History’s shortest lesson

Booked a morning lesson for today at 9:00am with Marv. Got there a bit early to start getting the plane ready. Cloud cover was bad – prediction was for lots of rain today. By the time Marv showed, the ceiling was down to 2400 – no problem for some pattern work. We preflighted the plane and then talked about runway lighting, markings, taxiways and procedures in the pattern. Fired up and taxied to 16L for departure. My flying club’s planes are all the way at the opposite end of the runway, so when 34L is in use, it is only about 100 feet of taxiing. When 16L is in use, however, and given the fact that Marv likes to use ALL available runway (I good practice, I agree) it makes for a long taxi. No problem.

So we get in the air and realize that the ceiling is WAY lower than it had been. ATIS was saying 1800 feet (right around pattern altitude), but we could see it was dropping rapidly. By the time we started our turn downwind, we were in solid IMC. We dropped a bit, and told the tower that we would be making our first landing a full stop. Taxied back and shut it down. A total of .2 hours on the tach. Didn’t even bother putting it in my logbook.

STILL 3.2 total hours