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!!!!