Month: July 2004

Instrument training starts soon

I showed up for Instrument groundschool today. Someone should have told me that it was starting on Monday, I would have showed up then. It might have made things simpler. Oh well. Instrument flying is a pretty weird thing when you think about. Staring at a bunch of needles that are supposed to tell you where you are and where you’re going. Stage 1 of instrument training is basic attitudes. This is where I learn basic flying all over again. Flying straight and level, turns, climbs and descents. Only this time I can stare at the instruments all I want,…

I’m a pilot!

Finally! It seems to have taken slightly longer than forever. I’ve got nearly 60 hours; it should have taken more like 40. The national average is more like 80, but those are people who fly once a week or once a month. The scary thing is just how little I actually know and how little experience I have. Sure, I can fly, but I can only imagine how much trouble I could get in were I rich enough to have my own plane and decide to go fly across the country. Before I started I thought I would know more…

Superfast

We were slammed at work this week. We’ve had a few really busy weeks in the past couple of months, but this week we had our biggest single day the Mardel warehouse has ever had. We were there from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Monday and Tuesday, and to 6 p.m. yesterday and today. If they don’t let us off early tomorrow, I’ll have five hours of overtime this week. On top of that, they also were training three new people this week, which means that we lose a perfectly good worker to go train for each trainee. One…

Private Checkride

There’s nothing like failing a checkride to make you feel crappy. I showed up at 9am with everything I was supposed to have for my oral exam. After two and half hours of endless questioning, the check airman told me to go ahead and preflight the airplane. I actually did really well on the oral exam– I missed maybe three questions in two and a half hours. He gave me a list of things I needed to review. For most people it’s a fairly lengthy list. Mine had two items on it, “Convective Sigmets and Airmets.” And it’s not like…

Updates

I haven’t been in a writing mood lately. I guess Joanna hasn’t either. The big news is that I’ve completed all the flights for my Private Pilot Certificate. I just have to emerge successful from a three hour oral questioning session, then prove to an examiner that I can fly the plane. This is all scheduled to take place on Monday. I need to study. We got Arthur back from the shop last week. He runs great, save the fact that he seems to have an electrical issue. The generator light is illuminated, and it’s not charging the battery. I…