so i'm sittin here playin with clay. sometimes i really feel like i'm back in kindergarden. I'm sure there's a really important element of the FAR/AIM that i could study, but this works for now
not used to seein sights like this as i grew up in san diego, it's pretty, but brrr
Answer: tons, but not a lot of flying. I guess I needed to just step back and take a little summer vacation from flying school as well as greatly simplify the work situation. I've slimmed down to probably 1.2 jobs as compared to the 2 or 3 I was working before. The drawback there is that I'm slightly less in touch with the aviation side of things.
New digital camera means more flickr posts! I did some housesitting for my uncle last week and this is what the drive from job #1 to the house looks like at night.
I'm hoping to squeeze into the schedule at school for the Seneca and a multi engine instructor so I can get to work on my Private MEL certificate, but there's only one Seneca, one instructor and another student hogging all the time. I think there will have to be words between the me and the school.
Why this guy keeps parking his bicycle here, I don't know.
People keep asking me, "so now that you have your instrument rating, what's next?" or something to that effect. There are a couple of options at this point, but I've elected to go for multiengine add-on to my private pilot certificate. This allows the several long cross countries that are part of the commercial syllabus to be logged as PIC in a multi, generally considered good to have in your logbook.
The instructor walked me through the preflight on the Seneca I. Nothing terribly complicated there just a couple of new things to check - as well as having an additional engine to look over, this is my first retractable gear airplane. My least favorite part about Piper aircraft is the need to get into the pilot's seat by entering through the copilot's side and clambering across the copilot's seat and the center controls, but soon we were strapped in and beginning the engine(s) start procedure.
Imagine to yourself (or for that matter, to anyone around you as well) driving a mid to small sized automobile for several months and then jumping into a largish van. Now give the van wings, two engines and significantly smaller tires and not only do you have a freaky mental picture of a flying van in your head but you may also understand what it's like to go from a Cessna 172 to a Piper Seneca. The haze was pretty nasty, but I could see enough to notice that we were getting out to the practice area in short order.
We started with steep turns, I did alright but the haze gave me a crappy horizon and very few good ground reference points. My instructor encouraged me to fly to commercial standards (50 degrees of bank) right away and with that done, we proceeded to stalls.
I've never liked stalls. I understand the logic behind teaching and practicing them, but I still don't like them. Stalls in new airplanes make me nervous, and I especially remember being nervous practicing them under the hood during my instrument training. This may or may not go back to the time I inadvertantly got to practice spin recovery during some solo practice while working on my private certificate. In any case, stalls proved to be no scary thing. The Seneca is a very solid feeling, stable aircraft.
On the way back in, my ears were in constant need of a pressure equalization procedure. I've been spending a lot of time at 3,000 feet and we got to 6,500 and above. After putting my first hour of multi time in my logbook, I felt reasonably upbeat.
Later I got the news that I may not fit in the budget at my current position. Right now I'm helping out at the programming position I had before beginning this whole pilot adventure and I was really under the impression that I'd be able to stay here for at least 3 months and probably longer. Now it looks like I may be hunting down other prospects for income. Talk about a buzzkill.
Just some post exam randomness today. Yesterday, I went out and picked up an iDJ for doing dj and podcast stuff. Of course that meant I needed another iPod for the second side, so to bring the total tally to three I bought a 1 gig nano. Just enough to hold a few songs so I can fade back and forth between the nano and my venerable 40 gig iPod Photo (ipod #3 is the shuffle). Tested it out last night and it is pretty cool. Though I did find out that the case I'd been keeping the iPod photo (dubbed fliPod) in would not fit in the dock connector of the iDJ so away it went. Kinda lame 'cause now the fliPod has no belt clip, however I did get a little case for the nano which is probably better suited for belt clippage. Mmmm... clippage.
WOOHOO!!
I'm instrument rated :) The recheck went - fairly smooth. Only had to do one coupled VOR approach, of course the autopilot seemed to have it's own ideas of what to do.
The departure from 27R as published is a right 270 to 165 (mentioned that before I think) and we're cleared to climb up to 3000 feet. After getting the heading bug on the correct side of the heading indicator, I engaged my supposed electronic helper to allow it to finish the turn. It seemed to be a little confused for a moment and didn't exactly keep smooth progress toward the desired heading. By some miracle, I ended up with the nose pointed the right direction. I started the approach check, NAV1 - check, NAV2 - check, COM 1 set to ATIS on primary and tower on standby. Shaping up to be a pretty good approach so...why are we at 3300 feet?
Otto the copilot seems to be on vacation, time to disengange and try again. SoCal clears me for the approach and I reset the autopilot - which in addition to having trouble with the altitudes also can't seem to intercept a VOR radial. I hear about it from SoCal and go back to heading mode for a while. This would be easier hand flown at this point but the examiner needs to see this approach coupled.
Finally nav and approach mode seem to be cooperating and there is at least a chance of getting the vertical speed and altitude modes to work.
Crossing Poggi at 1220 on the nose, the examiner tells me we can cancel IFR and depart the Brown class D airspace to the north. He also asks if I mind handing over the controls for him to take us home. This I've learned is not a bad sign and I relax while he takes us back VFR.
Time to go find a nice cloud to crash through :)
I didn't think that any ride could take longer that my private pilot practical. Today, I proved myself wrong. Last Friday (the 21st) was the original scheduling of my instrument ride. Even though I wasn't sure I did that great a job, the examiner seemed very pleased with the oral portion of the exam. Ok, vast improvement over the private ride where I got a letter of disapproval before climbing into the aircraft - the rest should be cake. After all, I was more worried about the oral than anything.
The weather last week was solidly overcast and we figured that because of heavy IFR traffic, we probably wouldn't be able to do practice approaches. This means sitting on the ground idling while we wait for our next clearance. That combined with an airshow at my home airport prompted the decision to discontinue and do the flight portion in a week.
Yesterday was the first flight. Again, I didn't think I did that great but the examiner had many kind words. I never got down to the minimum decent altitude on the VOR-A approach into Oceanside (KOKB) and I almost flew the holding pattern backwards. We did get stuck on the ground at Palomar (KCRQ), but only for 15 minutes. Being unable to carve out a section of VMC space to do unusual attitudes and a DME arc, the examiner opted to go back and do just one more flight to mop up the one goofy approach, the arc and unusual attitudes. I made quite a few mistakes, but caught most of them before the examiner had to say anything.
That supposedly final flight was today. One autopilot coupled approach into Brown (KSDM) and the other things and we would've been done. Except that I boneheaded just about every altitude I could have. On departure, the instruction from SoCal was to climb to 2600 feet, which I acknowledged and promptly levelled off at 1600. Of course, the examiner is sitting there waiting for me to realize what I'd done and I get the call from SoCal. "Cessna 290 verify you are climbing to 2600". I take another look at the altimiter and figure it out, acknowledge the call and resume climbing - oops.
The VOR-A approach to Brown has a stepdown fix from 2400 to the MDA of 1220 at FINLE intersection, 4.4 DME from Poggi VORTAC. We joined the approach course between HAILE and FINLE. After getting established on the approach course, what I should have done is decend to 2400 until reaching FINLE. What I did was cross FINLE at 2600. Ok, no real big deal there, I still have 4.4 miles to get to 1220 except that I don't realize yet what I've done wrong. I do catch that I should be going down so I level off at 2400 and cross the VOR (which on this approach is the missed approach point) at 2400 instead of the MDA - oops.
We do the arc and unusual attitudes to check them off the list and land at Gillespie. The debrief goes about as expected, I get my letter of disapproval and have to tell everyone who asks that no, I don't quite have that instrument rating yet. Of course, I'm working dispatch this afternoon so plenty of people are asking.
Now I have to go up one more time with the chief instructor so he can re-endorse me for the retake. And for those keeping score at home, yes this will be the 4th time I see the examiner. The good news is he's a real nice guy and a true professional. If I could just shake these checkride jitters and not make boneheaded mistakes, I might just survive getting this rating.
It's been raining a little here and I came home to something that stirred my inner photographer. This one comes from a love of black and white, but there are some color shots too. Be sure to see the rest of the set on flickr.
Wings level 1 is complete and the paperwork is now at the San Diego FSDO (flight standards district office, pronounced fizdo). I can't wait for my little bronze pin thingy. I did and plan to continue to participate in this program for three (3) reasons.
It's really only been a few months since passing my private pilot checkride and I was suprised how rusty some of those skills were. I also learned a couple of things that never got covered in my initial training thus reinforcing the opinion that you really should fly with a few different instructors.
If you are a US pilot, I highly recommend checking out the wings program. There is no such thing as too much training :)
Tests make me nervous. Checkrides aren't any better. There's always the nagging thought that something got missed. What question is he going to ask me in the oral that I'm just not going to remember? Do I still remember how to do a DME arc? Holding pattern? Which approaches am I going to have to do? Will I remember to get all the right radios tuned on all the right frequencies? GPS? Autopilot? As you can see the question marks are not in short supply.
My IFR ride is scheduled for Friday the 21st and there's the optimistic part of me that knows I've been doing maneuvers and approaches over and over these past few months and the cheif pilot seems to think it's time to schedule the ride. Then of course there's the nervous side that is always wondering what pitfall I will catch. I made sure to get the afternoon slot instead of the morning one to avoid the embarrasing episode of waking up waay too late and showing up late for the test (not the best first impression on the examiner) and so that I'll have some time for last minute review before the actual oral exam begins (eek!).
Hopefully I'll be able to keep my confident foot forward.
Ok. I was gonna go with wordpress or movable type and host my own blog. But, it would seem that I just don't have the time to hack my own blog together. So here I be on blogger. I do wish blogger had tags, or categories, or something like that but at least this way mah peeps can comment if they wanna tell me not to kill myself (hi greybeard and bliv). Incidently, I did go to the California motorcycle safety class and got my class M1 license. The bike runs beautifully :)
Part of me wants to consolidate all the old posts (available at http://www.dailydrivel.net/blog) onto this blog, but I don't know if I'll have the time.
Yesterday, I completed flight 2 of the FAA Wings safety program. Did lots of emergency practice with an instructor with whom I've never flown before. It was good practice and I'm one more hour away from my wingies :)
I'm out, comment and let me know yer still here :D
