A reasonably nice day here in West Central Florida but there is a hurricane coming soon so figured I better get a flight in today.  We only have one runway open RWY4-22 but the wind was from 60 degrees at 10 to 16K.  Temp 70F, humidity 70%.  The Q200 hadn't been run for 2 weeks so it didn't pop right off but after about 10 blades it fired up and stayed running.  I have a carb and have installed a primer that injects fuel right on the low pressure side of the intake valve.  Using that helps starting a lot.  

The airport was pretty busy today.  The Cherokee GA trainers were out in force and mixing it up with the Bis Jets and Airbuss's.  Took 18 minutes to get launched.  My normal lately has been around 10 so it was busy.  After launch I had to level off at 1000 feet to keep from going into the Tampa Class B and checking Flight Aware, they showed me at 197 mph before I pulled the power back.  I then climbed up to 5500'.  The mission today was to fire up the 2 meter ham radio and talk to people.  At ground level these radios talk 10-20 miles... But at 5500' wow, half of Florida was listening to me.  I got several people that were new ham operators and very excited to talk to an airplane.  Others told me of their days flying in the Virgin Islands.  Others talked about wanting to get a pilot license.  It was fun.  

As I got back to the Tampa Bay beaches I hung up the ham radio and dialed up KPIE.  I slipped in behind a slow mover and KPIE told me I was 30K faster.  Darn, I had already slowed down to final approach speed and I was still 30K faster!  Here go the S-Turns.  The tower complimented me on making the spacing good.  I mostly had the traffic visually and the ADS-B was doing great with his position.  Then an Airbuss pulled in 10 miles behind me!   Now I'm the slow mover!   I'm burning maybe 3 GPH and the Airbuss probably 300 GPH , so I offer to leave to the west and come back later.  The tower says nah, keep coming.  The slow mover has gone around so I'm cleared to land so I let the Q200 speed up a bit to 130K.  Now the trick is going to be, getting down to 80K to land.  The way I do that is pull up, slow to 80K and let her drop like a rock.  If you plan it just right you got enough speed to flare and land.  Worked out perfect, made the second turn off, and looked back to see the Airbuss on short final.  Taxied back to the hangar and was looking out the right side to see the Airbuss go by on the runway.  The jet used the whole runway and turned off at the end of the runway.  She (female pilot) was told to yield to the experimental on the taxiway  :) 

Oh, the hurricane.  I checked just now and it looks like it will hit Key West and miss our area.  Darn hurricanes.  

Mike Dwyer

Q200 N3QP

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