What a horrible day yesterday. Me AND a friend took off of work to go pick up the plane yesterday afternoon since Thurs and Fri weather were/are going to be crappy around here and the owner wanted it gone by Sat. Got there, everything looked in order, paid the man, got my Bill of Sales and I was on my way ?so I thought.
First, the gas pump was locked and there was nobody at the po-dunk airport to unlock it for 45 mins (mind you storms were rolling in from the West). Finally got gas. In the mean-time had done a thorough pre-flight and run the engine up. All looked good except the primer leaks when you pull it out (o-ring replacement on plunger?).
Welllll, finally ready to go and realize we're having radio problems in BOTH planes (storms getting much closer ~ 15nm West of us by now). Realized it was a faulty transmit switch in my buddies plane (solved by using co-pilot switch - good enough for way home). My #2 nav/com (RT-328) was still having problems (#1 Com is out of aircraft for repair). Could not transmit or receive. Troubleshot for another 30 mins before I finally had to give up or get rained/t-stormed in for 2 days. Left the plane there with a not-so-nice message with the avionics folks who had just installed an intercom and confirmed the 328 was fine. Got off the ground in some light rain, still east of the storm and had no problems getting South of it (it was moving NE, we were heading S). A 30kt direct headwind made it a long 2 hr, frustrating flight home. ...not to mention the C-5 (!) Dover approach passed 1,000' below us in low vis w/o ever giving us a heads up. I had just started to calm down over having to leave the plane there, then saw the gigantic C-5 coming at us 1000' below (didn't appear that low from 3 nm) without ANY heads up from Dover Approach who we were both speaking to.
Anyhow, it's just frustrating. Little problems, but it was an expensive complete waste of time going up to NJ and back. We'll see what the avionics shop says after they start looking at it this morning.
