Dorothy, Are We In Kansas? Wind Makes A Decision For Me

That is the question. The wind does blow here, but like rain, lightly and infrequently unless accompanied by a thunderstorm.

The last few weeks have been the exception. The weather is weird here, which I believe is a sign of a fairly significant El Nino this winter. For anyone that isn't familiar with it, click the link and it will take you to a NOAA site that introduces El Nino and its sister La Nina.

For Arizona, El Nino usually means the summer heat makes an early departure, frequent (well, for AZ at least) rain systems and plenty of snowfall for the Southwest. It usually wreaks much havoc on California, where mudslides and rivers such as the Russian swell past flood stage. The effects here are pleasant. Unfortunately, it means heat, drought and much suffering in areas of the world from Australia to East and Southeast Asia.

My point is, these weird winds we've been having seem to be a piece of the El Nino puzzle. Today, the winds were worse than last week with winds of 22 knots with occasional nasty gusts.

The wind hit around noon today, coming from the southwest. It was from the remnants of a tropical depression from the Gulf of California. Usually in El Nino years do tropical disturbances have any affect on Arizona weather. Normally, they turn out to the cold waters off of Northern Baja and die quickly.

Today was the day for my check out in either a Diamond DA-20 or the pimped out Piper Archer I mentioned yesterday. I was going to follow John and Pedro's advice and go with the Eclipse, but the winds were just a little to gnarly for an 1100 pound aircraft with a 35' wingspan. They offered me a block deal to check out in both, with the Archer being first and I bit.

Did I mention that this Archer is pimped out? Just the air conditioning alone made my day. It burns a lot more fuel with the a/c on, but it's a wet rental, so who cares? It was nice to enjoy on the hot ground. I haven't flown a Piper aircraft built in the New Millennium, much less the 3rd quarter of the previous century and there were quite a few differences. Most striking is the overhead console with the primer, magneto and lighting switches. No need for a sun visor. It felt like being in a George Barris chopped Mercury.

Oooh...and the high back leather seats with lumbar...check.

It's a good thing I was comfortable, because the takeoff roll was like a long road trip. This pig is heavy. 180 horses felt like 120. The extra weight from the A/C, Nav equipment and other options make this thing fly like a dump truck...albeit a comfy dump truck. I have it reserved for my next trip to Wickenburg and will see how I like it on cross country flights.

The check ride was unusual. The winds aloft were pretty wicked. We were doing slow flight at 4,500' and, when I looked at the Garmin 430, it showed our ground speed as 20 knots. Just because the winds are strong, it doesn't mean they can't change. This pig would drop like a lead balloon. The CFI was amused by it and I was not. He wanted me to continue to see how low it would go and I said, "I demonstrated slow flight and I'm paying for you and the plane. If you want to come back out and have fun, have at it." I recovered and we headed back to Falcon to do three landings. The runway was 22R with winds 260 at 22 knots. That's about 14-15 knot crosswind and about a 17 knot crosswind and within crosswind limits for the Archer. I couldn't believe how easy this plane corrects and greased all three landings. It must be the extra weight up front from the compressor and condenser.

I have already done the ground portion of the Diamond check out and with the same instructor, it shouldn't be more than a 20-30 minute flight to finish up. Hopefully, I'll have a day where my schedule and the weather cooperate. I'm really excited about flying the Eclipse.