Flight Time–Post Annual Local

Ever since the mechanics completed the annual inspection of the Cherokee, I’ve been itching to go fly the plane. Unfortunately, the winds have been too strong this week. Today, however, the winds were expected to subside around 7:00 PM, so I planned to go for a local checkout flight.

Susan and I left home at 6:00 and were in the air by 7:20. The flight started with a wide, left turning oval near the airport as I climbed to 3,500 feet. Once I was comfortable with the sounds and feels of the plane, I turned south to do a VOR check on the Victor 3 airway between Melbourne and Vero Beach. The Melbourne VOR has been out of service for some time, but I thought the Treasure VOR was still in service. I tuned both radios to it, but neither received a signal. Neither was identifying the VOR either. So much for flying IFR with VORs these days.

Since we were close to Vero Beach, I decided to go ahead and land there. I noted the ATIS information while doing a right 360 to lose altitude. Once I had the details, I called the Vero Beach Tower and asked for clearance to land. Tower did not respond. I looked up the hours of operation, thinking that the tower might be closed. Foreflight indicated that the tower was open until 2300. It was not clear if that was local time or Universal time. I did the math, and 2300 UTC works out to be 7:00 PM local. I therefore assumed that the tower was closed. I made another call, announcing my intentions to anyone listening. A minute later, I thought it odd that I didn’t hear anyone else, so I tuned COM2 to the tower frequency and immediately heard others on frequency, including the controller. I told him that I thought the tower was closed, but it appears that my COM1 radio is not receiving. He cleared me to land on Runway 12L.

After landing, Tower cleared me back to Runway 12L for a north departure. As I climbed to the north, I tried COM1 again. By this time, it was after sunset, so I used my headlamp to illuminate the radio. Just for grins, I twisted the volume knob. To my surprise, I could now hear Vero Beach Tower loud and clear. Somehow, while trying to tune and identify the VOR, I must have turned down the volume on COM1 by accident. DOH!

We continued flying up the beach and I noted the Hobbs time when it officially became night. We flew over Melbourne, then turned around and headed back to Valkaria. I turned on the lights at Valkaria by clicking five times on the CTAF frequency, then entered the left pattern for Runway 14. This was nearly a direct crosswind landing, but the winds were almost calm by this time, so it was not a problem.

One thing to note was the navigation lights. As part of the annual, we installed new LED lights for the navigation lights. I’m happy to report that they are extremely bright and light up the ground under the wings when taxiing. That was likely the least expensive upgrade you can make in an airplane.

The flight track is shown below.

Flight Time: 1.5 hours
Total Time: 704 hours