Monday, December 1, 2014

Another AP Checkout Flight

I went up again today for a short flight to check out a couple of things in regards to the AP.  I made one small adjustment to the VSI gain and I am now satisfied with the way the AP captures and holds the altitude input.  The weather was a little strange.  When I took off the winds were calm and visibility was 10 miles.  I flew out to the evaporation ponds north of Grantsville to check out the AP.  As I neared the water towers south of ATK the air got really rough.  There was lots of turbulence.  I climbed to 6200’ and continued flying towards Magna.  When I got past Magna, but not quite to Saltair a low lying cloud cluster was right in my flight path.  I entered the cloud and was through the other side in a matter of seconds.  It was an interesting experience.  After flying for a short time I returned to the airport.  The wind was now 160 at 14 knots , gusting to 19 knots.  I was happy to put it down for the day. I also noticed when I landed that my AOA widget is missing from the PFD.  It appears that when I updated the SkyView with the Vans download the AOA was deleted.  I will need to go up again and recalibrate the AOA.