Our Dumb Blog

On Wednesday, I flew from Norman, to Chikasha to Tulsa to Ponca City and back. 5.1 hours of flight.

After much ado and discussion about the weather (rain likely, no thunderstorms for the area,) we set off around 10:30am. One of the legs of the flight had to be between two airports more than 100NM from each other. Norman and Tulsa is something like 96NM. So we flew west to Chickasha first. Originally, I was going to fly an NDB (non-directional bearing) approach into Chickasha, but the ADF (Automatic Direction Finder, it’s what receives the signal broadcast by an NDB) in the aircraft we were flying wasn’t working, and the only other approach available was a VOR/DME approach. And the plane didn’t have DME (Distance Measuring Equipment) either.

So we flew VFR to Chickasha, and since I’d never done it, I asked Zach if I could land on one of the grass strips there, as opposed to the perfectly good concrete runway. I’d never landed on grass before, and wanted to try it. It’s a weird sensation, and while my landing wasn’t perfect, it was perfectly acceptable.

After landing, we taxied to the paved runway. A pipeline patrol aircraft called that he was 4 miles out, inbound for Chickasha on the radio. We replied that we were taking runway 17 and departing to the north east. Right after takeoff, we called that we were upwind runway 17. Maybe 20 seconds after takeoff, I spotted a Cessna, close at about one o’clock. At first I thought he was going the same direction we were, but then I realized he was heading right at us. I banked right while pointing him out to Zach.

Spotting other airplanes in the day is a pretty tricky endeavor. If they’re moving across your field of view, they’re fairly easy to spot. But if they’re moving across your field of view, you’re not on a collision course. If they ARE on a collision course, the other plane appears stationary and is very hard to spot. I think that the biggest reason there aren’t more aircraft collisions when flying in uncontrolled airspace under visual conditions is that there is a lot of space and planes are relatively small. I was still in a right bank when I realized how close we were going to come. At that point, it looked like we’d clear each other by about 10 feet. I increased my bank, and the other pilot was talking on the radio… “Chickasha traffic, pipeline patrol 1234 is about– OH SHIT!” NOW he sees us. He simultaneously banked off at about 75 degrees and dove, so we ended up clearing each other by about 25 feet.

25 feet is closer than you ever, ever want to get to another airplane. Even though we were both slow-moving, the time between my spotting him and passing him was about 10 seconds. And I spent the first several of those convinced he was going the same direction we were.

Zach was busy looking at something in the cockpit and didn’t see him until right about as we passed. Had I not been paying attention, we would have been toast.

The near-miss was the other pilot’s fault. We announced our position, and were flying runway heading less than 500 feet above the ground. The other pilot never should have been that low flying the wrong way over the departure end of a runway. I have no idea why he was. We talked briefly on the radio, and he claims his radio cut out and he never heard us…

But… we weren’t about to make a fuss about it. No one wants to get involved in an FAA investigation if it’s avoidable.

I’m not entirely upset that it happened, because now I know what traffic that close and closing looks like. While I can certainly hope that I don’t wine up that close again, near-misses happen every day.

As I opened our flight plan, I felt some sense of relief that we were going to be watched by radar for most of the rest of the flight. Under an IFR flight plan, ATC is responsible for keeping me away from other planes. It’s a nice feeling.

We ran into a little rain, but the clouds were pretty high, so we didn’t get much actual instrument flying in. It was miserably hot and turbulent the whole way.

Foggles, by the way, are a view-limiting device. There are lots of different kinds, the sort I use clip onto my glasses and only let me see out of the bottom. The idea is to make it so that I cannot see outside the airplane, in order to simulate flying in a cloud.

Flying 5 hours without really being able to see out can drive anyone crazy. The turbulence just makes it worse, because the plane is bouncing every which way and I have to make constant corrections in order to maintain an altitude and heading. Staring at the needles for 5 hours in 100 degree heat is enough to make me fairly exhausted.

We did a touch and go at Tulsa after shooting the ILS. It was the first ILS approach I’ve flown in an airplane, and with all the turbulence, I managed to lose the glideslope completely and barely held onto to the localizer course. The approach ended with Zach saying, “Well, you’ve got full scale deflection of the glideslope needle, and in actual instrument conditions you’d go around. Instead, take your foggles off and land.” Landing a 172 on a huge runway is almost funny. So small a plane, such a huge runway. I use what seems like a few inches of it to land and take off again. Then it’s on to Ponca City.

Ponca City has a huge runway and used to be a fairly active Mesa Airlines base. These days it’s pretty much deserted and uncontrolled. Mesa makes a couple of flights in an out of there. We were going to fly the ILS into Ponca City, but unfortunately, it was inoperative. So, we flew the VOR approach in, and it was the first time I’d actually flown a full approach, since ATC almost always just vectors you to the final approach course. But since it was an uncontrolled airport, Kansas City Center just cleared me for the approach and left me to my own devices.

We landed at Ponca City and went in for lunch. It turns out that there’s a really good Mexican restaurant in the airport. My first $100 hamburger, even if it was a chimichanga. It wasn’t Mexican-Mexican but more Tex-Mex. Or maybe Okie-Mex. The chips were these really good puffed up things which were crunchy on the outside and chewy inside. Never had anything quite like them. The chimichanga was quite good too. And it was all $4. Why was there never an airport restaurant like that anywhere I wound up as a flight attendant?

We had to pump our own gas. 23 gallons at $2.69/gal. Av-gas isn’t cheap. Apparently refineries only produce it a couple of days out of the year, and that has to last us until the next time they do it. It’s a big deal for them, because aviation gasoline needs lead in it, but they have to flush the refineries after making it to be sure that they remove all the the lead when they go back to making unleaded gasoline. Apparently aviation gasoline these days is the source of endless battles between the EPA who wants lead-free gasoline, the FAA who wants endless certification tests performed on any new gasoline formula, and pilots who just want cheap gas. The trouble is, no one’s managed to come up with a good enough lead substitute for use in high-performance high-compression aircraft engines. (The airplanes I fly, however, have engines quite similar to a 1960′s VW bug, and can be modified to run on automobile gasoline just fine.)

After pumping gas, filing our flight plan, and doing a walk-around, we set off for Norman. It’s not quite 100NM from Ponca City. It should take about an hour. Unfortunately, we had a direct headwind of about 40 knots which substantially cuts into our cruise speed. Most 172′s can cruise at a little over 100 knots. The one we were in wouldn’t do much over 90 knots. So we were flying with a ground speed of.. oh.. maybe 55 miles per hour. It would have been quicker to drive. As it was, it took us roughly two hours. It was so hot, and ATC wouldn’t give us an altitude higher than 6,000 feet. Since the standard atmospheric lapse rate is 2 degrees Celsius per 1,000 feet, the higher you get, the more pleasant it is. We wanted at least 8,000 feet, but OKC approach control really doesn’t like to deal with us, because we’re so slow. A ground track of 50 knots makes them even less happy than it does us. So they keep us low and out of the way of the real airplanes.

As we were nearing Tinker AFB, we heard, “Sentry four one heavy, we have an emergency,” in a surprisingly calm voice. In fact, the air traffic controller sounded more upset than the pilot. After being asked the nature of the emergency, the pilot, sounding noticeably more worried this time, announced that he had smoke and fumes in the cockpit. We saw them land okay, and apparently they evacuated the plane at the end of the runway, since it was still on the runway when we flew over Tinker.

“Sentry” is apparently the Air Force call sign for the E-3 AWACS planes, which are Boeing 707′s with an enormous radar dome on top. I’d never seen one in person until I moved here, and now I see them all the time. A little internet research turned up why. The Air Force has 33 of them, and 28 of those are based at Tinker. They fly endless practice approaches both at Will Rogers and Tinker. They’re fun to watch, because they’re huge and make a lot of noise.

5.1 hours of flying, and I was exhausted. It turned out to be a fairly eventful day. When I got home, Joanna called to tell me she had a flat tire.

I didn’t fly yesterday because Zach was busy with other students, and I haven’t flown yet today because it’s really too windy. I could fly, but shooting practice approaches with all this wind will prove to be nearly impossible.

Well, when I got to the airport today, Zach said he really didn’t think flying would be too productive today, but I’d go if he wanted. He had just gotten back from a flight and said it was just miserable. Hot and really turbulent. It’s so windy, that OKC approach was unable to provide usefull vectors, and was so busy they were unable to let him fly practice approaches. His student wasn’t really able to fly any approaches. Zach said he’d fly with me if I really wanted to. I figured that if it was that miserable, and he really didn’t want to fly, that I’d happily put it off. I still may finish before the end of the month.

Tomorrow, we’re supposed to go to Tulsa. Only, because of the specific requirements for the flight, we’re actually going to Chickasha first, then to Tulsa, then Ponca City, then back to Norman. 360NM or so. We could just about fly to Memphis or so if we weren’t flying in circles. A grand tour of Oklahoma with my foggles on. We’ll have to get fuel in Ponca City.

There’s a chance of thunderstorms, so I don’t know if I’ll be going or not. It looks like it’s going to be hot-hot.

Berck

Zach and I flew up to Wiley Post today to drop someone off there. I filed my first IFR flight plan, and flew IFR up there.

It was quite turbulent today, so I was having a hard time of it. First time flying an airplane in a couple of weeks, and today wasn’t an easy day to do it.

I copied my IFR clearance down okay, but had a heck of a time reading it back. The controller reads you an endless string of things which until you get the hang of, is rather hard to elegantly write down and repeat all very quickly.

On the way over to Wiley Post, we filed at 4,000 which ended up being kinda nifty, as the cloud layer was right at 4,000 feet. It was only a broken layer, so we were in and out of clouds. It looked really cool, just flying through them.

I shot the VOR approach into Wiley post, actually did it twice for practice. The first time I was all over the place, busted my MDA and got a low altitude alert from the controller, which is considered bad. It’s hard enough flying a light plane straight and level when you can see outside. Flying the needles in turbulence is rough.

On the way to Wiley Post, Zach and the guy behind in the back were on a headset splitter, so the controller couldn’t really hear Zach very well at all, so I had to make all the radio calls. There’s a lot of talking in IFR flying, and it’s all new sorts of talking that I’m not used to, so that was an added stress.

After dropping the guy off, we flew back to Westheimer, and I shot the localizer approach coming in. Although I lost the needle once, I got back on it before the final approach fix and flew fairly decent approach back in. Zach made all the radio calls which helped out quite a bit.

Flying IFR makes me feel like a real pilot:)

It’s good to be back in a real plane, but I was so very exhausted. 2.1 hours IFR in turbulence is enough to make me sleep well tonight.

Berck has been reading The Morning News outloud to me. We especially appreciated this explanation of Olympic sports by the non-expert Andrew Womack:

Badminton, Handball, Table Tennis, Tennis & Volleyball

Badminton is tennis with a volleyball net and a shuttlecock instead of a ball. Handball is racquetball without a racquet–technically, it could just be called “ball”. Table tennis has a ball and paddles (instead of racquets), and is just like tennis except everything’s smaller and the court is usually stored in the basement. Volleyball is like badminton, which, as stated earlier, is like tennis, but without any racquets and with a ball.

If we took the racquets from the badmintoners and gave them to the handballers, then sent the badmintoners over to the volleyball courts to play that instead (same net anyway), and then if we get the tennis players and the table-tennis players to switch courts, then, finally, is everyone even?

This still leaves us with a bag full of shuttlecocks.

We don’t have a TV because Berck doesn’t want one. I don’t mind not having a TV around…except when the Olympics are on. We could apparently get a gadget so we could watch cable on the computer monitor, but it costs $30 and would take however long to get here…by then after the Olympics are finished.

I had my phone interview for the volunteer center coordinator with the University of Central Oklahoma at six on Thursday. We’re supposed to get off at the warehouse at five thirty, but lately we’ve been working a lot of overtime. My last check had eight and a half hours of overtime on it. I’m not sure that working till seven at night is worth it, though.

I worked really hard all day to make sure we got off on time. We did.

The phone interview went fine, I guess. I don’t think I’ve got the sort of personality they’re looking for. They said they would give me a call the next day to see about coming in for a real interview this coming week. But I didn’t hear from them.

On Fridays I get off at one. I dashed home yesterday, scarfed down a hot dog, and dashed up to Oklahoma City for an interview with Temple of Faith school. As I was looking for it, I passed through a run-down black part of town, then little Vietnam. I turned on to the street where the school was supposed to be. The streets were all pot-holed, the cars that were driving down them all looked a block from breaking down, the houses were decidedly low-income. I saw a bigger building on the next corner and hoped it wasn’t Temple of Faith church. It looked fifty years old and crumbling. I pulled in front of it and considered calling and canceling the interview. This couldn’t possibly be worth it.

But I went inside anyway. The girl in running pants at the front desk took me to a conference room and gave me an application to fill out. I don’t know why one has to fill in all the information on applications that is already in printed form on one’s resume. But I had nothing better to do while waiting for my interview. Before I finished, an attractive young woman came in and introduced herself as the director. She waited until I finished and then asked me some more questions to fill out another form.

Finally she told me some about the school (the reason I’d have to come for the interview anyway, since the lady answering the phones would only make me an interview). The church had wanted to form a school for about four years, but they’d had to go through 30,000 dollars renovating the building.

And renovate it they have. We went on a tour of the facilities, and the school half of the building is beautiful, freshly painted rooms, each colorfully decorated and filled with great new toys. The church is just starting out with an all day school for infants through kindergarten with after school activities for school-aged children. They want to expand into a full elementary school in the future.

They’re opening at the beginning of September and still don’t have all the teachers they need (one for every age group and a part time position for after school programs). They pay between six and ten, and since I have a master’s degree, I’d probably be able to get nine or ten.

The director’s enthusiasm for her new school was infectious. I didn’t tell her it wasn’t enough money, wondering if this could actually work. The pastor’s wife, who is out of town this week, is the executive director and performs final interviews. I would get a call this next week.

Of course, after thinking about it more, I don’t think I should do it. But it was nice to have a positive interview…or any interview at all.

We don’t have a TV, so for the first time, I’m forced to simply read about the Olympics instead of watching them.

Here’s a great article about an American who won ten gold medals…and you’ve never even heard of him.

Well, I finally got that stage check done. I’m done with the stupid simulators, at least until I get to the commercial program.

Zach thinks I’ll be done by the end of next week. In fact, what he said is I’ll fly three lessons a day Mon-Wed. Which means I’d be signed off for my stage check on Wednesday. I doubt it. We’ll see what happens.

It’s back to studying. This time for the oral exam.

I’m hoping for some nice cloudy weather next week. No thunderstorms, just clouds.

Berck

Well, my stage check lasted all of 15 minutes. Calvo, after canceling on me yesterday was 45 minutes late today. I flew one approach in the simulator, then started the published missed approach. I was supposedly executing a tear drop entry, but after flying outbound, I turned back to intercept the inbound leg. The wrong way. So he failed me. Just like that.

I feel like breaking things, but there’s nothing suitable around.

On top of that, I still feel sick.

I’m probably going to have to waste another stupid week waiting for him to schedule me again. So much for getting done in August.

I’ve sent out a letter and resume to every private school in the area (about 50) and heard back from one of them, saying, great letter, we’re a growing school, and we’ll need teachers…sometime…we’ll keep you on file.

Last night I applied for a position for Volunteer Center Coordinator at the University of Central Oklahoma (not to be confused with OU). It’s probably the position I’m most qualified for that I’ve applied for. Almost all of my work experience has been coordinating volunteers.

Today I called two schools that had placed ads in the classifieds saying they needed teachers.

One of the schools (it’s actually a daycare, from what I can tell…they don’t have any kids older than four) only pays $8/hour. I talked to a receptionist at the other one who only schedules interviews…she couldn’t tell me about salary or anything. So I made an appointment for one for Friday afternoon. It’s a “child development center,” which I think means “daycare.” But hey…it’s an interview.

My cheatsheet didn’t print right, so I only had half of the number of a third school, but I figured I’d call them tomorrow.

I checked to see if I had any messages when I got off work today. There was one from UCO wanting to set up a phone interview! So I’ve got to call them back tomorrow and see what we can work out. They wanted to talk to me at 3 on Thursday, which is in the middle of my work day. But at this rate, I may not be working then anyway. This cold is making me feel horrible.

Zach called me at noon today to tell me that my stage check wasn’t going to be today afterall. It’s supposedly tomorrow at 3pm. I’m not going to hold my breath.

Joanna says that I’ve given her my allergies, so it’s probably a cold. She’s probably right. I felt worse today. I spent most of the day reading.

This endless game of hurry up and wait drives me crazy. I work like crazy for a week, only so they can dawdle about scheduling my stage checks. I haven’t done anything since Friday.

My allergies have been acting up this weekend, so I haven’t been feeling great. Today was better than yesterday.

Yesterday, I went to the pharmacy to buy some pseudophedrine. It seems that in the state of Oklahoma, purchasing Sudafed is almost as hard as getting narcotics. You don’t need a prescription, but you do need a background check. Apparently it’s an ingredient used in the manufacturing of crystal meth. And apparently the state of Oklahoma thinks that making it difficult to get will do something about the “drug problem”. So far all it’s done is increased meth traffic 300% between Texas and Oklahoma. And seriously. If I’m going to make crystal meth, a short drive to a neighboring state to pick up some Sudafed sounds pretty simple compared to selling the stuff. It makes me mad.

I tinkered a bit with Arthur today. He has breaker points. I’ve heard about breaker points in history books, but never actually seen them. And I certainly don’t have a “dwell meter”– the device needed to set points properly. You can, it seems, make do with a feeler gauge. Which is what I did. He runs quite a bit better now, but he’s still making an ignition-related noise I’m not sure about.

I’d like to sell him, but I just don’t know that it’s going to happen. After running an ad in the Oklahoman for a week, I got all of one phone call. Considering that an ad in the Oklahoman is $44, I can’t exactly afford to run it for a couple of months. I’m not exactly sure what to do. I’d put him on ebay, but I doubt I’ll get any bites there either. People looking for old trucks haven’t don’t seem to go for places like ebay. Unless it’s an old rust bucket they hope to pick up for $50. Putting him on ebay means I need pictures. Without a digital camera, that takes awhile.

I wouldn’t mind keeping him forever. But he’s not a terribly practical second vehicle. An excellent third vehicle, but I’m not sure about second. And he still needs a lot of suspension work and the transmission’s been a bit flaky since I bought it. I plan to drive the transmission ’till it craps out. The suspension can be a bit more dangerous. Particularly when it comes to hauling things. Which is what he’s supposedly good for.

But it’s little things. Like the turn signal stalk broke off in my hand last week.

I got a phone call today that my stage check will be tomorrow afternoon. I hope I pass, because if I don’t, I’ll probably have to wait around another week until they call me again.

I’m just not sure about the simulator. I have a hard time taking it seriously and pretending it’s an airplane. But if I pass, that’s all I’ve got to do in it. Well, for my instrument rating anyway. I’ll have to do a little more time in my commercial with it. Stupid thing.

I made potato and leek soup and some salad for dinner. Joanna seemed excited about it, which is good because I think she’s going to be eating it for lunch for a few days:)

She won’t eat my Russian dressing. She put mayonnaise on hers.

In studying for the instrument rating written exam, I realized that it was going to be more difficult than I’d anticipated before I started studying. I figured it wouldn’t be that much harder than the private written. I scheduled the Exam last week for today. I spent all of last week studying in general, reading the Instrument Flying Handbook, and large portions of the Airman’s Information Manual, and thought I knew plenty. It wasn’t until Monday that I started studying specifically for this exam. And that’s when I realized that I didn’t know the answers to all too many of the 895 possible questions.

I studied all day yesterday when I wasn’t in ground school and wasn’t in the simulator. The test was scheduled for immediately after groundschool because the lady in charge of the testing can be really annoying.

The test was about as hard as I expected, and I had to guess at a couple of the questions. I got a 90% in spite of it all though, which is far better than I’d expected or hoped for. In addition to the Instrument written, I had to take the Certified Flight Instrument Instructor exam as well. They have us do them both at once because they questions come from the same pool. It turned out that the instructor exam was a piece of cake compared to the instrument exam. I ended up with a 96% on the instructor exam.

I’m glad that’s over with. Now I just have to get through a stage check in the simulator before I can go on to finishing this thing up.

I’m really, really hating the simulator. It’s nothing like flying an airplane, and they’re old and crappy. The one I flew today constantly tried to bank to the left, which made doing anything impossible. And it’s not impossible to get them to climb, descend or to stay fairly level, but it’s an absolute impossibility to establish a constant rate of descent at a specific airspeed. They’re just too finicky. You nudge the trimwheel the smallest amount possible, and the stupid thing reacts with 10 degrees of nose up or down. The joys of getting your ratings at the cheapest flight school in the country:)

I’m studying for the FAA Instrument Written exam. It’s driving me crazy. While reading this question, I was thoroughly amused by the ridiculous number of acronyms in this one question and its possible answers.

How does a pilot determine if DME is available on an ILS/LOC?

A– IAP indicate DME/TACAN channel in LOC frequency box.
B– LOC/DME are indicated on en route low altitude frequency box.
C– LOC/DME frequencies available in the AIM.

I took and passed my Stage 1 Instrument check today. I’ve proved that I can fly around without visual reference to the outside world. I can, under the hood, perform basic flight maneuvers, stalls, steep turns and slow flight. I can also fly with various instruments covered up– i.e., without an attitude indicator (artificial horizon) or a directional gyro. Which means I can also do compass turns (turning with a magnetic compass is something of an art and a real pain in the butt).

I had a little trouble maintaining altitude, but I kept it within +/- 100 feet, which is what’s required. I was worried about steep turns under the hood, but miraculously they turned out just fine.

I even got complimented on my landing.

Zach wants to have me done with Stage 2 by Friday. Stage 2 doesn’t involve any flying in the airplane, it’s all in the simulator. You might get some fancy idea of simulator when I say that word, but ours resembles playground equipment. They aren’t really simulators per se, they are “instrument training devices.” There is no attempt made to simulate the outside world, just an instrument panel. And they’re very finicky devices. But, supposedly, they’ll get the job done.

I scheduled my Instrument written exam for Thursday. I get to go study that now.

Berck

I’ve been contemplating shaving my head because it’s so hot. Joanna doesn’t want me to, so she gave me a haircut instead. (She wasn’t too thrilled about it being any shorter, but it was getting silly.) It took her half an hour and it kept getting shorter. Had I not taken a nap and/or washed my hair before having her cut it, I think she would have had an easier time. Since I don’t really care too terribly much about how it looks, I’m happy with it if she’s happy with it. Paying someone to cut hair just seems silly.

Mom sent me a meat thermometer, so I cooked a roast I bought a couple months ago. Roast and asparagus. I even cooked the asparagus the way Joanna likes it (properly) whereas I liked it sauteed until it’s no longer chewy, and then a little more so it’s a little browned. That is, I like it very much overcooked in lots of butter with garlic and salt.

So we talked about buying some wine to drink with dinner, but there’s almost nothing under $15/bottle that Joanna will like, so we bought beer instead.

Oklahoma has some weird beer laws. Really weird. Beer cannot be sold in grocery stores unless it contains no more than 3.2% alcohol by weight. (Keep in mind alcohol is measured % by volume in most of the rest of the world.)

This wouldn’t seem like such a big deal. I’ve certainly lived plenty of places where you can’t buy beer in the grocery store at all. Making a separate trip to the liquor store never bothered me much.

3.2% by weight (which is about 4% by volume) is a sufficiently low alcohol content that it would preclude most beers from being sold in the grocery store. Or so you’d think.

Beer manufacturers, in a desperate attempt to sell beer simply produced watered down versions of their beer to sell in grocery stores. And if a couple beer manufacturers do it, they all have to do it in order to be competitive. All major domestic manufacturers play this game. So in the grocery stores you can find Budweiser, Coors… and even Shiner Bock. Shiner Bock, from the little brewery in Shiner, Texas is a long time favourite of ours. Jonah and I started drinking it while we were in Dallas in ’98– It’s nothing terribly special, except when you consider that it’s really cheap, yet tastes like an import. It’s got good flavor, but is mild enough most any beer drinker can tolerate it. We served it at our wedding.

Since we’ve gotten here, we’ve only gotten beer a couple times, but each time we’ve bought some Shiner at the grocery store. And it just tasted a little weak, lacking in flavor somehow. I started thinking that maybe I’d just outgrown shiner and didn’t like it anymore. And then one of my flight instructors mentioned Oklahoma’s 3.2 beer laws. Which he didn’t understand, saying that it was illegal to sell beer greater than 3.2% alcohol in Oklahoma. This didn’t make any sense to me, until I did some research.

A lot of breweries refuse to compromise their beer, and just lose the grocery store sales. Shiner apparently decided that such a large portion of its beer market required grocery store sales, that the only way it could sell in Oklahoma was to produce a 3.2 version. Such a compromise is unlike the reputation that Shiner tries to perpetrate, and so off-putting to me that I’m just not going to buy it here. It might have been one thing if the labels said, “Shiner for Oklahoma,” or printed the fact that it was 3.2 beer on the label. But no, bottle of shiner here is IDENTICAL to a bottle from Texas. You can’t tell by looking.

And it’s not like you can go buy Shiner in the liquor store and have it be the real stuff, if a beer company makes 3.2 beer for Oklahoma (and Utah, actually, has the same law), then everywhere it’s sold in the state it’s the same 3.2 beer.

3.2 beer could probably be served to school kids with little ill effect. Shiner bock is normally only 3.46% alcohol by weight, and you’d think that .26% wouldn’t make much of a difference. It does.

So, Joanna and I stormed off to the liquor store around the corner which is actually closer than the grocery store and were actually amazed at their collection. It’s a very small place that seems to make most of its money selling wild turkey to college kids, but despite the size, one corner is packed with an amazingly great beer selection. I got most excited about several Belgian beers. They sold Kwak, a Belgian beer which I’ve only had twice. The first time was in Belgium, at this really nifty pub which served 300+ beers and had the right glasses for all of them. Kwak has one of the most original glasses I’ve ever seen. The beer is a dark amber with lots of flavor, rather malty, and not at all bitter. I generally like my Belgian beer a little fruity, but Joanna doesn’t like fruity so much. They also had a belgian beer I’d never heard of before, which we haven’t tried yet, and Hacker-Pschorr. I’m new to Hacker-Pschorr, it’s German, and almost all the German beer you can get in this country is lacking in flavor but really bitter. The first time I’d ever seen Hacker-Pschorr was in a pub in Knoxville, and it was so good I was determined to drink it again some day. They were selling three different versions, and we got the Oktoberfest. While very good, it’s not as good as the porter I had before. Joanna and I really liked it as well, so we’re excited about trying the other kinds sometime.

We decided it would be really cool to operate a little beer shop. Not a liquor store so much as a beer shop. And sell a few hundred kinds of beer we’d managed to import from all over the world. Probably not a large enough market base for such a store, but we like the idea.

After dinner, we watched Punch-Drunk love. It stars Adam Sandler, which, we all know, is plenty reason to avoid any movie. But we’d heard that Adam Sandler fans hated this movie, whereas people like me who hate Adam Sandler supposedly liked the movie. It’s directed by P.T. Anderson, who also did Magnolia.

Punch Drunk Love is a short little movie, and it’s very weird, but it’s coherent and does what it does well. It’s far better than Magnolia. It’s a weird movie, which worked on me quite well, because I was really expecting something more along the lines of what Adam Sandler usually does. Overall, I’d say it’s worth seeing.

Well, I never thought he’d be able to do it, but Zach has gotten me through Stage 1 in less than one week. I started on Saturday and it’s Friday. He signed me off for my stage check on this morning at 10am or so. Now I just get to wait around for them to call me. Fortunately, the timing of this stage check won’t really affect me too much, since I can start flying stage 2 before I finish stage 1 this time. Stage 2 is all in the simulators. They’re not very good simulators, just some basic flight controls and some instruments, but it should teach me to fly approaches.

After a week, I’ve got 10 hours instrument time, including a whopping 0.3 in actual instrument conditions. We got to climb through the clouds this morning. That was neat.. It was really pretty up there, just frustrating that I didn’t get to look at it at all.

I’m so exhausted. I need to study more, but I think I’m going to try to relax a bit this weekend, after a week of hard studying. I’ve devoured the FAA’s Instrument Flying Manual which and large chunks of the Aeronautical Information Manual, which can put me to sleep in no time.

Now I’m going to start studying for the written test pretty much exclusively, since I went ahead and scheduled it for Thursday.

If I actually get an instrument rating by the end of the month, I’ll do a little happy dance.

The last several flights have ended with me flying the localizer approach to runway 3 back to Norman. I’m starting to get the hang of flying the needle. (For those who don’t know, a localizer approach gets you lined up on the runway without actually being able to see it. At about 1,500 feet and a couple miles out, I take my foggles off and there, pretty as can be, is the runway, right ahead. I can’t wait until I get to fly an ILS approach (Which not only lines you up with the runway, but also gets you descending at exactly the correct speed to touchdown on the runway. It means I can fly in clouds right down to a couple hundred feet over the runway before I actually have to be able to see it.)

I’ve flown 4.1 hours today. I think my brain is fried. Completely fried. But, I’ve now completed lessons 1-8, which leaves one to be flown tomorrow morning at 8am, and then I’m signed off for my stage check, which if any luck will be Saturday. If so, Zach will have completed his goal of first stage in one week. There’s absolutely no way to describe the sort of brain frying that learning to fly instruments can cause, particularly if you overdose. After I pass the stage check, it’s on the simulators.

I flew two localizer approaches today. I did. Me. That rocked.

It was a beautiful night to fly. Unfortunately, I couldn’t look outside.

Earlier today the ceilings were at about 2,000 feet, and I was sure I was going to get some actual time. But no, someone else took the airplane I was scheduled in. By the time I got to fly, the clouds were all gone.

Berck is flying tonight…and has been flying pretty much all day. His instructor is bound and determined that Berck will have his check ride on Monday. If he flies all day tomorrow, that might just happen. Zack let Berck come home for thirty minutes tonight to grab a bite to eat, and then he was out the door again.

In the interest of true blogging, I thought I’d hand out some sites:

Bubblewrap

Politics

And a picture that might make you smile.

My instrument instructor, Zack, is convinced that I’m going to get my instrument rating in three weeks, starting a couple of days ago. I think he’s probably off his rocker, but I’m willing to do my part in making that happen.

I think 4 weeks, best case scenario, but that it will be longer. But maybe not. We’ll see.

Which means I need to study. I left ground school a few minutes early today so I could fly around 10:30. I did pretty good today. Instrument flying is all about small corrections and scanning. Flying solely by reference to six instruments is tricky, because it’s impossible to watch all of them at once. It’s easy if everything is doing what it’s supposed to. But as soon as you notice that you’re 100 feet low, you try to correct, of course. But what you can’t do is keep looking at the altimeter to see how your correct is working. You have to glance at everything else, otherwise you’ll end up slowing down and turning without realizing it.

Mostly it’s a matter of getting the hang of it. I performed almost entirely within tolerances today which is pretty good for my third lesson.

After getting home, I spent the next six hours studying. I can now understand the approach plates I bought. Mostly. I’m supposed to know how to read an approach plate for all kinds of navigational systems I’ve never even heard of. And I thought I knew a lot about navigation. Take, for instance, the “Microwave Landing System,” which appears to be a bit more complex than TV dinners.

And I still can’t figure out what a compass locator co-located with a marker beacon is either.

After I finish learning all these things I don’t know, I’m going to prepare for the instrument written, and hopefully get that out of the way next week. And after that, I’ll probably spend my free time flying endless approaches in microsoft flight sim.