My Flying Career

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…

The Piper Seminole I flew

Well I FINALLY had my first day of Multi-Engine flight training.  I was sick on Wednesday and the weather was terrible so I wasn’t able to have a lesson that day.  But Friday was an awesome day to fly!

I can basically sum up my first multi-engine lesson with one word. Overwhelming!  There are only twice as many engines as I’m used to, but there is about 3 times as many things to do.  Not only is this my first time flying a multi-engine airplane, it is my first time flying a complex airplane.  So retractable landing gear, and the constant speed prop are all new things to me, on top of having double the engine controls and instruments.  We flew over to Scappoose to do some maneuvers.  We did Steep Turns, Power-off stalls, and 4 touch-and-goes.  The first touch-and-go was crazy!  Trying to keep track of the manifold pressure, propeller RPM’s and look out the window, AND look at my checklist was just crazy.  But by the 4th time, I think I was starting to pick up on the cues and memorize the checklist items.  That’s the best way for me to learn, repetition.

All in all it was extremely fun, and when we started heading back to Hillsboro, I felt like I was starting to get it.  Oh yeah, one thing I have to start memorizing is the stinkin’ cowl flaps.  Holy cow, cowl flaps up, cowl flaps down, cowl flaps up, etc.  Thank God for checklists.  My instructor said that he thinks I have the basics down pretty good, and our next lesson will be all single-engine operations.  Yay!

Ok, on to pictures, I didn’t take a ton of pictures.  But here are the ones I did take of the plane.  Enjoy!

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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!

This blog is for friends, family, and other pilot-career-aspiring people out there who want to follow me on my journey to becoming a Professional Pilot.

My name is John Kelly, I am 22 years old and have always dreamed of eventually becoming a professional pilot. Over the past few years I have earned my Private Pilot’s License(Single-Engine & Multi-Engine) and Instrument Rating. I fly out of Salem’s McNary Field(KSLE) and am attending Hillsboro Aviation to continue my flight training.

I hope you enjoy reading my blog and am open to comments and advice.

To see my current plan, visit the My Plan page.

Well…I signed the loan and told my work that I would be going to flight school on April 1st.  No turning back now! I’m so excited I haven’t been able to sleep well (or that could be the massive amounts of coffee I drink at work).  This is something I have dreamed of ever since I was a kid and now it is becoming a reality.

Now it is true that the aviation economy is not at it’s high point.  But I think of it this way; Treat the aviation economy like the stock market.  Buy low and sell high.  Well, it’s hard to think of it getting any worse that it is now; so I figure it can only get better. Right?

A little about myself.  I am 22 years old and am married to the most wonderful woman ever (she would have to be to put up with my aviation craze).  Over the past few years I have earned my Private Pilot’s Certificate and my Instrument Rating add on from flight instructors at my local airport.  I believe this to be the most inexpensive and efficient way to start out.  More on that later…

The flight school I have chosen is Hillsboro Aviation out of Hillsboro, Oregon.  Many factors have come in to play when choosing this school and after literally a year of researching, my choice is clear.  Since this is more of an introductory post, I will not go too much into detail, but don’t worry, I will lay out my reasoning and research in future posts(so stay tuned ).

One last thing…the point of this blog is give other pilot-career-aspiring folks out there a chance to hopefully educate themselves from my mistakes and maybe even right choices every now and then.  I, in no way, consider myself a good writer, so you will have to bear with it.  But I will do my best.