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.)