1.5 Hours; 2 Landings; KGNV-KCDK-KGNV
Tonights flying adventure was to take my parents from Gainesville, Florida to Cedar Key for dinner. It'd be a nice, quick trip for dinner, and a fun outing.
The flight west took just about half an hour. Cedar Key airport has a 2,300 foot runway, with water on both ends. I overflew the field from the northeast to consult the windsock and inspect the runway. The overflight was lower than standard traffic pattern altitude, and I didn't lose enough altitude turning base to final, and was higher/faster than I felt comfortable with coming over the threshold considering available runway length. I initiated a go around and flew a more standard patten and made a comfortable short-field landing.
While airborne you are supposed to be able to call for a taxi via CTAF, but my request was answered by someone other than the taxi driver advising us she had lost her radio and gave us a phone number. Once on the ground, we called her cell phone several times, but got no answer. We set off on foot for the two mile trek to Dock Street for dinner.
Through the graciousness of the restaurant staff, we were able to get a car ride back to the airport. The runway lights were not the typical elevated type, but were inset into the grass (which needed to be mowed). For best practice, since we would be flying upwind over open water before being able to turn back inbound for land, I executed a textbook short-field takeoff and gained several hundred feet of altitude by the time we crossed the departure threshold and headed out over the water.
Winds aloft were light and variable, so the trip back was about another 30 minutes. About 15 miles west of the field clouds started building in at about 3,000 feet. Winds were calm at the surface and tower cleared us for straight in runway 7. Temperature and dewpoint were forecast to converge at 8 PM but were still five degrees apart, about two hours later the field went IFR due to ceilings.
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