Aviate

What is the point of being a pilot if you are not going to get out there and fly? Flying is a cool and very enjoyable when done safely and within your personal limits. There are a lot of cool places to visit that are either only accessible by plane or a more interesting visit from flying. Back in September my instructor to me (in his family's plane) to a small grass strip 30 miles east of our home field of Augusta (3AU). The name of the unincorporated town is Beaumont, I would say a stop here is just as necessary as any of the cool aviation related stuff in the Air Capital. The history of the strip goes back 130 years when most of the towns visitors were ranchers. Now the towns hotel and cafe (restored in 2001) are on the national list of historic places as well as the railroad water town across the street. The air field (07S) is a well maintained grass strip with a road/taxiway through a grove of trees. Shutdown the plane on one of the grass parking areas and head on into the inviting building with a twin Beech next to it. It is a true "$100 hamburger" (Which was very good and well priced, about $10 with a pop if I remember right) destination and it is well worth it. The restaurant is decorated with various memorbilia and history but don't forget to sign the guest "log book" before leaving. The have various fly-in and bike-in (for the motorcycle lovers out there) weekends but we were the only one's there and it was still just as interesting. Check out the pictures I took of our visit...(click on the pictures to view the whole picture) And the website at I could have easily driven there but would it have been as interesting or fun? I doubt it. As someone who likes to eat, travel and fly trips like the one to Beaumont are no brainers. Wither it be to a airport restaurants, fly-in breakfast, or just a day trip for pleasure get out there and aviate. The flying plans for the next couple of months include trips to (go figure!) airport restaurants at Ponca City, Oklahoma (KPNC)and Hutchinson, Kansas (KHUT), hopefully a trip back to Iowa and my family is coming to visit in March so I look forward to taking them up then. Thanks for your comments, sentiments and for reading. Let me know if there is anything you want to know more about or a topic you want me to write on!

Dream Come True!

Well I have waited a long time and worked hard for this...I am now officially a certified Private Pilot! On Friday February 13th I passed the oral portion of my practical test, sadly the weather did not cooperate and we had to wait a day to do the flight portion. Even though it was far from my best flying I did good enough to pass and now join my grandpa, dad, aunt and uncle as pilots. I can't wait to share my love for aviation and flying with my family and friends. Goals I have long term are to give back and do flights such as Young Eagles, Pilots and Paws, and Angel Flights. If you are interested or have kids that are I encourage you to just go hang out at your local airport, find a fly-in or a Young Eagles and Eagle Flights (http://www.youngeagles.org). This afternoon (Sunday the 15th) I took my first passenger up when my wife joined me for a short flight. Sadly she get's motion sickness so we were not up all that long before heading back before it got too bad. I have always told her I will never do anything she is not comfortable with and will do everything in power to make everything as comfortable for her (and any passenger really) as possible. We did have a bit of a cross wind so the one big thing I did learn was to inform my passengers of anything that may seem different than the generally viewed procedure. The bright side of it I think it was one of my best cross wind take offs and landings. We are looking forward to flying around the area as well as flying back to Iowa when we are able. Since my aunt and uncle will be selling the plane I have been using I will probably get checked out in Open Airplane (OpenAirplane.com) and may even join an area flying club. I will continue to update this blog with our experiences flying and other stuff. Check back in a week for a post on a trip to a grass airfield that my instructor and I went to back in September. Also if you are a pilot and use android devices (like me) in the cockpit check out flywithandroid.com it is a new website that a guy in my home town recently started.

Almost done...

It has been nearly two months since I last updated this. In October the plane was out of commission for a few weeks while it had Garmin 430 installed. Once it got back I have been busy studying and finishing up the last few requirements that I had to fulfill. This mostly consisted of refining my skills, and finishing the last couple hours of night flight, cross country and simulated instrument time. I have also been busy studying to make sure I know all of the information that I need to for the practical. Today I did my last prep for my private pilot practical check ride that I will do this Friday afternoon. If all goes well in six days I will hold a Private Pilot Certificate! If you remember back in in September I passed my written test. The other two "tests" are an oral exam and a check ride with an FAA pilot examiner. The oral part consists of him asking me questions about rules, laws, limitations, what is required of me as a private pilot as well as showing him flight plan that he has told me to make. For the flight portion I will have to do steep turns (360 degree turns at 45 degrees of bank while not losing or gaining more than 100 feet of altitude), both power on and power off stalls, slow flight (nose high attitude while holding the plane on the edge of a stall to prove you can maneuver and recover from that condition of flight), turns around a point (360 degree turn around a fixed point keeping equidistant from the center while adjusting for the wind), rectangular pattern (flying a rectangle or square pattern around a field keeping the same distance from the square or rectangle...used to prove you can fly a traffic pattern at an airport and adjust for the wind so you don't get blown all over). I will also have to do normal, soft field (used for operating on grass airfields) and over a 50 foot obstacle (used for landing and taking off over a 50 foot obstacle at the end of the runway). Today I did great with everything except the landings for a couple reasons. A little rusty, an at least 10 knot straight cross wind and it was only 10 degrees fahrenheit (colder air is more dense and increase the performance of planes...in this case it was hard to get it to slow down and descend). Everything I did today would have passed for the conditions but the landings need to be better on the check ride so I am hoping to get up at least once between now and then just to get a couple more in. I don't have much else to say but I do have a couple of blog topics in mind that I will write in the coming weeks so check back for those as well as to find out how I did. I just realized that for some reason this is not showing the paragraphs I have so until I figure that out I apologize for the run-ons. Oh and GO CYCLONES BEAT IOWA!!!!

Up and Down...

A couple of weeks ago I completed one of the biggest (if not the biggest) part of flight training other than actually completing and passing...the solo long cross country. This entails obviously flying solo but also a full flight plan. I did mine from my home airport of Augusta (3AU) to Emporia (KEMP) down to Independence KS (KIDP) and back to 3AU. The total course was just shy of 200 miles and allowed me to use dead reckoning (using your flight planning, previously known positions, and ground clues to figure out where you are) as well as the Emporia VOR (EMP) going to and from Emporia. A VOR a VHF omni directional range which allows you to tune a navigation radio to that VOR's frequency and find your radial to or from that VOR. I also had the Wichita VOR as reference going back to 3AU from KIDP but used mostly dead reckoning and GPS on this leg since the VOR it is not really a good line from KIDP to 3AU and the VOR (however I could have flown to a point where I would have intercepted a radial from the VOR that would take me to 3AU). Overall the flight went quite well, in fact the flight planning was the hardest part. The second hardest part was waiting for the weather to improve. The plan was to meet with my instructor at 8AM on a Sunday morning and hopefully be "wheels up" by 9:30. We were doing great until good until we got to the whole flying part. Due to some rain the day before and cooler temperatures there was some fog and low ceilings at KIDP that I had to wait for. Just before 10AM it finally started to improve so he let me go and to check it on my way and wait and KEMP if it was not good enough. Sadly I had to do this as well and waited another 20-30 minutes there. When the weather was finally good enough I launched out of KEMP for the last two legs which went very smoothly except for a Southwest Airlines crew that got confused and took one of my hand off's from Kansas City Center, after that got straightened out it was smooth sailing. It felt great to finally be done with a big part of learning to fly. The down part of this post is with mixed feelings. I am very excited and can't wait to finish my license and use it, however my aunt and uncle who own the plan decided to put a Garmin 430 (GPS and communication system) in it. As a member of my generation any "new" technology is cool and I can't wait to use that as well. Hopefully later this week it will get back and I will get back in the air. By my count I have one hour of night flight, two hours of simulated IFR and three hours of prep for the practical and oral test. I have continued to study for that part, check back in a couple of weeks for hopefully a very exciting post!

Checklists

When it comes to knowing and making sure everything is how it should be checklists are very important. Especially in aviation, while extremely safe if something is out of place or not how it should be you could be in for a very bad day. This is why having a following checklists and procedures is very important to hopefully catch any abnormalities and to make sure everything is done the right way. Getting your pilots license can also seem like another checklist, in a way it is. There are many requirements that go into getting your license and proving that you are a capable pilot. Recently I have checked off several of those items. This past Friday I passed the private pilot written exam. Although this is just one of many requirements it was a huge relief to have completed. The test is a 60 question multiple choice test that you have 2.5 hours to complete. You need to have at least 70% to pass (I had above 80) oh and it costs $150 (one big reason I was happy to have passed on my first try). I took the test at Stearmen Field (Identifier 1k1) which is a small airpark just to the north west of Wichita and only about 10 minutes from our house. Stearmen has a some really interesting planes (and houses) and a great restaurant on the field. One of the great things about Wichita is that you never know what you are going to get see. As I was leaving Stearmen a B-24 made a low pass down the runway. Later in the day on Friday I solo'd up to Hutchinson, Kansas (KHUT) which is a class D airspace about 45 north west of my home airport on the east side of Wichita. The main purpose of that flight was to take care off the requirement of having three solo landings at a towered airport. Just to be sure I did five. Several of which were some of the best landings I have ever done. The main thing that I have been needing to work on is letting the plane come down more before flaring and having more airspeed. On my way back to Augusta I was reminded of just how busy the airspace around Wichita can be. The ceiling of the Wichita class C airspace is 5,300 feet and I was cruising at 5,500 . Technically I would have been fine to fly right along above it but that would have made for an interesting decent into Augusta just outside of the airspace and well that is just a little too close to a congested airspace with no radio communication with them for my comfort. Every time I went to key the mic and call Wichita Approach someone else started talking. So to avoid the airspace I decided to divert around the north side of Wichita. I was finally able to get in contact with the controller which allowed me to proceed through the airspace. Since they were departing out of Wichita Mid-Continent to the north he also had me decent to 3,500 to stay out of the way of the jets departing and going over me. That controller eventually handed me off to an equally busy controller who after finally responded and just cleared me direct to Augusta and terminated my radar service. Sunday morning I got up early and enjoyed flying with my instructor on a perfect morning and did some "hood time" simulating using only the instruments for navigation and operation and not looking outside. After flying around for awhile east and north east of Wichita we headed direct to the Wichita VOR on the west side of town. From there we "shot" an ILS approach into Mid-Continent. Although it was difficult at first I thought that I was staring to get the hang of everything the more I did. I still have two more hours of the three required to complete but hopefully at least another hour if not all of it will get done this coming weekend. This coming week and weekend will be full of more items getting checked off. If the weather cooperates I plan to do some night flight with my instructor Friday night (3 hours required) and then Saturday I hope to do my solo cross country. Still need to figure all of that out. Depending on my instructors availability I hope to get pretty much done if not done next weekend. We will see. Sometime this week I will update about a trip to a small grass trip my instructor and I went to for a burger last weekend...my main point of that. Get out and fly there are countless cool places you can visit while flying that are just a lot cooler when you fly there then drive.

Step By Step

The last two weeks have kept me busy flying and studying. While flying I have been focusing on soft field operations, steep turns and ground reference maneuvers. Studying for my written exam has been going fairly well and I hope to take that in two weeks. Planning cross country flights to Ponca City, Oklahoma (PNC) and Newton, Kansas (EWK) has greatly helped in bring everything together. The toughest part of the practice tests is the chart questions, the computer screen makes it hard to draw lines and what not. Thankfully on the actual test I will get paper copies. This past Saturday my instructor and I flew to PNC and EWK. Before the flight we went over the flight plans that I had made. The flight plan consists of several things. There are obvious aspects such as your flight route but even that is not as simple as just pointing the plane in the general direction of your destination and going. You have to account for wind direction and speed, magnetic variation and magnetic deviation. Once you figure all of that you will be able to figure out you just need your distance and speed to figure out the time and fuel you will need. Fuel needed and fuel burned is also highly necessary aspect. For flights under visual flight rule (VFR) conditions you have to have a half hour of fuel on board when you land during the day and 45 minutes at night. Studying what potential obstacles you will have, airspaces you will go through and if and or when you have to talk to ATC are also highly advised. Doing this also gives you a good chance to look at your route and know what landmarks you can use on the ground to make sure you are on the right track and to find potential alternate airports. The flights went great and I handled all aspects of flying. I don't like to boast too much since I know I have a lot of learning to do (there is a great saying that a pilots license is just a license to learn) but I those flights gave me a lot of confidence that I can do this whole piloting thing. Most of the landings went good and I thought that my communications with ATC were very good. The real test will come later this week when I do those flights on my own. Next Saturday we are tentatively planning on flying to a couple of airports with control towers which is a requirement of getting the license. Look for an update after those, as always questions and comments are encouraged. Oh one last thing... GO CYCLONES!!! BEAT IOWA!!!

Living, Working, Flying

It has been a few weeks since I updated this and to tell you the truth I have not had much to update about. I have flown a few time with my instructor to a few airports (Newton (EWK), Jabarra (AAO), ElDorado (EQA), and Stearman (1K1) field). During this fight we have used ATC to get radar service (essentially just them telling us if there is any traffic to be aware of). I am slowly getting better at talking to ATC so that is a plus. I am also now checked off to go on solo flight between our home base of Augusta (3AU) and ElDorado. Last Monday we also worked on short and soft field takeoffs and landings. Soft field takeoffs are designed to get you off of the ground as quickly and smoothly as possible, from there you hold it in ground effect until you are at your normal climbing speed. Soft field landings are done with some power to help smooth landing and allow you to "feel" the runway for a good spot to put it down. Short field takeoff's are similar to soft field except you climb quickly to get over a certain size (say 50 foot high) obstacle near the end of the runway or if you just have a short runway, however these two usually go together. To do this you lift off as soon as possible and climb at your best angle until you clear the object before resume best rate of climb. Short field landings use full flaps just like soft field landings but you again are trying to get down as quickly as possible and you may have to clear an object. Once you clear the object you nose down and cut power. Since these procedures is done so low and slow proper execution is key since you will have little time and altitude to recover. I think doing this has also helped me improve my landings and landing where I am aiming instead of just floating until I get down. I was hoping to do a fair amount of flying this past weekend but well airplanes are mechanical and they break. On Friday I went out to fly and my aunt had just gotten down and the carburetor heat handle thing came completely out of the panel and then the vacuum pump went out. Thankfully it didn't take long to fix and I was able to fly for an hour this morning. This morning was truly the reason why you fly especially in the morning. It was 80 on the ground but a couple thousand feet up was right about 70 and smooth as can be. I worked on steep turns which I have not done in awhile and was a little rusty...certainly something to keep working on. Hopefully the wind will cooperate a few nights this week and I will be able to get up a few nights. College football also starts later this week and will be going strong next weekend...I cannot contain my exCYtment (see what I did there). Leave some comments and I will be sure to respond. GO CYCLONES!!! BEAT THE PANTHERS!!!