Only an instructor would love a day like today

There are only a handful of pilots I'd be comfortable with flying with today. Luckily, one of my lessons is with one of them.

The winds are howling courtesy of a big low pressure system that has brought an unusual haze, high temperatures and a few lines of thunderstorms across the state. It's bad enough that the ATIS at Crystal mentions hazardous weather information available though flight watch.

The winds aloft are out of the southwest at 35 knots or so and it's going to be a hot bumpy ride down low. My instrument student opines that he'd rather be sitting home watching golf than flying in this mess.

I can't argue with his logic or judgment. It's just a plain bad day to be flying light airplanes and not such a great day for flying an airliner.

But I also know my guy is good enough to handle it. Plus, I'm confident we'll stay visual for the entire trip, a key to flying when there are boomers about.

So, we file IFR for what is normally a short flight over to Litchfield, about 45 miles southwest.

The takeoff is something to behold. The crosswind is about 40 degrees and the winds are 20 knots gusting to 30.

Incredibly, there's another airplane taking off at the same time. It's a pretty Navion all done up in Air Force paint.

Minneapolis departure gives us a bizarre vector to the northeast despite our south by southwest destination but eventually we get turned in the right direction and they give us a heading and clear us to join V78, which runs between Gopher and Darwin VORs.

After about five minutes it's obvious we could fly our assigned heading all day and still not intercept the airway so I give departure a call and let them know their heading just won't work out. They come back with a more reasonable intercept heading and we're on the airway in no time.

The rest of the trip out is uneventful. We climb above the worst of the turbulence and my guy does a great job. The 172 performs like crap in this weather, but it's good enough.

The approach into Litchfield works out ok although the AWOS is reporting calm winds and I'm pretty certain that's just plain wrong. Sure enough, a 182 on final reports going around and offers the helpful advice that the winds are "screwy".

When we overfly the field the windsock is sticking straight out at a 90-degree angle to the runway and flapping around. "Screwy" seems to describe the situation quite well.

The trip back is more of the same. We're tired of getting beat up and ask for 5,000 heading home, which we get because nobody else is dumb enough to be out flying today.

The air is cool and smooth at 5,000 but we're only there for a few minutes before center hands us off to Minneapolis approach, who promptly drops us down to 3,000, back in the bumps and murk.

Even I don't have the heart to make my student fly another approach although he's up for it. I figure it's good training to handle the typical “Airport 12 O'clock and 10 miles, report it in sight” visual approach deal.

On the way in the winds are a 50 degree crosswind at 14 gusting to 25 and my student does a great job getting us down with a minimum of fuss.

He's a good pilot and he flies the airplane until we have it safely tucked back in the hangar.

I head home for a cold beer. It's been six days of straight work with at least two flights, and often three flights, a day and I'm plain whipped. I've flown something like 18 hours this past week, which I guess isn't a lot but it's more than I'm used to. That translates into probably 70 hours of actual work, driving to and from the airport, hanging out between lessons, prepping, pushing airplanes in and out of hangars, etc..

The morning started with a flight in a newish Bonanza and a pilot who was getting used to the airplane and wanted to fly with an instructor for a bit. Luckily he's a fine pilot and did a good job so it was a low stress flight. Even better, I knew enough about the Bonanza and the systems, particularly the autopilot and GPS, that I could teach him some stuff and therefore earn my pay

I'd never even sat in a Bonanza before this morning, which I thought was an issue but didn't seem to concern my client in the least.

As luck would have it, in the last simulator session I went through to maintain my instrument currency we'd configured it as a Bonanza so I was familiar with the appropriate power settings and how to use the blasted KFC-150 autopilot. I'd also studied everything I could find about the airplane for a few days before the flight.

I guess that's an unseen part of flight instructing: Spending untold hours studying an airplane or subject all for less than 2 hours of pay.

Anyhow, my Bonanza guy was good enough that he made it easy on me and I never had to touch the controls but got to show him some neat tricks.

The power settings and speeds are pretty close to an SR-22 so the thing felt pretty normal after about five minutes of flying around. That's more a testament to the quality of the airplane than to any ability on my part, to be sure.

It seems bizarre, but I'd be comfortable flying that airplane across the country tomorrow. It's that good and that sweet a machine.

It's also a beautiful airplane, by the way, and incredibly solid and stable. The entire airplane feels like it's machined out of a solid block of aluminium. If I had the cash I'd have a hard time not buying a Bonanza.

Some days I just can't believe I get paid to do what I do.