Archive for the ‘Flying’ Category

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.

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.

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:)