My Flying Career

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.