My Flying Career

Wow, I can’t believe I am preparing for my Commercial Multi-Engine checkride (or the official name, Practical Test)!  What a ride it has been so far, and it is only just beginning!

The last several weeks I have been working towards meeting time requirements, cross-country requirements, practicing maneuvers, and studying for my oral.  All in preparation to meet the PTS (Practical Test Standards) on the day I have to shine the most.

As I have been preparing for my checkride, I notice a few things different about this checkride as opposed to any of the others I have taken since.  For one, this checkride is a culmination of practically everything I have learned to this point.  This is not like an Instrument rating, where the examiner can only really ask you questions about Instrument related issues.  Or a Multi-Engine rating where the examiner can only ask you questions pertaining to Multi-Engine aircraft.  This is a Commercial certificate, which basically gives the examiner the right to ask you questions about nearly anything I’ve learned up to this point.  The amount of knowledge I need to know and have readily available is much larger than my other recent checkrides.

Anyway, last Wednesday, I took a practice oral exam with one of the senior flight instructors at Hillsboro Aviation.  I felt pretty confident about my knowledge.  My biggest challenge was getting what was in my head, out my mouth.  For some reason I really struggle with putting what I know into short, concise, detailed statements.  I turn them into these huge bloated paragraphs that in turn confuse me and the guy asking the question.   It’s frustrating to me, because I know the answer, I really do.  But when I put it into words, I sound like an idiot.  Need to work on my communication skills I guess.

The flight portion of the practice checkride we scrapped due to weather.  The weather wasn’t terrible, but I needed 4,000 feet to do single-engine maneuvers in the twin, and it didn’t look like we were going to get that.  I opted to just wait until next week and do all the maneuvers at once instead of breaking it up into two flights.  So barring any weather issues, I’ll do the practice flight this Monday and let you all know how that goes.

Yesterday I flew to Eugene with a friend I promised I would take flying sometime.  Little did he know this would be more of an adventure than he signed up for.  The flight there was fantastic.  We flew IFR, because it had been a little while since I had been “in the system” and even the the weather was pretty good VFR weather, I like to keep current on at least IFR operations, even if it’s not necessarily in IMC.

Well, we arrived in Eugene, stretched at FlightCraft for a bit, watched the Seahawks kill the Rams, then went out to begin our trek home.  Before takeoff, I do what’s called a runup.  This is where you do your last minute checks to make sure all the radios and avionics are set, and you also runup the engine to about 3/4 power(1700 rpm in my case) and check the magnetoes.  The Cessna 172 engine has a dual magneto system for reliability and efficiency.  Each magneto supplies the spark for a spark plug on each of the cylinders.  So each cylinder has two spark plugs.  Well during the runup procedure you check the left magneto and the right magneto, to make sure that each side is working properly.  Because of the redundancy, you would probably never know if one went bad unless you manually shut one side off.  Well in switching to the right side, the engine lost between 200 – 250 RPMs and began shaking vibrantly.  The POH (Pilots Operating Handbook) for this aircraft states, “RPM drop should not exceed 125 RPM on either magneto or show greater than 50 RPM differential between magnetos”. This can sometimes be “normal” when you have a carbon fouled spark plug.  To clear the carbon fouled plug you would increase power and lean the mixture.  This, in effect, would burn off the carbon or oil that has contaminated the plug.  Well I did that a few times, and the right side magneto never got better.  The left side however was running like a champ.  I was very bummed, but I opted to taxi back and call the owner to see if he had any other ideas.  After talking to him and some other pilots in the area, we all agreed that there was something wrong with the airplane, most likely a bad magneto.  So we had to find ourselves a ride home.  I was waiting for the Lear 31 pilots that I was talking to, to offer a ride on their way back to Spokane, but that didn’t happen. lol.

My friends wife came down and picked us up and took us back to SLE.  We left Salem for a quick flight to Eugene and back at 3pm.  I got back to SLE at 9pm.  What a day.

Right now the plane is getting looked at and I will keep you all posted on the cause of the problem.

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?

My longest flight to date is now my non-stop flight from Salem, OR to Redding CA.  What for you ask?  Well besides still needing to build time for my Commercial, my friends birthday was coming up and he really wanted to get some In-N-Out burgers.  So we flew down to Redding for the sole purpose of eating some delicious In-N-Out burgers!  How cool is that!  I’m really going to miss it when I no longer have to build time, and can pick my destinations.  Here’s how the flight went:

Before we left, the only interesting things I got from the flight briefer for my flight was reported light rime ice at 7,700 feet near Eugene.  The tops, according to the Area Forecast (FA) were reported at 8,000 feet, and it was reportedly overcast all the way to Medford.  That’s only 300 feet from the reported ice and the tops of the clouds.  Not to mention the ice report was so high up, I knew that if it got bad enough, I could always descend out of it as I would still be in the Willamette Valley.  Ok, so I knew what to expect, had a plan, and an alternative plan.  I felt comfortable to continue the flight.  I filed 9,000 feet and figured I could always ask for 11,000 if I was bobbing in and out of the tops.

We took off at 8:40am, the climb was fairly uneventful until we got to, how high you ask?  It was freaky, at exactly 7,700 feet we started to notice a little ice building.  I reported the ice to ATC and continued climbing, hoping for the tops to appear any minute.  Again, it blew me away at how accurate the forecast was, because at 8,000 we saw blue skies.  I continued my climb to 9,000 feet, however it was a few degrees below freezing, so it took a while for the little ice we had accumulated to break away.  But it finally did.

The cruise portion of the flight was uneventful.  We were about 1,000 feet above the overcast layer, so there was too much to look at, and we had almost 3 hours of this!  Nearing the Siskiyous I opted to cancel my IFR flight plan as there were some tall Cumulous clouds that I didn’t want to go through, and I could see that it was becoming broken, to scattered and the MEA for that portion would make me climb to 11,000 feet.  Also Redding was reporting Clear skies so I had no doubt that we would be able to descend into Redding completely VFR.  It was really weird watching as we approached the California border, how it almost instantly went from Overcast to clear.  It’s sad really.

Descending into Redding, we got a great view of Shasta Lake.  It also really tested my VFR navigation skills.  I haven’t had to find an airport I haven’t been to, not being IFR, in a little while.  But we found it, called ‘em 10 miles out and made a very nice landing.

We asked the lady at the FBO’s desk if we could borrow the courtesy car.  The look on her face when my friend piped up, “Yeah, we just flew down here for my birthday from Salem, JUST to get In-N-Out burgers” was priceless.  I love seeing what kind of car I get when I land at a new airport.  The car we got was an old Lincoln Towncar.  Actually is was fairly nice compared to some of the cars I’ve used.  Best of all, the A/C worked.  It was 85 degrees, and that may not seem like much, but we just descended out of below freezing temperatures.  So we were happy the A/C worked.  With both of us on our iPhone’s trying to figure out how to get to In-N-Out, we pressed onward.

We arrived at In-N-Out and ate our burgers (I had the Double-Double).  Mission Accomplished.  We also met up with my boss, who had just started his family vacation driving around the country.  Took him I think a little over 6 hours to get to In-N-Out.  Took us 3.  I tried not to rub it in….too much.

I will continue the rest of my journey on my next blog post, where we got into hail, moderate rain, and was VMC for about an hour(which seemed like forever when you don’t have an autopilot).

To be continue…

I am very sorry it has been so long since I’ve given you all an update on what’s going on.  I have no excuse other than pure laziness.

I have had so much fun flying all over recently.  I am still building time for my Commercial Rating and let me tell you.  I will miss the day when I don’t get to build time on my own like this.  I am really enjoying going out and flying wherever I want to go.  My last two most memorable time-building flights were to Yakima, Washington and Redding California.

For my Yakima flight, I flew at 9,000 feet and flew east down near the Columbia River until about The Dalles, then went north up to Yakima.  The reason I chose that less direct route was because any other (more direct route) would take me over more mountanous terrain and would require me to go to 12,000 or 16,000 feet.  When I got to Yakima, I parked at Noland-Decoto Flying Services to fuel and find a place to eat.  The people were very friendly and one of the guys that worked their let me take his car into town to find something to eat.  And what did I find.  One of my all time favorite burger places.  Red Robin!  After eating my bacon cheeseburger I drove back to the airport, checked the weather, filed my IFR flight plan and began my preflight to head back home.  The flight both there and back were fairly uneventful.  Stayed mostly on-top of the cloud deck.  I put together an album of photos of my trip..be sure and read the captions!

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My next post, which I hope to write soon, will be about my trip to Redding California for In-N-Out burgers, where I logged a total of 6.3 hours.

Thanks for reading.

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.

An interesting read…

Age 65 Retirements Begin Soon, How Will That Affect the Airlines? – PilotJobs.com: Regional Airline Pilot Jobs
Age 65 Retirements Part 2 - PilotJobs.com: Regional Airline Pilot Jobs
Age 65 Retirements Part 3 – PilotJobs.com: Regional Airline Pilot Jobs

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.

Hey Everyone,

Well here’s the lowdown on what’s been happening.  I’ve been polishing my skills in the Seminole to a point where I am comfortable taking a stage check (practice checkride pretty much).  My normal instructor was out of town last weekend, so I was placed with another instructor, and I don’t know if it was the nerves or just not my day, but I wasn’t flying so well…  Little mistakes here and there.  So I opted to do one more lesson with my instructor before taking my stage check, just to at least bring back up my confidence.  Well we did that and I felt really good about it.  So next step…Stage check.   Hoping to get that scheduled this Monday or Tuesday.  It’s been a little difficult considering they were running all the Seminoles they had pretty hard, and just recently, they got one taken out of commission.  You can read about it here.  Kind of a scary story considering I’ve flown that plane a few times.

On the time-building side of things.  I have gotten to fly all over the place in order to just increase my total time.  I’ve flown to North Bend (KOTH) a few times.  I like North Bend, because usually it has the opposite weather as Salem.  If Salem’s got crappy weather, North Bend is usually nice.  If Salem has nice weather, I can usually find crappy weather at North Bend to practice approaches.  It also has some fun approaches to do, however there are a couple of approaches that take you a few miles out into the ocean.  And I don’t know about everyone else, but flying a single engine piston airplane 5 miles out into the ocean at 2000 feet, is just unnecessary.  I don’t think I could swim 5 miles in 40 degree water(or 70 for that matter).  I’ve also flown to Astoria and Tacoma-Narrows.  I REALLY like Tacoma-Narrows.  Just an insanely beautiful flight.  I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t bring my camera on that one.  However, I did see the Les Scwab jet there (I believe it was a Cessna Citation).  For those of you who are in the area, Tacoma-Narrows has a fantastic restaurant on the field.  I’ve only had their burgers, but those were amazing.

Until next time, thanks for reading.