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!!!!