Entries with tag "flight_lessons"

Before I go into detail, I suppose I should first just say that my checkride went splendidly and I'm now the proud possessor of a private pilot's certificate with 42.5 logged hours. Surprisingly, I find that I'm actually more excited about this accomplishment than I was when I graduated from college. I suppose that might be indicative of misplaced priorities, but college felt like something that I simply had to do. Sure, when I was done I had put in a lot of work and succeeded at something difficult, but it had been something that was practically a requirement, so it wasn't all that remarkable that I did it. Nobody gives you a ceremony when you properly raise your kids, although I'm sure that's not an easy task. But it's just something that's expected of you. Learning to fly, on the other hand, was a mountain that I climbed willingly and purely because I wanted to, and I guess that's why there's a greater sense of reward when I reach the peak. Besides, my college degree doesn't let me do anything nearly as fun as flying an airplane. (OK, maybe indirectly it does).

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Earlier this week I completed all of my training prerequisites other than the overall 40 minimum hours of flight time, so for the past few days I've been working with Mike on reviewing my landings (soft-field, short-field, etc) and maneuvers (slow flight, stalls, 45°-banked turns, turns around a point, etc). Yesterday he decided that I was ready, coincidentally just as I reached exactly 40.0 hours in my logbook.

Before you can schedule an FAA practical test (known as a 'checkride'), Fly By Knight makes you go up with a different instructor than the one you trained with, who plays the part of an FAA examiner makes you run through the maneuvers and landings that the real examiner will make you do. That instructor decides whether you're ready for the checkride itself — if he gives you a thumbs-up, you can go ahead and schedule the official test. If he gives you a thumbs-down, then you need to spend a few more flights with your instructor reviewing things a little more.

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Today there was some bad weather down at New Orleans moving north, so we stayed close to the airport and just worked on improving my landings. We practiced short-field and soft-field and combination short/soft-field landings, and I definitely felt myself getting more comfortable with them. One maneuver which gave me trouble was the soft-field touch-and-go.

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Today N5356F was back from its 100-hour inspection, and the weather was decent, so I finally managed to go on my long cross-country flight. I flew to Baton Rouge, then on to Lafayette, and then direct back to Hammond. The whole flight was actually quite unremarkable. No airliners chased me down, I didn't get lost — nothing worth recounting happened at all, really. Which I guess is a good thing.

Just about the only mistake I did make was due to the fact that I seldom fly N5356F. Most of my training has been in the other Warrior, N1288H. And so, out of force of habit, when I filed my flight plan and made my initial call to Baton Rouge Approach, I reported that I was flying N1288H. It was only about 20 minutes into the flight, when I requested Flight Following from Baton Rouge Approach, that I realized I had given them the wrong callsign, and had to correct it. But it was no big deal, and after that everything went smashingly. Now I'm up to about 32 hours. That 40-hour mark is getting pretty close.

As I described yesterday, it turned out that both of the FBO's Piper Warriors were down for maintenance today, which meant that I couldn't go flying. Mike suggested that a good way to use the time would be to take the practice written exam instead.

One of the requirements you have to meet before getting a pilot's license is to score a 75% or better on the official FAA written knowledge exam. However, the FAA doesn't even let you take the written exam until a flight instructor has signed an endorsement in your logbook saying you're ready. At Fly By Knight, they give you a practice exam, and if you score 85% or better on it, then they endorse your logbook and you can make an appointment to take the official one.

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Today I got two exercises in pilot decision-making, for free!

I was scheduled to do my long solo cross-country flight, flying from Hammond to Baton Rouge, then to Lafayette, then back to Hammond; about 170 miles in all. We had to cancel on Friday because the weather has continued to be crap as it has been for the past few weeks, but as I awoke this morning I found that there wasn't a single cloud in the sky. It was like a magical little window had been opened up in the never-ending series of summer thunderstorms, just for me. It looked like I'd actually get to go up to my planned altitude (4500 feet westbound and 5500 feet eastbound), where the air is nice and cool, rather than sweating it out at 2000 feet to stay under the clouds, like I had to do on my first solo cross-country flight to Gulfport.

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Yesterday before doing some solo flying, Mike and I flew up to Sycamore (the flight school's mechanic's grass strip) to deliver an airplane part they needed. I got to try another soft/short field landing, and we delivered the part. He's got a nice setup out there. I wouldn't mind living somewhere like that — in a house out away from town, on a field bordered by forest, with a grass strip and a few hangars attached to your house.

I taxied out to the end of the strip and prepared to take off again. As I was running through my checklist, a butterfly floated up out of the taller grass bordering the airstrip. I thought to myself what a pleasant setting this was, and just sat and watching the buttefly for a bit, enjoying the peaceful moment.

And then the butterfly fluttered straight into my propeller and disappeared in a puff of yellow. :(

Today the weather between here and Gulfport, MS was finally clear enough for me to go on my first solo cross-country flight, from Hammond to Gulfport and back, a round-trip distance of 142 nautical miles. And look at that! I managed to stay alive. That was my primary objective for the day, and I'm glad I managed to achieve it.

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My aviation headset arrived today, just as I was about to head to Hammond for a solo flight. This headset, unlike the basic units the FBO provides with their planes, has active noise cancellation, which is a feature I've never had before in a set of headphones. I tried it out in my apartmente before leaving, and it's incredible. A flick of the button, and my annoyingly loud air conditioning unit just disappears. Needless to say, it works great for a droning airplane engine as well (yet retains enough of the sound for you to clearly hear what the engine is doing). I could actually hear the wind whooshing past the plane.

This headset also has an input for a cell phone or MP3 player (automatically muted when anyone talks on the radio, of course). I don't know if there's anything more wonderful than lifting off the ground with Sigur Rós playing gently in the background as the sun starts to set.

Today we flew back out to Baton Rouge to give me some more practice interacting with ATC during the day, when things are more busy. Mike told me to act like he wasn't there — a few times when I forgot what ATC had told me, I asked him what they had said, and he shrugged and made me deal with it as if I was alone in the plane. Which meant I had to get back on the radio and ask ATC to tell me again because I'd forgotten it, in front of everyone (metaphorically speaking). Hehe, that's pretty good incentive to help remember to write it down next time.

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I had mentioned to Mike that I'd like to get some more practice handling emergency procedures, so we devoted today's lesson primarily to that. The flight school's mechanic has a small private grass runway on his land that the school has permission to use for soft-field and short-field landing practice, so Mike had me fly out in that general direction, and then when we got close, he cut my engine back to idle at 2500' and had me go through the engine out checklist and set up for an emergency landing. Man, things happen a lot faster when your engine is "off."

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Wow, flying at night is actually quite pleasant. It feels a lot more relaxed and peaceful than flying during the day. I think a big factor that contributes towards that is the fact that the wind is a lot calmer at night, but it also had to do with the fact that you can't see most of the world below you, so it feels like flying over nothingness. Kind of like at the end of the Langoliers, except you don't have to fly through a time warp while asleep to get back home.

Landing wasn't too hard either. You do have less visual reference with which to judge your altitude, so you have to be careful not to flare too high from the runway, but really I never felt uncomfortable or out of control while landing. The runway lighting actually makes the dimensions of the runway easier to see than during the day.

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Today Mike and I flew down over the lake to the New Orleans airport, MSY (or Moisant Field, as apparently every other pilot knows it — apparently the name was changed in 2001 and most people still use the old one), to give me a taste of flying into a Class B airport (the busiest classification). I had the option of flying to Baton Rouge instead, but I wanted to try flying into an airport that I had actually arrived at as a commercial passenger. It went surprisingly well. And when I checked my logbook later, it turned out this was my 50th landing. Hey, look at that.

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Today I set off with Mike on my first cross-country flight. We flew from Hammond to Gulfport, Mississippi, and then back again. Of course, it didn't start there. There's actually a lot more involved in planning a flight than I would have thought.

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Woo, I soloed today. When the lesson began, I did a few touch-and-gos with Mike, my instructor, just like we'd been doing for the last few lessons. When I landed the third time, Mike told me to pull off the runway and let him out. Hehehe. He signed the section of my logbook that says I'm endorsed to fly solo, grabbed a handheld radio to keep in contact with me, and off I went. I didn't expect it to happen so soon — I only had 9.1 hours of flight experience at that point, and I'd always heard that your first solo usually happens around 12-15 hours. But, surprisingly, when I was off on my own, I felt very ready and in control, and didn't feel frightened or anything.

Heh, and the fates didn't wait long to throw a little test in my way.

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You may have noticed (if you're not logged in) that I've added a few small ads to the site. I've tried to make them as unintrusive as possible — matching them to the site's color scheme, etc. Even so, I hate to do it. But the flight lessons I'm taking are putting pretty significant demands on my budget, and I'm trying to find ways to reduce my monthly expenses in any way possible. The $160/mo I pay to keep BinRock online was obviously one of the first things to look at. I've never considered adding ads to the site before, because I always assumed they'd only bring in $10 or $20 a month, and that just wasn't worth the clutter they add. But I've been talking with friends of mine who participate in Google AdSense, and I've been learning that actually, based on my monthly traffic, it's quite likely that I'll bring in something in the $80-100 range — over half of my monthly server costs. That's just not something I can ignore — at least for now. Once I've finished the flight lessons and my finances have settled back down, I may get rid of them again. And of course, if it turns out they really aren't producing enough income to be worthwhile, then they'll be gone much sooner than that.

Since I started flight lessons a few weeks ago, Bryan had occasionally mentioned coming along with me on one, but since my lessons are always during the day, he was always at work. Yesterday was a holiday, though, so he came along (after making me promise not to kill him). Fortunately, he brought along Cat's camera too, so he took some pictures and videos during the flight.

It was a relatively exciting lesson too, since we were practicing stalls and stall recovery. A stall occurs when a wing pitches up so high that the airflow breaks up and the wing suddenly stops producing lift. It tends to happen during slow flight, at times when you're flying just barely faster than the plane's minimum speed, such as takeoff and landing. The recovery involves adding full power and pitching down briefly to break the stall, then smoothly pitching back up to stop the plane from descending.

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For the last month or so I've had this insidious and steadily increasing desire to get back into flying, and finally get my pilot's license like I originally planned to do when I was 16 (because of the relative priority I gave to the idea, I remember musing that it was very likely that I'd find myself having a pilot's license but no driver's license — needing my parents to drive me to the airfield when I wanted to go up, hehe). Even the harrowing experience of landing in a light jet in tropical storm-force winds hasn't done much to allay my enthusiasm. As a recreational pilot, I can simply choose not to fly if the weather looks like it could turn ugly.

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