Tony Flys

High performance endorsement

2009-10-22T16:06:00.002-04:00

I took another ride with CFI Pete today to finish my high performance endorsement and G1000 checkout. For you non-pilots, additional training is required before a pilot can legally fly an airplane, as pilot in command, with an engine of more than 200 HP. Those airplanes are called high performance and the training is noted with an instructor's endorsement in the pilot's log book. One good thing is that the G1000 checkout will let me fly any of the G1000 172s at Bay Air in addition to the 182.

Pete and I flew out over the Gulf first, where I put the autopilot through it's paces. I had a few questions that the G1000 trainer software did not answer, silly things, like how to make it fly the GPS heading. Pete got me squared away on that and we headed back to Whitted for some landings.

Pete worked me hard. We did short field, soft field, no flaps and short approach (power off or simulated engine failure) landings. I was a lot more comfortable with the 182 today. It's bigger, faster and heavier on the controls, but in the end it flies pretty much like the trusty 172. The things to remember are: Don't let it get too slow, below 70 knots it's gonna sink like a rock. Don't land on the nose wheel. That big engine wants to pull the nose down, but keep it up and make the stall horn squeal before landing on the main gear. It's more complicated than a 172, so live by the checklist. Other than that, no problem.

I don't know what's next. The wife and I will probably head out for breakfast one weekend, or a lunch run to Sharky's in Venice, mmmm that sounds good. We're going back to Cedar Key for an overnight stay, and I'm thinking about a stone crab run to Everglades City. One good thing about living in Florida is that there's lots of places to go.

The G1000 C182, wow, what a step up.

2009-10-17T11:17:00.005-04:00

I took my first flight in the left seat of a 182 on Thursday. What a big step up from the older "steam gauge" 172s I've been flying. This 182 is a 2007 model with the G1000 avionics package. The only dials and gauges on the panel are backups in case of a complete electrical failure. I have to say it is a lot different, but still a lot of fun. Of course, I think flying just about anything would be fun.

All the fancy avionics aside, the real big difference in the 182 is the bigger engine in the nose. The plane is heavier, faster and requires a bit more attention to fly, or I should say to land. The 182 has a constant speed propeller. Which means the pilot no longer controls the speed of the propeller with engine RPM, he now controls the engine power and RPM with manifold pressure and propeller pitch. So, the pilot has picked up one more control to worry about. Actually, I broke even on the control knobs. This 182 is fuel injected, so I lost the carburetor heat control. Nope, forgot about the cowl flaps, I did pick up one more control knob. Pre-flight and engine run-up are more complex because of the G1000 and constant speed prop. There's simply more things to check, so I'm really going to have to pay attention to the check list any time I fly this plane.

I took off from Whitted with CFI Pete and we flew out over the Gulf to play with the G1000 and the autopilot. This is the first time I've flow a plane equipped with an autopilot. We went through all the maneuvers to get me familiar with the flight characteristics of the 182, slow flight, stalls and steep turns. We did not do a power-on stall. Pete told me that the 235 HP engine in the 182 will let you pull the nose up so steep that you could enter a spin. I don't need any more of those. After that it was autopilot time. The autopilot with track the heading bug, the gps or the nav radios. It will climb or descend at a rate set by the pilot. The G1000 includes a flight director and the autopilot will follow that. Pretty much after take off, you can fly it just by pushing buttons until you're ready to land.

Once done playing with the autopilot, we headed to St. Pete-Clearwater International Airport (PIE) for some touch-and-goes. Runway 25 was in use at Whitted, and since that puts your departure over downtown St. Pete, touch-and-goes are not allowed on 25. PIE wasn't too busy. A Coast Guard C-13o was doing some pattern work on runway 17L, so the tower put us on 22, and we had that runway to ourselves. The tower would switch me from right to left traffic, keeping me out of the C-130's way, I guess. The 182 looks pretty much like a 172, but the increase in weight, power and speed makes landing more interesting. First off, it doesn't slow down quickly as power is reduced. You have to plan your descent further ahead. It really doesn't want to slow down until you start lowering the flaps, but be careful one you do get it slow. Below 70 knots, it starts dropping out of the sky. You can't chop your throttle and glide in on final, like you can in a 172. It's necessary to maintain power until over the runway threshold and then slowly reduce engine power.

On the way back to Whitted, Pete asked me if I thought I was good with the 182. I think I need another hour or so with an instructor to nail those landings, then I'll be good. After the high-performance endorsement , I'll be able to rent any plane at Bay Air, except the Piper Arrow. That will give me more flexibility if something comes up last minute. Also, the 182 will let two couples take a dinner trip or something.

Spins

2009-10-08T13:09:00.002-04:00

A few folks have asked me what it's like to perform a spin. This link won't give you the sensation of pulling positive g's then being weightless before more positive g's that you get inside the aircraft, but it will give you some idea of the disorientation one might experience.

Youtube video clip

Long overdue update...

2009-10-07T13:00:00.003-04:00

Sorry about the long hiatus in my blogging. I could list a whole bunch of excuses, but no one wants to read that, so I'll just catch everyone up on what I've been doing.

We finally got moved and settled down a bit. After the moving expenses slowed some, I got back to flying more often. I've wanted to get a tail wheel endorsement for some time, because a number of pilots have told me that would help improve my skills. After getting the endorsement, they were correct. For you non-pilots, a tail wheel or conventional airplane is just what it sounds like. It has two wheels on the front, and one on the tail. A pilot needs a log book endorsement from an instructor, stating that you have received instruction in the operation on a tail wheel airplane before you can legally fly one. Now, a tail wheel airplane flys just like any other. It's taking off, landing and ground handling that are different. I think of it this way: You don't quit flying a tail dragger until you step out of it.

I went to Airport Manatee (48X) for tail wheel instruction. Bill, the CFI there, has a 1948 Aeronca Champ. What a blast the Champ is to fly. I would not want to go any great distance in it, cruise speed is a whopping 80 MPH. But flying around at 80 MPH with the window open is a lot of fun. Took me about 5 hours to get the endorsement. Flying a 172 had ingrained some habits that were not compatible with landing a tail wheel airplane. I've flown an additional hour with Bill after finishing the endorsement during which time he introduced me to spins, chandelles and lazy 8's. The spins were exciting to say the least. The first one scared the poop out of me. I was sure we were going to rip the wings off the airplane. I did two after Bill demonstrated the first, and they were still exciting.

Last weekend, Alice and I flew to Sebring (SEF), yes that's the place with the race trace, for breakfast. The wife is warming up to flying. She says she wants to go here and there with another couple. That's fine with me. Any destination I have to fly to is a good destination. Unfortunately, four grown adults don't fit into a 172 that well. They really don't fit if two of the adults are women toting baggage for an overnight trip. Well, I'll have to remedy that. I talked to one of the instructors at Bay Air about getting a high performance endorsement so that I could rent the club's G1000 182. Yea, that's right. I'll be flying in style.

I hope to be better about blogging in the future. Next week I should get started on the high performance training and I'll let everyone know how that's going.

License to learn

2009-07-19T12:41:00.004-04:00

A couple of posts ago I wrote that we were moving. Well, the big day is nearly here and things have gotten busy, but I did get a chance to fly a bit on Thursday. Don't know when I'll get in the air again. We close on one house this Thursday, move Saturday, close on the other Tuesday and leave for a short cruise a few days later. I know, it's kinda busy.

So, I took a friend and went for a short flight around the Tampa Bay area. Beautiful weather that morning, but the transponder in N54666 was not working and we had to wait while the avionics tech swapped it out. We headed east from Albert Whitted, around the McDill AFB class D airspace. Even though it's class D, you can't enter it since 911. Then we flew north along the east side of Tampa Bay to Peter O. Knight (TPF) airport.

I've flow into TPF before, so I didn't check the NOTAMs (Notice to Airmen), the AFD (Airport Facility Directory) or anything. Mistake. I tuned the AWOS for Peter O. Knight and got the weather numbers and a message saying that runway 3-21 is closed and they have a new UNICOM frequency. Ok, I've got it and start thinking about which runway to use as I tune the CTAF (common traffic advisory frequency). About 10 miles out, I start announcing my intentions. I don't hear anyone else announcing anything for Peter O., but don't think too much about it because I don't see any other planes on my traffic information system. At any rate, I'm about to enter the pattern as someone from Peter O. comes on the radio and tells me they have a new CTAF. Ok, I tune the correct radio frequency and spot construction off the end of one of the runways. The wind is calm, so I'll just land on the other runway, except the one I'm planning on landing on is the one that is closed. There was construction off of 17-35, but they were actually working on 3-21! I was really confused by this point, so I circled the field before entering the downwind for 17. Next time I check NOTAMs before I go anywhere.

I don't know when I'll be flying again. Hopefully it won't be too long. I'm supposed to go to Tampa with a friend to look at a partnership in a 182. That would suit the kind of flying I would like to do. It's kind of hard to go somewhere for the weekend if you're renting, and the longer legs and higher speed of the 182 would let me get away a bit faster. Of course, I'll need permission from the boss lady on this one.

Mountain Flying

2009-07-05T09:32:00.009-04:00

The wife and I have been on a nice and well deserved vacation for the last week. We visited some family and did some fun things on our own. I even managed to get in some flying, as I had hoped.

Before leaving Bradenton, I contacted Brandon at Knoxville Flight Training, and arranged a mountain flying lesson. It turned out to be just the ticket. Knoxville Flight Training had been recommended to me through the AOPA forums, a valuable resource from time to time. For a low-time flat lander like me, the training was very helpful. Some day I hope to be able to fly to my favorite vacation spots in the North Carolina mountains without endangering anyone (especially me).

We did about 45 minutes of ground instruction before heading out to the plane, and talked about topics like wind direction and speed over mountain ridges, updrafts and downdrafts, route planning, emergency landings and survival planning when flying over remote areas. After that it was out the plane and away we went.

My brother, Benny, went along and took the photos. Brandon did the navigating, which freed me to fly the plane and have fun. We took off from Knoxville Downtown Island Airport (DKX) and flew south to the Calderwood dam. The photo at top is downtown Knoxville. The University of Tennessee football stadium is at the top left of the photo. To the left is a photo of the dam where a scene in the movie "The Fugitive" with Harrison Ford was filmed. We followed the river along the southern border of the Smokey Mountain National Park to Sylva, N.C. and the Jackson County airport (24A), where I performed my first mountain landing.

Yep, that's the airport running down the top of that ridge. We had some pretty good winds aloft that day, and were getting bounce around during the flight, but when we flew over the field, the windsock was hanging limp. The landing was uneventful, and with calm winds on the field, we taxied to far end of the runway, spun the plane around, opened the throttle for full power, leaned the engine for altitude and took off opposite of how we landed. With no wind on the field we took advantage of the topography as best we could. Brandon explained that it's not a good idea to take off uphill or into a mountain if it can be avoided. The photo below is us departing Jackson County.

As I mentioned, it was kinda bumpy at altitude. After taking off my photographer started feeling a bit sick, so the picture taking came to a quick halt. We didn't have an on board emergency, but you won't see photos of most of the rest of the trip. We flew to Franklin, N.C. and the Macon County airport (1A5) for another landing, where we got out of the plane for a few minutes. Benny took my picture with the plane in Franklin. After that it was back to Knoxville.

I did have my GPS logger with me, so I have a good track of the flight. Just click on the link and it will open, but you will need google earth installed. Brandon was great, and I would highly recommend a bit of mountain training to any Florida pilots thinking about flying into the hills.

Rain outs and practice time.

2009-06-12T21:06:00.003-04:00

I haven't had much luck flying for the past few weeks. One practice session got rained out, and a planned trip with my wife to Sebring (SEF) for breakfast was cancelled because of thunderstorms along the route. I did get back into the air on Tuesday. Performed my stalls and slow flight for the first time in a while. The maneuvers felt strange, but everything else was good. The pattern at Whitted was busy and my landings were good, so I taxied back to the ramp happy.

Now for the fun news. We're driving to Tennessee the end of this month to visit my mother and brother. While there I though I might get in a little bit of flying, so I called the Knoxville Flight Training Center at Knoxville Downtown Island airport (DKX) to arrange things. I spoke to Brandon, who was very helpful and have schedule a mountain flying lesson during my vacation. I can't wait. We plan on flying to Jackson County (24A) and getting some landings in there. Check out this airport:

That's just too cool to pass up. Hopefully, we'll have good weather. My brother is going along and he should have some pics for the report.

Been a long time...

2009-05-27T11:24:00.003-04:00

Sorry about not posting for some time. Usual excuse, I've been busy. March, April, May is the busy season for my business, and my wife and I are trying to sell our house and move. No need to tell me about the real estate market... At any rate, I've been flying a little, but just enough to keep the rust off.

The move is cutting into my flying budget, at least until I know where I stand. I had planned on getting a tail wheel endorsement this summer, but that may have to wait a bit. I'm flying every other week, and that seems to keep me comfortable in the left seat.

I did get in one cross country flight to Wauchula (CHN) and Avon Park (AVO). Other than that, I've just been taking friends sightseeing. It is more fun taking pax than flying alone. Who knows, I might get in a few more adventures this summer!

Cedar Key (CDK)

2009-03-26T09:18:00.019-04:00

My wife and I took a day trip to Cedar Key, an old fishing village on the "nature" coast of west Florida. It's sort of a peaceful, tranquil, quiet, less crowded version of Key West. Most likely being located in the middle of no-where helps with that atmosphere. The place is known for good seafood, wildlife, fishing, arts, and relaxation. It's not a beach community. The coastline is saw-grass marsh in that area of Florida, hence all the wildlife. There was only one thing wrong with the trip, and that was the traffic jam we got into on the Skyway bridge getting to the airport. Otherwise, a perfect day.

Cedar Key has a paved 2355 foot runway that is orientated 5/23. I'm guessing that's usually a good orientation with the morning land breeze/afternoon sea breeze we have on this side of Florida. However, I picked a day with the wind directly out of the south. So I landed with about a 10 knot crosswind. I didn't do poorly for a guy used to airports with multiple runways. Sorry that the runway pic is not better. The sun was in front of us as we landed. There is a small apron at the west end of the runway with tie downs.

The only other airports my wife has landed at have been controlled fields. We get out of the plane and she says "Where's the airport?" I don't really understand and reply that this is it, after all didn't we just land on yonder strip of pavement? "No, I mean the terminal building." Now I get it, and while trying to suppress a huge grin I explain that not all airports have the facilities she has become accustomed to.

I called ahead and reserved a golf cart for the day. Cedar Key is made up of several small islands. The place is not too big, but you need some type of transportation to see all of it. There is a cabby on the island who monitors the CTAF and will be happy to drive you into town for a small fee. The cabby will also give you her idea of the wind conditions prior to landing. Somehow, letting the cabby select my runway seems risky. I can't find that section in the FAR, but I think pilots are supposed to make their own decisions. The golf cart worked out well. The owner drove the cart to the airport to meet us, and when we were done for the day, we left it at the airport as instructed.

After the obligatory tourist photos, Alice and I headed out on the cart to explore. Our first stop was the island's school, where I had my picture taken with the school's mascot. Yep, they're the sharks. Alice is a teacher and just loves schools. I guess if they had a car wash on the island, I would have had to take a look at that. Next it was on to the museum. Cedar Key has a history that pre-dates the Civil War, kinda rare in Florida, and the museum has historic and natural history exhibits. We skipped the trail because we were getting hungry.

We checked out some of the restaurants along the waterfront and decided on the Dockside Depot. It was not the fanciest place, but the prices were reasonable and we could sit by the water. Both Alice and I had the blackened grouper sandwich, a Florida staple. My sandwich was good with a generous portion of grouper. There's a good half dozen restaurants to choose from and I would try something different next time, just to be adventurous. We did a bit of shopping after lunch. I bought a cap, and Alice got a shirt and we found a nice water color print that now graces the foyer in our house. My wallet was a bit lighter when we flew home.

We rode around the islands looking at old houses and wildlife for a bit. This osprey has taken up residence by the airport and pelicans are all over the place.

This would be my Cedar Key dream home. Guys, you're gonna love this:

Backyard: Gulf of Mexico

Front yard: Private taxiway to the airstrip

Top Floor: Residence

Bottom Floor: Hanger

I don't need to know any more.

So much for the dream home, this is what I probably could afford:

As we departed, Alice was able to get a shot of the light house, which is accessible only by water.

I was able to log 2.5 hours of PIC cross country time. I'll try to make most of my flights cross-country so that they build toward that instrument rating. The ride home was bumpier than the trip north. I followed the coast, and I guess there was some convection working. Next time I would take life jackets and fly direct, climb more and probably have a smooth ride. My landing back at Whitted was horrible. The wind was splitting the runways, so I had another cross wind to deal with, but I was barely crabbed on approach so I thought it was no big deal. About the time I crossed the threshold I started drifting left, a lot. Left rudder, right aileron to correct. I landed straight, but I had drifted to the left half of the runway before I had it under control.

1st $100 hamburger.

2009-03-14T14:30:00.010-04:00

In keeping with the theme of important personal aviation firsts, I performed a pilot's ritual for the first time today, the $100 hamburger. Actually, it was an omelet, and it cost more than $100, but there were three of us, so that brought the unit cost down below $100.

My daughter is home for Spring break, and today just happens to be her birthday. I thought it would be nice to take the girls out for breakfast, and since I have a pilot's license, why not fly somewhere? We flew to Bunky's Barnstormin Restaurant at the Bartow Municipal Airport (BOW). If you look at the flight track, it's kinda goofy. We did a bit of sightseeing on the way over and back. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. I flew the pattern at Bartow a bit low. Someone in a Cessna flew into the class D airspace at pattern altitude and announced himself, apologizing, as he crossed the field! I went low and he went high as we crossed paths.

The Bartow airport is an old WWII and Korean War Army air force training base. So, the runways are wide and long. They have a brand new terminal building that houses the restaurant and an aviation museum, among other things. Bunky's was good and reasonably priced. My wife says she would go back, so it can't be bad.

I had planned on flying to Lake Wales (X07) after departing Bartow, but a quick walk around after breakfast revealed a low strut on the right main gear. Not wanting to bang the plane up at Lake Wales, I headed home to Albert Whitted. My cross-country time building will have to wait for the next trip. Today was fairly warm for March, even in Florida, and the trip home was sort of bumpy. I planned on cruising at about 2500 feet, but the base of the clouds was right there and I flew home below the clouds in the rough air. Alice said it wasn't too bad and that she definitely like the Archer better than the 172. I think it feels more solid. The door closes and latches more securely and the cabin is quieter. All things that make the wife feel better about flying. Landing at Whitted, I made the stall horn growl good before I set down, thinking about that left strut. When I got back to Bay Air, the strut was down, so it went on the squawk sheet.

My next cross-county trip will be to Cedar Key with my wife. Cedar Key is an old fishing village on the nature coast of west Florida. We'll make a day of that trip. I probably will get some practice in before hand.

Oh, this was parked on the tarmac outside the terminal. Alice said I need to learn to fly something like it because that is how she would prefer to travel. If I win the powerball... but I don't gamble, so it's kinda unlikely.

Bartow

You'll need google earth to open and view the Bartow flight track.

2nd Pax

2009-03-09T20:23:00.004-04:00

Pax, that's passenger(s) in pilot lingo... I think. I didn't get to fly last week. The Archer had a leaky exhaust system. That's a bigger deal in airplanes than automobiles. The cabin heat in an airplane works by warming outside air with the engine exhaust system, hence a leaky exhaust system can mean exhaust gasses in the cabin. Don't want that.

I got back into the air today by taking a friend along for a bit of a practice flight. Out to the beach to run through some maneuvers and back to Whitted for some touch-and-goes. The sky was crystal clear with very little haze, perfect day for flying and keeping my skills sharp. I'm planning on taking my wife and daughter to Bartow (BOW) for breakfast Saturday. After breakfast we'll fly on to Lake Wales (X07) for a touch-and-go before returning to Whitted. I'm thinking ahead about the cross country time needed for an instrument rating and the extra few miles to Lake Wales is needed for the 50nm cross country minimum.

Archer1

You'll need google earth to view the Archer 1 file.

Statistics:

Total Time: 53.7 Hours
Cross Country: 12.0 Hours

Checked out on the Archer.

2009-02-24T18:44:00.004-05:00

I've been signed off to fly the club's/FBO's Piper Archer. It was a pretty simple process. Rob spent about 30 minutes with me on the ground going over the important differences between the Archer and the 172s I've been flying. Other than the wing being lower the big one is having to monitor fuel usage and switch fuel tanks.

The speeds are different. The stall speeds, Vs0 and Vs1 are higher. Pretty much all the V numbers are a bit higher. I picked up a POH, Pilot's Operating Handbook, which I will have to read. The flaps are operated like a parking brake in many cars. That's nice because an electrical failure has no effect on the flaps. Other than that, it's just little things like the trim wheel is in a different place, and it has rudder trim.

Rob and I flew out over the beach and ran through the maneuvers. Slow flight was no problem. I was surprised when I got to the stalls. I had expected stalls to be as exciting as in the 172, but they were very docile. Power-on and power-off stalls were mild. A few steep turns and we headed home for some pattern work.

Landing was no problem. I just have to remember that all my pattern speeds are 5 knots higher than in the 172, and when you cut the power in the Archer, she comes down quick. It will float a bit more than the Cessna. I'm guessing that's because of the low wing and more ground effect.

It will take a bit of getting used to, but it does have more room in the cabin which will be good for Alice and I. Getting in and out might take some practice. The visibility out of the airplane is good, especially on the ground. I might take a buddy along next week while I practice a bit, just to get more familiar with the airplane. Then, I'm taking Alice for an out of town breakfast.

1st Passenger

2009-02-16T17:11:00.006-05:00

As the title aludes to, I put my freshly printed Private Pilot Temporary Certificate to good use today by carrying my first passenger. My somewhat reluctant wife was bribed into flying with me. It only cost me a lunch on the pier in St. Pete and was well worth it.

Now, my wife is not real fond of any mode of transportation that does not fall into the "everyday" category. Automobiles, airliners and cruise liners are her preferred modes of transport. Motorcycles, boats and Cessnas are to be avoided. So, I was on my best piloting behavior today, for today was the day I was to find out if I would be looking for an Archer or a Cub in the future, a 177 or a 152, you get the idea.

We did a bit of sightseeing around the Tampa Bay area. I flew south from Albert Whitted to the Skyway Bridge, then out to Egmont Key and south to Anna Maria Island. I could tell that Alice was pretty tense at first. She just about refused to say anything over the intercom. I let her use my headset rather than the nasty rental unit, which turned out to be a wise move on my part. But once we got to something she was interested in photographing, she loosened up a bit. Yep guys, she loves to take pictures. I think all women do. Heck, by the time we flew over our house, she had me doing steep turns around it so she could get the shot she wanted.

We flew east following the Manatee river, then back to the Skyway and Whitted. Alice was surprised at how smooth the landing was. Actually, a last second gust had me a little crooked on the runway and although smooth, I didn't think it was my best.

We followed up the flight with lunch on the pier, where this guy, a great blue heron was posing for photographers. He probably was expecting some compensation in the form of fish bits.

The judgement was in and if I want my wife to fly with me again I will need to purchase another headset. Not bad. I certainly don't want to use the rental unit again. Oh, and I have permission to get checked out on the Archer or get my complex in the Arrow. Once Alice found out there was more room in those, she indicated that's what we should fly in in the future.

My scud running check-ride.

2009-02-12T19:45:00.010-05:00

KSPG 121853Z 28006KT 10SM OVC011 22/19 A3015 RMK AO2

Yep, that's as good as the weather got for my check-ride. Honestly, overcast at 1100 feet was optimistic. When I took off, I was in the clouds at 900 feet and had to drop down out of them, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's start at the beginning, or earlier. Yesterday would be good.

I mentioned in my last post that a fraternity brother was flying in. We had lunch at the Columbia restaurant on the pier in St. Petersburg. Good spanish food, if you're ever in Tampa/St. Pete, and only a few blocks from Albert Whitted. After lunch, I got to fly his Piper Lance out over the beach for a bit. Nice plane, the Lance/Saratoga. Plenty of room after you've been in a 172. This one had an new interior and a very much updated panel, so it was nice on the eyes and body to fly. My buddy is instrument rated and I was impressed by how methodical he was when it came to flying and using the checklist. That's my good flying story, now for the check-ride.

So, I head across the airport to the club/FBO to pull the maintenance records for N54666 and pick up a new sectional. Every so often, I get a bit OC about something, and it went into high gear at that point. I bookmarked all the pages in the airframe/engine log that the DPE might want to see and put the log away for safe keeping. I had a brand new sectional chart in my hand and headed home to plot my cross-country, which I had already done on the old sectional. This is where I got a little whacky. I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening working out the navigation log, filling in the flight plan info, checking and double checking my required materials for the check-ride. My flight bag was packed and unpacked about four times, just to make sure I had everything.

Morning rolls around and I'm up early to get some work done before I head to the airport. Of course, the weather must be checked and while not too bad, its not all good either. A weak cold front is supposed to push through the area later in the day, but it should be OK for most of the morning. An hour at work and I'm driving across the Skyway to St. Pete. It's dark and I can't see everything, but no fog. I can see Tampa across the bay, so the visibility is good. Upon arrival at the airport, I get my material organized and pull up the latest winds aloft info to finish my flight plan. I'm working on fuel consumption when one of the FBO guys walks in and says: "Man, that's some nasty weather outside." It's light out by now, so I walk to the window and can barely see my truck in the parking lot. Crap.

Well, at least I can get the oral portion of the test out of the way today. Just about the time I finish the math for my navigation log, the examiner shows up. Very nice gentleman. We pretty much just had a conversation about flying. I did screw up by forgetting how often the ELT had to be inspected, but no big deal. Considering the state of mind I was in by this time, I think I did great. Dave, the examiner, looked over my chart and flight plan, which I had spent hours on, for about 2 minutes. I guess I had spent way too much time on it. The oral must have lasted about an hour, but it seemed like 15 minutes. We walked outside to take a look at the weather and it was still bad. We check the TAF (Terminal Aerodrome Forecast for you landlubbers) and it was calling for clearing within the hour. Well, we'll just hang out at the airport for a bit and see if we can get the check-ride accomplished. Dave looked into filing IFR and flying some place where the weather was better for the check-ride, but all of west central Florida was fogged in. We waited.

After an hour or so, Dave tells me that he would really like to get the check-ride completed today because his schedule gets goofy after today. He's headed to Alaska for his airline gig this weekend, and if we don't get the flight in today, it might be a few days before we can get together again. He lives a few blocks from Peter O. Knight airport, and the plan is if the weather clears, I'm to fly the Peter O. Knight, pick him up and fly the check-ride. Good thing Rob and I went to Peter O. Knight on Tuesday.

Dave headed back to Tampa, while I found something to eat and waited. And waited. And waited. The FBO has a contract with the Florida Wildlife Commission to fly wildlife biologists around the Tampa Bay area conducting manatee surveys. They were attempting to conduct some sort of intensive survey yesterday, and at about 1:00 they got special VFR clearance and took off. Within 2 minutes they were on the radio requesting landing clearance. They got back to the FBO and called it a day, but by 1:30 the ceiling had risen to 1100 feet and Whitted had gone VFR. I called Dave, who said he had blue sky at Peter O. Knight, and if I thought I could make it, come over and pick him up. I was on my way.

The check-ride was sort of mundane compared to the flights to and from Peter O. Knight. The ceiling was 1100 feet, maybe, and I was flying between cloud layers much of the way. Finding the airport was no problem, thank you Mr. Garmin, and as Dave had said the sky was blue at Peter O. Knight. It was the only blue sky I saw. I landed and taxied to the FBO. Dave jumped into the plane and started to put on his seat belt. Wait, I'm supposed to tell you how to do that, OK you have. Now you're supposed to wear it during take-, Yea OK lets get moving. I'm taxiing to runway 17 and have to cross 21 on the way, so I'm stopping at the hold short line and about ready to make a radio call when: There's nobody flying, lets go. This is not the check-ride I had expected or prepared for. It was the Reader's Digest condensed version.

I made a soft field take off and put on the foggles about the time I took out the flaps. Really, I didn't need them. It was IFR all the way from Whitted. A few minutes of simulated IFR with one unusual attitude recovery and it was time for maneuvers. The things I had spent hours practicing took about 5 minutes. Slow flight, one straight power-off stall and one turning power-on stall with a simulated emergency landing and a turn around a barn thrown in for fun. Back to Peter O. Knight for a short field and a soft field landing. Dave said I had obviously made a normal takeoff and landing since I got to Peter O. Knight in the first place. We might have spent 30 minutes in the air.

Inside the FBO at Knight, Dave critiqued a few things. He thought I landed too much on the nose wheel. As whacky as I was yesterday, I was glad just to have landed, but I will make the stall horn squeel before I land next time. He also talked about another technique for setting up the emergency landing. Sounded good, so I'll look into that. Then he presented my temporary certificate. Man, I'm glad to have that thing. I didn't hang around long because with it getting later in the afternoon, I knew the fog would be coming back to Whitted. The flight back was much the same as the flight over. The 10 mile visibility in the METAR is an outright lie. I couldn't see downtown St. Pete until I was within about 5 miles. However, I could see a massive fog bank rolling across St. Petersburg toward the airport. The tower had me circle off the end of 25 while he got IFR clearance for one of our CFIs who was departing with a charter for Key West. I landed and within 5 minutes the beacon was on and Whitted was IFR. In hindsight, I guess Dave wanted me to get back to Whitted early just for such reason. Returning to the club/FBO was very anti-climatic. The crowd that was there in the morning for the manatee survey was gone. All the CFIs were gone. Just the girl behind the counter. That was OK, I was a pilot.

About the title of this post: Scud Running - This occurs when a pilot tries to maintain visual contact with the ground while instrument conditions exits. From the FAA handbook. I won't be doing it again.

I'm a PP-ASEL

2009-02-12T17:14:00.002-05:00

This is going to be the shortest post I've ever made. I passed my check-ride today and I'll fill everyone in on it with my next post. What should have been done by noon took all day, and I'm in a bit of a hurry now, so the low-down will have to wait. It's worth it, however.

Last flight as a student pilot, hopefully.

2009-02-10T17:51:00.008-05:00

With any luck, I have taken my last flight as a student pilot. If I revise that statement on Thursday, it will be with a huge frown on my face.

Rob and I took a quick flight today. I had spent a good deal of my last two practice sessions working on stalls, and it seems to have paid off. I went through slow flight, power-on and power-off stalls, both straight and banked. All went well, as did my short field landing at Whitted. My examiner's home airport is Peter O. Knight (TPF), and Rob says he loves to divert pilots there. So, we flew across the bay to TPF where I did a touch-and-go to get a feel for the place. That's TPF in the photo at the top. Once again, I borrowed the photo from AirNav.

Back at Whitted, we went to the maintenance hangar to take a look at the engine and airframe log book for N54666. I'm headed back to Whitted tomorrow to "check out" the log book and move it over to the FBO office where I'll have easy access to it Thursday. I'm gonna bookmark the pages for the annual, 100 hour, transponder and ELT inspections. That should impress the examiner, I hope. An old fraternity brother, and former college roommate is flying into Whitted tomorrow, so the trip to the airport is fortuitous. I'm gonna buy him lunch, and he's gonna let me fly his Lance. I get the better part of that bargain.

lesson 31

You'll need google earth to open the lesson 31 file.

Statistics:
Total Time: 49.4 Hours
Flight Training: 27.1 Hours
Simulated Instrument: 3.0 Hours
Solo/PIC: 21.1 Hours
Cross Country: 12.0 Hours
Night: 3.1 Hours
Landings: 146

Gettin kinda lazy

2009-02-08T11:29:00.005-05:00

I've had two solo practice flights over the past few days and I'm finally getting around to posting. Truth is, I've been using every spare waking moment in preparation for my oral exam/check-ride and I'm starting to get sort of burnt out. I've reached the point where I feel that if I'm not ready now, I'll never be ready.

Rob and I are flying tomorrow. I have a list of questions in preparation for the oral, and he needs to show me where the maintenance records are kept. He'll look over my flight plan as well. Truth is, I wish I could take the test tomorrow and get it over with.

lesson 31

You'll need google earth to view the lesson 31 file.

Statistics:

Total Time: 47.4 Hours

Flight Training: 25.7 Hours

Simulated Instrument: 3.0 Hours

Solo/PIC: 21.1 Hours

Cross Country: 12.0 Hours

Night: 3.1 Hours

Landings: 142

Check-ride scheduled

2009-02-04T10:27:00.002-05:00

I talked to the DPE (designated pilot examiner) this morning and scheduled my check-ride for Thursday, the 12th. I need to plan a one way cross-country flight to Marathon and work out the weight and balance calculations in preparation. I have two solo practice sessions scheduled between now and the check-ride, and I'm feeling pretty confident. Hopefully, the weather will hold and all will go as scheduled.

Check-ride prep

2009-02-03T15:46:00.002-05:00

Rob and I flew for about an hour and a half today in preparation for my upcoming check-ride. Slow flight, stalls, ground reference maneuvers, performance take-off and landings, power-off and emergency landings, we covered it all. While in slow flight, I turned the plane into the wind and the Garmin 430 GPS unit indicated that our ground speed was only 20 knots. We were practically hovering over St. Petersburg. Rob thought that was fun, but I was fighting the plane in the gusts and did not enjoy it as much. The only part I felt uncomfortable with was the stalls. Of course, that's never been my strong suit.

We had some excitement as I was practicing a short field landing. The wind was running 14 knots gusting to 20. Now, you pilots know that can be interesting in a Cessna, especially when low and slow as in a short field landing. We caught a gust or some wind shear that rolled the plane about 30 degrees to the right just as I was crossing the runway threshold. I landed fine, after almost wetting my pants. Honestly, if we had not been practicing short field technique, I would have landed with 20 degrees of flaps and at about 70-75 knots under the wind conditions.

Rob told me to set up my check-ride appointment with the examiner. I'll call him tomorrow and I'm gonna practice a bit more on Thursday morning, after which, Rob will endorse my log book to take the practical test. I picked up a guide for the oral exam and am reading that and my manual for the 172P. If all goes well, I'll be a pilot next week.

lesson 30

You'll need google earth to view the lesson 30 file.

Statistics (a bit more detailed this time):

Total Time: 44.7 Hours

Flight Training: 25.7 Hours

Simulated Instrument: 3.0 Hours

Solo/PIC: 18.4 Hours

Cross Country: 12.0 Hours

Night: 3.1 Hours

Landings: 132

Internet Difficulties

2009-01-28T16:49:00.002-05:00

I've been having a lot of Internet problems the last few days. BrightHouse says it will be almost a week before they can get a service tech out, a stunning testimonial, so I'm gonna get a quick post in while the getting is good.

I finished my simulated instrument time on Tuesday. Rob took a pic of me with the IFR goggles on. Don't know who was looking for traffic while he was taking the pic. All I need is a few hours of prep for the checkride and the big event itself. Next time I fly, Rob will run me through a mock checkride. I'll probably practice a bit after that to brush up on my weak points and I might take another mock checkride with a different instructor. If the weather cooperates, which it is not doing at the present time, I should finish up within a couple of weeks.

Medical Flight Test... Passed!!

2009-01-23T19:22:00.002-05:00

Today was the big day for my medical flight test, and I can say with a smile on my face that I am now in possession of a new medical certificate with no restrictions and a SODA, statement of demonstrated ability. The actual test was a piece of cake, however after bringing an FAA inspector to my FBO, I may not be welcome there any longer.

The inspector was friendly and complimentary of my flying and complimentary of Rob, my instructor. He was very knowledgeable and told Rob and I about a couple areas we could work on, and some ideas of how to work on those things. He did find a couple of faults with the airplane, no... two airplanes, and gave the maintenance shop a fit. The folks at Bay Air were real good about getting me another airplane after 54666 was found to be questionable. Mind you, winter in Florida is the busy season for nearly everything and aviation is no exception. I think they found another plane so fast because maintenance wanted to get rid of the two of us. The didn't want this guy coming back another day.

The flight test lasted about a half hour. We flew out to the beach, spotted some inbound traffic and some birds, performed a simulated emergency landing and flew back to the airport. Piece of cake, well I did fly low enough on the simulated emergency that I thought he was actually going to have me land at the beach. Rob never had me get that low, about 100 feet. The sky was very clear and I could see the VASI from the beach, about 6 miles out. That and a nice landing sealed the deal. On landing we found that the nose wheel shimmy dampener on 9400L was in bad shape, so my friend paid another visit to the maintenance shop. He sat down with Rob and I after that went over what he liked about my training and where he thought I could improve, more right rudder.

I'm glad its over. I need one hour of instrument time and three hours of checkride prep. It won't be long and my wife will be riding with me. She can't wait.

Quick Update

2009-01-21T18:22:00.002-05:00

I don't want to bore anyone with my exploits on another practice day, but that's just what I'm doing. I got in a little time today doing pattern work and maneuvers that are likely to come up during my medical flight test on Friday. I think I'm in good shape. Wish me luck, and I'll let you know how it goes.

Strange Day

2009-01-17T14:11:00.011-05:00

I had one of those days again. Nothing went as planned. It was my intention to finish my simulated instrument time today, but that hope was dashed when Rob called and told me he couldn't make it today. No problem, I still need some more solo time, and I wanted to work on my maneuvers. So, I preflighted N54159, not my favorite plane, and off I went.

I had the standard drill in mind. Slow flight, stalls, steep turns, emergency landings and ground reference maneuvers. Well, the slow flight and stalls were sort of weird. It was very cool this morning with a 14 knot breeze out of the northeast. The altimeter setting was 30.45, the highest I can recall. I'm hoping it was these conditions that screwed up my stalls, or lack thereof. The plane didn't want to stall at all today. I preformed a power-on stall, the more violent kind, where the plane mushed through a very gentle stall. Tried it again with the same result. For slow flight, I had the plane under 40 knots and the stall horn barely whined. Did I mention that the plane climbed like rocket. Trimmed for a 76 knot climb, the plane was pitched so high it scared me and the VSI was pegged out. I went to an 85 knot climb which felt a lot more comfortable.

Too strange for me, so I moved on to maneuvers. Those went well. I went through several simulated emergency landing with no problems. The high winds made it an ideal day for ground reference. I flew low over Fort Desoto Park and flew turns around the water tower. Once again I forgot to turn on my GPS logger, so I can't check to see that I made nice circles, but they looked good from the sky. After a few steep turns it was time to head back to Whitted for some pattern work.

At Bay Air, students aren't allowed to do touch and goes, so I land and taxi back for take off and the controller tells me that I'm cleared to take off, runway 7, left traffic??? We always fly right traffic from runway 7, so I asked ATC to repeat the instructions. Left traffic. There's a reason for the right traffic pattern on 7. Left traffic would take me over downtown St. Petersburg, where there's nothing in the way of emergency landing sites and plenty of tall buildings. Someone in a helicopter was practicing something south of runway 36, hence the left traffic. I make one trip around the pattern and felt uncomfortable enough to call it a day. When I got back to Bay Air, even the CFIs said they didn't much care for the left traffic patten.

My medical flight test is definitely scheduled for Friday the 23rd. I'll be glad to get that behind me. The FAA inspector that is going with me sounds like a nice guy. I can't imagine that I will have trouble with it, but because it could put an end to my flying days, I am a bit nervous about it. I plan on practicing again early next week, especially the emergency landing procedure and pattern work that will comprise the flight test.

Statistics:

Dual Instruction Time: 23.3 Hours

Solo/PIC Time: 17.0 Hours

Landings: 132

Cross Country Requirement...complete!

2009-01-14T16:43:00.006-05:00

I finished my cross country requirements today with a flight lasting nearly 3 hours. The route was Albert Whitted (SPG) to Lake Wales (X07) to Leesburg (LEE) to Brooksville (BKV) and home. It was fun, uneventful and not overly exciting. Uneventful is the best kind of flying. My photos are not too good. My wife had the camera, so I'm back to cell phone pics.

Prior to the flight, Rob checked my flight plan and signed my logbook authorizing the trip. I filed a VFR flight plan. Rob says it will probably be the only one I ever file. The briefer at Flight Services was none too friendly, so Rob might be right. After departing Whitted, I tried to contact the St. Petersburg Flight Service Station with no success. I wanted to open my flight plan before asking Tampa for permission to enter their airspace. Possibly, I was too low to get the FSS on the radio, and after contacting Tampa Approach and receiving flight following and permission to transit the Class B airspace, I dropped the idea of opening my flight plan. Tampa had me on radar almost all the way to Lake Wales, where they terminated radar service.

Lake Wales is a scenic town in the hill and lake country of central Florida. I could clearly see Bok Tower, an old time Florida attraction. However, I have learned my lesson about taking photos near the airport or in the traffic pattern and did not get a pic of the tower. I flew north to Winter Haven, the city of my birth, and set course for Leesburg. Leesburg is the first towered field I've landed at by myself. It was pretty busy, but the controllers kept everything moving and I got in and out without any problems. From Leesburg I was off to Brooksville.

Brooksville, or Hernando County, sounded busy on the radio, but I think most pilots were doing instrument approaches and never put wheels on asphalt. I got a bit confused about which runway to use. The winds were light and variable, so I went with the flow and landed on 9. The FBO seemed to be about 5 miles from the runway, but nature was calling and I had to stop. This was the first time that I have gotten out of the airplane at an airport other than Whitted. Someone was at the plane before I could exit to see if I needed fuel or anything. Nice to see that kind of service, but I just wanted the restroom and vending machine. The photo is trusty old N54666 on the ramp at Brooksville.

The GPS came in handy today. I missed two checkpoints. There was enough haze to make spotting landmarks difficult. Couple that with a bad forecast of the winds aloft and I got off course a bit, particularly on the legs from Leesburg to Brooksville and from Brooksville to the coast. Now its hard to miss the Gulf of Mexico, but without the GPS, I don't think I would have found the Brooksville airport. One of my checkpoints was a small private airfield, which I never saw. I would have gotten home with little problem. Like I said, its hard to miss the Gulf and once there a left turn would take me home. Over the Florida peninsula, you can't get very lost.

I plan on putting in some pattern work and maneuver practice this weekend. My medical flight test is tentatively scheduled for next Friday. The FAA inspector has to talk to someone in Washington first. I didn't realize this required an act of congress. He tells me that he can't be the PIC for the flight and I can't be the PIC with a passenger. Sounds like a catch 22 situation. I'm starting to think that Rob may have to go along, or that I'll be taking my checkride with a FAA inspector rather than a designated pilot examiner (DPE). As my wife says, we'll see.

lesson 26

You will need google earth to open and view the lesson 26 flight track.

Statistics:

Dual Instruction Time: 23.3 Hours

Solo/PIC Time: 15.8 Hours

Landings: 130

Unusual Attitudes

2009-01-10T20:14:00.008-05:00

I had my second round of simulated instrument flying today. I might not have explained that well enough last time for my non-pilot readers, so here goes. We fly VFR, that means good weather, but to practice instrument flight, I put on a hood that limits my vision to the instrument panel of the airplane. The instructor gives directions on which way to turn, climb or descent, and keeps a look out for other airplanes.

Rob threw me a few curves today, literally. After a few minutes of basic instrument flight, we got into unusual attitude recovery. For this fun event, I close my eyes while Rob flies the plane and tries to get me disorientated. He then puts the plane in an unusual attitude (hence the name) and has me recover. The plane may be climbing, diving and most likely banked at the same time. I have to quickly, by looking at the airspeed and turn coordinator, access the situation and take steps to return to straight and level flight. It went pretty well. Rob never was able to get me thoroughly disorientated, and I recovered quickly. I over controlled on the recoveries, but I got things back to straight and level pretty quick. If the GPS track looks like we were drinking, its because Rob played this game for a good while.

I can't tell you that I saw anything interesting, because I didn't see much of anything at all. I had the hood on all the way back to Whitted, where we did a few short field landings and called it a day. Don't worry, I took the hood off for the landings. Next week I'm going to try to finish my cross country requirement with a flight to Lake Wales (X07), Leesburg (LEE) and Brooksville (BVK) before returning to Whitted. Rob endorsed my logbook for solo flights within Tampa's class B, so I'll be able to request flight following. I may file a VFR flight plan for one leg of the trip, just to have done it. I will try to get some good photos on that flight.

lesson 25

You will need google earth to view the lesson 25 file.

Statistics:

Dual Instruction Time: 23.3 Hours

Solo/PIC Time: 13.0 Hours

Landings: 126

Aeronautical Knowledge Test

2009-01-07T12:54:00.002-05:00

Just a quick note. I took and passed my FAA Private Pilot Aeronautical Knowledge Test today with a score of 95%. They got me with one trick question, one math error and one I simply didn't know. I'm glad it's over with, I got real tired of studying for it. Next up will be my medical flight test, then the big one.

Hood Time

2009-01-06T18:23:00.007-05:00

It was my intention to snap a photo of the instrument panel of N54666 first thing this morning, but like so many intentions, it got away from me. So, the panel to the left is from another Cessna 172P found on the Internet, but happens to look amazingly similar to the one I stared at for an hour this morning. Oh, did I forget to mention, I was wearing a hood, or blinders, that kept me from seeing anything else.

First things first. Rob went over my log book to make sure that we had not missed anything in the course of my training. I don't have much left: One solo cross country, a few hours of instrument time and a few hours of test preparation. Presuming I pass the test, I would then be free to terrorize the skies with passengers, as we were terrorized this morning. More on that later. After the log book review, Rob went over the instrument scan, a technique for flying and managing the plane without outside visual reference. Ten minutes of ground instruction then time to give it a shot.

I put on the hood as soon as we hit 400 feet and didn't take it off until we were on final at about 400 feet. We flew east, over Tampa Bay to Ruskin, where I practiced some simple maneuvers. Climbs, descents, standard rate turns, climbing turns and descending turns. That's pretty simple stuff, but made difficult when you only have instruments to look at. Now, I have only 1.1 hours of instrument time, so I'm not claiming to be an great instrument pilot, but I think I did pretty well. I didn't get disorientated or confused. Lost maybe, but not confused. I sort of liked it. It took a good deal of concentration, and if I had to do it for hours, I'm sure it would be exhausting. Actually, I think Rob was just trying to sell me the instrument course after I finish my PPL.

Rob kept me under the hood and gave me headings to get us back to Whitted. As I mentioned above, instrument flying takes concentration, but as we were approaching the airport I hear half of a conversation between Whitted's Air Traffic Control and another of the rental planes. Someone is having trouble finding his way around the airport. He finally takes off and turns left when ATC told him to go right. Bad news, we're on the left. About this time, I'm guessing the other renter changes radio frequency because the tower can no longer contact him. The tower calls us to warn us to avoid this guy. Rob yanks the hood off, the other guy climbs above our approach path and I land in a stiff cross wind. Pretty exciting. The controller didn't want the guys name, but did want him warned not to change radio frequency until clear of the class D airspace. Now the really funny part. We walk in the office and Rob asks "Who's in 54159?" We're told, oh, that was so-and-so, you know the (insert name of major air carrier here) pilot. Honest.

Tomorrow I take the FAA Private Pilot's Knowledge Exam. I'll be glad to be done with it. I'll fly some more later this week, but I haven't decided what I want to do just yet. I get to choose my own route for my next cross country, so I might just do that.

lesson 24

You'll need google earth to view the lesson 24 flight track.

Statistics

Dual Instruction Time: 22.0 Hours

Solo/PIC Time: 13.0 Hours

Landings: 122

Night Cross Country

2008-12-31T12:38:00.006-05:00

I don't think that I will ever be a big night flyer, but flying was sure fun last night. We got to do a lot of new things, see some new sights and even got scolded by air traffic control. In the process, my night flying requirements were met as far as the FAA is concerned.

Rob had me plan a flight from St. Pete/Clearwater (PIE) to Venice(VNC). There is a training requirement for a night cross-country flight of over 100 nm. Whitted is only 43 nm from Venice, so we first flew to St. Pete and did some full stop landings before heading to Venice. We got in trouble at St. Pete.

The tower had us landing on 35R, which is a 9700 foot beast of a runway that the big boys use. At sea level in cool weather the 172 needs about 550 feet to land. My landings were very good last night, but in the dark and at an unfamiliar airport, I missed the first taxiway off the runway on my first landing. We had to motor down the runway a good distance before coming to the next taxiway. On the second landing, Rob decided to fix the problem. After all, he used to work at PIE and was familiar with the place. So I land and am motoring down the runway looking for taxiway "G", golf for you pilots. Rob thinks he spots it and jams on the brakes and turns for it. Bad news, golf is blocked and we are now turned ninety degrees to the direction of the runway. Rob simply completes a 360 on the runway and heads for taxiway "F", foxtrot. About this time the tower controller comes on the radio: "54666 did you just do a 360 on the runway?" I'm laughing and not about to answer him, after all it wasn't my 360. Rob tells him that indeed we did a 360. "Well don't do it again." No crap, we don't usually do 360s on runways.

We got clearance to taxi back to 35R for another trip around the pattern. This time I managed to find taxiway "M", mike, where we did a 180 on the taxiway, with permission, and departed for Venice. I had informed ground control that we were headed for Venice, which could involve transiting Tampa's class B airspace and control came back with a laundry list of instructions which went something like this: "Cessna 54666, taxi to runway 35R and hold, contact tower on 128.4 when ready, left turn to heading 270 on departure, climb and maintain 1600 VFR, squawk 0123, contact Tampa Approach on 119.65 after departing the area." That was a little more in the way of instructions than I was used to, so I had to ask him to repeat. Rob was a bit surprised that PIE ground did all that and had expected to simply depart to the west and request the class B transit with Tampa.

We followed the instructions and after leaving the class D airspace contacted Tampa approach. They told us to climb to 3500 feet and turn to heading 180. This class B stuff is easy, as long as you do what they say. After a few minutes, Tampa approach told us to fly direct to Venice, which took us over my house, and Sarasota International (SRQ). Sarasota International is less than a mile from Sarasota Bay, and Venice Municipal is on the beach, so we were following the coast south. It was beautiful, peaceful and very different from day flying. We had requested flight following, so Tampa informed us of traffic a few times. Once we had Venice in sight, I informed Tampa and requested a frequency change to Venice's ASOS. Tampa cancelled flight following and told me to squawk VFR.

I screwed up my first approach at Venice. On my turn to final, I lost sight of the runway and then picked up the wrong set of lights coming out of my turn. I ended up too high, so we went around. This time I flew the pattern nicely. Venice is an interesting airport. For one thing, it's on the beach. For another, the taxiways don't paralleled the runways. They mostly run around the perimeter of the airport. That means if you want to taxi back for departure, it seems as though you're driving through the boonies. I'm glad Rob knew his way around. I had an airport diagram, but in the dark, I would have been lost.

After departure from Venice, I contacted Tampa approach again. They cleared us through Sarasota's class C and Tampa's class B airspace straight to Albert Whitted. I was sort of liking this class B thing, but Rob told me it could be different during the day. Sometimes they're busy and might tell you to call back later or avoid their airspace all together.

Back at Whitted, Rob killed the landing light while I was on final and made me land without it. That's not a lot of fun. It's hard to see unlit asphalt at night, but the landing was not bad. Next week I'm going to put in some simulated instrument time and we're going over my log book to make sure we have not missed any required training. There's not a lot left. My GPS ground track is incomplete. Not sure what happened, but you can still see where we went.

Happy New Year!!!

lesson 23

Google earth is needed to view the lesson 23 file.

Statistics

Dual Instruction Time: 21.0 Hours

Solo/PIC Time: 13.0 Hours

Landings: 121

Night Flying

2008-12-24T09:32:00.013-05:00

No, I haven't lost my mind. The picture is St. Petersburg at night. If it looks dark, that's because it is. I had my first night flight yesterday. My oldest son and brother, who are here for Christmas, rode along. In hindsight, night flying may not be the best way to introduce someone to general aviation.

After taking off at Whitted, Rob had me head west for the Gulf of Mexico. He had a lesson in mind that I had not anticipated. As we got over the beach, he announced that we were headed for the abyss. We flew out over the Gulf for a little instrument practice. I didn't put on a hood or foggles, but over water without land in view, a hood is not necessary for instrument work. Everything was black. I could see nothing outside the plane. Rob had me make a couple standard rate turns to specified headings and practice climbs on the instruments. On my part it took a lot of concentration. After we landed, my son said it was sort of horrifying. Living on the coast, it would be tempting to fly over water to Key West or another coastal destination. Rob wanted to show me what I would be in if I attempted such a thing at night.

After instrument work, we turned back toward the coast and headed for St. Pete Clearwater International (PIE). PIE is class D, and the largest airport I've landed at. We were instructed to make straight in for runway 9, following two other light planes. Traffic is a lot easier to see at night, but the airport is not. I could see the beacon from the beach, but I could not make out the runways until we were fairly close. I was truly grateful for the VASI, without which I probably would have been all over the place on my approach. Rob said I would flare too high because of the difference in perspective at night. He was right and I smacked the runway pretty good. We taxied back for departure to Whitted. Taxiing past airliners was cool.

Back at Whitted, I flew the pattern for five more landings. They were much better than the one at PIE. Rob had me make one with the landing light off. I couldn't see the asphalt until we were sitting on it, but the landing was good.

I forgot to turn on my GPS logger for this trip. I didn't realize that we were going to PIE before the flight or it would have been on. However, Drew did get a good video of my landing at PIE: Landing at PIE Sorry about the quality of the video. Google did it. It is quite good seen at full resolutuion

Next Tuesday we're flying to PIE and Venice (VNC) at night. I want to go to Venice during the day. There's a good restaurant on the beach that's only a short walk from the airport. Guess it will have to wait.

Thanks to all who read this blog. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do writing it. And... Have a very merry Christmas!

Statistics:

Dual Instruction Time: 19.1 Hours

Solo/PIC Time: 13.0 Hours

Landings: 116

Much better

2008-12-18T19:41:00.003-05:00

I was back at Albert Whitted today. Nothing like getting back on the horse that threw you. Rob had planned a pre-knowledge test review, and that's what we did. Fun, fun, fun. There's nothing quite like Federal Air Regulations to get my interest. Seriously, we went over the test areas that I thought I might have trouble with. I'm using Sporty's FAA practice tests to help me prepare, and I did subscribe to their "premium" test prep service, for a small fee of course. I tried some of the free online tests, but found some wrong answers in one and decided that I'm getting what I pay for with Sporty's. The premium service has explanations that go along with the correct and incorrect answers, so it's easy to see where you went wrong and makes studying more efficient.

After an hour and a half of review, Rob endorsed my log book to take the aeronautical knowledge test. I'll take it after the first of the year. Then it was time to grab the key for N54666 and get in a little practice. Test review had taken longer than planned, so I decided to remain in the pattern and work on takeoffs and landings. For a while I had the airport to myself. You know it's not busy when air traffic controls clears you to takeoff and you haven't even exited the runway from the previous landing. I goofed up one short field takeoff and a short field landing. Just got distracted and forgot what I was doing, other than that it went pretty well. My GPS track shows a tight pattern that I was happy with.

Next week, night flying. My brother and my oldest son are flying with Rob and I Tuesday night. It'll be a working flight. I have to get in 10 night landings, so we'll knock out a bunch Tuesday. The following night flight will be cross country and we'll get in my class B work. Rob was talking about going to Orlando International (KMCO). That would be fine with me.

lesson 21

You'll need google earth to open the lesson 21 track.

Statistics

Dual Instruction Time: 17.9 Hours

Solo/PIC Time: 13.0 Hours

Landings: 110

Not my best day

2008-12-17T12:47:00.004-05:00

Sometimes I feel like I'm starting to nail this flying thing, and then I have a day like today and get a reality check. It's not that I did anything horrible. I just wasn't on the top of my game and didn't perform like I expected. My navigation was fine. I didn't even cheat with the GPS. The weather was mostly clear and calm, a bit hazy with a few clouds scattered at 3000 feet. But, my landings were awful. I haven't flow in over a week, that's a long time off for me, and I'm hoping it was the cause.

It was my second solo cross country flight. Back to Charlotte County (PGD) and Arcadia (X06) then home to Whitted. Rob was not around Bay Air this morning, so CFI Pete looked over and approved my flight plan and endorsed my log book for the flight. No problems on the way to Charlotte County. The haze made finding my landmarks a bit more difficult, but I was tracking the VOR so the landmarks were not as important as if I had been navigating by pilotage. I must have estimated the winds correctly, because my ground speed was almost dead on.

Once at Charlotte County the fun began. About 15 miles out, I tuned their weather advisory channel and got the wind information, numbers in pilot speak. Winds 090 at 5. Cool, sounds like a nice easy landing on runway 9. The problem was that no one was using 9. I heard pilots landing on 4, taking off on 15, landing on 15 and doing something, who knows what on 22. Pilots were practicing instrument approaches from every direction. It's a damned confusing place, pardon my French. The last time Rob and I were there, the situation was almost as bad, and Rob instructed me to use the winds to select my runway, so I announced my intentions to land on 9. Must have been OK with everyone else, nobody said anything to me. Luckily, I seemed to catch a slight break in the activity and entered the left downwind for 9, announced all my turns and got configured to land. Last time we were here, Rob had me do a touch and go, but I'm not supposed to do them by myself. On final, I saw why Rob had me do a touch and go. The "new" runway 9 at Charlotte County is a small resurfaced area in the middle of the "old" runway 9, and the old 9 looks like crap. I didn't want to get off of the resurfaced area, so I announced I was doing a touch and go, and got out of there. My eyes were wide open looking for traffic as I climbed out and set my course for Arcadia. I hope I'm not sent to Charlotte County again.

The flight to Arcadia was as calm and uneventful as the trip to Charlotte County. It was only about a 20 mile flight that went by very quickly. I tuned Arcadia's CTAF and could hear pilots as far away as Clearwater and Okechobee, but no one was announcing anything for Arcadia. After Charlotte County it was a welcomed change. I suspected that the surface winds were about the same, but I overflew the field and got a good look at their wind T, which serves the same function as a wind sock. The winds were pretty much as I had guessed, just a bit stronger judging from the trees and bushes, so I entered the left downwind for runway 5. I flew a nice pattern, announced all my turns and got setup for a slight crosswind. I dipped my right wing into the wind, corrected the nose with left rudder and set her down on the middle of the runway, but.... I bounced... twice. I haven't bounced since I soloed. I was embarrassed, but the good thing was no one was around to see. Maybe I was concentrating on the cross wind and let my speed get too high on final. Who knows. I was not very happy. Taxi back to runway 5, announce my departure and I'm outta there.

I tracked the PIE VOR home on a Victor airway, sort of a highway in the sky. I was alert for traffic as I climbed to 4500 feet, a VFR cruising altitude, but no planes were to be seen. The VOR took me straight to Ruskin where I contacted Whitted tower for the trip home. Control told me to enter right pattern for runway 7 and look for the helicopter departing to the north west. Normal stuff for Whitted. I was feeling comfortable on the downwind and cleared to land, but.. I bounced again. I know my speed was right this time, what is going on? It wasn't a hard bounce, the kind that shakes the plane, just a gentle bounce that put me back in the air by a foot or two. This will have to be fixed.

Tomorrow, Rob is giving me a pre-knowlege test review, after which I'll be able to take the FAA private pilot knowledge test. Most likely, I won't take the test till after the first of the year. Things get kinda crazy around the holidays. I'll also get in a little practice. After today, it's needed.

lesson 20

You'll need google earth to open the lesson 20 flight track.

Statistics

Dual Instruction Time: 17.9 Hours

Solo/PIC Time: 12.0 Hours

Landings: 103

Rained out

2008-12-11T10:38:00.003-05:00

I had hoped to get in my second solo cross country flight today, but the weather man was right and I'll have to wait. My tight schedule for the next few days, and maintenance on the 172s will have me waiting till the middle of next week most likely.

When I started flight training, I thought I would stretch it out over six months or so. Now that I'm getting close to my PPL, I'm wanting to finish sooner rather than later. My brother is coming to visit for Christmas and wants to go flying. It would be nice to be able to carry passengers without a CFI on board.

I'll try the cross country again next week. Hopefully, the weather will cooperate.

More of the same...

2008-12-09T16:54:00.003-05:00

I tried to get a bit of practice in yesterday, but my streak of bad luck with machinery was still intact. The oil seal on the nose gear strut gave out on the flight before mine, so N54666 was out for the day. N54058 was still getting it's new engine, and the other two 172s were taken. After rescheduling for today, I drove home.

Things were better today. No problems with N54666 were discovered during my thorough preflight inspection, so off I went. Same routine as my last few practice sessions. Out to the beach for maneuvers, then back to Whitted for pattern work. Nothing remarkable to report, except for the goofy winds.

I radioed Whitted tower as I crossed the beach on my way back to the airport, and as always he gave me the winds or "numbers "in pilot lingo. 080 at 4. Easy, a slight breeze almost directly down runway 7. Funny thing was, I was having to crab about 20 degrees to the south to avoid drifting north of the runway center line. It sure did not feel like any 4 knot breeze. Well, I would like to practice my crosswind landing, so I'm thinking about this: I'll crab until I cross the blast fence, then transition to a slip, right wing down, left rudder... Then the crosswind just went away. I straightened the plane and landed with almost no rudder input.

Same thing during my pattern work. I was seriously crabbed on the downwind leg, and overshot my turn to final several times due the southerly wind at pattern altitude. On the field the wind was calm. It was pretty weird as far as I was concerned, but at Bay Air, they said it have been like that yesterday.

I plan on flying cross country this Thursday, but the weather man is saying it may not happen. We'll see.

lesson 19

You'll need google earth to view the lesson 19 flight track.

Statistics:

Dual Instruction Time: 17.9 hours

Solo/PIC Time: 10.2 hours

Landings: 100

Did you ever have one of those days?

2008-12-04T16:46:00.004-05:00

My day started early. One of my businesses is an automated car wash. It's pretty sophisticated. Sophisticated enough to call me when something is wrong. That's just what it did at 1:30 AM. I got the message, but nobody is washing their car at that time, and I'm not getting out of bed to fix anything either. Turn the phone off, go back to bed, up at 5:00 to head to work and find out what's wrong. I guess that's why I have an engineering degree, so I can fix car washes. My wife thinks it's for changing tires and fixing toilets, but it's really for car washes. Anyway, the problem is a pesky intermittent electrical glitch that I can't solve before I have to leave for Albert Whitted. The machine works most of the time, the rest will have to wait a few hours.

I was unable to schedule my favorite plane, N54058. It was out for maintenance. At Bay Air, I inquired about the nature of the problem. They found a crack in the engine block during a 100 hour inspection. OUCH! A new Lycoming 0-320 runs about $25K. Glad that's not my bill. So I finish my flight plan and Rob shows up and approves it. I pre-flight N54666 and were off, or almost off. I'm doing the engine run-up... 1700 RPM, mag check, left down 50, right down 75, mags OK, carb heat... oops. I pulled the carb heat knob out of the dash. I don't know if the cable was broken, or if the linkage to the carburetor was broken, but we're not taking N54666. Rob heads over to maintenance while I go back to the counter to inquire about another plane.

Good news and bad news. The good new is that N9400L is available. The bad news is that it has no GPS. Well, we are working on VOR navigation today, so we won't be able to cheat with the GPS. By the way, the push to talk on the pilot's yoke doesn't work either. Rob has to make all the radio calls. Being the good instructor, he makes me tell him what to say and when.

I thought I knew all there was to know about VOR navigation. Heck, I have Microsoft Flight Simulator and have "flown" all over the county using the VOR. It works real nice in FSX, not so nice in the real world. I was surprised how high we had to climb to receive the nearby PIE VOR. Rob did not want to fool with class B airspace, so we could concentrate on the VOR. By the time we had the PIE VOR we were almost out from under the class B. We were able to pick up the PGD VOR, and I tracked it to Charlotte County. That's the airport in the pic at top. It's not my pic. I... um... borrowed it from AirNav. I sent them a picture of Albert Whitted, so I guess we're even.

Charlotte County (PGD) was a piece of work. It's an uncontrolled airport, but busier than Whitted. The CTAF was like a party line. Planes were landing and taking off from intersecting runways. We kept our eyes peeled, did a touch and go and got out of there. I'm a new pilot, but Rob was saying "These guys are nuts." Three things I definitely learned to appreciate today were the Garmin GPS, it's traffic system and air traffic control at Whitted. I tracked the PGD VOR back to Parrish, then dead reckoning to Whitted. A nice uneventful ride home.

Back at Bay Air, Rob told me I need to finish my test study guide. I'll finish it in about a week and have a review session with him, then I can schedule and take the test. I'm to plan a solo cross country to Charlotte County and Arcadia (X06). That will be the first new airport I've flown to solo, and will take care of one of the cross country requirements for my license. Next time Rob and I fly, it will be at night. We'll take care of the class B requirement at night. That should be a lot of fun.

lesson 18

You will need google earth to open the lesson 18 file.

Statistics

Dual Instruction Time: 17.9 Hours

Solo/PIC Time: 8.8 Hours

Landings: 94

Study, practice, study, practice....

2008-12-02T13:46:00.007-05:00

My youngest son thinks his mom and I are cruel for making him prepare for his upcoming SAT. He'll really think we're cruel after he takes the test 3 or 4 times. At any rate, we're evil because we make him work practice questions 30 minutes each day. I've got news for him, I'm harder on myself. I put in at least an hour a day in preparation for my upcoming private pilot knowledge test. Having been out of school for some time, studying is not as easy as it used to be. I usually study right before bedtime, helps me get to sleep.

I took another practice flight today. I was pretty happy with the way it went and thought my maneuvers were up to standards. In hindsight, or in GPS hindsight, I did cut my turn around a point a bit close. Next time I'll make sure to finish it off properly. The landings went well. It seems to be getting easier to transition between normal/short/soft field landings. The only thing I did wrong was getting on the brakes before I dumped the flaps on one of the short field landings. The tires on the 172 were squeeling down the runway.

Thursday, Rob and I are flying to Charlotte County (PGD) and navigating by VOR. Should be fun. I have my flight plans prepared, or as prepared as they can be until I get the weather Thursday morning. I've prepared two routes, one involves Tampa's class B and Sarasota's class C airspace. I'm hoping we go that way. Guess it will depend on how Rob feels Thursday.

lesson 17

You'll need google earth to open and view the lesson 17 flight track.

Statistics

Dual Instruction Time: 16.4 Hours

Solo/PIC Time: 8.8 Hours

Landings: 92

Flying with the family

2008-11-28T16:16:00.008-05:00

We've got a house full right now. All the kids are home from college. My son's roommate came with him, and my in laws are here for Thanksgiving. It's a little stressful. The good thing is that when I offer to take a carload of them with me, my wife has no problem with flying. Suddenly she fully supports it.

My son's room mate is an aeronautical engineering student at Georgia Tech. He works for a company that rebuilds airplane parts and he wants to fly himself one of these days. Well, we were going to the airport anyway so I called early this morning and scheduled a discovery flight for him. I got home from work and told him I had some good news and some bad news. The bad news is that you're not flying with us today. The good news is that you get to pilot an airplane today. The picture at the top is him in one of the 172 G1000s. My son rode along in the back seat and took pics and video. I think seeing the look on his face when he got out of the plane was more fun than anything else we did today.

While they were up, I preflighed good old N54058, none of that fancy G1000 stuff for me, no sir. That's me and my flying guests to the right. When Drew and John landed, it was my turn to play pilot. I took Drew and his fiance, Aubrey, up first. Aubrey is not real sure about small airplanes. The first thing she said when we got to Whitted was "Those are smaller than anything I've been in before." I was on my best piloting behavior. Fortunately, the weather was beautiful. We had very little turbulence, even over St. Petersburg. We flew out to the beach, south to Egmont Key and back to Albert Whitted. We were cleared for a straight-in approach to runway 7, but someone in the pattern extended his downwind too far and we had to circle on final before we were cleared to land. First time that has happened to me.

Next I took my daughter Sarah and her grandfather up for a spin. This time we flew south to Egmont Key, then over the bay to the Sunshine Skyway bridge. Sarah and Drew took a bunch of photos and some video. I've added to my slide show and have one of the flight videos available on the blog. Sarah also took my favorite shot, only a pilot would like this one, my turn onto final for runway 18.

The best thing to come of today was that Sarah and Aubrey gave my wife a good report. They told her I did not scare them. Now my wife says she might go flying with me. If she let her children go, I can get her in the air one day.

My gps logger was goofy. I don't know if it was in a bad spot or if the batteries were low because I forgot to charge it. No gps track this time. Next week I have some practice scheduled and cross country to Charlotte County.

How to use the VOR and how to waste $19.20.

2008-11-25T13:52:00.007-05:00

Today I learned all about VOR navigation. Actually, I already had a pretty good idea, having read about it and having played Microsoft Flight Simulator a bit. Rob made it fairly interesting anyway. He did show me a seriously cool web site that has a VOR simulator along with other navigation and aviation tools, luizmonteiro.com. Truthfully, GPS has all but made VORs obsolete, however we still learn about it because the equipment is very common on light airplanes, it's good as a backup if the GPS fails, and the FAA will test me on the material. We also went over a truly obsolete system, the automatic direction finder and NDBs. Although none of the planes I fly has a working automatic direction finder, I still have to know how they work because I might get tested on it.

Having learned this, my mission is to plan a flight to Charlotte County (PGD). I'm to plan it two ways:
1) Track the Sarasota VOR to SRQ, then track the Punta Gorda VOR to Charlotte County.
2) Track the St. Petersburg VOR to Parrish, then track the Punta Gorda VOR to Charlotte County.
I don't know which route I prefer. Either way, we plan on requesting to transit Tampa's class B airspace. That would be new for me. Tampa handles approaches to Sarasota's class C, so that might include a little more radio work which would be good. Maybe Rob will let me fly one route on the way down, and the other on the way back.

The coolest thing about today was going over the training I still need. There's not a lot. Some solo cross country work, night flying and instrument flying. Then preparation for the practical test.

I had planned on a practice session today but the clear sky had disappeared by the time ground school was over. We still had 10 mile visibility and a ceiling of 4400 feet at Whitted, so I gave it a shot. By the time I had the plane started and tuned the ASOS, the ceiling was down to 3200 feet. I requested taxi clearance and the controller told me we had showers in the area. Air traffic control at Whitted is very helpful, so I asked him to advise me if the weather deteriorated any further. By the time I finished my run-ups, the controller told me we had showers west of the airport and moving our way. Time to call it a day. I don't need to be flying in rain showers and poor visibility. When I got to my truck, I think we were down to IFR conditions. I managed to put 2/10 of an hour on the hobbs meter to the tune of $19.20 starting and taxiing the plane.

Friday, Josh and I are taking my kids for a ride. The weather should be spectacular, and I'm really looking forward to it.

1st Solo Cross Country

2008-11-20T13:09:00.012-05:00

I had a beautiful day for my first solo cross country flight. I got to work this morning and it was 38F with frost on the ground. Some in Florida would say that's too cold, but it's just right for me. The sky was clear and the winds calm. Perfect flying weather.

I finished my flight plan at Bay Air. I had left my E6B in the plane on my last trip, so all the math had to wait until I retrieved it. Took me about 45 minutes to get the weather, NOTAMs, calculate courses, times and fuel consumption. After Rob arrived and checked my flight plan I was good to go.

The trip north was very uneventful. The air was calm. I hit all my checkpoints within a minute of the calculated times. I remember reading that another student pilot blogger had written that flying the plane is not all that hard, it's all the stuff that comes with flying that complicates the issue. Once at altitude and with a proper flight plan, flying in good weather could not be much easier. OK, if I had an autopilot it could be easier, but even without one it's not hard. Now, if you're trying to land at an unfamiliar airport and take some pictures things can get kinda sticky. That's what happened to me.

The automated weather was out at Crystal River, but someone at the FBO there was good enough to give me wind and active runway information over the unicom frequency. I would be using runway 9, which was opposite of the way I landed Tuesday with Rob. I'm coming from the south and landing on 9, so I'm supposed to overfly the field 500 feet above pattern altitude and make a teardrop entry into the downwind, and I want to get photos of the springs, which happen to be right under the left hand pattern for 9, and I'm at an uncontrolled field which means I have to announce every turn on the CTAF. If it seems like I was trying to accomplish too much, I was.

I got a photo that was not real good (the one at top), I completely butchered my entry into the pattern and who knows what I said on the radio. Lesson learned: Take photos while cruising, NOT in the traffic pattern. I completely forgot about the teardrop, and in an effort to get my photo, my downwind leg drifted far too close to the runway. My turn to final was tight and overshot lining up on the runway. Additionally, I was too fast. The good news is that the runway at Crystal River is 4555 feet long. That's almost 1700 feet longer than 18/36 at Whitted. I touched down on the second half of the runway and had room to spare. It worked out better than it sounds. As soon as I cleared the runway, the guy on the unicom announced that we were now using runway 27. Other inbound planes were announcing themselves on the CTAF, so I spun the plane around on the taxiway, announced that I was departing 27 to the south and got out of there. Anyone who saw me had just two words to say: Student Pilot.

I'm still unhappy about not getting good photos. In my youth, I was a scuba diver and had my checkout dive at Crystal River. The river is fed by several springs, one of which is huge. The water is as clear as a swimming pool and filled with fresh and salt water fish. Diving with the manatees is a big tourist attraction now. However, the springs were literally under the traffic pattern and I was not going to try to get another photo.

The return trip was as uneventful as the trip out. Calm clear air, checkpoints on time, very little traffic to worry about. After my series of screw-ups at Crystal River, I was glad to be back at Whitted. I have VOR ground school scheduled for Tuesday and a brief practice session. The kids will be in town for Thanksgiving, so I'm going to take them up for a little sightseeing on Friday. CFI Josh will be our chaperon. I'm really looking forward to that.

lesson 16

You'll need google earth to open and view the lesson 16 file.

Statistics:

Dual Instruction Time: 15.4 Hours

Solo/PIC Time: 7.3 Hours

Landings: 84

PilotMall.com Scholarship

2008-11-19T18:25:00.007-05:00

Yesterday, after I had purchased my knee board at Pilot Mall, the young lady who waited on me mentioned that I might apply for their aviation education scholarship, if I had not finished my private pilot training. At first, I thought it was funny, that I, at 47 years of age would apply for a scholarship. But after she told me they have had only 5 applicants, I didn't think it so funny any more. They are offering one $1000 and two $500 scholarships to U.S. citizens training for a private pilot certificate. Fill out a brief application, pen a 500 word essay and that's it. I would post my essay, but one of you guys might copy it.

PilotMall.com scholarship link.

1st Cross Country Flight

2008-11-18T12:58:00.006-05:00

Today's flight was a real learning experience. Some of the lessons were big and some were tiny little things. For example, immediately after finishing the flight, I walked around the corner from Bay Air to Pilot Mall and purchased a knee board. I had more trouble keeping my charts and flight plan organized than flying or finding my checkpoints. It's a small lesson that makes a big difference.

This was a beautiful day for flying. We cruised at 2500 feet from Albert Whitted to Crystal River (CGC). Climbing out of Whitted and Crystal River, we had some pretty strong turbulence, but once at altitude the air was smooth. I could mostly fly with my hands off of the yoke, just using the rudder to make small course corrections and making minor trim adjustments as needed.

Rob check my flight plan before we left. I had my wind correction angle wrong on the trip out. Other than that, it was good. We recorded the time at all the checkpoints and checked estimated against actual ground speed. We had more wind aloft than forecasted. Our trip north was slower, and the return trip was faster than planned. The only thing I was unhappy with was my landing at Crystal River. The north-south runway at Crystal River is grass and Rob wanted to land on the pavement. The difficulty was the 10 knot wind directly out of the north. Great. 9/27 at Crystal River is long (4555 feet) but only 75 feet wide. That 75 feet goes by pretty fast when you're drifting in a 10 knot crosswind. Rob got on the controls and put more aileron into the wind and I set her down on the left side of the runway. I would like to have taken a couple trips around the pattern and tried that again, but we headed back to Whitted.

The return trip was uneventful. After adjusting for the wind, we hit the checkpoints on schedule. Landing at Whitted, a Coast Guard Jayhawk helicopter (not my photo, borrowed from another web site) did a touch and go in front of us, so we flew through his wake/rotor wash on final. That bounced us around a bit and is the reason for the long slow turn from downwind to final, if you bother to look at the GPS track.

I'm to fly the trip to Crystal River solo next. I may practice again before I fly the solo cross country. After that, VOR navigation and a longer supervised cross county. I'm getting close to being free to fly new places on my own. Too cool. By the way, Rob and I were talking about the cross wind while we were at Crystal River, and I forgot to fly north to the springs and get photos. Next time I won't forget. The photo at top was one of my checkpoints, the inlet at the Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Refuge. That's a mouth full.

lesson 15

You'll need google earth to open and view the lesson 15 flight track.

Statistics

Dual Instruction Time: 15.1 Hours

Solo/PIC Time: 5.4 Hours

Landings: 82

Practice makes perfect?

2008-11-13T13:35:00.004-05:00

I feel like I took a step backwards today. Saturday, my maneuvers were smooth and nice (read benign stalls). Today, different story. I don't know if it was weather or what, but my stalls were more violent than they've been for some time. The first power-on stall was downright scary. But I got back on the horse and did another that was better. I wonder if warmer, more humid weather made the stalls worse. Most likely, it's just me.

I flew the same routine as my last practice session. Out over the beach for maneuvers, then pattern work back at Whitted. The GPS track does not look so good, but I thought my steep turns were perfect. I caught my wake on both the left and right turns. I would have landed right on my selected emergency landing site. If not for those wicked stalls, I would have called it a great day. My pattern work was fair. I'm still having trouble moving from normal to short field to soft field landings. Practice will iron that out.

Tuesday starts my cross country. I hope to get some photos in route to Crystal River. My family used to spend weekends there when I was a teenager. I'm hoping Rob will let me fly low over the springs and get some good shots. We'll see.

lesson 14

You'll need google earth to open the lesson 14 flight file.

Statistics

Dual Instruction Time: 13.0 Hours

Solo/PIC Time: 5.4 Hours

Landings: 80

More ground school

2008-11-11T17:59:00.003-05:00

Three hours of ground school today left me with a headache and sore eyes. Man, the numbers on those charts are tough for an old guy, especially if the "class room" is not extremely well lit. That's behind me, so I can start some cross country work.

Rob and I went over flight planning using navigation by dead reckoning. "Dead reckoning is navigation solely by means of computations based on time, airspeed, distance and direction." Yea, that's from the book. You can see why it puts me to sleep. We also went over some more weather, or how and where to get weather information. Now I can plan a short trip. And that's my job. I've got to prepare a flight plan to and from Crystal River (CGC). Next week we get to fly there. The airport at Crystal River has one paved and one grass runway. I'm hoping the wind is out of the north so we can land on the grass.

I'm going to practice a bit more on Thursday. Cross country next week. I'm sure I'll get in some more ground school before taking longer flights and learn about the other navigational methods available to me. It's funny to use dead reckoning in a plane equipped with a state of the art GPS system. But, them's the rules.

Practice, practice, practice

2008-11-08T14:26:00.002-05:00

My wife is out of town this weekend. Our daughter has an event at college, and Alice wanted to attend. So, can I find something to do with myself? Yep, I'll go flying, and what a beautiful day it was. I took off a little after 8:00 with no sign of clouds in the sky, calm winds, cool temperatures and great visibility. Typical November day in Florida.

I set out to practice all my practical test maneuvers and all the landing/take off procedures. I accomplished nearly all, with varying degrees of success. The maneuvers went very well. I caught my own wake in the steep turn to the right. Transitioned to slow flight while keeping my heading and altitude. Rode the ragged edge of the stall for a minute and went back to normal cruise. I know I'm getting more comfortable in the plane by myself. I did the dreaded power-on stall without Rob. Kept my heading, recovered and had no problems. The only minor problem was that I would have over shot my landing site when I practiced an emergency landing. I'll have to do a few more of those to better judge my glide path. The winds were so light, there was little point in practicing turns around a point.

I headed back to Whitted. My landings were good, but not great. Actually, I was very happy with the way I handled my most serious error. Coming back from the beach, I must not have been paying attention. I found my self too high and way too fast on final. I immediately decided to go around. I had worried that I tend to fixate on the landing, and have not actually needed to go around to this point. When the need arouse, I did the right thing. I practiced all my landing and take off techniques. The biggest problem I'm having is switching gears from one technique to another. I'll have to do all of them when my check ride comes, so I'll just keep working on it.

Alice took the good camera with her, so the shot at the top is from my cell phone. There are a lot of interesting aircraft at Whitted on the weekends, and I'll get some photos my next opportunity. A WWII vintage Stearman biplane was taxiing out as I was doing my pre-flite, and a Waco cabin biplane was doing sightseeing tours. Both are beautiful airplanes.

lesson 13

You'll need google earth to open and view the lesson 13 file. While not really a lesson, I'll keep the files sequential to avoid confusing myself.

Statistics

Dual Instruction Time: 13 Hours

Solo/PIC Time: 4.1 Hours

Landing: 74

Short shorts

2008-11-05T16:04:00.009-05:00

I know the picture at the top of this post is a bit confusing, but bear with me. I'm trying to give you an idea of what I was looking at today.

Had another lesson. I brought Rob up to speed on what Josh and I had done last time. No need to go to Manatee again. We briefly went over short field takeoff and landing procedures before taking off for some pattern work.

Short field landings are similar to to normal landings. You're just moving slower, and on final approach, you are descending much more rapidly. It was not hard once I had done it a few times. The only problem is that things look different. The angles are different. Here is were the photo at the top comes in. At Whitted, Tampa Bay is just off of both ends of runway 18/36. Landing on 36, there is a seawall, a few feet of grass, and the runway. When landing at a steep angle, like on a short field approach, it sure looks like you're gonna hit that seawall. It took a few laps around the pattern to convince me that I could clear it.

I did 5 or 6 short field landings and takeoffs, and practiced the soft field technique a few times. All in all, my landings were good. The only one I was unhappy with was my first soft field approach. I don't think my brain had shifted gears between the short field technique and the soft field technique. I ended up bouncing through some goofy hybrid landing and was crooked in the crosswind to boot. Rob told me not to be too hard on myself. He thought all my landings were up to practical test standards. OK, I feel better.

Soon, the fun begins. We get to start our cross country work. I've scheduled a 3 hour ground school session for my next lesson, and I have a pile of reading to do. I'm really looking forward to cross country. I like going other places.

lesson 12

You'll need google earth to open and view the lesson 12 file.

Statistics

Dual Instruction Time: 13 Hours

Solo/PIC Time: 2.8 Hours

Landings: 68

Dude, that's some sweet grass

2008-11-01T14:56:00.015-04:00

I had two "first" today. I made my first landing away from good old Albert Whitted, and I made my first landing on grass, all with a different instructor. In the process, I had more fun than I've had in a long time. Other pilots have told me they prefer grass fields. Now I can see why. Grass is a bit more forgiving than asphalt. It requires you to do more of the "pilot" stuff, but it's a lot of fun.

I got a call from Bay Air yesterday. I knew that Rob was buying a house. He finally closed and was trying to get moved. So, I could cancel today's lesson, fly another solo trip, or schedule another instructor. Quickly thinking to myself, I thought one day I would have someone other than Rob in the plane, certainly the FAA inspector for my medical flight test and the examiner for my checkride. So might as well try someone new. Today it was CFI Josh. We talked for a couple minutes about where I was in my training and what Rob had planned next. We went to the "classroom" and went over radio procedures for uncontrolled fields and technique for soft field landing. I was up to speed with the radio, but the soft field procedures seemed daunting.

I've gotten ahead of myself. When I got to Bay Air, Josh was still up with another student. A group of guys were taking discovery flights. They were excited that they got to fly the airplane and such. Sound sort of familiar? Anyhow, they were asking about lessons, costs, scheduling all things that they needed to know. I'm minding my business, just standing around waiting for Josh, until they find out that I'm a student pilot. Guess who got to be the aviation expert for a few minutes? It was fun talking to someone who sounded just like me a few months ago. Josh showed up and put a quick end to my celebrity status.

The soft field technique is a lot of fun. You try to do a wheelie down the runway in a effort to keep the nose wheel off the ground. Once airborne, you level off quickly, remaining in ground effect until you gain airspeed, then you can begin a normal climb. It may sound like a lot, but it makes sense once you do it and is easier than it sounds. Landing is similar, you try to keep the nose wheel off the ground as much as possible. We made four landings at Airport Manatee (48X, photo at top) before heading back to Whitted. The last landing was a touch and go. Josh never demonstrated anything. He explained and expected me to do it. I prefer that. I learn faster if I do it myself.

To pilots this may sound strange, but I was happy to have a decent crosswind at Airport Manatee and have a chance to practice my crosswind landings. So far, I've not had much trouble with crosswinds. I understand the technique, but I don't think about it. I just fly the plane and it works out. Not thinking about it makes me think that I didn't do anything, but today we had a 10 knot wind 50 degrees off the runway. My books shows that as a 7 knot crosswind. That's the limit Rob signed off on for me, and good enough for now.

We were going to work on short field technique back at Whitted, but the place was so busy that we did one touch and go and called it a day. At one point we were number 5 to land. Josh laughed and said that never happens at Whitted. All in all, a great day.

lesson 11 file

Remember, you'll need google earth on your computer to open the flight file.

Statistics

Dual Instruction Time: 12 hours

Solo/PIC Time: 2.8 hours

Landings: 60

Medical Flight Test Update part 2

2008-10-30T18:50:00.004-04:00

A little background for anyone who may not have read some of the oldest posts in this blog. I have an vision condition called amblyopia, more commonly known as lazy eye. I've had to jump through a few hoops due to this, but the end is in sight. I hope.

I received a letter from the FAA today instructing me to call the Tampa office of the FAA and schedule a time for my medical flight test. I spoke to one of the inspectors in Tampa, who was a very nice and helpful gentleman. He told me what the test involves. Basically, one of the inspectors will drive to Albert Whitted and we will take a ride. I will have to perform normal pilot functions like selecting an emergency landing site, spotting air traffic, reading a chart and landing the plane. Nothing that I haven't already done.

I tried to go ahead and schedule but the inspector balked when he found I had limited time in the plane. I don't think he wanted to ride with a freshly soloed student pilot. He suggested that I wait until I have 20 hours or so in the plane. That won't be long.

Tour de Coast

2008-10-29T16:47:00.007-04:00

I had planned on flying yesterday. Woke up at 5:00 and called Whitted's ASOS. Winds were 18 knots gusting to 24. I promptly logged into the flight schedule and cancelled my reservation. I'm restricted to 17 knot maximum winds for solo flight. Just for grins, I called back at 9:00 when I was scheduled, the winds were 20 knots gusting to 30. I rescheduled for today and had a beautiful flight.

You might call it the lighthouse tour. I flew from Whitted north to the Anclote lighthouse. Anclote Key is the northern most of the barrier islands on Florida's west coast. North of Anclote the coast changes from beach to saw grass. In the middle of the top photo is the Anclote lighthouse. Look hard, because it's a rusty steel structure and does not show up very well when you're flying 1000 feet above it. It s no longer in use, but preservationists keep it from falling apart.

I took as many photos as I could manage. I had a real camera with me today. However, I had to fly while I was snapping pictures, and shoot through the window of the plane, so they're not perfect. To the left is the Egmont lighthouse. It looks a bit more like a traditional lighthouse. The water is not as blue as it should be this time of year. We have had high winds the last couple of days, and that has muddied the coastal waters.

I added a slide show of the pictures I took in flight. I'll keep adding to it as I travel to new places. If you click on the slide show, you should get a larger version. I've mastered one more tiny piece of technology. If you open the GPS file of today's flight, (which I forgot to turn on until I was over the beach) the track will be colorized and extruded from the ground to give you an idea of my altitude. Looks better too. Thanks to gpsvisualizer.com for the help with that.

Today's flight was fairly uneventful. However, for the first time, I did get to use runway 18/36 at Whitted for takeoff. I had planned on practicing my flight maneuvers and taking a couple laps around the pattern, but coffee and cold weather is a bad combination for Tony. My bladder was telling me it was time to land. I called the tower and the controller asked me which runway I wanted to use! He told me he had one reading on his wind indicator but the windsock on the field was pointed a different direction. I requested runway 36, having never landed on that one and wanting to try it. Moments later he was back on the radio telling me to land on runway 7.

The weird thing for me is believing someone would actually rent me a plane to fly around in. I know I'm doing it, but somehow it just doesn't seem real. The next weird thing is that I'm actually doing it. Taking off, flying, landing, all by myself without hurting myself or anyone else, or damaging the plane. Too cool.

lesson 10 file

You'll need google earth to open the flight file. I called this lesson 10 even though it's not really a lesson. Helps keep me organized.

Statistics

Dual Instruction Time: 11 hours

Pilot in Command: 2.8 hours

Landings: 51

Free at last

2008-10-22T13:24:00.014-04:00

Well, not really free, just sort of free or free with limits, but free to fly alone within the local area, and today I did.

Bay Air uses an online scheduling service called Flight Schedule Pro. Last night, I received an email from Flight Schedule Pro letting me know that my reservation for today had been revised. Rob had scheduled me for an additional hour in the plane. OK, but what's up with that. Nothing like a little mystery to pique my interest.

So, we have a bit of ground school that we had planned. We reviewed airspace in the St. Petersburg area. Rob does not want me flying into Tampa's Class B airspace and getting him into trouble. Apparently, if a student pilot does something like that, it's the instructor who suffers the consequences. Then we went over some weather information. Specifically, how to get and make sense of routine aviation weather reports or METARSs. Bay Air subscribes to an online weather service for pilots and this information is available in the lobby, but anyone with Internet service can access aviation weather reports from the National Weather Service. We looked at some local weather reports as they related to my ability to fly on a given day or not. Rob increased my maximum permissible wind to 17 knots, but it will be nice to know if I am able to fly before I drive to the airport. He also gave me the telephone number for Whitted's ASOS so I can check the weather without a computer.

Ground school complete and I head out to make sure N54058 is ready to go. Rob hops in the plane, we take off and head west for the beach. There is a lot of traffic at Whitted today. Whitted is only a mile or two from Tropicana Field, where game one of the World Series will be played tonight. Rob says that a lot of people will be flying into Whitted to see the game. I guess that explains some of the traffic. Once over the water, I practice slow flight, stalls and the emergency landing procedure. Rob then slides his seat back, tells me to get back to the airport and turns his microphone off.

No problem. I've done this before. I spot the Don Cesar and turn for it. Once over the Don:

"Whitted Tower, Cessna 54058 over the Don, inbound touch and go."

I did two touch and goes and a power off landing on runway 7. The wind was at 15 knots, gusting and shifting a bit. On one approach, I looked at the windsock at the end of runway seven. Once second it would be 20 degrees left of the runway, the next it would be down the runway. It make landing interesting. I would set up for a slip and find myself drifting left. Next trip I would line up straight and have the crosswind pushing me right. I gave up thinking about it and just flew the plane, that worked better. After the power off landing, Rob got out of the plane and told me to go have fun. Cool, with an airplane to myself, I think I can do that.

I stayed in the pattern and made two full stop landings before deciding to go to the beach.

"Whitted Tower, Cessna 54058 at Bay Air ready to taxi for westbound departure."

"Cessna 54058, wind 070 at 15, taxi to runway 7."

I taxi to the runway and hold, get takeoff clearance and I'm off. The plane performs better than ever. With a 15 knot headwind and Rob out of the plane, I'm climbing like a rocket. Usually, headed to the beach from Whitted, I would climb east bound, turn north around the pier while still climbing and then turn west, still climbing. Today, I had to level off as I was turning north around the pier to avoid climbing into Tampa's airspace.

Once over the beach, I flew south to Egmont Key. I circled the lighthouse and took the photo at the top of this post. All I had was my cell phone, so don't be too critical. I didn't expect to be doing this today, so I did not bring a real camera. Next time, I'll be prepared. Then I flew to the south end of Egmont and got this photo of what is left of the old fort.

It may not look like much now, but this was an artillery battery built during the Spanish-American war to guard the entrance to Tampa Bay. In historical perspective, a Spanish invasion of Florida was unlikely. I figure that politics has never changed, and Florida just had a good congressional delegation that knew how to bring home the pork.

Alter flying over Egmont, I climbed to 2000 feet and transitioned to slow flight. It was a little unnerving hearing the stall warning without Rob in the plane, so I resumed normal flight. I could not bring myself to attempt a stall without Rob, but I did practice setting up an emergency landing. Next time, I've promised myself to practice the stalls.

My time was starting to run short, so I headed for the Don. Once over the Don:

"Whitted Tower, Cessna 54058 over the Don, inbound to land."

Nothing.

"Whitted Tower, Cessna 54058 over the Don, inbound to land."

Again nothing. We had radio problems earlier in the day. At times, I could barely hear ATC. Other pilots were having the same problem, evidenced by their request to have instructions repeated. But this was silence. I adjusted the volume on the Garmin 430 and was considering turning back toward the beach until I had radio contact when I heard:

"Cessna 54058, how do you read?"

"Loud and clear, 54058."

"Cessna 54058, make straight in runway 7 winds 060 at 15."

I was relieved to hear the tower. I know the procedure for loss of radio communications, but I didn't want to do it today, not with all the traffic inbound to Whitted due to the World Series. My landing was uneventful, even with the gusty variable winds. I taxied back to Bay Air and could not find a parking spot. They weren't kidding about people flying in to the World Series. Steve at the desk told me not to worry about parking, the flight line guys would move the plane.

Rob wants me to fly a couple more times by myself before we get together again. Fine with me. Next time I plan on flying north to the Anclote Lighthouse, then south to Egmont again. Anclote is a little more than 25 miles, but Rob says it's OK. I'll have a real camera and hope to get some good photos. After that, I plan on heading east. In a previous life, I grew oranges for a living. I had an orange grove near a little town called Wiamauma. I want to have a look at it. When Rob and I get together next, we'll start working on soft and short field takeoffs and landings. Should be fun, I want to land on grass.

Once again, you can take a look at where I've flown by opening the lesson 9 file. You will need to have google earth installed in order to open the file. I'm trying to use a site called GPSVisualizer to add altitude perspective to these files, if I can figure it out.

lesson 9 file

Statistics

Dual Instruction Time: 11.0 hours

Pilot In Command: 1.5 hours

Landings: 50

Slide show from Alaska

2008-10-19T12:55:00.003-04:00

I've been meaning to do this for some time, but I finally added a slide show from our Alaska vacation this summer. You will find photos from all of the places we went, and some good shots of the Juneau ice fields we flew over. If you click on the slide show, you should get a larger version.

By the way, I got within about 15 feet of the bear in the photos. He was a tame wild bear that frequented the lodge we visited.

I'll add a St. Pete/Tampa Bay slide show when I get some good pictures of the area where I've been flying.

1st Solo!!!

2008-10-17T12:58:00.007-04:00

I'm feeling like the king of the world! I got to fly an airplane all by myself today. No one else was in it! I had to take off, handle the radio, watch out for traffic, manage my speed, altitude and pitch, and land the plane. Three times! If you're getting the idea that I enjoyed myself, you would be correct. I loved it!

I'm getting ahead of myself, so let me start at the beginning. I stayed up kinda late last night, hoping to see the Rays clinch the American League championship. Fortunately, I went to bed before the wheels really fell off. So, I'm sort of tired this morning and not in the best of moods. I get to work and rush through my "to do" list before I head off for Albert Whitted. Driving to the airport, across Tampa Bay, I notice that the weather is perfect. A slight breeze out of the east north east. This might be the day. I start to get excited.

Rob got to the airport before I did, so he has some coffee while I preflight the airplane. We're in N54058 today, my favorite of the older Cessnas at Bay Air. We hop in the plane and wait as a tour group of school kids walks past. It's probably a bad idea to start an airplane engine with kids on the ground nearby. The kids watch me startup and finish my preflight checks. Ground clears us to taxi and tower clears us for takeoff.

Rob has me run a couple laps around the pattern while he is endorsing my log book and student pilot certificate. I'm legal for solo flight now within 25 nm of Albert Whitted, with a 3000 foot ceiling restriction, a 12 knot wind restriction, a 7 knot cross-wind restriction and 5 mile visibility restriction. Cool. No problems with the pattern. I seem to have cured my flare problem with the simplest of fixes. I raised the seat in the airplane. Now I can see over the dash and keep the runway in sight while in the landing flare. I make two beautiful landings.

Rob says we need to practice two things before I can solo. Slips and go-arounds. I've already used a forward slip to land in a crosswind, so the side slip is no big deal. He has me climb too high on the downwind leg of the pattern and perform a side slip on final approach to get rid of the excess altitude. I land and we go around to practice the go-around. This is the simplest of all maneuvers. I'm guessing the problem with a go-around is with making the decision when to go around. One more trip around the pattern and Rob has me make a simulated emergency landing and taxi back to Bay Air. Then it happens, Rob gets out of the airplane and says good luck.

"Whitted Ground, Cessna 54058 at Bay Air, ready to taxi for pattern work."

"54058, Taxi to runway seven, you're second in line after the Cessna doing his run-ups."

I had to wait a few minutes while another student did his engine run-ups. He must have been newer than me, it took him a little while. After he is out of the way, I switch the radio to tower frequency:

"Whitted Tower, Cessna 54058 at runway 7, ready to go."

"Cessna 54058, hold for Cessna on final."

I have to wait again.

"Cessna 54058, cleared for departure, right hand pattern."

"Cleared for departure, right hand pattern, 54058"

I'm ready for business now. I taxi onto the runway, line up down the runway, give the plane full power and something is wrong. I've got about 40 knots of airspeed and the nose is coming off the runway. Think fast. Crap, I trimmed for best glide on that simulated emergency and never set the trim back to neutral. So I hold the nose down until I get 55 knots, rotate and I'm up. Now I trim for my 76 knot climb and all is well, except for the stain in my shorts. I ran through the after landing and takeoff check lists on the ground, but neutral elevator trim is in the preflight checklist. I won't make that mistake again. It was too exciting for my first solo trip. Later, Rob said he should have caught it before he let me go, and told me that it's a good idea to visually check the entire panel before you take off.

"Cessna 54058, cleared for the option."

"Cleared for the option, I'll be making a full stop. 54058"

My first trip around the pattern was the easiest, after the takeoff excitement. The airport was getting busier. Other students were in the pattern and other flights were inbound. When I taxied back to runway 7 for my second trip, three planes were waiting to take off. On my third trip, I had to extend my downwind a bit as I was third in line to land.

That's me with the stupid grin on my face. But, what a day. It just does not get much better. I logged my first PIC (Pilot in Command) time! Good thing that I wore a ratty T-shirt, because the back side of it is now on the bulletin board at Bay Air. I'll have a photo of that next time. Rob says that next we're going to head out to the beach (life is rough when you live in a place where you have to go to the beach to get something done) and practice stalls and such for a few minutes. He then wants me to run the landing approach from the beach to be sure that I can get myself home. After that, he will have me solo again. Then I'm to fly a few hours on my own, within 25 miles of the airport as noted earlier. I'm really looking forward to it.

Statistics:

Dual Instruction Time: 9.9 hours

Pilot in Command Time: 0.5 hours

Landings: 43

Look familiar?

2008-10-14T12:41:00.001-04:00

I think I'm finally getting a good feel for the landing flare. As you can see on the picture to the left, we went around and around the traffic pattern again today. I won't bore you with the details of every trip, but today's lesson went very well and I was pleased with my performance. I did not solo today. I've been a little apprehensive about that, mostly due to my poor landings, but today I feel very confident and ready to solo.

The wind was blowing at 15 knots down the runway. This was the biggest factor that kept Rob from letting me solo. I'm flying again Friday, and Rob says he will endorse my log book for solo flight, with a few restrictions. I really hope to solo Friday.

Changing wind conditions are good in a way. The first trip around the pattern, I landed with 30 degrees of flaps. With a 15 knot headwind, we seemed to be barely moving. Next trip, Rob had me land with 10 degrees of flaps. My airspeed was higher and the runway looked different because we were not pitched down as much, but all was well and a smooth landing resulted. Rob recorded 10 landings in my log book, but he lost count. If you check the GPS track, we went around 14 times.

I forgot to mention last lesson, but Rob had me practice a power off landing. Basically, he set the engine power to idle on the downwind leg of the pattern and had me land the plane. It was the best landing of my sad attempts last week. He did the same thing today, mostly to show me that I was extending my downwind too far. He cut the engine power to idle and told me to land. With today's strong wind, I could not make it back to the airport. Power on, and back to Whitted to land. After that lesson, I stayed closer to the field.

On one trip, the controller has us make a short approach. Another plane was inbound to land and we needed to get out of the way. Even that did not bother me. I'm getting a good handle on the airspeed/altitude/pitch and power that I need in the pattern. And, my landing flares were much better today. I know I can do this by myself.

I do have a couple of things to work on. I need to be just a little more aggressive with the elevator in the flare and during rotation. Rob says that I need to keep the nose gear off the runway more. I need to pay attention to airspeed during takeoff a little better and make sure I rotate at the correct speed. As for the flare, what bothers me is that as I flare, the nose of the airplane rises and the dash of the airplane rises above my view of the end of the runway. I guess I have been unwilling to loose sight of the end of the runway and have not pulled back enough on the elevator as a result. However, on our last trip around, I looked more toward the left side of the runway as this happened, and I think that helped. I could also try raising the seat.

Hopefully, in the next few weeks I'll be able to do some sightseeing as I fly. I have not bothered to take a camera with me, other than my cell phone, because I just don't have the time to use one. Between Rob talking to me, air traffic control in my ear, and the plane to manage, I've been busy while in the air. I'm looking forward to taking some pics of where I've been and sharing them with you.

I enjoy reading the few comments that have been left on my blog. If you have a comment, suggestion, question or criticism, please leave a comment. I have a thick skin and can take it.

lesson 7 file

You will need to have google earth installed on your computer to open and view the lesson 7 file.
Statistics:

Dual Instruction Time: 9.2 Hours

Landings: 36

Too many things at once...

2008-10-08T13:08:00.000-04:00

I was looking forward to working on landings and the traffic pattern this morning, but Rob and Mother Nature had other ideas. Rob wanted to review slow flight and stalls, and Mother Nature threw us a curve ball when it came time to work on landings.

We took a different airplane today. N54159 is another 1981 Cessna 172P, but without the Garmin 430 radio/GPS system of the other planes. For what we were doing it was fine. Well, almost fine. It had a finicky alternator and the rudder trim was a little off. Some 172s have a rudder that can be trimmed from inside the cockpit. Others, like the ones we have flown, have a manual trim tab that can only be adjusted on the ground. A little right rudder was required at almost all times today. I'm going to blame some of my difficulties today on that factor. Maybe not. There's an old saying that goes: a good carpenter never quarrels with his tools. On second thought, my problems were mostly my fault.

My stalls were a little rough. It's funny how fast newly acquired skills degrade. I'll be glad when I can practice these on my own. Rob wants to make sure I'm practicing the correct procedures. We did a set of steep turns, which went pretty well, and an emergency landing procedure over Egmont Key. Again, that went pretty well. We had a little wind today, so Rob decided to demonstrate the turn around a point. Pretty simple maneuver. You simply fly a circle around a point on the ground. The complications come with windy conditions. Your speed is constantly changing as you turn, so you have to vary the bank angle as you turn. I thought I did pretty well. If you notice the big circles on the GPS track of today's lesson, Rob did the first turn and I did the next two. They all look like good circles.

Rob had me run the whole landing as we headed back toward Albert Whitted. So, I headed north for the Don Cesar.

"Whitted Tower, Cessna 54158 over the Don, inbound touch and go."

"54158, make straight in runway 7, touch and go."

"Straight in runway 7. 54158"

Rob left me alone to get the plane ready to land. Once over I275, I reduced power and trimmed for level flight, 90 kts. From here on in, I visualized where I might be it the traffic pattern at the distance from the runway where I was. Reduce power, 1700 RPM, 10 degree flaps, pitch nose down. Reduce power, 1600 RPM, 20 degree flaps. It was about at this point we noticed that the wind had picked up a bit was somewhat across the runway. The wind was pushing me left of the runway. I can correct that in flight simply by turning slightly into the wind. My course would then be down the runway, but the plane would be pointed right of the runway. So, we decided that today would be a good day to start working on crosswind landings.

I guess I've been lucky so far to have the wind coming pretty much straight down the runway. Sooner or later, the wind and my luck had to change. The crosswind was not too strong, so Rob let me finish the first landing. It was not my prettiest. As I flared for landing, I eased up on the rudder to straighten the nose of the plane and I drifted left with the crosswind. Landing on the left side of the runway rattled me and I let the plane come down too hard. Full power and we're up again for another try.

Rob demonstrated his crosswind technique this time around. He likes to crab (the plane is pointed to the right of it's direction of travel) into the wind on final and then transition to a slip (uncoordinated flight where the plane slips or skids through the air) as he flares for landing. He has a little more experience at this than I have and what worked well for him, was a handful for me. My attempt at his technique was ugly. He decided that I might just try the slip on my final approach.

The slip worked better. Rob's concern with the slip is that it is uncoordinated flight (rudder and ailerons move in opposite directions) creating more drag and losing altitude fast. In fact, a slip is a method pilots use when they are too high or fast on final approach to kill altitude or airspeed. It is also easier and more dangerous to stall in uncoordinated flight. So, more power is needed if you want to descend at the normal rate. OK, I understand the concept, but the execution is still off a bit. I tried three landings this way, each one getting better, but none good enough.

We were out of time. I felt good about today's flight, even though I did not perform as well as I hoped. I was mentally set for working on the landing flare, but adding the crosswind component got me off my game. Rob said he has seen a lot worse. If so, I'm glad I wasn't in the plane. He did say that my landings were not all that bad and next week, if I get the flare right, I should solo. There is a tradition among pilots where the back of a pilot's shirt is cut off after his/her first solo. I was told not to wear a good shirt next week.

lesson 6 file

You will need to have google earth installed on your computer to open the lesson 6 file.

Statistics:

Dual Instruction Time: 8.0 hours

Landings: 26

Around and around we go

2008-10-04T13:31:00.000-04:00

The end of this week was interesting as far a flying goes. I drove to Albert Whitted airport yesterday (Friday) expecting to get a little flying in. Rob had planned on some ground school time before our flight. He wanted to make sure that I understood how airspace works, and he wanted to go over the traffic pattern. Albert Whitted sits under Tampa's class B airspace. East of the airport, the bottom of Tampa's airspace is only 1200 feet above sea level. To the west it is 3000 feet and climbs to 6000 feet past the beach. So, unless you want an airspace incursion (not a good thing) on your record, you need to understand how the local airspace works.

I had woken Friday morning with a slight headache. It seemed be be getting better, but by the time ground school was over, it had become nearly unbearable. I was relieved when I realized we had used up most of our time for the day and would be unable to fly. Rob scheduled a session for Saturday morning and I drove home in search of Tylenol. Friday night, I completed my presolo aeronautical knowledge test.

Fast forward to Saturday morning. I'm feeling much better and am looking forward to flying. We had some trouble starting N54666. She had been flow earlier, but did not want to start. We were considering taking a different plane when one of the other CFI's came over and said he had some trouble starting N54666 today. We were advised to lean the mixture and pump the throttle until she started. What do you know, it worked.

Rob planned on pattern work today, and that is what we did. Friday, we had gone over power settings, flap settings and speeds in the pattern. Today, I put that to use over and over.

"Whitted ground, Cessna 54666 at Bay Air, remain in the pattern, touch and go."

"54666, taxi to runway 7 and hold short."

At times it was interesting because there was another Cessna doing the same thing and other airplanes landing and taking off. It was the busiest I had seen Albert Whitted in my very short aviation career. Considering we never left the vicinity of the airport, there was plenty to look at.

I'm not going to bore you with the details of every trip around the pattern. (At this point the non pilot readers breathe a deep sigh of relief.) I will however, share some of the challenges. Rob's biggest concern is that I don't get too slow as I turn onto base and final approach. He says this is where most people get themselves hurt. I have to watch my airspeed, especially on those turns.

Final approach is interesting when landing on runway 7. We're flying over the land, so we have thermal activity. Additionally, buildings that are six or seven stories tall are near the end of the runway. On a breezy day, such as today, the buildings can make the air squirrely as you near the ground. We had all this going on today. The plane was jumping around on final approach. Now, on any other runway at Albert Whitted this would not be a problem. All the other approaches are over water where you would expect to find smooth air. This bumpy air is more of a nuisance that a big problem. It makes continuous course corrections necessary on final approach.

My last challenge is simply getting the landing technique perfected. I got better as the day went on, but I still have some work to do on my flare. I landed sort of hard a couple of times and I landed a little crooked a couple of times. Rob made some suggestions that helped. I need to increasingly apply back pressure on the yoke as we land, and I need to apply pressure to both rudder pedals and increase the right or left pressure as I need right or left rudder.

I did a few things well. I kept my speed up when turning on base and final. I lined up my approach well. If you'll look at the GPS track you will see that I was nearly down the middle of the runway every time. I managed my pitch/power and rate of descent well.

Thirteen landings and I was whipped. I've got some things to work on and some positives to be happy with. We will work on a more perfect rectangular pattern as time goes on. Rob signed my presolo knowledge endorsement and is telling me that most likely lesson after next he will get out of the plane and have me take it around by myself. I don't know if I'm excited or frightened by that.

On a curious note: If you use google earth to open the file of today's flight, you might notice that the runway number seen in google earth and the runway number in my taxi instructions don't match. A couple of years ago, runway 6 at Albert Whitted became runway 7. No, the runway was not turned. The earth's magnetic field is not uniform, nor is it constant. There is an annual drift of magnetic north to the west at about 0.1 degrees per year. This drift caused the magnetic heading of the runway to become closer to 070 than 060.

lesson 5 file

You will need to have google earth installed on your computer to open this file.

Statistics:

Dual Instruction Time: 6.4 hours

Landings: 20

Better Than It Looks

2008-09-30T12:55:00.000-04:00

As I've written before, I get to work early. This morning, as the light was beginning to show in the sky, I had my doubts about flying. It had rained hard over night. The sky was still threatening with low clouds. I waited as late as I could before heading to the airport, expecting to get a call cancelling my lesson.

Well, no one called, and as I drove north the weather got better. Not good, just better. Being a real novice at this flying thing, I don't know how bad is bad enough to cancel, but apparently today was not one of those days.

Rob beat me to the airport by a few minutes and had some coffee while I did the pre-flight inspection. We were in N54058 today. This is my favorite plane, it just seems easier to fly. Rob has me busy at this point, doing the pre-flight, running down the checklist and handling the radio.

"Whitted ground, Cessna 54058 at Bay air for departure to the west."

"54058, taxi to runway 7 and hold. Contact tower on 127.4"

"Taxi to 7 and hold, 54058"

A Piper Archer was on final and landed as we reached the hold line. Rob was telling me something about the radio when:

"Cessna 54058, are you ready to go?"

"Ready to go, 54058"

"54058, cleared for takeoff, left hand departure, I have another aircraft on downwind."

"Cleared for takeoff, left hand departure, 54058"

The controller was politely telling us that if we wanted to go it was now or wait for the other airplane to land, so off we went. Once airborne, I realized the weather was not as big a deal as I had imagined. The overcast sky kept the heating of the land down and no heating means no thermals and a smooth ride. Below the clouds, visibility was good. Actually, it was one of the nicest days I've had for flying.

Rob had me enter slow flight as soon as I reached altitude. It was pretty weird flying over St. Petersburg with the stall warning buzzing in my ear. I exited slow flight and practiced a power on and a power off stall. I'm getting more comfortable with those. After a couple of steep turns it was time for something new.

Emergency landing procedure. Glide Locate Identify Declare Execute, GLIDE. I believe there's a mnemonic device for everything in aviation. This one is pretty good. Glide, trim the airplane for a 65 knot descent without flaps. Locate, locate an emergency landing site. Identify, go over a brief checklist to see if you can identify the engine problem. Declare, get on the radio and let everyone know you have an emergency. Set your transponder to 7700, which will let Air Traffic Control know you are in trouble. Execute, execute the emergency landing.

That may seem like a lot, but once the plane is trimmed for the 65 knot descent, there is plenty of time for everything else. I lined up for an emergency landing on the beach at Egmont Key. Rob let me glide down to four or five hundred feet before telling me to recover. Full power and the plane climbs like a rocket. I enjoyed flying that low over Egmont Key. The beach has shifted a bit since I was a teenager. Parts of the old fort that I have climbed on and fished off of are now under water.

We practiced one more emergency landing then headed back to Albert Whitted. Rob said it was time for some touch and goes! Cool, I'm up for anything new.

"Whitted Tower, Cessna 54058 over the Don, inbound touch and go."

"54058, cleared for touch and go right hand pattern, straight in runway 7. You are number two in the pattern, I have a Piper on base."

"Touch and go, strait in runway 7. 54058"

Now, I've never done a touch and go before, so Rob explains it on our way it to land. The touch and go is easy, just apply power after you land, dump your flaps, steer with the feet and take off again. However, we were going to fly a right hand traffic pattern and go around for another landing. Today was better than my last two landings. I think I'm starting to get the feel of where I need to start my flare. Rob handled the flaps today as well as the radio calls while we were in the pattern. I had my hands full with the airplane. My left hand on the control yoke, my right hand on the throttle and my feet on the rudder pedals, so I was out of appendages and could not handle one more task. I'll be expected to do it all when I get more comfortable with the procedure. We went around and made two more landings before calling it a day.

Next lesson we will probably review more, try to start working on our ground reference maneuvers and do more pattern work. We also have some ground school work to do on airspace.

Statistics:

Dual Instruction Hours: 5.2

Landings: 7

More Stalls

2008-09-27T15:24:00.000-04:00

Rob and I flew again today. His back was better and the weather was very nice for this time of year in Florida. I did the pre-flight checks by myself this time. N54666 was a little low on oil again, so I let Rob know and he called for a mechanic and oil. We climbed in the plane and ran through the engine start procedures. Then, I actually got to use the radio!

"Whitted Ground, Cessna 54666 at Bay Air for departure to the west"

"Cessna 54666, Taxi to runway 7 and hold. Contact tower on 127.4"

"Taxi to runway 7 and hold. Contact tower on 127.4. Cessna 54666"

Pretty cool. I'm getting a little more comfortable taxiing the aircraft. In the past it has been scary when other planes were nearby. Now, I'm looking around to make sure my wing tips hit nothing and taxiing to where I need to go. I taxi out to the runway, do my engine run-up and magneto checks then:

"Whitted Tower, Cessna 54666 ready for departure."

"Cessna 54666, cleared for departure"

"Cleared for departure, Cessna 54666"

Rob saw another plane several miles off inbound to land, so he told me not to stop on the runway, just roll into position and keep going. So, I rolled to the middle of the runway, lined up the airplane and gave it power. Taking off is getting to be pretty easy. The neutral position indicator for the elevator trim is a little off in 54666, so the nose wants to come up a little too much on climb out. No problem, adjust the trim and head for the beach.

Once over the water, we reviewed slow flight and power off stalls. Then it was time for power on stalls. Rob did the first one, and I have to admit, power on is a little more exciting than power off stalls. The plane is pointed up so much that it wants to fall to the right or left. I did several stalls and found that the problem is if you over control when it falls one way, you make it fall the other way more severely. As with everything when the plane is slow, rudder control is critical. I'm a little slow with the rudder and once I use it, I tend to over-control and then back off of it too fast. It made for some interesting stalls with the plane falling right then left. Of course a lot is going on when you are doing this, so one mistake leads to another and at one point I had us in a powered dive before I knew what was going on. Rob calmly told me to raise the nose and return to level flight.

I don't know how many stalls I did, but we practiced until I got it right. Then we practiced a little more. Rob showed me left and right steep turns and had me do a set before we headed for the airport. I found the steep turns much easier than the stalls. We were in the same area as last lesson, so the landing approach was the same. Once over the Don Cesar:

"Whitted Tower, Cessna 54666 over the Don inbound to land."

"Cessna 54666, make straight in runway 7, cleared to land."

"Straight in runway 7, Cessna 54666."

The traffic was light, so we were cleared to land immediately. I did pretty well on the landing approach as far as setting up the airplane to land.

Over the runway, I started my flare a little early and was corrected by Rob. He says not to worry about the landings, we're not even really working on them yet, so I'm doing great.

I had a blast, but I was sweat soaked and exhausted after the flight. I guess I'm concentrating on flying so much that I don't realize I'm working pretty hard during some of these maneuvers. My left arm is still sore from pulling on the yoke during stall practice. Next time, we'll review again, do more steep turns and start ground reference maneuvers. Ground reference maneuvers are things like s-turns and turns around a point. Rob would like a little wind to complicate matters.

The link at the bottom of this post will download a GPS file of our flight today. You will need to have Google Earth installed on your computer. Click on the link and it will open. Enjoy.

lesson 3 file

Statistics:

Dual Instruction Time: 4 hours

Landings: 4

Ground School

2008-09-24T10:39:00.000-04:00

I didn't get much flying done today. I got to Bay Air a few minutes before Rob did. When he walked in, I knew there was a problem. His back had been giving him trouble and he was in a lot of pain. Initially, I was upset about not flying today, but after a little more thought I realized that with my 2.8 hours of flying experience I did not want to find myself flying the plane if he was incapacitated.

We had planned on a little ground school time today before our flight, so at least the trip to St. Pete was not completely wasted. Rob wanted me to have a good grip on aerodynamics before we went much further. Now, I'm an engineer by education. I know about thermodynamics, fluid dynamics and some other dynamics. What we went over was aerodynamics lite. In school, every time I studied something that had dynamics in it's name you could be sure there was lots of math involved. No math today, and that's just fine with me. The idea is just to have a grip on the forces acting on the plane and the principles that make it fly. Enough said.

We did talk about what was coming up next in our flight sessions. Power on stalls, steep turns, ground reference maneuvers and landings. Lots of landings getting ready to solo. I'm going to try to get a flight in Saturday. Weekends in the fall are tough for me. My youngest son plays football on Friday nights, so we are out sort of late. I usually feel the effects of that on Saturday.

How slow can you go?

2008-09-19T22:42:00.000-04:00

I get up and out to work pretty early in the morning. When I left home today, I was thinking about flying and how nice the weather was going to be. Well that was at about 5:30 AM. By 10:30 when I was driving across the Skyway to St. Pete, things had changed. It had warmed considerably and a good breeze was coming out of the east.

Once again I met CFI Rob at Bay Air. We found our steed, N54666. Another 1981 Cessna 172 that Rob says some students won't fly because of the tail number. I did not mind the tail number, but it is a little more banged up and seemed to be a little harder to control. Of course, all trainers that have seen any service are banged up. I did most of the pre-flight inspection. The plane was a little low on oil, so Rob found a mechanic and oil while I finished the pre-flight.

In the spirit of preparing me for handling the radio next week, Rob let me tune the radio to Whitted ASOS (automated surface observation system) and get the weather report. At Albert Whitted, ASOS is sort of redundant because the tower always gives the weather report when you ask for clearance. I then tuned Whitted tower and Rob got taxi clearance. After engine runup, Rob requested take off clearance and we were on our way.

A clear September sky leads to a lot of heading midday in Florida. I found it difficult to trim the plane during our flight over Pinellas county to the Gulf of Mexico. We would fly through a thermal and gain altitude, then hit an area of sink and drop like a rock. It was a pretty bumpy trip. Once over the Gulf however, the air was calm. The water heats evenly, unlike the land, and strong thermals are not very common.

We took up where we left off Tuesday, with slow flight. I'm starting to get the idea of it. I held the nose of the plane up while reducing engine speed to about 1500 RPM. As airspeed falls, you add flaps and continue to slow. With full flaps you can get the plane down to under 40 knots, at which point you increase power to about 2000 RPM and putz around with your nose up in the air and the stall warning blaring in your ear. You can make very gentle turns in this configuration.

Coming out of slow flight, power is increased, the nose of the plane is lowered and flaps are raised as airspeed increases. We ran through this maneuver several times. Other than keeping the nose pointed up, this is the landing configuration of the airplane, and these maneuvers are designed to teach landing skills.

Rob thought I was getting the hang of slow flight, so we moved on to stalls. For non-pilots, a stall in an airplane is not like a stall in your car. The engine does not stop. The engine keeps running. It is the wing that stalls, and the plane stops flying and starts falling. Performing a stall is not quite as dramatic as it sounds. In fact, the 172 is hard to stall and easy to recover.

We started with power-off stalls. We climbed to 3500 feet and got into our landing configuration. With the plane slowed down and flaps fully extended, I pulled the nose of the plane up and bled speed until the stall horn sounded. Pull the nose up a little more and the plane stops flying. Recovery is easy. Release the pressure on the yoke, carb heat on, full power, raise flaps as speed increases. The real key is to remember that your ailerons don't work well when the plane is in slow flight and don't work at all when the plane is stalled. In fact, you can aggravate the stall with the ailerons and induce a spin.

Rob had me run though a few power off stalls and then had me perform a maneuver he called the falling leaf. Visualize a leaf falling through calm air and you have the idea. I climbed to 3500 feet and prepared for another power off stall as before. This time however, I was not to release the back pressure on the yoke as we stalled. The plane would stall, recover on it's own, stall again and so on. My job was to keep a constant heading and wings level during this maneuver using the rudder. It went pretty well, much better than I imagined when it was first explained to me. We went through 4 or 5 stalls before Rob called it a day and had me recover and head for home.

Back over the land we were in rough air again. We were getting knocked around so much that I was worried about the landing. Same procedure as the last two trips. Fly over the Don Cesar and turn toward the airport. Rob was telling me less about the landing configuration this time. I guess I got it right because he just let me keep flying. Considering the rough ride I probably did pretty well, but when he told me to flare I pulled back a little too much on the yoke and instead of leveling off over the runway we rose. Rob helped out a little here, but instead of the gentle touchdown of my last landing, we smacked the runway pretty good.

Note to self: If wife ever allows you to buy an airplane, DO NOT buy an airplane that has EVER been used as a trainer.

In retrospect, I think that I had been pulling on the yoke so much during slow flight and stalls that I just yanked on it too hard out of habit. Something to keep in mind for the next flight, which will be Wednesday. Rob wants to spend a little time going over aerodynamics before we fly. We will be going over slow flight and power off (landing) stalls again and probably get to power on (take off) stalls. I should get to talk on the radio next time. I will definitely be looking forward to it.

Another student pilot blogger, Greg P. of Huntington WV, put me on to the idea of using a GPS logger to show where I've flown. The device can also be used to review flight performance. This may be helpful when I get into pattern work. I've ordered one of these devices and hopefully will be able to share the routes we've been flying soon.

Statistics:

Dual Instruction Hours: 2.8

Landings: 3

Lesson Numero Uno

2008-09-16T13:51:00.000-04:00

Today was the big day, officially my first lesson. I must say, it went pretty well. I also parted with a few dollars today by prepaying for some instructional time. My wife would like the discount I got, but dislike the amount of money that was spent. Well, you can't have it all.

I arrived at Bay Air about 15 minutes early because I knew we had a little paperwork to do. I had my passport, driver's license and medical certificate in hand along with a flying club membership application and an aircraft rental agreement. Paperwork complete, CFI Rob and I headed out on the tarmac to find our ride for the day.

N54058 is not one of the new glass panel jobs we flew on the discovery flight. It's old school, a 1981 Cessna 172. That's it in the photo at the top. We preflighted the plane. Rob spent a little more time going over the details of the preflight inspection. He'll go over it one more time with me, then I will be expected to do the preflight. Thank goodness for the checklist!

After the engine run-ups, Rob contacted Whitted tower and got clearance to take off. Bay Air is at the end of runway 7, and since we were cleared for runway 7 we did not need much of a taxi clearance. Probably during the lesson after next, I'll start doing the radio work. I taxied onto the runway, steered straight down the runway with my feet, added full power and took off. I'm learning that you have to apply a little right rudder under full power or in a nose up attitude to keep the Cessna straight. We were cleared for a left hand departure to the west.

The worst thing about flying, or at least training, out of Albert Whitted is that you can't enjoy the scenery. I'm paying attention to Rob. Doing what he says. Concentrating on flying the airplane. Meanwhile, we're flying over some of the best scenery on the west coast of Florida. We pretty much flew from back and forth between Egmont Key and Treasure Island with me practicing climbing, descending and level flight. I got to work the trim wheel this time, that was new.

Actually, climbing, descending and leveling off were easier in a real plane than on the simulator. FSX has been a real help, but now that I'm actually flying and need to get the "feel" of an airplane, I don't know how much more I'll be using it.

Rob was happy with my ability to climb and descend so he decided to introduce me to slow flight. Honestly, this was the only time today that he flew the plane. He slowed the plane, lowered flaps and got us down to 38 knots. I then took the controls to get a feel for how much right rudder is necessary to keep the plane flying straight in this configuration. Rob had me make a gentle right turn before he took the controls again and got us out of slow flight.

It's funny, but time flys when you are flying. Before I knew it an hour was nearly up. Rob told me to fly over a famous St. Pete Beach landmark, the Don Cesar Hotel. This big pink hotel on the beach can be seen for miles and just happens to line up with runway 7/25 at Albert Whitted airport.

It was a little hazy, so I could not see the runway as we passed over the Don, but Albert Whitted is just south of downtown St. Pete so it's easy to find. As we crossed over I275, about 3 miles from the airport, Rob had me start reducing engine power while holding the nose of the airplane up to reduce our speed. As we neared the airport I lowered the flaps and let the nose fall so that I could see the big 7 on the runway. Rob talked me through getting the flaps all the way down while keeping the nose on the runway. As we crossed the end of the runway he had me pull back on the yoke and then some more as we got closer to the ground and the plane gently settled down on the runway. I kid you not, I landed it all by myself!! Well, I had verbal help.

What a day. I was pleased to say the least. After taxiing back to Bay Air we went inside. I prepaid for their solo package which includes 15 hours of dual time in the 172 and 5 hours of ground school time with the instructor. It also included the SoftComm C-40 headset and a logbook. I probably would not have bought this headset on my own, but the package deal was too good to pass up. I also paid for a membership in the flying club. That will save me some money once the solo package time is up. Rob made entries in my logbook for today and the discovery flight I took. Call me silly, but it was a cool feeling to see my time and landings recorded. Rob gave me credit for the landing on my discovery flight.

I also picked up the FAA's Pilot's Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge and have some reading to do before our next lesson, which will be Friday, weather permitting. I can't wait.

Statistics:

Dual Instruction Hours: 1.6

Landings: 2

Medical Flight Test Update

2008-09-12T10:08:00.000-04:00

I've done no flying this week due to weather, so I thought I would post a brief update on my medical certification. I've been in contact with a doctor in the FAA's Aerospace Medical Division since the beginning of this process. I received an email from him today about the medical flight test that I may have to take. His office will review all my medical reports and make a determination if the test is necessary. If so, they will order it.

I would strongly encourage anyone with medical conditions seeking a pilot's license to educate themselves before beginning the process. I have subscribed to several aviation message boards and read horror stories of delays in dealing with the FAA on medical issues. In my experience, if you are prepared, know what is likely to be an issue and have the necessary medical reports in hand the process is not that bad. You need to be proactive in dealing with the FAA.

I've scheduled two flight sessions next week. Hopefully, the weather will be cooperative for at least one.

Ike

2008-09-10T09:19:00.000-04:00

As I had feared, Hurricane Ike spoiled any flying for today. The combination of gusty winds, low clouds and scattered showers was too much. My CFI called and asked me to reschedule, which I have done for next Tuesday. The good news is that Ike is not coming here. He's headed to Texas and our thoughts and prayers will be with those in his path and those he has already effected. September 10th is the statistical peak of the Atlantic hurricane season, so the tropical activity should be slowing down in the next few weeks. Also, fall is my favorite time of year in Florida. The weather is generally good and should start cooling a bit in two or three weeks.

Medical Exam Passed....almost

2008-09-09T16:07:00.000-04:00

Yesterday when I left the medical examiner's office I was pretty upset. He refused to grant a medical certificate because of a condition that should not have caused a big problem, amblopia or lazy eye. I emailed the doctor the relevant sections of the FAA's Aviation Medical Examiner's Guide and hoped he would come through for me. Well... Today I'm much happier. The doctor called, apologized for the delay and thanked me for the information I sent. I have in my grimy hands one signed Medical Certificate Third Class and Student Pilot Certificate.

Actually the amblyopia still places one limitation on me. I have to have a medical flight test at the end of my training when I have my regular FAA flight test. No big deal. I can proceed with my training without any problems. Which is exactly what I will do tomorrow morning if the weather (can you say Hurricane Ike) permits.

Aviation Medical Exam

2008-09-07T10:52:00.000-04:00

I had my aviation medical exam today. I'm not real happy. I should have known something was wrong when the Doctor said he had never seen the FAA form for eye evaluation before(and the robot says "Danger Will Robinson, Danger!). Honestly, I should have gotten up and walked out at that point. I had communicated with the Aerospace Medical Division of the FAA before I started this process to make sure my amblyopia was not a big deal. I took a copy of the email from the doctor at the FAA and a copy of the eye evaluation from my opthamologist in with me. I think these just confused the medical examiner. Everything else was fine, I just have amblyopia, which I already knew about and have dealt with.

At any rate, I have sent the local medical examiner a link the FAA web site concerning aviation medical exams and amblyopia. Hopefully, this guy will read it and follow the instructions. I will have to follow up with him tomorrow because I have little confidence in his ability to figure it out.

I've made a decision on where to take flying lessons. I had an appointment for a discovery flight at Sarasota International and cancelled it. Several pilot friends have told me that I probably would not want to train at Sarasota. It's a pretty busy airport and most likely I would spend a fair amount of time on the ground waiting for jets to take off or land. If I'm paying a little over two dollars a minute for training, I don't want the clock running while sitting on a taxi way.

I'll be training at Albert Whitted airport in St. Petersburg. It's an easy drive from my work. The rental rates are the best in the area. They have a pretty good fleet of rental aircraft and a number of instructors. I like the idea of flying out of a controlled airport that's not too busy. They have an online scheduling system and I've scheduled some time for Wednesday morning, weather permitting.

Albert Whitted

2008-09-02T13:11:00.000-04:00

Wow! I drove across the Skyway Bridge and took a discovery flight out of Albert Whitted airport (SPG) today. What a cool place. The airport is just south of downtown St. Petersburg on Tampa Bay. It is a big change from little Airport Manatee, and only a 30 minute drive from my work.

Bay Air Flying Service operates an flying club there. When I arrived CFI Rob was waiting on me and we were promptly on the flight line pre-flighting a Cessna 172 G1000. That's right, one of the new jobs with all the fancy electronics and flat panel displays. Rob went over the pre-flight with me, we climbed into the plane, did some more pre-flight and then I started the engine. Rob had me do the engine run-ups. Everything was good and we were ready to go.

Rob called Whitted tower and got takeoff clearance. Then he had me taxi onto runway 7, which is conveniently right next to parking at Bay Air. He had me steer down the runway and add power to the engine, and guess what. I took off!

We turned south over Tampa Bay and eventually southwest toward the Skyway. We flew over Fort Desoto Park, which is an old Spanish-American War fort that has become a popular and beautiful destination in the St. Pete area. Anyhow, we ended up over St. Pete Beach where I got to practice turning the plane left and right, climbing, descending and avoiding clouds. The weather was a little bumpy today with a lot of small puffy clouds that we were not supposed to fly through or near, oops.

After an half hour or so, I pointed the plane east and Rob radioed for landing clearance. There was another Cessna in the pattern ahead of us, but the haze was thick enough that we never saw him. I kept the plane lined up on the runway and reduced power when Rob directed. He worked the flaps at first and then had me work them. He came this close (if you could see my fingers they would be about a half inch apart) to having me land the plane! Needless to say, I had a blast. It took all my will power not to sign up for lessons on the spot!

I've got a lot to think about, and am going to have a tough decision to make in the near future. There were many things I liked about Albert Whitted. The nice paved runways sure were a lot easier to taxi on. It is a controlled airport but not busy. Bay Air has a lot of planes and instructors available and has the look of a professional operation, but with a casual feel. I think if I wanted to rent a plane after I had my license, I would probably come back to Bay Air. Their prices are certainly competitive. The only downside, mostly psychological on my part, is that I would be learning from someone who is my son's age. I can get over that.

I'm not going to get much else done this week. Next week I have my medical exam and have an appointment at Sarasota International (SRQ).

Eye Eye skipper...

2008-08-28T07:46:00.000-04:00

I had my eye exam today. Because I have amblyopia I contacted the Aerospace Medical Division of the FAA. They were prompt and helpful with a reply. I needed to see an opthomologist and have a form 8500-7 completed before I have my medical exam. Aparantly, other than the lazy eye, my eyes are in very good shape for my age. That's done, next step is the medical exam. I'll also try to visit another flight school next week.

First flight

2008-08-26T16:27:00.000-04:00

It's not a great photo, but see that plane behind me. I got to fly it today!

I arrived at Airport Manatee just before 7:30 this morning, the weather was perfect. CFI Bill pulled in right behind me on his Harley. He got right to it. He went over the pre-flight inspection with me, we pulled the Cherokee out between the hangers climbed in the cockpit and continued the pre-flight. By the way, I was sitting in the left seat! After going over the check list, we started the engine and I taxied the plane out onto the field, where we did some more pre-flight stuff.

Honestly, taxiing the airplane was the hardest thing I did today. Tropical Storm Fay passed nearby last week and it has rained daily since then. I believe the field was a little wet and soft and made taxiing difficult. It did not help that I may have been sitting a little too far from the rudder pedals and my legs had to work pretty hard.

After the engine run-ups we taxied onto the runway and Bill got us into the air. After we hit 1500 feet, it was all me. I practiced left and right standard rate turns, climbing, descending and level flight. FSX really helped on the turns because I knew exactly what I was doing. We flew around the practice area for about 30 minutes (seemed like 5) then Bill had me point the plane back at the airport. As we got close to entering the pattern, Bill took over and landed the plane.

Closing thoughts:
I really enjoyed flying the Cherokee 180, but paying close attention during pre-flight, takeoff and landing begins to show me how much I have to learn.
I like Airport Manatee. As soon as you reach altitude you are in the practice area. I did not waste much time taxiing around a large airport, waiting on other pilots or transiting to the practice area.
Bill seems like he would be easy to work with as an instructor.
I need to get a new cell phone that takes better pictures.

Flight instruction is fairly expensive, so I'm going to do my due diligence and check out at least two other flight schools. I'll also line up my eye exam so I can get the medical stuff out of the way.

Airport Manatee

2008-08-25T13:41:00.000-04:00

This morning I drove up to Airport Manatee (48X). You might be able to tell from the photo that Airport Manatee is something of a small field. I met CFI Bill, who runs the one man flying school there, and talked to him for about an hour and a half. Very friendly and seemingly knowledgeable gentleman. We talked about cost, his style of instruction, his aircraft, scheduling and lots of other stuff.

I liked the man and what he had to say. I'm taking the "Discovery" flight tomorrow, which for him is a half price first lesson. The thing I liked the most is that he is first and foremost a flight instructor. He is not building time looking for an airline job. If I was to choose him, I would have the same CFI for every lesson. The biggest downside is price. For private pilot through ATP trainining he uses a Piper Cherokee 180. Yep, the rental rate is a lot more than a Cessna 152 or 172.

I've got several other flight schools to check out and medical exams to take before I make a decision. Tomorrow I'll let you know how the flight went.

FSX

2008-08-23T12:28:00.000-04:00

I mentioned in my last post that my son's gift of Microsoft Flight Simulator X (FSX) was the thing that motivated me to press on with flight lessons. I thought I would tell you a little about FSX and my experience with it. Since we in Florida are still putting up with Tropical Storm Fay, meaning I can't get any yard work done without getting rained on, now is as good a time as any.

Be warned: FSX is very processor intensive. If you don't have an up to date computer, don't even bother. I have a 1.88ghz dual core intel processor with 2 GB of ram and a GeForce 8800 video card. In my opinion that's the minimum configuration. I usually get a new computer every two years, so I'm about due. The next one will be a lot stronger and should run FSX a lot smoother. Enough of the technical stuff, and that's good because that's about the depth of my knowledge on the subject.

I was not too thrilled with FSX at first because I enjoy military flight sims and have not had a civilian flight simulator in decades. So I install the program and fly a few beginners missions. Pretty cool. I start the flight school that comes with FSX and fall in love with it. I'm practicing steep turns, VOR navigation and all kinds of good stuff. Funny thing was I never moved on to the twin engine planes or the jets, just the single engine prop planes.

Yea, that's a virtual me in my virtual Cessna 182. Well, flight simming is fun, and as long as it's a military sim I don't get the urge to fly because...well I'm 47 and I don't have perfect eye sight. But a civilian sim, I wonder? A little research and an email to the Regional Flight Surgeons office tells me that I can indeed fly. The new sport pilot licenses don't even require a medical exam, but I would prefer the private pilot license. At that point, the fun with my wife begins.

This is the sad mess that I've been "flying" so far. Notice the stick and throttle controls typical of a military jet. I'll most likely get a control yoke like on a Cessna. Of course, that will depend on where I take flight lessons. One local school uses some of the new light sport airplanes that have a control stick.

One resource that I hope will help is a book I picked up. Microsoft Flight Simulator X for Pilots Real World Training. That's a mouthful. It was written by flight instructors as a companion to real flight training. I hope it helps and saves me a few bucks on plane rental. If it does not help, I won't use it. At $130 per hour I need to reinforce good habits, not learn bad ones.

The icebreaker

2008-08-22T20:12:00.000-04:00

I've always wanted to be a pilot. Real life has a habit of getting in the way of dreams. Work, kids, money tend to postpone the unnecessary. My kids are mostly in college now, and while that may have made the money situation tight, my job is such that I can get some free time when I like.

I had not thought too much about flying lessons until my oldest son gave me a copy of Microsoft Flight Simulator X for my birthday. That was like throwing gasoline on a fire(which I've been stupid enought to try). I wanted to fly for real. One little bitty problem arose: my wife was not nearly as excited by the idea as I was.

Fast forward to June, my wife and I take a cruise to Alaska. I'm able to talk her into taking a seaplane flight to a lodge near Juneau. That's us on the dock with the Taku Glacier and a seaplane in the background. Turns out that the wife did not have such a horrible time on the "rickety" little plane. Matter of fact, she was to busy snapping photos of the scenery to notice much about the flight. This is one of the glaciers we flew over that day. If you're going to Alaska, I would highly recommend this trip. If you want to read more about the Alaska cruise, you can check out a blog written by one of my table mates http://www.timstravelblog.com/

At any rate, the whole thing has the effect of softening up my wife a bit, and what do you know, she finally says I can fly!

That's what this blog is about. I've read other blogs about flying. Most start with their first lesson. I'm going to start now. I have to select a flight school and get my medical certification which will be more complicated than most since I have amblyopia (lazy eye). The amblyopia is the reason I did not try to fly when I was younger. You can't fly for a living with that condition, but it is possible to get a private pilot's license.

I hope you enjoy.

Tony