Friends

It's nice having friends that fly. That way when you are in a money slump like me.. you can still get up there... on their dime! :) That's what I got to do today. Granted I was in the back of the aircraft with no control, it is still really nice to get in the air and experience flight. There is nothing else like it. Steve had to log another 1.8 with his instructor before he could be signed off for the commercial check-ride, which he hopes to schedule this week. If you ask me.... he's ready, but who am I to tell. Steve is a great pilot, and I enjoy flying with him very much. Besides, the closer he gets to his CFI, the closer I get to having some free instruction. Well, I might have to buy a case of beer every once in a while... but hey... that is still cheap! lol. Anyway, just wanted to report back here in case someone is still reading. I don't know if anybody checks on this unless I post on the aviation boards. If you are still checking in for updates, I would love to hear from you. What do you do when you can't fly? Just leave a comment. I think it is easy to do. Talk to you later!

Real Life

I am changing jobs and it is a good thing. I will be making more money and have potential for higher bonuses, which means more flying. Unfortunately they pay bi-weekly and all my bills are set up for weekly pay. Things will be tight for a month or so until we adjust, so flying is on hold for now. It really sucks because I am so close to solo, but during this break I am going to try and get my medical out of the way. That should only be like 50 bucks or so, so that should be no big deal. I will update you all when I start flying again. Thanks for reading!

I just recently found out that I have some readers at work too! That was very exciting news for me. I hope to bring you all some exciting new adventures soon!

Joe

Networking

So I am a little late posting about this, but I didn't want to leave it out of the blog. Last week I had a chance to meet up with a friend from the forums. His name is Ken and he owns a Senecca III. You can look at it here http://www.klrdmd.com/Home/Seneca.html That plane is so awesome. And guess what... I got to log my time in it because he is a CFI. So me... a student with only about 15 hours has 1.4 in a multi-engine aircraft. Kinda fricken cool.

So Ken emailed me on Wednesday night to see if I wanted to go grab some breakfast the following morning. Of course my response was nothing short of YES!!!! How could I possibly say no to that? I got to the airport around 730 and wasn't expecting him til 8. I sat in the truck and listened to the scanner waiting for his call sign. Sure enough at 745 I hear "Chandler tower, Senecca 8377X 15 miles south with Kilo, request full stop" Woot.. I jumped out of my truck and headed for the terminal. I listened to the radio and followed him on the frequency until he pulled up to the terminal. I walked out the plane to meet him. What a beautiful plane.

Ken is a great guy. He is a dental anaesthesiologist and I guess more of a teacher now. He travels the country giving lectures and whatnot. Not a bad gig. Sounds like fun. I would rather be traveling talking about planes.. but I'm not a dentist so I wouldn't have much to talk about. Anyway...

As I approach the plane Ken motions me inside to the left seat. I must have looked thoroughly confused because he explained that he could ride right seat because he is a CFI and MEI so I could actually fly the plane. OMG! I jumped in got situated and looked at the panel. Now you have to understand this situation to fully appreciate it. Up to this point I have flown a 1 engine Cessna 172. About as basic as it gets. Now I get in the left seat of this thing and it might as well have been an airliner. Well that is a little extreme but you know what I mean. It turns out it wasn't that difficult. This plane has two engines so instead of doing everything once... you do it twice. You start the left engine, then the right. Check instruments for both of them and you are ready to go. I let Ken handle the radios so I could concentrate on not crashing his 120,000$ plane into anything. We picked up ATIS and taxi'd out to runway 4L.

This is where it really gets fun. After being cleared to takeoff I positioned us on the numbers. Once all lined up he told me to hold the breaks and throttle both engines up to 36 inches of manifold pressure. (if I knew completely what that meant I would take time to explain it to you... I need to do some reading and maybe I will put it in my next post. But for the purpose of this entry... We put the needles on the 36 mark on the instrument displaying inches of manifold pressure.) Ok so here we are... breaks held on the numbers... engines cranking away just waiting to lurch forward.. Once I got both engines equal.. let go of the breaks and WOOOOOOOOW! ZOOOOOOM! (I have other way to describe the feeling sorry) Every other plane I have flown in you slowly increase throttle and go down the runway. This thing went screamin' after you released the breaks. Rotate at 79 and away you go. I barely had to give any rudder pressure with this plane. Ken explained that it doesn't have all the normal left turning tendencies of other planes because the engines rotate opposite of each other counteracting torque. (Did I explain that right?) So we get cleared to turn away from the airport and we are on our way. Basically Ken did what Dan did. He pointed to a mountain and said fly there. The whole time Ken was naming mountain peaks and airports in the distance. I guess he flies this route quite a bit, so he knows it by heart. We saw an aerobatic plane doing it's thing around a mountain. That was pretty cool. You see them do the shows at airshows, but it is a totally different view when you are flying over them. I leveled us off at 5,500 ft and we just cruised. It was much easier to maintain altitude and heading in this plane. I'm not sure why, but it just flies smoother than the Cessna.

As we got close to AVQ-Merana Regional, we announced our intentions to land and Ken put it down. I got us on the approach and ken took over a couple hundred feet above the runway. He says it's because it lands differently than the Cessna I fly, which I'm sure it does, but I'm pretty sure it was because he didn't want a student pilot with 15 hours pounding his nice Senecca into the pavement. Somehow... I understand. :)

I taxi'd us to the parking and flipped it around. Ran through the shutdown checklist and secured the aircraft. Time for breakfast! Breakfast was good! I had a Western Omelet... yum. We sat and talked about a lot of things. He has owned I think 7 aircraft now. The Mooney was his favorite, and that is probably what he will go back to after this one. What a life. I would love to own an aircraft like this. I would do the same thing. I would find young people who love to fly and let them. Why not? He did get breakfast out of it. Granted he said that a full tank of gas costs about $1,000, so I think I ended up spending less money. He wouldn't accept money for fuel, what a great guy.

After breakfast we came back out and started it up. Wind was favoring 30 so that's where we taxi'd to. As we get up to takeoff there was a Cessna doing touch and goes opposite of our runway. That is the joy of an uncontrolled airport. You can do whatever you want. If you want to takeoff and land with the wind... you can. Not that you should but he did. Oh well, when he took off again and was crossing us on the runway we took the runway and blasted outta there before he knew what was going on. I think before he even turned crosswind we were above pattern altitude cruising on out. Fun stuff.

This time once we got to cruise altitude he let me try out the autopilot. LOL how cool. Push a couple buttons and the plane flies itself. That was cool and all... but I kinda wanted to fly. (Now I know I don't want to be an airline pilot.) I popped the autopilot off and hand flew the rest of the way home. I handled radios this time. Got the ATIS, contacted tower at 15 miles out. This is one little mishap that I did. I called the wrong tower frequency. At chandler there are two frequencies. 133.1 if you are coming from the South or the East and 126.1 if you are coming from the North or East. Now we were coming up from Tuscon area so I should have contacted 133.1 which I KNEW. Anyway.. I called the wrong tower .. they told me I was stupid and I made the same call on the right frequency. Before I knew it we were on the ground and it was all over.

It made for a great morning. It was beautiful outside as always. Couldn't ask for more. So for 20 bucks I got 1.4 of multi-engine cross country time. What a smokin deal. Thank you Ken! I appreciate it so much. Another entry in the logbook that I will never forget!

Not so hot!

Aircraft: C4653G

Weather: HOT! Winds 190@8G18 - felt that!

Finally I got back in the air after 2 weeks of no flying. I have been dying to get back up there. Last week money was tight, so I had to put it off, no way around it. This week I invited my father-in-law, Joe to go up with us. What a great trip!

This is the first time with me flying that I actually got to fly somewhere. Normally for training up until this point we just fly around the pattern or go out to the practice area. This time we flew from Chandler Municipal over to Williams Gateway, which is about 10 miles away. Nothing big, but fun because they are slightly busier with some military jets, and some airline activity, and they have a great restaurant. This was the true 100$ hamburger that I got to fly!

I showed up with Joe at about 1030 to pre-flight 53G and Dan was already there. No big deal, did the pre-flight, told Joe a little bit about what I was doing and why. I think Dan is learning to trust me a little bit more because he didn't do his own pre-flight right behind me this time. HA. After the pre-flight, we headed into the air conditioning and talked about the flight we were about to undertake. Dan had a sectional and we went over what all the markings and identifiers meant on and around Gateway. After grabbing some waters, we were off to the aircraft again, this time to FLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

With Joe all secure in the back and everyone adjusted, I picked up the ATIS on the speaker before cranking the engine. This saves me a little buck, because why sit there on the taxi-way with the engine turning? I taxi'd up to the tower to make my ground call, and all went well. Got cleared to taxi over to 22R via Alpha, November. Thanks to my excellent night before preparation I was prepared and wrote everything down and read it back like a pro. I had all the frequencies lined up for CHD and IWA with Chandlers on Radio one and Gateway on Radio two. All I had to do was flip a switch and I was ready to transmit on the Gateway frequencies. So... we taxi'd over to 22R and did the runup, made our call and we were off!

We climbed to about 2800ft and leveled off and headed towards Gateway. Since we took off on 22R we were headed SW which is away from Gateway so we turned to set ourselves up to enter their airspace. This is where things started happening fast. We had very little time before hitting their airspace, so I had to pick up the ATIS and call tower. Dan was rushing me the whole time. After getting the ATIS, I made my call to tower and I don't know what happened. In fact I keep playing it over in my head and just can't figure it out. I made the perfect call and she never got back to me. She cleared other people to land and enter the airspace but I didn't get mine. Whatever, Dan said to call again. So I did, and everything was fine. The problem was, were outside their airspace doing circles, and I had accidentally let us climb to almost 4000ft, which was approaching PHX class Bravo airspace. For those of you that don't know... that is a NO NO! So finally she calls out our tail number and we get our clearance into the Delta airspace and set up for a right downwind pattern entry. By this time my head is really spinning because I haven't flown in two weeks, and I need to do a whole bunch of stuff before I can land. So I start my decent, enter the patter too high, pull the power back to 1700 abeam the numbers, kick in some flaps, turn base late, end up being too high, kick in more flaps and FINALLY I am on track for a good landing. This particular runway at Gateway has over 10000ft of runway so that landing wasn't a problem, and was actually relatively smooth. We exit onto taxiway Hotel (I think) and make our call to ground. "C4653G clear of 12R @ Hotel, taxi to transient near the restaurant". We got clearance to go and park at the FBO and pulled up next to an old HUGE navy fighter. I think Dan said it was a T-6, I will add a picture at the bottom and you can correct me if I'm wrong. After I shut the engine down the line guy comes running up telling us we weren't supposed to park there. Dan was trying to signal with him where to park, but the line guy apparently didn't know the correct signals because he was telling Dan to start his left engine. LOL. Needless to say, Dan wasn't moving and we got some chalks to secure the aircraft. Good times!

Lunch was great, it was pretty uneventful compared to the flying, but what can be better than 3 guys flying to an airport to grab a burger. I'll tell you..... NOTHING. There is NOTHING better than flying with some friends to an airport for some food. I can't frickin wait to get my certificate so I can do just that. Take a Saturday morning and go fly for food.

Anyway, after lunch we decide to head out and do some pattern work at Chandler. I did a total of 4 landings there, all of which sucked! You could really tell that it had been a while since I landed. Dan was on the controls more and I was getting extremely frustrated. Once again I sucked with my rudder control and kept cross controlling while turning crosswind and base. Dan thinks I'm trying to kill myself. (the airplane can enter a spin if you are not careful and cross control. A spin itself is not dangerous, but when you are close the ground in the pattern, you just don't have time to recover. I think next lesson we are going to the practice area to once and for all fix my problem with the rudder. Dan said he has some special exercises to fix it. So landing 1 not so hot, I didn't flare very well and we landed on all threes. Landing 2 not so hot, I landed HARD. BOOM! Landing 3 Dan was trying to show me how to stay 3 ft above the runway for a flare and ended up having to just land himself because we would of had a hard time getting up enough speed w/ a passenger in the back. Landing 4 not so bad, I finally flared good and put her down on the main gear first and did it semi-correctly. BUT... the airplane is not broken, and we are alive so.. SUCCESS!

My radio shyness is gone, every time I get on the radio I know what to say and thank god, because that is what used to give me such a heart-attack. Things are good now that I am able to fly again, but they need to improve. I wish I could go twice a week, but at least I need to get up there once a week so I don't forget things and waste my money.

Joe if you are reading this (and you better be) thanks for riding along. I hope you can get into this at some point yourself. I would love for you to take a lesson and let me fly along. You are welcome on any flight that I take as long as we aren't stalling the airplane cuz even though it would probably be ok... I like life. :) ---- Oh and thanks for lunch!

For everyone else.. thanks for reading! You know what to do.... click those adds! MONEY MONEY MONEY!!!! I will return the favor if I can.. just tell me where to go!

This flight: 1.2

Total time: 13.3

$

So another thing that I'm pretty sure a lot of student pilots go through. This week I can't fly. Not because of the weather, I live in Arizona, but because money got in the way. It sucks but it is reality. For some reason Arizona decides that it should cost 400$ to register our truck. The really crappy thing about it is that it is windy this weekend and I need to do ground reference maneuvers. Oh well... next week.

Oh ya.. don't forget to click on the adds! :)

More Right Rudder!

Aircraft: C172 4653G

Weather: 90 degrees, wind 070@5, beautiful as usual

More right rudder... Words every student probably hears a whole lot of. I'm pretty sure I have it the worst! That isn't even the worst of it. I don't use enough ,or any, rudder in any of my turns. What is going on? For some reason I am afraid to push on any of the controls too hard. The word for next lesson is AGGRESSIVE. Be more aggressive with the controls.

So today was great! Dan emailed me a couple days ago and said that there would be no wind today, so instead of doing our lesson on ground reference maneuvers, we would do some pattern work, and learn how to land. AWESOME. I love to land! It is so much fun taking off and landing, taking off and landing! Total I landed 7 times, with help from Dan. Mostly he kept pushing the nose down and telling me to aim at the numbers. (for the non-fliers, each runway is marked with numbers. For example, the runway we were landing and departing from was 4L. That means it's heading, magnetic I believe, is 040, which is NE.) Basically when you are landing you are supposed to be on a 3 degree glideslope, and you want to touch down within the first third of the runway. On final you keep the airspeed at about 55-65 knots with the flaps down, and at about 20 feet off the runway pull the power to idle. At 10 feet off the runway start the flare (holding back on the controls to keep the nose up) and at 3 feet try and prevent the airplane from landing by pulling back to the stops. You have to do this all while maintaining heading w/ the rudder. A lot of the problems that I had were rudder related. I would come down, and flare correctly but then I would just stop flying the airplane and let it drift off center, or it would just SMACK into the runway, which is not good. Dan kept saying I was doing a good job, but I don't see it. These were my first few landing so I'm not too worried about sucking at it only a few hours in, but Dan is talking about soloing me. I'm pretty certain I could do it, but I definitely need more practice.

Here is the full procedure from takeoff to landing, just in case you are interested, and also for me to write down and make sure I know it.

Takeoff is easy, just keep the aircraft centered down the runway and apply full power. Watch the gauges to make sure oil pressure/temp is ok and keep right rudder in because of the strong left turning tendencies of the plane. At 55 knots lift the nose off the ground and climb out. When the wheels leave the ground the left turning tendency increases so you have to increase right rudder. About 500 feet AGL (above ground level) start the crosswind turn. Left aileron, left rudder. By this time you are probably at pattern altitude so reduce power slightly and start turning downwind. Again left aileron, left rudder. On downwind slow the aircraft by pulling power to 2100 RPM, carb heat on, 1 notch of flaps. (all at the same time) At this point you have a few seconds to complete the before landing checklist. I did it 7 times so lets see if I can remember it off the top of my head.... Seat upright, seat belts on, Altimeter check, Heading indicator check, Mixture rich, fuel selector on both, make sure carb heat is on.... Yep I got it. Sweet. So you are cruising along on downwind, listening to ATC for landing clearance, or whatever else they want to tell you (today was crazy, but that is another story), looking for traffic, and waiting to come up abeem the numbers. This means you are directly across the edge of the runway you will be landing on. At this point, start a 500fpm descent, power to 1700 RPM, and another notch of flaps. Once at a 45 degree angle to the landing runway, start the turn to base, and keep the descent at 500 fpm. When you come up on the runway start the turn to final and throw in a nother notch of flaps. On final set up the airspeed to be 55-65 knots and aim at the numbers. That's pretty much it. I went over the actual landing in the previous paragraph so I won't go over that again. Oh, and for a touch and go, which is what we were doing... after landing and you are stabilized going down the runway, flaps up, carb heat off, full power... do it all again. FUN FUN!

I mentioned the controller up a little bit. I don't want to pass too much judgement because I am new to this game too, but the controller we were dealing with in the air had to be a newb. He was getting all stressed out, called my base turn way to early, cancelled our landing clearance a couple times... Craziness. I mean I guess that's what I'm going to be dealing with in the "real world" but I was just trying to land and this dude was throwing all kinds of stuff at me. Like I said, it is probably good because I learned a lot, but Dan was getting annoyed. He said if the controller gives an instruction that you cannot follow, you are the PIC. You are the one responsible for the safety of the flight. So if they tell you to do a touch and go, and you can't make it happen, too bad!

Anyway, it was a great flight. Next time we go up I think we are going to be working on rudder control in the practice area. Dan said to bring a puke bag because he has some fun exercises to teach me control, but I should be ok. Looks like I need to get going on my medical. I need to have a 3rd class medical in order to solo, and Dan is harping on that, so I guess I should go out and get it. I think that is going to cost another 90 bucks, so I have to figure out how to work that in. I'll figure it out. I can't wait to get up again. That's the thing I hate about learning to fly... you have to come back down. 1 hour just isn't long enough.

Oh, I almost forgot to remind you.. click on my adds! I could really use the clicks. They were going good for a while, and it seems that.. unless I ask, people don't click. Honestly I wouldn't either unless someone asked because I hate adds. But to help an aspiring pilot.. I would click away!!!!!

Today's flight: 1.1 hrs

Total time: 12.1 hrs

I get one thing, and let another go.

Aircraft: C172 - 4653G

Weather: Cool, rainy, 7500 ceiling, minimal wind.

Today we had a great flight! The weather is not typical to this area, low clouds, humid, cool, and a little rain. Perfect for flying though, it was so nice and cool!

Again I got to the airport early, but Mike was close behind to open up the school and get some fuel in the airplane. After we had the fuel I started the pre-flight. Everything was in check, so Dan and I went in to the training room and went over the maneuvers we would be practicing today. Basically it would be a review of the last flight, w/ stalls, but this time adding one more. Steep turns. Steep turns are a lot of fun. Basically when you fly normally you use 30 degrees of bank, to keep the passengers comfy and because you don't really need anything more than that. With a steep turn you use 45 degrees. The procedure goes like this-

Clearing turns, flow check, start coordinated turn (aileron and rudder - my weak point of course) in either direction, after 30 degrees of bank add 200 rpm and trim the back pressure off. Now continue the turn for 360 degrees and roll out on the heading you had assigned all while maintaining altitude and 95 knots. Seems easy right? NOT. First I attempted one to the left, and that went rather well. When I tried to the right, that is a different story. It's a completely different picture outside the airplane and for some reason I just couldn't get it. We tried a few more times and had to move on. I'll probably be doing a lot more of those in the future!

This week was pretty busy for me so I had zero time to study. Better yet, I didn't make time to study, and it showed. Dan asked me to do a power off stall and I couldn't remember the procedure. I need to be doing more chair flying at home so I can get the flow down. It really isn't difficult to do, but if you don't remember the steps... it just won't get done correctly. So, I've learned my lesson there. Chair fly at home for free, and don't spend hard earned money while the engine is running to learn something all over again in the air!

Now for the title of this post. As you have read in the past, the one major hurdle I was trying to get over was talking on the radio. Well, I think I'm past that. Today I think I sounded like a pro. I think my only slip up was when I called ground and forgot to add the ATIS in my transmission. Other than that, I read back everything well, and remembered what I read back. I did minimal instructor assisted takeoffs, and did rather well in the pattern and on landing. Granted I had more assistance on landing, but according to Dans syllabus, I should be landing fully unassisted in a couple lessons. In fact, after my next lesson, all we do is solo prep. Which will probably landing after landing after landing, which.... I'm okay with! :)

As for the things that I let go... Basics. For some reason this lesson I couldn't maintain my heading, mostly because I was too busy chasing my altimeter. I don't know if this is because I'm trying to be a perfectionist or what. I do know one thing, and that is that I need to keep my head outside the airplane. Again I kept trying to chase down my altimeter so I was focusing on it instead of looking outside. Next time I will just keep my head outside and see what happens.

Next week we are working on ground reference maneuvers. Dan said these are fun because we are close to the ground and we look outside and fly around stuff. That is the very basic description, but basically the idea is to fly around a point, and make sure that I stay the same distance away from it. This sounds a lot easier than it is because the airplane is effected by the air mass that it is in. If the wind is blowing at all, you need to turn (crab) the airplane into the wind so you don't stray from your course.

So today was fun, but it became a little more stressful than I would have liked. I got 2 landing under my belt, and another 1.3 hours in my book. I have to look but I think that puts me at 11 hours even. 1.3 in the plane is getting up there in price for me.. 125$ but.... that is still less than one hour at Angel air! And of course... if you are still reading.. click the adds. I think I'm almost to 30$ right now and google won't pay me until it reaches 100$. I will pay you back with more detailed write ups of my adventures in the sky. I enjoy writing this, and I hope you enjoy reading it. And please, if you are reading this and have had some similar experiences or whatever, please leave a comment! Thanks everyone!

~Joe

This flight: 1.3 hrs

Total time: 11 hrs

$250 Fajita

So Tuesday was my first flight to an actual destination. A good friend of mine, Steve, his wife, Noel my wife Brittany, and I, all flew to Sedona for the day. The night before I was freaking out about the weather because we all really wanted to go, and some weather was rolling in. Luckily it all went well. We flew out of Deer Valley Airport in North Phoenix. Steve is working on his Commercial rating there with Westwind. A few more flights and a checkride and he will have it. I wish he had his CFI because then I could have made this flight and logged the time, but oh well.

So we show up at the airport and rent some headsets for the girls, and head out to the awaiting Arrow. The plane is beautiful and we can only put 20 gallons of fuel in because of the four of us in the plane. That was more than enough to get us there and back with time to spare. As soon as I stepped onto the ramp I was soaked. I sweat like a pig and the 95+ degrees just totally jacked me up. Steve preflighted the plane explaining everything that he was doing to my wife because she was scared. She doesn't like to fly in big planes, let alone tiny planes like this. Once the preflight was done we all got situated in the plane and started her up. Finally the giant fan was on and I could cool down a little bit. Brittany kind of freaked out when I told her we wouldn't shut the door until takeoff, but she quickly understood why. The taxi was great, but it was so busy there. Steve said that Deer Valley is the busiest general aviation airport in the country, and I believe it. There are 3 pilot factories on the airport and we quickly had 6 planes lined up behind us waiting for departure. After the run-up we waited about 15 min to takeoff because of all the traffic. Finally it was our turn. We lined up on the runway and away we went. It took a while to get off the ground due to the fact we had a lot of weight on board. We were well within limits but it still took a few extra feet of runway. Brittany was already starting to look sick so Steve kept everything as smooth as he could. Once we climbed up it got a little cooler and more comftorable. The view was amazing. As we got closer to Sedona you could see the terrain changing to the red rocks. It was amazing! When we got close and descended to pattern altitude we could see the runway. We entered the left downwind pattern on the 45 for runway 21. It was really funny because every time Steve called to make a position report, he would say "Sedona Tower, Arrow... turning base". I made fun of him pretty bad, but it's just because he is used to flying out of a towered airport. The runway is on the edge of a cliff. If you took a step off the end of the runway you would go tumbling. It was a little intimidating for me, but Steve is a pro and put us down very gently. We taxi'd to the parking spot and were out of the plane in time to see a Waco take off. I really want to fly in one of those. I don't have the money to do it right now through a commercial place, but if anybody is reading this and owns one... Hook me up!

Once the plane was secured we went in and rented a car. We drove around Sedona and grabbed a bite to eat at a Mexican restaurant. I had fajitas, hence the title of this entry. I also had a great Margarita! Total we probably spent a couple hours on the ground in Sedona. It was fun, but I was along more for the ride than the actual destination, even though it was nice to have a destination. By this time some weather was rolling in and we had a couple rain drops. I think Steve got a little nervous about beating the weather so we headed back to the airport and got situated. This time Brit was happy to be flying and enjoyed it a lot more than the trip to Sedona. It could be due to the fact that the temperature felt like it dropped about 20 degrees.

We taxi'd to runway 21 which had a direct crosswind, but again, Steve handled it like a pro and got us up quick. On the way back we climbed pretty quick, but even at 8,000 MSL we were only about 4,000 off the ground. Was a great view. Back down at Deer Valley, we got parked and shut down, and went inside to pay. The trip was exactly 2.0, and that is pretty bad because we spent a lot of time on the ground and had to pay for it.

After that trip, I think I’ve found a place I would like to visit again. Even if I just fly there and fly back, the view is worth it. Maybe I’ll go there for a solo cross country when I get there in my training! Nothing like a 250$ fajita!

Sedona

I have a couple of things to write about but don't quite have the time to get them down in detail. I'm flying up to Sedona with my friend Steve, his wife and my wife tomorrow, so I will be back to give details about that! I also went flying with another friend Joel, that I met on AOPA forums. Tomorrow will be a busy blogging day so be sure to tune in for that! I hope the weather rolls out of here in time for the flight tomorrow.

~Joe

Slow Flight, Stalls, Emergency!

Aircraft: C172N

Weather: Perfect, light breeze, nice and cool!

What a beautiful morning to go flying! Showed up at 0630 and Dan was right behind me. We walked over to the terminal to go over what we did last week and to prep for the flight we were about to undertake. We talked about stalls and angle of attack, and how to set up for each of the 3 maneuvers we would do today.

The airplane had little fuel in it, so we had to call the fuel truck to give us some gas. While they topped of the tanks, I pre-flighted the aircraft. Did my walk around to make sure nothing was loose, checked the tanks to make sure they did in fact put fuel, and the correct fuel in the tanks, (they did) and we were good to go. (there is more to the pre-flight, but for the purpose of this writing I won't bore you with the details.)

Once we pulled the plane out of parking I started her up, tuned the radio and picked up the ATIS. (for those of you who are non fliers reading, that is the Automated Terminal Information Service, which is recorded once an hour by the controllers to give information like wind direction and speed, altimeter setting, and general information like which runways are in use.) After writing down the information I needed I pulled up to the tower to make my initial call to ground. I've been practicing all week so it went pretty smooth. "Chandler Ground, Cessna 4653G at base of the tower, taxi for departure to the South, information Yankee." Ground cleared me to 4L via Alpha and Delta. I read back the instructions and started the taxi. I've gotten pretty good at taxiing in my last couple flights so that was a non-issue. Then Dan looks at me and says, "hey Joe I didn't catch that. What runway were we going to?" I froze and said, I have NO IDEA! Great, so I think I'm good, all confident in myself, read the instruction back to ATC, and I still have no idea what I'm doing. Oh well, no big deal, Dan just called again and asked.

Finally we got to the end of the runway and did our run-up. We do this because we need to check the engine and instruments on the ground before we go in the air. Parking break set, full throttle, check the mags, L, R, Both, make sure engine instruments are in the green, Oil Pressure, Oil Temp, Suction good, Ammeter not showing discharge, Throttle Idle, Throttle just over 1000 RPM. I think that's it, that is from memory, so if I missed something oh well, we use a checklist for that anyway. Someone else is doing his run-up so Dan tells me to hurry up so we can get in front of him (which we did! :) ) I took off (Dan was on the controls too, but lets just say I did) kept runway heading and departed w/ a downwind departure. Above 2500, we turned over the aiport to the left and headed to the practice area.

On the way to the practice area we did some IR - Instrument Reference. Dan gave me some foggles (the foggles block all vision outside so all you can see is the instrument panel) and I put them on. This was pretty cool, because it looked just like my flight simulator. I was actually really good with this practice. I could hold pretty much anything he threw at me and we were done with that after just .3. Pretty fun stuff.

Slow flight was the next maneuver we did once in the practice area. The point of flying slow, is to learn how the aircraft handles when you are in the landing configuration (slow flying w/ full flaps) coming down to land. The maneuver goes like this - Power 1800 RPM, maintain heading, and altitude. When you are in slow flight, pitch controls airspeed and throttle controls altitude. So, back to the maneuver - 1800RPM flaps one notch at 110KIAS. Pitch up to slow down, and put another notch of flaps in when inside the white arc. Keep putting in flaps until they are all in and pitch the nose up to slow the aircraft until the stall horn starts going off. Put in power to maintain altitude and ride the stall horn just before the airplane stalls. The airspeed seemed to hang right around 40 KIAS. I think I did pretty good keeping everything lined up correctly, but then we did some turns. For this maneuver you need a lot of right rudder, and Dan had to keep telling me to push it in. Turns were pretty hard for me to do and I'm not sure why. The controls in slow flight are very sloppy, so it seemed like when I turned it was in short bursts of heading change. I don't know if that makes sense to you, but that's the best way I can describe it. Dan said I would be able to get it down after trying it a couple times. Recovery from slow flight is pretty easy, just pitch the nose down lose the flaps one notch at a time, make sure you're above 60KIAS before yout take out the last notch of flaps. After all of that, you should be at the same heading and altitude you were assigned.

Next we have power on/off stalls, otherwise known as approach or departure stall. Obviously the power off would be approach, because that is when you would be in that configuration, and the power on would be the departure because that is when you would be at full power pitching up. These are pretty east to get into. For power off here is the procedure- Power 1800 RPM slow down and get full flaps down one notch at a time. Once flaps are out, start a 500fpm descent. After 200ft descent, throttle idle and pitch to maintain altitude. Once you are at a high enough angle of attack the airplane will stall. Once stall breaks, nose down to horizon, full throttle climb back to your assigned altitude and get flaps out one at a time. For a power on stall- set power to 1800RPM, slow to 60 KIAS, flaps if specified, @60, full power and pitch the nose up 3 degrees per second while maintaining heading. Once the stall breaks, pitch nose just below horizon and let the aircraft accelerate, above 60knots remove flaps and resume normal cruise. I should tell you, that no maneuver should be attempted before making clearing turns and a flow check, which means looking at panel and making sure everything is right. Master is on, which would be pretty obvious if it wasn't, circuits in, carb heat on.

I don't remember which maneuver we had finished but Dan reached over and pulled my power idle. He told me that the engine had just quit and asked what we should do. I immediately said - find a place to land. Wrong answer! The first thing you do when the engine quits is establish the aircraft's best glide speed, which in our aircraft is 65 knots. Once you are on that slow glide, then you can start looking for a safe place to land. Dan pointed out a good road that had no power lines and that was good with me. We set ourselves up to land and got pretty low. Once we were satisfied that we could make the landing safely, our engine miraculously started working again and we recovered. By this time it was time to head back, which is always the least fun :(

We were pretty low because of the emergency we just simulated so we kept that altitude for the flight back which was perfect because we needed to be low to land anyway. It was really cool flying low because you could see the ground in much better detail and the mountains we flew by were really pretty. Now, I love flying, but as a passenger you get much more time to enjoy the view. Next week I'll bring my camera and have Dan snap some pictures for me. He might as well, I mean I'm paying him to just sit there and get an airplane ride. ( just kidding Dan if you are reading this. I'm sure it is difficult to keep me from killing both of us! )

Once we were near Chandler airspace I made the call for landing. "Chandler Tower, 5 miles SE landing with Zulu" Tower asked us to Ident (which means to press a button in the cockpit so our little blip flashes on their radar screen) and we were cleared for a right base approach to 4R. By this time I was starting to realize where we actually were. I really don't know how pilots manage all this crap in their head. We have to be practically over top of the airport before I realize we are there. I mean I'm guessing it will come to me eventually but jeeez. We put the plane down and taxied off the runway on November. How I remember details like that I don't know, especially when I can't remember what runway we were assigned when I even repeated it back. Anyway, we had to taxi off and hold short of 22R for departing aircraft. It seemed like a long time, cuz Dan and I were both getting pretty antsy watching the Hobbs meter tick by just sitting there on the taxiway. I am charged for every minute the engine is running, whether we are flying or not. Finally tower let us cross the runway and head back to the parking, but the Hobbs had already ticked over for another .1 so we just relaxed and went slow, considering I had already paid for it. (as a side note, I just went to find out online why the Hobbs meter is called the Hobbs meter, but there was nothing. If anybody knows, I would be interesting in knowing.)

After securing the airplane we walked into the school and talked about what we did and what we are doing next time. STEEP TURNS! Woot! I've watched a couple videos on them and they look fun. Should be a good time! Dan signed my logbook and we were good to go.

Well I think that's all I've got. Remember, if you are still reading - CLICK THE ADDS and pay for my flying! I've already made about 11 bucks, but google wont send me a check until I reach 100$. So clicky away! Time to go read about steep turns and work on my chair flying. Thanks for reading!

Today's Flight: 1.2 hrs

Total Time: 9.7 hrs

Total Cost: $1172.87

Total cost does not include the 6.5 hours I had from back in 2003. This is just the cost since I started flying this year, which so far is 3 flights and all the books I bought. Oh... and my headset.

Clicky Clicky!

Night Before

Sitting at the computer mentally prepping myself for tomorrows flight. I think I have everything together. I wrote out all the radio transactios that will take place, that way I will know what to say beforehand. I have been watching a video blog online on EAA's website. Here is the link. http://www.eaa.org/apps/blog/learntofly/17/Default.aspx It is so much fun to watch. This guy is trying to earn his sport pilot rating which is a little bit different than the private that I am going for. The private allows for a little more freadom and I think with the sport rating you are restricted by milage you can fly from your home airport, but it still seems really cool! Anyway, I have to get up early and go fly, so watch the videos. They are fun!

101 Degrees

Aircraft: C172N

Weather: Clear 101 Degrees Wind Minimal

Let me tell you, I picked the wrong season to start flying in! Today was 101 degrees in beautiful Arizona. Lets just say, I need to start drinking more water.

I guess this would be a good time to explain the way this flight school works. This small flight

school called Wings 270 (wings270.com) is owned and operated by a guy named Mike. He comes in every morning that someone is going to be flying and unlocks the door so we can get the key to the airplane. If Mike isn't available, the door doesn't get opened. I was a little bit early this morning so no big deal. After parking my truck I walked up to the building and it was locked. My flight wasn't scheduled until 1100 so that was no big deal. Dan (new flight instructor) wanted me to show up at 1030 so we could go over the pre-flight together. I put my bag in the airplane before they showed up and was able to do so, because the security on this high tech 1980 Cessna 172N is so great. The door can be opened with any key. In fact, if your fingernail was long enough you could turn the lock to pop open the door. Mike and Dan both arrived at the same time and I went in to prep for the flight with Dan.

Dan uses the Jeppesen syllabus for training which is fine with me. It has me soloing around flight 8 which is great. Seems a little more high speed than the Cessna kit that I got. Todays flight was

basically a review of the first 3 lessons from his syllabus and getting some of lesson 4 demoed to me. The first 3 lessons are all about the 4 fundamentals of flight, climbs, turns, descents, and straight and level flight. I must have done really good with all of this because we moved through it pretty quickly and moved on the the next task. Dan demoed slow flight and power off/on stalls. Those will be concentrated on next flight which will hopefully be on Friday if all goes well. We used the same practice area as I did last time with my previous flight instructor. I recognized the same small mountain that we were flying over which was cool. This time I got pretty turned around and really had no idea how to get back to the airport. Of course Dan knew and pointed me in the right direction when it was time. I don't think I actually knew where we were going

until we were on base leg of the pattern, which is pretty bad because ATC had us enter the pattern on the base leg. Listening to the radio we had at least 2 other aircraft behind us trying to land, so Dan expedited our trip to the ground. The tower kept calling our position out to the other planes as if to almost rush us onto the ground. He told us to do a short final to the runway, which Dan did. He said that we didn't have to if we didn't want to, because he is the PIC (pilot in command) and we have the final authority when it comes to how we fly the airplane. He said since our time is up anyway, we might as well just put it down and get back. Dan greased the landing and I followed along with my hands and feet on the controls. I can't wait to get into landings!!!! It shouldn't be too long.

Dan handled all the radio work from when we left to when we got on the ground again. After we exited the runway he turned it over to me to make the call to ground. Talk about being scared. Why is that, I don't mind flying all over the place in an aluminum machine barely bigger than my truck, but when it comes to talking on the radio I FREEZE! Dan told me what to say and that is not what came out. I think I managed to squeeze out something like this "Chandler ground Cessna 4653 g g golf, clear of the active, request um...... ..... .... Taxi to..... Wings 270? 53Golf" You could almost hear the controler laughing, but I'm sure he gets it all day because there is a lot

of training at Chandler. I didn't even have to say "student pilot" at the end, because I made it very clear that I was a student pilot. Oh well, after he spit out my instructions, I had a little bit of confidence and read back "Taxi to wings 270 Cessna 4653 Golf". What really kills me is that I KNOW what to say. I've even practiced at home. I made little cards w/ the things I'm going to say at different stages of flight. But when you finally get in the airplane and press that button, it is different. I'm sure I'll be ok next time, but we will see. I'll let you know how that turns out.

Now when I get hot, I sweat. I don't think I am normal! I sweat more than anybody I know. When I got out of that plane I was soaked from head to toe with sweat. I feel bad for Dan because he has to sit next to me in such tight quarters, but he seems to be a sweater too, so that is good. LOL. Like I said, summer in AZ, not the best time to start flight training. At least when I

get done, I will be able to take Brittany up and it wont be 100 degrees outside. She will throw up without the heat, so I think Brittany will stay on the ground until the weather is nice and PERFECT.

That's all for this installment of "Joe Has the Greatest Life Ever Because He is Finally Flying" and be sure to tune in next time when I don't crap my pants when I have to say a couple things

on the radio. Thanks for reading! I've included a couple pictures of the new plane I'm flying. For the cockpit picture, subtract the GPS system because we didn't use it for my flight, and probably won't.

Oh BTW, If you are still reading this, please click on an add or two on the right, I make money for every click, and It would really help my flying fund. If you see something you like, click away my friends. Thanks!

This Flight: .9

Total Time: 8.5 hours

Too Good to Be True

It was too good to be true. I was flying, learning more than I could ever imagine about aviation and not getting charged a whole lot for ground instruction. Sounds great right... Wrong. I consider myself a very integrity conscience person. So when my instructor wanted me to pay him cash instead of paying the flight school for a ground lesson that sent up a red flag. My instructor wanted me to pay him $25 cash instead of paying the flight school $55. Sounds nice right? Wrong again! Turns out, flight instructors only get paid about $15 of the $55 that I pay them. That's why Alex wanted $25 from me. He was making out. Also, he told me that I would need about 75 hours of ground instruction from him. NOT!!!! I talked with my friends on the AOPA forums and they told me that I should only need .1 here and .2 there of ground instruction after each flight. Alex wanted to charge me 75 hours x $25 = $1875 bucks for instruction that I didn't need. What did I do you ask... I canceled my future flights with Alex and went shopping for a new CFI.

I decided to check out Craigslist. I figured everything can be sold on Craigslist. Sure enough I found a guy in my area that is a free lance instructor. No fancy flight school, just him and a plane. I mean that's what it's all about right. Why pay more than you need to for the exact same instruction. My costs are going down dramatically from here on out. I'm going from 135$/hr at the flight school to $89/hr w/ him for the plane. Then instruction is $45/hr. But, I will not be needing 75 hours worth of ground time. I checked his references and tomorrow we have a meeting at Chandler Municiple. I'm pretty excited to meet him. He is a 10,000 hour former airline pilot, and has over 2,000 hours dual instruction given. I think this guy is going to be great. We exchanged email addresses and have been chatting ocasionally. Not sure if I will be flying tomorrow or not but I will report back here for sure. As for now... hitting the books!

Saturday

Saturday, a day to relax. Not for me. I woke up this morning and looked at the bank and crunched some numbers to see if I could fly again. Yay... It is possible!!! Called my instructor to set something up, but he is busy today. Oh well. We set up a ground school session for monday before I go to work. 0830 to 1030. Should be a good time. For now, time to hit the books again. Still lots to learn!

Straight and Level

Aircraft: C172 N199SP

WOOT! That was great!!!! I love flying, and it turns out, I'm not half bad. I made all the common mistakes for a first flight, but that was to be expected.

Took off from Stellar, headed south to the practice area. Alex handled all the radio work, and I concentrated on keeping my eyes outside the airplane and keeping the wings level. Once we passed Memorial Airport, we were in the SW practice area. It's so great because I have a sectional and I can show you exactly where we were the whole time.

The main mission for today was the four fundamentals of flight. (climbs, descents, turns, and straight and level flight) I didn't realize how well the airplane flies by itself. Once you set the trim (which is another thing that I am amazed with, it works so well w/ only slight movement) the airplane remains at that pitch and if you maintain a certain pitch, the airspeed will remain the same as well. We practiced increasing the speed at cruise. Just keep the nose down as you increase throttle and your airspeed will go up. We practiced turns, 45deg 90deg 180deg and my favorite 360deg. By the time we got to the full 360deg turn I was pretty much on point. I chose Memorial Airport as my reference point for the full turns and I nailed every single on of them. Just have to keep the cowling on the horizon and you only have to look at the instruments to verify what you are seeing outside. You can fly the airplane without looking at the instruments.

Alex stressed the importance of collsion avoidance, and I got used to thinking outloud, by verbally saying, "checking traffic left, checking traffic right" before executing a turn. We only saw one other aircraft in the practice area, and it was at our same altitude. I saw it off our right wing, heading away from before I executed a turn.

Coming back from the training area was great too. We had to stay clear of Chandler airspace and Alex showed me where that line was. There is a row of houses that clearly shows where not to go. On our way back I used everything I had learned about turns and descents, and used them to get us back to Stellar. For pattern entry we just needed to be left of the Chandler mall and right of the runway. Start base when we get to Ray rd, and final when abeem the runway. Alex did a great job putting the airplane down on the runway, and for this time, I followed along w/ the movements of the yoke and throttle. I taxied back to the parking spot and we shut down and completed the checklist.

Things to work on:

• Don't be afraid of the airplane, you don't have to be so careful with it. He kept telling me to be more aggresive with the controls and throttle.
• Don't overcorrect on taxi, keep right foot on the yellow line.
• During turns, keep the cowling on the horrizon and the plane will stay at the same altitude.

Next flight:

• Continue working on 4 fundamentals.
• Slow flight
• Steep turns

This flight: 1.1 hrs

Total time: 7.6 hrs

First Flight Tommorow

So It has been about a week and tomorrow is my first flight. I doubt I will get much sleep tonight just thinking about it, but it doesn't help that I have to work from 0500 to 0900 before my 1000 flight lesson. Oh well, after that I can come home and relax. Tonight I will review everything for tomorrows flight. I'm pretty sure tomorrow will be just absolute basics. Pre-flight, taxi practice, takeoff, 4 fundamentals of flight (climbs, descents, turns, and straight and level flight). Hopefully we can do some touch and go's if we have time. I am pretty sure I will be able to master the 4 fundamentals within a couple flights. I may be cocky but I think I can do it. I just have to remember right rudder in a climb and left rudder in a descent. In a turn it is rudder in the direction of the turn. Seems simple from the ground and in my head, I'll find out tomorow if it is that easy. I'm pretty nervous about talking on the radio, it is something I have never done, but from what I've read (and I've read a lot) most pilots are a little aprehensive about it the first few times, then it becomes natural. I don't think my instructor will throw that on me the first flight, but I don't know for sure. Aight, time to go review for tomorrow. I will back to update you about tomorrows flight. I'm sure you can't wait to see how it went!! lol..

~Joe

Day One - Sunday 26 April 2009

Today was my first official ground school lesson. I have had some previous flying time (6.5 hours) but for the purpose of this blog I am going to talk like I have had zero time.

I called the flight school early in the morning after getting no sleep the night before. I told them that I was interested in meeting with an instructor and getting started flying. When I got to the airport at about 12pm my instructor, Alex, was already waiting. We shook hands, grabbed my new King School training kit and headed for a conferance room. Here we talked about our lives and what brought us to flying. My instructor is a great guy, originally for Yugoslavia he flew for their Air Force and has only been in the US for 20 years. He has instructed here in Arizona before, but it was for a Part 141 pilot mill in Mesa. After that he went to Hawaii and flew Cessna Caravans for a small airline. I told him about my small previous flying experience and he told me that it would help me out a little bit since I knew some of the basics of flight.

After the discussion about our past and what brought us to this point we went to check out the airplane we would be flying. The beautiful C172 SP. Alex and I mutually agreed that we did not want to train in the G1000 cockpit. I wanted to learn the basics and then when I'm good enough I can switch to the glass. We walked to the dispatch counter to sign out an airplane. At this time Alex went through the checkout process and the book that is issued with each plane. We had a long conversation about the MEL (which for some reason the M is escaping my memory. I want to say it stands for Minimum Equipment List, but I will check w/ him again on Friday.) and why it is important to the safe and legal opperation of the airplane. We signed the paperwork and walked out to the parking spot of the airplane.

Once we were to the airplane we unlocked the doors and talked about every button, switch, guage, screen, placard, and book in the plane. I am very comftorable with all of that after our long conversation. We talked about the necessary documents that are needed in the plane in order to safely and legaly fly. After that we stepped out of the plane to talk about the preflight. We went through a very detailed preflight of the aircraft and deemed it worthy of flight for the day. Unfortuantly for me, I would not be flying it today.

After the preflight we went inside set up our next lesson for Friday, 1 May 2009. 10am to 1pm. I cannot wait. This time we are actually going to be flying!

The reason I did not fly today is because of my budget. I explained to Alex that my budget is very low, and I would only be able to fly once a week. We discussed the disadvantages to this, but I think I will be able to make up the time not flying, with a lot of home study. The book hasnt left my hand yet! The great thing about this day is that it didnt cost me much. I paid for the books and the pilot kit, but Alex is so great, and understands my budget situation so much that he didnt charge me anything for the 3 hours of ground school that we just had. He also said that in the future he can give me discounts when he can, and only charge me for 1 hour when we had 2. I think I found the perfect instructor and I cannot wait to go flying with him!

Thanks for reading! I will be back on Friday to quickly document everything that goes on in flight and on the ground. If I have any questions I will be looking to my friends on the AOPA forums and I will hope not to get flamed down for asking stupid questions. :)

Thanks again for reading... Time for me to hit the books, I have so much to learn!!!!

~Joe

Today's flight: 0hrs

Total flight time: 6.5hrs

Finally Flying

Ok, so I finally got some money together and I'm going to set out on this mission to become a pilot. I am going to fly out of Stellar Air Park (P19) and training with Angel Flight Service. I have been there a couple of times to check them out and I am pretty excited to begin. I will update this blog with my experiences each time I fly, mostly for myself to look back on, but I hope I can make it enjoyable to someone else who has dreamed to fly as long as I have. Thanks for reading, I am headed to the airport for my first flight now. Talk to you later!

~Joe