Aviation can be a fickle mistress - awesome sometimes, frustrating others. Unable to go flying for the past few weeks, I spent yesterday morning looking at the sky, waiting for the showers to pass. I then figured that if there was ever a chance to fly, I'd better head over to the hangar and wait where I proceeded to spend most of the afternoon waiting for the cloud base to rise.
After a while, I figured that the cloud wasn't moving up any time soon so a flight over the City of Ballarat like I had originally planned for my Wife was put on the back burner. I then figured that maybe I should just do some circuits to stay current. I called Mel to see if she would want to come up for some circuits, but she was settling into a good book and was happy to wait for a better day to see the town.
By this stage, the cloud was sitting at around 700 feet agl. Not quite enough for the 1000 foot height needed for a normal circuit. I watched as some other guys were flying in and out with a nice looking Tecnam P2002, but I couldn't tell if they were doing low level circuits or not. I pre-flight checked the Jabiru, then decided to walk across to the Aero Club where the Tecnam was parked in between outings. The answer from the pilot when asked about the conditions confirmed my suspicions: they weren't flying low level circuits, but were actually flying them just under the cloud at 800 feet above the ground.
I called Manny to see whether he would want me to fuel the plane up, as it was already out and ready, before putting it away (at least then I could feel like I achieved something!). He said no thanks, and asked me about the weather. He then commended me for making the decision not to go in these marginal conditions. It's nice to know that I made the right decision!
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