My Flying Career

Okay, that’s it! It’s been long enough… I’ve moved, got a new job, and am getting settled in up here in the “big city”. It’s time to buckle down and get it done. I’m very excited and motivated to continue what I’ve started. And holy cow…remember when I said that the commercial rating was the hardest rating I’ve ever had to study for? Well forget that. The Certified Flight Instructor certificate is now the most challenging certificate I’ve ever had to study for. The depth and breadth of knowledge is unbelievable. But I’m up to the challenge and have cracked open my library. And yes, my flying books I think can finally be considered a library. I finally have an entire bookshelf FULL of books about aviation. My wife still doesn’t understand why I kept all of those books from my private, instrument, and commercial ratings. Well, here’s why. The Certified Flight Instructor practical test examiner can ask just about anything out of any of those books. And I need to know it, or know how to find it quickly.

The work has just begun, and I will keep you all informed of my progress.

Please forgive me, as it has been far too long since I have posted.  I apologize to those of you who  have been sitting at the edge of your seats waiting to hear what I have to say next (all one of you)

So what the heck have I been doing?  Well a lot has happened in the last month, and I have had to put blogging on the backburner.  First off, I am pleased to announce that I passed my Flight Instructor Airplane (FIA) knowledge test with a 90%!  A quick note on that test.  I think the computer was reading my mind and found the areas that I was the weakest in, and giving me all of those questions.  I was actually kind of upset to get a 90%.  I had been working REALLY hard, and felt that the computer didn’t give me any easy questions.  But oh well, 90 is good too!

I also lost my job on January 14th due to financial difficulties the company was having.  I had worked for the company for over five years and both parties were sad to see each other leave.  That was the main reason I have not been posting anything.  Because frankly, I have been extremely busy with Resume’s, application, interviews, working through finances, you know the drill.

As of February 1st, I now am an employee of McKenzie Books, Inc. and Cash4Books.net in Beaverton, OR as a Software Developer.  I was very happy to not be unemployed for very long and hope to get back into my flight training soon.  So the plan now is to wait for a little bit longer days and continue my Flight Instructor training at Hillsboro Aviation in their Cessna RG.  I will, of course, keep you all posted when I start that.

Until then…

Wow, 2010 already?  Time flies when you’re having fun (John, do not make a lame joke using this pun).  I have yet to fly this year because  have been studying diligently for my CFI-A Knowledge Test.  I really want to get a good score on this test and even more, I want to REALLY know this stuff backwards and forwards.  So that’s where I am at.

My IFR PIC currency lapsed at the end of November because I did not meet the requirements in the last 6 months to remain current.  The way the currency works, for IFR at least, is that you must have accomplished, in the last 6 months, the following:

• At least six instrument approaches;
• Holding procedures; and
• Intercepting and tracking courses through the use of navigation systems.

You can find all this information in Part 61.57 of the Code of Federal Regulations.  Well by the end of November I had all but 4 instrument approaches.  It had just been such nice weather the last 6 months, I haven’t had to shoot an approach.  So what happens when you lapse like I did?  Well you are given a 6 month grace period where the FAA allows you to go up with a Safety Pilot and shoot the remaining requirements in simulated conditions.  Who qualifies as a Safety Pilot?  All they have to possess is at least a Private Pilot’s Certificate and a current medical certificate.  I decided to give my Grandpa a call and ask him to be my safety pilot.

My grandpa is a corporate pilot out of Hillsboro and used to be an airline pilot for Eastern Airlines before they went bankrupt.  So you can imagine how much fun we have when we both are in the cockpit.  I really enjoy flying with him and I get a kick out of his comments on how slow the Cessna is compared to the Learjet 35 he currently flies.  So I flew up to Hillsboro, picked him up and we got my required 4 approaches in.  Did the ILS to Aurora, ILS to McMinneville, the VOR approach to Hillsboro, then got radar vectors for the ILS back into Hillsboro.  It reminded me of when I was training for my Instrument Rating.  Approach after approach after approach.  It mentally wears on you.  I think it is one of the toughest things I’ve had to do in aviation.  I think the only way to make it more difficult would be to have to do it in a light twin.

Well I’ve rambled on long enough.  Happy new year everyone and hopefully my next post will be on how well I did on my CFI-A Knowledge Test!

Today I took my FOI (Fundamentals of Instructing) knowledge test.  I felt very confident as I have studied hard for a while.  Not only did I pass, but I got a 100% test score!  Funny little side story – recently the LaserGrade testing centers have been able to reveal what answers you got incorrect at the end of your test.  I know, most of you are thinking, why hasn’t that always been the case?  Well, they have been a little behind the times, and until now, you never got to see which questions you got wrong.  It was very depressing.  Well the proctor was very excited to see how the new system works, and how it shows you your missed answers.  Well when I had finished, she was confused at how come we didn’t get to see my missed answers, then she looked at the score.  ”Wait a second, no wonder….you got ALL the answers right!”  I chuckled and apologized for not being able to be the guinea pig for this new system. Maybe next time…. hopefully not, but maybe.

Next up, studying for my FIA (Flight Instructor Airplane) test.  This is a 100 question knowledge test spanning basically everything I have learned thus far (minus Instrument Rating questions).  So this is a big question bank they will be grabbing questions from.  So I will need to review and study A LOT!  So let me get back to that, so I can get another 100%.

Today I passed my Single-Engine Commercial addon checkride!  Which basically means I can use the commercial pilot privileges in a single-engine aircraft as well as a multi-engine aircraft now.  How’d it go?  Well I woke up this morning, looked at the TAF for the time that we had scheduled for my checkride, which was 3pm, and saw that it was forecasting 2,500 broken and winds somewhere around 20+ knots and gusting.  Perfect day for a checkride huh?  Well, my checkride rolls around and the clouds were 8,000 feet overcast, which was perfect. The winds were 19 knots gusting to 26 knots!  Luckily it was straight down the runway.  Well, when it wasn’t randomly gusting sideways.  I got to say though.  When I walked outside and felt how string the winds were, and was watching a little Cessna 152 struggle to keep the blue (or grey) side up on takeoff, I wasn’t worried.  I don’t want to say that I have every come to a place where I can’t learn anymore, or become over confident, but it never cross my mind that I couldn’t do this.  Anyway, I felt very professional walking out there in the gusting conditions and feeling confident that I could complete the task at hand in a safe manner.

A couple things to let you know how windy it was…  When I was taxiing, I had to slow to a crawl on turns, or else the wind would start lifting the plane and skidding it sideways!  It was one of those times were your Aileron placement was extremely important to keep from flipping over.  After takeoff, my examiner got this idea that I should get the plane as slow as I possibly could into the wind, then look down and see if we are moving over the ground.  It was incredible, I got the plane to about 50mph or so, then looked down.  It reminded me of when you look out your window and you see that lone bird just fighting the wind and not going anywhere.  Just hovering.  Well that’s what we were doing.  I turned an airplane into a helicopter!  Well enough with the playing around, we had maneuvers to accomplish.

The chandelles and lazy eights were not much more difficult with the high winds.  As those are not ground reference maneuvers, it doesn’t matter as much what the wind is doing.  I felt that it was a little different, but I still think they went really well.  The eights on pylons and the steep spiral on the other hand were MUCH more difficult in those high wind gusty conditions!  I did them within standards, but they were by far the hardest maneuvers of the day.  The short field, soft field, and 180 degree power off landings were a bit less than perfect.  I didn’t get the kiss (chirp chirp) that I like to get, but I also didn’t cause back pain either.  They were adequate.  It’s hard to expect a chirp-chirp landing when you have winds gusting like they were.

Anyway that was pretty much it.  Oh yeah, the Oral exam went really well.  I felt very prepared and don’t remember a whole lot of questions that I didn’t know the answer to right off the top of my head.  It was also a very fast oral, since it was just an addon rating, all that was tested was the performance and systems of the airplane we were flying.  And there isn’t a whole lot to a Cessna 172.

Ok, so what’s next.  CFI!  Starting immediately I will be studying for my FOI (Fundamentals of Instructing) knowledge test and then my CFI-A (Certified Flight Instructor – Airplane) knowledge test.  I seriously can’t wait.  Now I get to learn all the nitty gritty details about pretty much everything I’ve learned up to this point.  I also get to learn about how to instruct and get some skills in that arena.  I’m very excited.

I will try and do my best to find things to post about as I study while not making it dry and boring.  With my writing skills that’s difficult enough as it is.

Until next time…

Why do I always start out my posts with an apology for taking so long to post. grrr

So I have been taking the required cross-country flights for my commercial certificate this last few weeks while studying for my oral and practicing the single-engine commercial maneuvers in the club plane.  It’s keeping me pretty busy, but I love it.

I took a day VFR cross country to Yakima, which was fun.  Rather uneventful though.  I took my night VFR cross country to Paine Field in Everett, WA.  That was a lot of fun.  It has been a while since I have done any night flying.  It seams like every airport that remotely gets any traffic in the northwest is doing something to their runways/taxiways.  All the airports I was picking for my destination had runway/taxiway closures.  Paine had it’s two longer runways closed and left the shorter(3000 feet) runway open.  3,000 feet is the minimum Hillsboro Aviation will allow their Seminoles to fly into, and it’s the minimum I’d probably fly into as well in a twin.

We left hillsboro enroute for Paine with all the weather and NOTAMS and feeling very confident and excited about the flight.  Once we got within distance to pick up the ATIS report, we tuned in and listened to the long list of NOTAMS confirming that we are allowed to land on the planned runway.  However they mentioned something I wasn’t told when I called Flight Service about the flight.  The ATIS threw in at the end, “Pilot Controlled Lighting Inoperative”.  Now we both hear that thinking, uh, does that mean we can’t turn the lights on?  We radioed Seattle Approach asking if they could find out if the lights were on.  They replied that they believed the lights were on.  So we decided to continue with the flight and told Approach that if we didn’t see any lights we’d be coming back with intentions to land somewhere else, probably Boeing  Field.  Long story short, we were clicking the mic, trying to get the lights on, and I don’t know if they turned on from the mic clicking or if they were always on, but I didn’t see them til we were right over the top of the runway.  We landed, closed and opened our new VFR flight plan, and were off enroute to hillsboro.  That flight was fairly uneventful, just chatted with my flight instructor on the way back.

Ok back to studying.

Today was a good day.  After a month of studying I passed my Commercial Pilot Knowledge test with a score of 91%.  That’s an A in my book.

So what does this mean and what do I do next?  Well this is just the first part of getting my Commercial License.  I still have my checkride which consists of a flying portion and an oral portion.  I also am getting two different commercial licenses.  I am getting a Single-Engine Commercial, and a Multi-Engine Commercial.  And those are two different checkrides that I will either take back to back (if I’m feeling up to the long day) or I will take very close to each other.

Over the past few months I have been flying a lot in the Club Cessna building time trying to get closer to the 250 hours required for the commercial license.  Well I now have 222 hours and am close enough that I will spend the rest of my time practicing commercial maneuvers and wiping off the rust on my Multi-Engine skills.

As part of the requirements I get to do a 250 mile straight line cross-country flight.  So basically I have to fly to an airport 250 miles straight line distance away.  And I’m going to do it in the twin!  I’m thinking I’ll go to Lewiston, ID.  But haven’t settled for sure.  Anybody have any good ideas?

Well, I have that on top of the world feeling once again. I just passed my Private Multi-Engine Land checkride! It felt so good to log my first few hours of PIC multi time! Instead of paying all that money for non-PIC multi time.

I learned something from this multi-engine training experience. I am better at learning knowledge as apposed to learning a skill. This is the first checkride (since my private) that I had to learn a new airplane. And not just a new airplane, but brand new concepts to the plane. So what I took away from this was that I could learn the concepts of how things worked on the plane, and why the plane moved and operated the way it did. But actually flying the airplane was more tough.  I felt like I was back at square one when I learned to fly the Cessna 172.  I was an infant learning to walk with new legs.

Having said all that, my next step, my commercial multi-engine rating, will be a very challenging one.  As I basically have to do the same checkride, but with stricter margins.  For example I have to do a short field landing on a point +100 feet, -0 feet.  As opposed to a short field landing on a point +200 feet, -0 feet.
I also have to study for my knowledge test.  I’ve gotten above 90% on all my other knowledge tests, and I would love to keep that streak going.  However, I have heard the commercial knowledge test is much harder than the Instrument and Private knowledge tests that I have already taken.  I guess that means I just have to study all that much harder.  Again, my strength, I believe, is in the knowledge, so I’m not sweating it too much.  I am more concerned about learning to fly the airplane to these stricter standards without paying an arm and a leg in aircraft rental (and instructor) fees.

So begins the Commercial Knowledge Test studying.  Back to the King Videos.

I must say, I’m a little disappointed with the King Multi-Engine ground school course. Definitely not up-to-par with their other courses I have used (namely, the Private and Instrument courses). But I don’t think King is completely to blame, as a Multi-Engine add-on is one of those ratings that is pretty specific to the airplane you are flying.  So they are not able to go into the intricate details of how the landing gear system works, or how the fuel system works.  From my little experience, it seems that their are some pretty major differences with these systems amongst light twins.  So that leaves a fairly large portion of the ground school up to you to figure out (with the help of your instructor of course).

These are things that I have found useful in studying for my Multi-Engine Oral Exam:

• Everything Explained for the Professional Pilot: Excruciatingly Detailed Explanations of Everything Essential for Every Pilot – This is a great book that will benefit you throughout your entire training.  It’s got a very informative section on Vmc as well as some other, otherwise hard to understand, concepts.  If you don’t have this book, and you plan on continuing your education towards a Professional Pilot career, check it out.
• Of course the POH (Pilots Operating Handbook) – This is an ABSOLUTE for getting your rating.  I had to read through the systems section at least twice.  There is so much information their, and sometimes it can be overwhelming, so read it again a few days later.  Also, highlight key terms, so that IF you need to reference something on your oral exam, you can quickly.
• And last but, absolutely not least, is your instructor! – I’m the kind of guy, that if I don’t know something, I like to find the answer myself.  But if I can’t find the answer, or don’t even know where to start looking for the answer.  Your instructor can be your biggest resource.  Not only will he most likely know the answer, but if he doesn’t, he will probably want to know the answer just as badly as you do, and will find it.  Also, on this note.  I HIGHLY recommend you take at least 2-3 hours to sit down with your instructor and fill in the gaps of anything that you don’t know.  Allow him to start prodding and probing for what you know.  My bet is you will find stuff you don’t know, and LEARN it!  I also recommend, if you have the opportunity, to sit down with a different instructor than your main instructor.  There are a lot of reasons for this.  One is it keeps your instructor in check and make sure he hasn’t missed anything.  Second, it gives you a HUGE confidence boost that, “Hey, not only does my instructor that I have been flying with the last few weeks think I can pass my checkride, but this guy does too. “

If you notice, I didn’t put the King Multi-Engine course in that list.  To be totally honest, if I were to redo my Multi-Engine education, I would take the $280 bucks that it costs and spend it on an instructor AFTER I have studyed on my own to fill in the gaps.  But that’s just me, and this post isn’t meant to be a review of the King video course.

I hope some have found this post helpful, and if you have any questions or things to add to this list, shoot a comment below.

Met with my instructor yesterday to discuss the nitty gritty before our first lesson, tentatively set for April 1st.  We went over a little bit more detailed syllabus, signed some paperwork, filled out a logbook audit, which is basically every crazy combination of flight hours you can think of.  Dual Night, Solo Night, Total Night, Dual Night X-country, Solo Night X-country, Total Night X-country, and so on and so forth.  It took quite a while to fill out.  I can’t imagine having to fill one of those things out if you had like 1000+ hours.  Took me long enough with ~140 hours.

After working through all that, I went down to the FBO store and bought a Seminole POH (Pilots Operating Handbook) & laminated checklists and the Cessna 172P POH & laminated checklists.  Yay! More books to read!  I’m actually very excited to have the Seminole POH.  After going through the King Video’s it will be nice to know, when they say “this is only for hydraulically actuated props”, to be able to know, “Hey, the Seminole has Hydraulically actuated props!”.  :-)

So between now and next week, I will be memorizing checklist items, reading the Seminole POH and building some more time in the club plane.  How very exciting!