My Flying Career

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…

In response to Zach’s comment on my last post, I would like to take you on a little journey through my short and long-term goals.

My long-term goals are probably not that of most.  ’The Airlines’ do not necessarily entice me that much.  The schedules and what I’ve heard about how some pilots are treated does not outweigh the pay.  It doesn’t seem to be the dream job it used to be.  From what I have seen, it looks like charter, air taxi, air ambulance, corporate, or any other job that has a little bit more excitement is what I am pursuing.  This goal of course has its baby steps (to quote ‘What about Bob?’), so for my short term goal, I would like to get hired at a flight school as an instructor.  I think that instructing is a great way of building skills for yourself and a way of giving back a little of what you have learned (It’s also a more inexpensive way to build time).  From their I will start my search for a ‘puddle-jumping’ company hopefully here in the northwest.  Ameriflight, Empire Airlines, Seaport Airline, to just name a few.  You can only plan so far in advance before the plans are no more than hopes and dreams.  I’m the kind of guy who is very goal-oriented and having these short-term and a long-term goals is what drives me.

To shift gears a little bit, I have been practicing my Single Engine Commercial maneuvers and will be taking my Single Engine Commerical addon checkride very soon.  I’ll let you all know how that goes.

Thanks for reading!

Well it’s official, I am a Commercial Pilot! For multi-engine aircraft at least. How did the checkride go you ask?  I’m glad you asked!  The checkride is a pass or fail situation, so I am unable to give you a letter grade or percentage.  But what I can give you is how I felt it went.  The checkride  consisted of two parts, the Oral quiz, and the Practical flight.  The oral was about 2 hours long and I felt very comfortable answering all of the questions the examiner asked.  Examiners tend to like to find an area that you seem to know the least about, and question you for more details on that subject.  On this particular checkride, she found out my inexperience with crossing the U.S. border and what steps are needed in order to do so.  I knew the basics.  You must have a radio operators license, you must call ahead to Customs and let them know you are coming.  However the examiner was also very practical, and I told her I would certainly not plan on crossing the border without first studying and questioning someone who has.  From what I’ve heard, it’s not something you just go willy-nilly doing without first knowing what’s going on.  She asked a lot of questions about VFR operations.  I had no problem answering those.  She also asked a lot of questions about performance in the Seminole, which I thought was weird, since I already had my Private Multi-Engine license and had already been drilled on a previous oral about that.  But hey, I’m not complaining, I knew all the right answers!

Ok, onto the flight.  When we started the Oral portion the clouds were reported at 3,500 feet broken and expected to continue like that for most of the day.  I was really worried that we would only be able to knock out the oral portion of the practical test that day because I needed at least 4,000 feet AGL to do an Engine-Failure, which was required on this checkride.  By the time we finished the oral to go flying the ceiling had raised to 7,000 feet.  Sweet!  Well, almost sweet.  There was a 12 gusting to 17 knot 20 degree crosswind.  Oh joy! Welcome to the start of fall.  Now it’s important to note, I have not flown the Seminole in a crosswind of this caliber before.  But again, the examiner was great and said, “lets just make our first trip around the pattern a normal takeoff and landing so you can get a feel for the crosswind”.  Off we went, takeoff was great, immediately went into a crab on climb out.  But man, the downwind leg went super fast with that tail wind.  In a matter of seconds I was putting the gear back down, few more seconds later I was turning base to final and trying to slow her down.  First landing was not terrible.  A little bit harder of a touch down than I like, but within standards.  Anyway in an effort not to make this blog post unnecessarily long, I will just say, the rest of the flight went very well, my best landing (which was honestly my main concern for the flight) was the short field landing, and it was beautiful.

Ok, so what are my plans now.  What’s next on the list of accomplishments for my career?  Well I need to get my Commercial Single-Engine addon.  This will just add Single-Engine privileges to my existing Commercial license.  It should be a faily short Oral (just questions about the performance of Single-Engine aircraft) and then the flight.  The flight has some different maneuvers than the twin.  So I need to get up and practice the maneuvers a bit before I take the checkride.  I expect to take my checkride in the next few weeks.  After that, I will start studying for my flight instructor ratings.  I would like to get all three flight instructor ratings.  The CFI (Certified Flight Instructor), CFI-I (Certified Flight Instructor – Instrument), and an MEI (Multi-Engine Instructor).  In order to take those checkrides, I will need to knock out three knowledge tests.  The CFI-A, the CFI-I, and the FOI (Fundamentals of Instructing).  I will also need to start practicing the same maneuvers I did for my commercial rating from the right seat.  And also practice teaching.  I need to be able to explain to a non-pilot how to perform a maneuver.  So my friends may be getting some free flights, provided they listen to my jibber-jabber for a bit and tell my how I did.

Thanks to everyone for their continued encouragement and support.  It really helps having people interested and encouraging me to “keep it up”!  So I thank you.

Until next time…

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!

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

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.