Flying

I went flying today -We were up 5.7 hours. Dave, the pilot, let me take the controls a lot of the time. He tested me a bunch by having me continually changing the trim, flaps, and throttle and then getting back to stable flight. We had flight following and were maintaining altitude at 4000 in order to provide highbird communications. Clouds started building up around 11 and it was hard to maintain 4000 and stay away from the clouds. Every now and then we would suddenly encounter a cloud bank and Dave would say "Aim for that whole in the clouds over there". I was a little jittery at those points. We covered several nav techniques in the event the GPS doesn't work. My head is spinning, but it was sure exhilarating.

We barely had time to refuel and get back on station at the lunch break so we traded controlling the a/c while the other ate lunch. We were monitoring several comm's and there was continual radio chatter. I can't imagine how pilots in real busy areas keep all the communications straight.
The new tower in Rogers had us come in on runway one and expedite both times we landed there because there was so much local traffic. There was so much haze it was hard to see the horizon and the bright sun shining off the haze tired my eyes. All told, we were out a little over 9 hours. I was sure tired when I got home, of course you can tell by how disjointed this post is.