AC237 was pushed out just after midnight, and I did the run on it, and then towed it to the terminal. We finished at 2:30 am Saturday morning, and that after finishing at 3:30 am the day before.

On Saturday morning, I went to a glider saftey seminar, put on by Tom Knauff, an American glider pilot. The Winnipeg Gliding Club hosted the seminar - actually a webinar - and since I'm an inactive member of the gliding club, I attended. Maybe this year I'll take up a flying membership again, not sure yet, though.

I went out to Oak Bank on Saturday afternoon, pulled the Challenger out of the hangar, and went for a flight. I took off, headed over to Grant's airfield and did a couple of circuits, and then did a bit of local flying. I stayed below 300 feet AGL for the rest of the flight, having a bit of fun waving at snowmobilers, and scaring some deer.

I had taken off only 25 minutes before sunset, so I didn't have a lot of time. Fortunately, because of the snow cover, there was enough light to keep flying until five minutes before official night. I had to use the glassy water landing technique, though, because it was pretty hard to judge the height above ground as I got close. The airplane has strobes and a landing light of sorts, so that helped a bit.

Five minutes after landing.