Haven't posted in awhile simply because nothing's broken.
In all seriousness, and with a full knock on a piece of hardwood, I'm consistently flying now and the airplane is doing great. I was having an issue with the prop struggling to turn over on some cold mornings, but when my A&P's guys would go out to check it out they couldn't replicate it. I thought this might be because it was warmer when they went out to start it, and maybe that was it, but I've since come to the idea that perhaps my hand moving the prop to cycle the oil was causing an issue. I've since stopped doing this and it seems to fire right up even on colder mornings (40s and above).
Speaking of the engine, I'm really happy with how it's performing - starts right up and is burning very little oil. I keep checking the oil expecting it to be lower only to find that it's holding onto it really well.
All my flying of late has been CFI training either solo or with an instructor, and I'm happy to report that I'm finally feeling really comfortable in the right seat. Landings are going well and I seem to have dropped the habit of landing yawed to the right like I was at first. Even when I fly by myself I practice teaching everything to an imaginary student in the left seat, and I really feel like I have great tactile control of the airplane.
Couple of things I have noted. With 40-degrees on the flaps the drag is incredible. At any altitude above about 040 I need almost full power to maintain level flight with that much drag. Gives me even more reason to continue defaulting to 20-degrees flaps on normal landings.
Also noted that every time I would pick a visual target for a short-field landing, I would end up short of my actual intended landing spot. It seems that with full flaps the airplane is going to touchdown more or less where your visual target is, so I started making them the same.
One of my sons hasn't even seen the plane, so I'm planning on flying him to BQ1 for lunch this coming Saturday which will give me another chance to practice instructing.
Annual on the aircraft expires end of April, so it'll be going in in May. I'll likely join the local flying club and fly 172s during that period and hopefully schedule my CFI exam somewhere around then. Until then, I'm still banging out maneuvers from the right seat and working on the oral exam prep.
