My Flying Career

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…

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…

So I need to apologize for taking so long to write this post.  I keep putting it off, and partially I feel I have nothing super exciting to write about.

The last couple weeks we have been practicing steep turns, slow flight, power-on and power-off stalls, Vmc demo, and of course lots of single engine operations.  For the most part I feel like I’m getting the maneuvers down.  I think the only thing I need to work on is memorizing the power settings for the different maneuvers.  But all in all, I’m beginning to feel comfortable flying the plane (unlike at first, when everything was just CRAZY).  I also got to fly for my first time in an FTD (Flight Training Device).  Which is basically a flight simulator with all the controls and a cockpit cutout, but doesn’t move (like a full-motion simulator).  That was kind of fun, it was helpful because we would be 50 feet above the runway, and then my instructor would kill an engine.  And I got to see “somewhat” what that would be like, and how incredibly fast you need to recognize what’s going on. I’ve got Identify, Verify, and Feather stuck in my head.  Those of you who have taken multi-engine training I’m sure know what I’m talking about.  Sometime in the next few lessons I will be doing a single-engine instrument approach!  Which I think sounds crazy hard, but Chris (my instructor) assures me that it’s not as hard as it sounds.  We’ll see.

On another note, I have been doing some time-building in the club plane here and there.  I shot the VOR-A approach into North Bend all the way to minimums, could barely see the airport, and went missed.  Picked up my clearance back to Salem and shot the ILS, went missed, then turned around and shot the back course to a full stop.  What a mentally busy day!  The weather wasn’t “terrible” in Salem, but the approach in North Bend was TOTALLY in the soup and was a lot of fun!

Finally the weather started clearing up and I flew VFR to corvallis, then west out to the beach, then north up the coast, and then east to Hillsboro for my multi-engine lesson.  What a great flight!  Not a cloud in the sky, the beach was beautiful!  I can’t remember the last time I flew to the beach in VFR conditions (without the hood on).  Flying north up the coast I even saw some Whales!  I scrambled for my camera and circled around, but was too late.  That had gone back down and I couldn’t find them again.  Sorry.  However I did take a bunch of pictures of the coast.   Hope you enjoy!

Alright, back to studying.  I’ll try and keep you all more up-to-date and not take so long on posting this time around.

Also, wanted to mention, if you aren’t subscribing to the RSS feed and want to receive email notifications when I post a new blog entry, be sure and subscribe here.

Thanks for reading,

John

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I consider all my flights an adventure.  And I could probably find something interesting to write about for each one.  But this flight, I don’t have to “find” something interesting.  It found me!

I started out on an IFR (Instrument Flight Rules) flight plan to North Bend, OR.  Cruising along at 7000 feet, I encountered a bit of icing for the first time!  Now in a 1974 Cessna 172, a plane that is 35 years old, and an engine that is past TBO (Time Between Overhaul), you/I don’t want to push your luck with ice!  There just isn’t a whole lot of power there to keep you airborne when you weight more and the camber of your wing has changed.  I opted to divert to my alternate of Eugene.  Shot the ILS perfectly and re-thought my afternoons flying.

My new plan is to fly to Hillsboro (KHIO) see if my new Instructor is there and say hello.  Well when I left, it was moderate rain at Eugene, but I knew the rain would stop before reaching Corvallis.  I took off in the moderate rain and began a climb to 6000 feet.  At about 4500 feet, the moderate rain became moderate snow.  Once reaching 6000 feet, I began to pick up some more ice.  I asked to descend to 4000, they granted my request, and the ice slowly began to slide off.  Once I arrive in Hillsboro, unfortunately my instructor wasn’t there to surprise, so I took off and started heading home.

I was kind of tired of all the hard IFR flying and the icing.  And Salem’s METAR showed VFR, and it was only about 30 minutes away, so I decided to fly back VFR (Visual Flight Rules).  Well about 20 miles north of Salem, I hear Salem Tower say they have 3 miles visibility and hear reports of 3/4 mile visibility coming to their area.  So again, I decided to divert to McMinnville (KMMV) and wait it out, or file IFR out of there.  After waiting about 30 minutes, there was a wall of moderate rain between McMinnville and Salem.  Salem’s METAR reports VFR and 4500 broken.  So I decide to file IFR out of McMinnville and after taking off, I found out it was a good choice. Salem was IFR again and I had to shoot the backcourse (which was fun because I hadn’t done that since my checkride!)

All in all I got to experience light icing for the first time, diversion and crazy weather.  A very fun and educational trip, but man am I mentally drained.  Flying single-pilot IFR with no autopilot or GPS is just one of the hardest mental workouts ever.

On another note, I have a meeting with my instructor on Monday to “officially” enroll me in the school and to go over my more detailed syllabus!  I’ll let you know how it goes probably on Tuesday.  And don’t forget to check out my pictures.  I left my digital camera at the FBO in Salem, so I had to take these with my iPhone.  So they aren’t the most detailed.  But they are better than nothing.

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