Orillia Ho!

There was a piper aztec that landed in London with a blown oil cooler on the weekend, so this morning (being Monday) it was into our shop. They had managed to hunt down a new oil cooler, but it was in Orillia, so I got the opportunity to play pilot man and fly the owner of the plane up to Orilia to pick up the part. Its always fun when I have a mission to complete, and someone else is picking up the gas tab. The flight's there and back were both uneventful, but both landings ended up being interesting in their own right.

The landing in Orilla unexpectadly turned into a little bit of a high stakes excercise in "how fast can you stop a Twin Comanche?" The touchdown was a little ugly... my fault, but then I noticed up ahead was a healthy flock of seagulls hanging out on the runway. And they didn't seem too concerned about the giant twin bladed bird mulcher bearing down on them. I managed to stop just barely in time, within 50 ft of the flock. You'd think they'd get out of the way. Oh no. I still had to practically shoo them out of the way to taxi by them. Dumb birds.

The traffic coming into London was rediculously busy, and the controller had his hands full. Our first circuit we were number 5 to land, that means there were 4 airplanes flying in front of us coming into land. They were all training aircraft. It was a good VFR day so I guess all 4 flight schools on the field all thought it'd be fun to do some circuits. We were following a Diamond Katana into runway 33 on our approach. For the controller is was a tricky excercise in traffic spacing having a slow Katana in front of a quick twin. I tried to stay a fair amount behind the Katana so I didn't overtake him, but I guess the controller was feeling pressure from the aircraft behind me, so he told me to keep my speed up. Ok, can do. I brought the flaps back up and kept my approach speed a little on the hot side until we came in a little closer. The Katana, apparently with a student pilot onboard, was cleared to land. At this point I was starting to close on him pretty quickly, and it was apparent that I was going to have to overshoot, lest I run him over. It turns out despite being cleared to land, the student pilot was intending to do a touch and go. Long story short: An upset controller, a frazzled student, and two airplanes climbing out off the same runway at the same time. So I had to overshoot, overtaking the Katana to his left. The second approach I nearly had to overshoot again, as the aircraft landing ahead of me took his sweet time getting off the runway. All turned out well though. I just delayed my touchdown a few seconds, and ended up making the smoothest landing ever! No thump, no tire squawk, just the sound of rolling tires and the airplane decelerating.

Made for a fun day, and I felt useful and important.