Dog is my co-pilot

Oh yes he is. Lagniappe took his first flight today. Here he is checking out the flight controls.


It was a nice if slightly windy day, and I needed to rack up some more flight hours to keep current, so I took Lagniappe out to the airport for his first check-ride as an aviation canine.





K-9 Air, ready to taxi on Bravo to Runway 26...



I wondered how he'd react to it, but he was suprisingly non-plussed. Once we were aloft, he just went to sleep on his blanket in the back seat and snoozed while I shot touch-and-go landings at Winchester, VA.










Turning onto a left-pattern downwind for runway 32. Winds are 10 knots right down centerline. We'll use twenty degrees of flap today.







"Winchester traffic, this is Shepherd #1, turning base to final for runway 32..."







Seven touch-and-go landings later, local traffic was starting to pick up so Lagniappe and I headed back for home. Of course since there were no witnesses, those landings were all text-book and virtually flawless. However when I came into Martinsburg's runway 26 and set down in that 13 knot crosswind with the tower crew watching, I came in too hot, bounced, and had to go power-on again to level off and put it down properly. Embarrassing... Tsk!


But Lagniappe wasn't perturbed, and he at least had the tact and good manners not to say anything smart about it. He just got down and chilled in the shade while I tied the plane up and gathered our things. He says "this flying stuff's all right!"