I got a 1 hour flight with my wife on Friday and did a 1.5 hour flight Saturday.

I was trying out a new video camera mount in a quest to produce smoother video but the test failed, so no video this time. 

On Friday we flew the entire length of our beaches and took lots of pictures but only a few of them were any good.

 One humorous (to me) thing that happened was on the way back to land I'd been putting along at 110 knots or so, in no hurry and the tower asked me to keep my speed up.  So I added a bit of throttle and was going 150K.  Then the tower puts a Cherokee front of me, still on base, so I slow to 110K.  He's right in front of us but he's doing a touch and go so it should work out.  The Cherokee does the bounce and go and is climbing out just as the tower tells me to keep my speed up.  Wasn't expecting that.  I just answered "daaaa ok" knowing full well that on short final, keeping the speed up means your not landing at this airport!  In hindsight I just should have said unable.    

On Saturday I was single place.  I took off on the long runway at KPIE and held it in ground effect until 120K then climbed out at around 2000 fpm.  Flight Aware shows me at 185 MPH (160K) but I was going faster than that. 

Once I got out from under the Tampa Class B I suffered a short loss of ADS-B while I buzzed an offshore island that was crazy with weekend boaters.  After the ADS-B recovered, I climbed up to 3000 feet.  

The plan was to do some ham radio from the plane and I made lots of contacts.  All of which had never talked to an airplane before.  That's fun.  I try to throttle back to 2300 RPM but my engine gets rough there and really doesn't sound happy.  It seems to like a minimum of 2600 RPM and is perfectly happy at red line.  It appears that 137 mph is the slowest I can cruise where the engine sounds happy.  

While buzzin by Clearwater I see several helicopters and these offshore Hydrofoils tearing up the water.  The urge to fly by a few was strong but I resisted it.  Started wondering if there was a TFR that I missed (nope-checked later).  Turns out the Hooters Clearwater Offshore powerboat races are happening this weekend.  I think tomorrow I'll drive up there to watch the races.  It's interesting to watch these huge cranes lift the boats from the trailers and plot them in the water.  Can typically talk to the drivers also.  https://clearwaternationals.com/

Y'all fly safe!

  

Mike Dwyer Q200

YouTube Videos:  https://www.youtube.com/user/FlyMeAirplane/playlists

Q200 Website: http://goo.gl/V8IrJF