First Flight

Lots of progress to report. My Inaugural flight in the new plane was ALL OUT. My trusty CFII, MEI Charlie Monette stopped counting hours accumulated for the FAA before I was born. He's generally not disturbed by anything it seems. So, the choice to test drive the plane in full-blown IMC seemed like low to moderate risk for me. After all, I had been staring at the panel for weeks now and was really curious as to how this baby was going to behave.

Charlie's first thoughts were that on the way to Auburn we would be IFR for about an hour. My tension levels went up. Fortunately, the Baron B55 with Colemill climbs like a rocket. We were in full blown IMC 1000 feet off the ground (30 seconds). We climbed straight through to 6000 feet above the ground and broke out in beautiful weather. An hour of cruise and we went back down into the clouds to make the approach for Auburn. On the way back the weather was about the same, but the approach was much wetter in Lexington than in Auburn. One good thing about flying IMC, the plane gets washed.