We’re going camping this weekend. Heading for Mt. Magazine State Park in Arkansas. We’ll be back Sunday night.
Laundry continued
It turns out that if you let ink-stained clothes soak all day and overnight with lots of soap and then wash them many times, the darker colored things look fine. The lighter colored things look fine once you bleach them. I managed to salvage most everything.
We slept with the windows open last night. At about 5am some sort of commotion woke me up. I had a hard time figuring out what was going on because I had been very much asleep. After a few seconds, I realized that it was coyotes. It’s one thing when they howl. But when they start carrying on yapping and yodling they sound just diabolical. Almost human-like. I pictured them lounging around a carcass of some sort, mugs full of ale, cigarettes, rolling around about some really funny coyote joke.
It’s amusing that we live in an apartment, but can hear coyotes just as loud as I’ve ever heard them when we’re camping.
Mostly Oklahoma has skunks. A lot of skunks. And coyotes. And road runners. But the whole state has been smelling of skunk for the past couple of weeks, and there’s dozens of them dead on the roads. It’s a strange place, Oklahoma.
Stupid Laundry
When I got up this morning, the weather was 100ft overcast with a visibility of less than 1/4 mile. It’s now up to 700ft and 7 miles, but, needless to say, I did not fly. Which is annoying, because I’m itching to get done with this.
I did manage to completely destroy a large portion of my wardrobe. It seems that I included a black ink pen with my last load. I’m not very happy about this, but fortunately most of what got destroyed was generic solid-color t-shirts. These are fortunately inexpensive. Unfortunately, my current favorite flannel shirt has some enormous black blobs on it now. I don’t think I can wear it in public anymore– Jonah would get mad. It seems silly that perfectly good clothes can’t be worn in public just because they’ve got some black spots on them? Doesn’t it?
Fortunately, all of my pants with the exception of a pair of brand new khaki cargos survived. I have a lot boxers with black ink on them as well, but that doesn’t matter, right?
Progress– slow and unsteady.
As you’ve probably noticed, things look a little different. I’m a little annoyed by the fixed-width thing; it seems that web people feel this strange need to specify pixel widths for a page. I can’t find a theme I much like. I tried to adapt the old one, but it broke the comments page, and I’m too lazy to figure out how to fix that.
I took the FAA Commercial Airplane Pilot written exam yesterday. I answered 95/100 questions correctly, so my 90% and above record is maintained. I’ve still got two flights left in this stage, minimum. If I can perform all my maneuvers within the appropriate tolerances next flight, then I’m going to fly with another instructer for a “mock stage check” to make sure I can pass, then off for the real thing. The third and final stage of this program should go much more quickly than the first two.
Maybe, just maybe, with a little luck I’ll finish at the end of April. That means I’ll have been here a year which is still way longer than I’d hoped. And then comes the job search. If I get a job somewhere other than Norman, that means that Joanna will be forced to look for other work. I’m thinking this is a good thing, because this warehouse stuff is getting old– and I’m not the one doing it!
We ate breakfast at the airport on Saturday because Jonah wanted to. The food was only mediocre, but it’s all you can eat for $5, and it’s not a buffet.
Jonah was talking about my “obnoxiousessity” last night. No, I don’t get it either.
I would have gotten one of those two flights out of the way today, but it seems that the airplane is down for maintenance. Maybe they’ll fix the stall warning horn? Both it and the plane I flew on Friday had innoperative stall horns. To be fair, the horn in 8091E sounded right as the plane stalled– but it’s really too late then. I did a half-dozen stall in 76067 and didn’t hear a peep out of it. Maybe it’s good for me– get used to judging my proximity to a stall without the horn. Still, there’s a reason just about every sort of plane has some kind of a stall warning system…
On Friday, I passed a party balloon on climbout at about 600 feet. I was close enough to clearly make out the string tied around it. It’s so very weird to have any reference frame other than the ground. The balloon appeared to be hanging out in one place as I climbed above it and flew past it just off the left wingtip. Yesterday, I got pretty close to a flock of birds that was higher than I’ve ever seen birds– about 4,500ft MSL. It was such a big flock of birds that ATC advised me of “Traffic, 10 o’clock, intermittent return, slow moving, altitude unknown.”
Another Dreary Week
I’ve got 3 dual instructional flights, 1 solo, and a checkride before I’m done with Stage 2 commercial. This stage I’ve been learning accuracy landings, and maneuvers such as Lazy Eights, Chandelles, Eights on Pylons, Steep Spirals… If my instructor didn’t annoy me quite a bit, I think I’d probably be enjoying it a lot more. Fortunately, Stage 3 is in a “complex” airplane and I’ll have a different instructor. “Complex” probably sounds cooler than it is– all it means is a plane with flaps, retractable gear and a variable pitch prop. Still, it will be the first time I’ve ever flown something other than a Cessna 172. Well, sort of. It’s a Cessna 172-RG.
I just found out last week that I have to have the FAA Commercial Written Exam AND I have to pass an oral exam before completion of Stage 2. It would have been good if I’d known this sooner. Still, it’s not a very big deal. I’ve been studying for the written, and like all FAA written exams I’ve taken before it, it will be a pain.
And it looks like I’m going to have plenty of time since the weather has turned all wintery again. The AWOS this morning was claiming 2 miles visibility, 100 feet overcast and light snow. There’s no snow, so I think the “automated percipitation descriminator” wasn’t doing such a good job of discriminating.
The weather was nice yesterday, which is why the plane I was scheduled in was broken. And the weather is predicted to be bad for the whole week.
So, back to my books. I haven’t scored less than a 90 on any of my written exams so far, and I wouldn’t want to screw that up here at the end. Not that it matters to anyone but me.