Friday afternoon from 5000 ft.

We've had a rare stretch of beautiful weather in the Puget Sound - sky's clear, sun's shining, and it's cold - it's just too nice not to fly. Last week I got checked out in a little DA20 and today I spent a little quality time getting reacquainted with the sky in it.

The DA20 is a cute little thing. It looks like a dragonfly and sounds a little like a riding lawnmower. Its sleek design allows it to fly pretty quick and it doesn't like to slow down. I definitely need to be a little more ahead of it on the landings than in the J3-cub or the 172. Then there's the added challenge of ground effect - which feels more pronounced on the low-wing than on the high wing planes I've been flying.

Essentially it boils down to this... configure the plane to slow down and descend, wait for it to actually slow down, configure the plane to land, bring her within a few feet of the ground, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, and wait until the plane bleeds off enough speed to stop flying. It takes twice as much waiting as I'm used to before the wheels finally kiss the runway.

So I spent a fair amount of time getting to know it today. I flew north from Boeing Field to Arlington staying high and close to the foothills. Just south and east of Arlington there was a group of three speedy planes chasing each other in the mountains... In the Mountains! They were amazing to watch - they'd climb up a few hundred feet, circle over a ridge line then drop and spiral a few hundred feet and peel out of the valley and do it again. I've seen eagles play like that, but not planes. They were having a good time.

The air was totally calm, wood smoke going straight up kind of calm, so I decided to brave a side trip up to Concrete. It's in a long valley just south of Mt Baker. I was up at around 5000' looking at the boot-track up to the summit and watching the Cascade Range unfold all around me as I flew up river. Found Concrete and flew by the dam there before turning around and heading back west towards the sound.

I stopped for a short break at Skagit then headed out over Puget Sound to the islands. Flew over Decatur Island and circled around... looked pretty quiet there. Only one boat in Reed's Bay and just one plane on the tie-downs. I'm not quite ready to land the DA20 on the little grass strip at Decatur, so I headed to Friday Harbor instead. Made an uneventful landing there and wished I had more time left in the day. But the sun was starting to lower so I took off heading south and flew over the length of the Sound back to Seattle. The city looked great as I flew by, just starting to pink from the setting sun.

Landed and parked uneventfully, shut down the plane, turned in the keys and then got in my car and went back to work. Looks like there's stormy weather headed our way again. Glad I got up in the sky and got a change of scene for a little while. It makes the rainy days a little brighter.