Flying with Andrew Strauss and Adelle was a great experience. I haven’t flown with Andy for sometime now and flying with him just humbles me so much. He is definitely the man. He demonstrated a “mountain” take off which scared the heck out of me. We adjusted to full throttle with the brakes on, then let go and began to roll. As ground effect set it, we lifted off and stayed about 10 feet or so above the runway while raising the landing gear. That was nuts. I got really nervous just knowing that if we lost lift, the plane would land on its belly. But of course, Andy flew that Mooney of his like it was nothing. He is the champ in flying that plane. Cruising at 160 knots is so much more fun than the 120 that I am use to in the Diamond.

The day of the flight started out with him calling me and telling me that I would be pilot in command. That meant that I would be in charge of the entire flight. I told him that I thought my checkride was over, but his, to me, is the hardest of them all. I have come a long way with the CAPT program and Pinnacle Academy , I wanted him to feel as if I learned something. I did normally what I would; Passenger Briefing, Departure Briefing, flight planning through the airspace in SD which by the way is a lot more restricting than anywhere is Florida, and planning the trip to Oceanside Airport. With all my time up in Carlsbad , I never noticed nor landed at this airport. It was just a little north but I can’t believe that I didn’t know that it was there. Flying at 160 knots also got me there a lot faster than what I expected so I had to descend really fast, but Andy ended up making the first approach. The landing that I did wasn’t that great. He greased it to the definition of not feeling it at all. It was just simply…beautiful. I look up to him so much.

Come to think of it, I gave Adelle my digital camera and she took quite a few pics. Mostly of her, but I love every one of them.