The new plan

So......I've decided that the new plan is to pay the rest of my way out of pocket according to my latest and most currect review of my situation. Although, this will drastically slow down the pace at which I train and accomplish each stage. As plans do often change in the midst of executing them, I have come to a crossroad in my life where a decision has to be made. I am in the process of picking up a second job helping my father at his sign shop on my days off from my regular job. One was or another I will get through it and still plan to eventually get my instructor certificates and teach some day in the future. As it has been said before....life is what happens when you're busy making other plans. I will still continue to update this as I can, on a much slower pace, I will still give you all the best ups and downs of my flght training that I can.

Night XC

On friday night, I completed my last night xc on my own for Stage 1 of my Commercial License, I still have the night xc with my instructor and my long xc to go. I flew out to White Plains, NY (HPN). It was a real nice and uneventful flight. The air was glassy smooth, not a bump at all. It took me just about an hour and a half to fly down to Westchester Airport where I stopped off for about and hour and took the crew car from Million Air - a BMW 535 - to a local restaurant, the cobblestone pub for that "$100 burger" for dinner, back to the airport, and flew back to Norwood, getting in just before midnight. All in all it was a really great flight, which put me back home in bed at 130AM.

Over the weekend I decided to re-evaluate my current financial situation as I am a little more than half way through. It's a good thing that I did, as I found myself to be in a little bit of a snag and will probably have to slow down my training for a little bit and push some things off to make it work right. So, now although my course is still to eventually complete everything, it looks like it will be taking quite a bit longer than was initially expected. But, I am not giving up. I'll be updating my report as soon as I figure out a few last details which will be my deciding factor. Until then.......

Totaling Stage 1 Time = more time needed

I am back from vacation and ready to fly again. It's been too long!!!! It's been nearly 2 weeks! I spent my night making a spreadsheet of all my time that I've accumulated in Stage 1 thus far of my commercial license so I can try and work out a game plan with Josh tomorrow morning after our flight to get the rest of the required time needed. Taking out the few things of solo requirement and night flight requirement I still have 10.8 hours of daytime cross country work to do. We're doing a flight tomorrow morning that will probably take close to 2 hours so that will take care of some of it. But, there's a few more flights to go still. I could always use what I have left toward my long commercial cross country flight, but we'll see what the plan is tomorrow after my flight with Josh. This weekend is the RI National Guard Air Show that I will be attending on Saturday. That will be an exciting treat!

Stage 1 Commercial Winding Down, Vacation Time!

Today I conducted yet another Commercial Cross Country flight with my instructor Josh. This time we flew out to Hartford/Brainard Airport in CT. We were going to go to Groton, but the surface observations were 100 feet overcast......no way in heck were we getting in there! But, we did get some nice actual time today. Of a 2.5 hour flight nearly 2 hours of it was actually in the clouds. Just the take offs and landings on both ends were in the clear. I only have 3 commercial cross country flights left in stage 1. I have one more to do with my instructor Josh at night. I have one more night cross country to do myself, and then my really long commercial cross country flight. I attempted to see if I could plan a flight up to Canada, but was told they don't want their aircraft leaving the country. Darn. That would have been a great flight to plan with customs and everything on both ends involved. I'll be there soon enough though I'm sure!

Next week I am on vacation all week with Caroline. We are heading out to California, LA/Hollywood/Santa Monica for a week and are staying a few days with her aunt and uncle while we are out there. I'm definitely planning on soaking up as much sun as I can while I'm there. So, in other words, it will be really quiet from me for the next 2 weeks until I take flight again being back from vacation........until then. Be well.

Instrument Rated

On Thursday June 4th I was up for my FAA Instrument Check Flight and Oral Exam. Since I knew I hadn't done the best on the FAA Written Test, but still passed - just not as well as I would have liked, I was a little worried that the oral exam might have been a little more involved than it was. But, much to my relief it was actually just the same amount of time the oral exam was supposed to be as usual. The oral exam portion itself lasted a little more than an hour and a half. We started off by Ray Collins, the Designated Examiner - the same examiner I had for my Private Pilot Check Flight - explaining how everything would go in terms of the oral quizzing, and if all went well we would then go out for the flight. Oh yes, I almost forgot to mention, that to add to the tension there was an FAA Examiner from the FSDO examining Ray as this was his annual check of being a Designated Examiner. We started off by examining the flight plan that he had me create for my Check Flight, which was a proposed IFR flight from Lebanon, NH to Nantucket. I had selected to use the Standard Instrument Departure listed for Lebanon, NH however, that departure procedure is only available for one runway. He recited off a made up weather report that would have me taking of a different runway making the use of that Departure invalid. Then I had to look up the Departure Procedure for Lebanon NH in my approach/departure plates. To which, it described my take off and departure procedures from the runway in use. He then asked me to explain why these procedures are used - as the procedures allow gauranteed obstacle clearance as well as guidance to the enroute structure of the flight in an area that does not have radar coverage. We moved onto the Enroute Structure where I selected a route from the Concord VOR to the Manchester VOR to the Boston VOR direct to Nantucket. Though my first look into the routing, they have what are called preferred IFR routes and TEC routes for different airports. They give a starting point and ending point and the route in between them which is the preferred route to follow - as you can imagine there are many many different ways to get from point A to point B - especially in the National Airspace System. In my research I didn't find any preferred routes, so I just selected my own route instead.....However, Ray then asked me if I had looked if there were any preferred routes from my destination of Nantucket to my origin on Lebanon, NH....low and behold - there was a preferred route from Nantucket to Lebanon. So we just reversed the routing and that is what I would use to file the flight plan routing. I never would have imagined to look if there were any routes from my destination back to my origin. I supposed this is why they have these oral exams to point out references like these to use in future planning.

Intermission........I know this is a lot of info.....haha

Then we moved onto the enroute structure where we talked about the altitude I then selected for the flight. I had selected 7000 feet as for starting up in Lebanon, the off route obstruction clearance altitudes (recomended) are 6100 and 6400 because of the mountainous terrain, and the Minimum Enroute Altitudes happen to be 6000 and the Obstruction Clearance Altitude happens to be 5300. So, in order to give myself a little buffer, I selected 7000 feet as a safe altitude for the enroute portion of the flight this on the other hand would give me more than sufficient altitude for power-off gliding distance once past the cape and over the Atlantic before reaching Nantucket. Lastly, we began to discuss the Arrival portion of getting into Nantucket. Here we briefed and discussed the different aspects of the approach into Nantucket as well as touching on Lost Communications, and what I would do if I were cleared to Nantucket and was scheduled in there at 135 local time but arrived 8 minutes early.....as I noted logically from lost comm procedures, I would fly a holding pattern over Nantucket and shoot the approach at my arrival time 8 minutes later. However, on the other hand, if I was later than my expected arrival, I would just continue to fly straight in and shoot the approach. Then we discussed the missed approach procedures and alternate requirements and what would happen if we could not get into Nantucket and the regulations surrounding the selection of an alternate. We also looked at non-standard alternate minimums - in our case we used Bradley International for this example for the ILS 6, which has 900 feet and 2 statute mile visibility minimums. We then briefly discussed the equipment checks required for all flights which was to include part of our final discussion on the instrument systems. We touched on VOR checks and VOT ground checks, and testing the pitot-static system. Pitot-Static, being very important in instrument flight with traditional guages, he had me touch on which instruments were covered by this system and what would happen if we were to encounter the scenario of a vacuum failure, or if the static port became clogged, or if the ram air became clogged and the indications that I could expect.

Then we moved on, and Ray discussed with me, what the plan was for the flight portion as we took a look at the weather around the area and decided on heading down to Plymouth to shoot the ILS 6 there, going missed, flying back to Norwood for the Localizer 35 approach, going missed and following the entire missed approach procedure, and then back around for the GPS 35 approach into Norwood with a circle to land on Runway 17. On our way out of the airport down toward Plymouth, we tackled the unusual attitudes to get those out of the way. He gave me vectors around to align me with the ILS 6 into Plymouth, I got a little behind the glideslope and was pretty much chasing it all the way down to the runway, but I managed to keep the localizer in pretty much the whole time. He had me go visual and asked me if I could make the landing, in which I said yes. We did a low approach, and he gave me vectors toward Norwood. We got on with Boston Approach as he made the first call, and I handled the radios there after. I flew the localizer 35 into Norwood, and executed the missed approach procedure. All was going well with the one exception that I forgot to put the flaps back up after shooting the approach. I can't believe I missed that! But, I put them up and continued to the hold at the Millis intersection. I held over Millis for one lap in the hold, to realize I was about 10 seconds long of my 1 minute inbound leg. So, I explained to Ray what I would need to ideally do, to make that 1 minute leg back inbound by extending the outbound leg by 10 seconds. He then gave me vectors and I contact Boston approach to shoot my last approach into Norwood, the GPS 35. By this time I was already sweating bullets because there is just so much going on that as a single-pilot in instrument conditions becomes incredibly demanind pushing you to your limits. I literally had sweat dripping from my foggles. Haha. Everything was going well, then he began to cover up my instruments - the attitude indicator and directional gyro in a simulation of vacuum failure and what we call partial-panel flying. I then rely on the magnetic compass for direction and all of the other instruments for my attitude in the aircraft. We circled to land on Runway 17, and landed pretty nicely, a little long, but nonetheless still a decent landing. We taxied back and parked the plane. He told me I passed, gave me a few constructive citiques on areas where I could improve, told me to secure the plane and come inside and meet with him when I'm finished to finish up my paperwork. All in all, a satisfactory performance, and here I now am, an Instrument Rated Pilot. I completed my Instrument Course in 45 hours time and almost 4 hours of actual instrument flying in there. I am much relieved to have that over with, and am now ready to fly through as many clouds as possible to gain more experience and keep my currency.

To current, including the flight we did to White Plains, NY just outside of NYC yesterday I now have 136.4 hours total flight time and added another hour and a half to my actual instrument flight time. Now, I'm actually already almost 40 hours into my Commercial License and beginning to look at and plan my long Commercial Cross Country Flight, which has to have a straight line distance of at least 250 nautical miles. Stay tuned for more updates!

FAA IFR Oral and Check Flight

Well, the D-day has been set. I am scheduled for my FAA oral exam and IFR check flight next Thursday, June 4th at 1200PM. The studying/reviewing begins. I also have to prepare an IFR flight plan for Lebanon, NH to Nantucket as well as a weight and balance, and will have to fly a few approaches around Norwood.....wish me luck!

Severe Congestion

I'm not talking about the ground variety where you're stuck in bumper to bumper traffic for hours on end.....I'm talking about the kind that causes you to feel miserable and having your sinuses completely blocked. That's how I have been for the last few days. You can just imagine the pressures your sinuses are under when flying a plane and how frequently you adjust the pressure in your sinuses while you're flying due to changes in altitude. Since I'm aiming at maintaining my safety and only flying when I am at my peak performance I am taking this week off from flying to get myself back to 100% health before I go up for my FAA check flight. Stay tuned until next week with more updates!

Pictures from Portland

Here are a few pictures from my trip last week up to Portland, ME with Caroline.

Piscataqua River

The Maine Coast

Logan Airport from 7,500 feet.

Over the City of Boston!

End of Course: Instrument

I FINALLY went up for my instrument end of course flight check today - after having it pushed off for nearly 2 months! Fortunate to say, I passed this time. I performed the procedure turn as required and flew the approach, this time into Minuteman Field in Stow, MA. Then I performed the missed approach procedure and held over EGORE which is 20 miles from the MHT VOR off the 210 radial. I made two laps there and then headed back toward Norwood, got on with Boston approach for radar vectors to the Localizer 35 approach, circled and landed. It was definitely difficult as the heat started really getting to me at the end, and it was pretty bumpy out there today too. I guess the important part to realize is that it was satisfactory enough in terms of performance to get by. Now it's time to start scheduling in that FAA Instrument Check Flight, hopefully next week if all goes well!

I'm still working on my Commercial requirements too.....tomorrow morning I am doing another cross-country flight with my instructor Josh, to Ticonderoga New York. Should be a little more than 3 hours round trip. Then I'm off to the Red Sox game tomorrow night for a little R&R - I guess a little more of a mental break and adventure. A good reward for a busy week and successful completion of my Instrument Course!

End of Course Pushed Back and Portland, ME

I went in on Thursday morning as scheduled at 1030 for my End of Course Instrument check ride again......I knew the weather forecast for later on in the afternoon was forecasted to be pretty bad, so it would be a tight squeeze to get it in. But, by the time I had gotten out to Norwood it wasn't looking too promising. I met with Radek briefly to discuss what our plan of attack would be to complete my end of course check flight, and got an updated briefing with the weather. Well, low and behold the weather had detriorated much faster than they were forecasting AND it was getting worse by the minute. The wind was already at 20 gusting 30 knots when that wasn't forecasted to occur until the afternoon and the radar was showing thunderstorms rolling into the area. So I made the decision to put it off another week again! This has been pushed off now for over a month. Hopefully next week will be the week.

Friday wasn't looking too good either, but the forecasts were still saying that it was supposed to improve by the afternoon. This was incredibly important to me because this was the flight that I was to take Caroline up for the first time with a little trip up to Portland, Maine. Luckily, it cleared up enough and actually turned out to be a really great afternoon and a great flight for her first flight - virtually no turbulence and really smooth aloft! To her surprise I had coordinated a little get together with her cousin Ryan and fiancee Jamie. They met us there at Northeast Air at Portland Airport. Caroline had no idea and was utterly shocked to see them there! Yes! My plan worked out perfectly! We went and had a little picnic at a park nearby on a river and enjoy the company. We stayed for a little over an hour and then headed back home. Both times we were vectored right over the city of Boston and were able to get some really great shots! I hope to get them up here later on this weekend!

Tuesday night I'm starting the first of my several commercial night flights, and then hopefully up for my instrument end of course check flight on Thursday! Wish me luck!

Busy Week

This week was a busy week and just seemed to pass by without any signs of stopping. It seemed like a blur just trying to think back about what I accomplished this week. Thank god for a trusty updated logbook to look back upon to review your flights.

Thursday - May 7th, I met with Josh and since there were some clouds in the area we decided to file and fly to Worcester and shoot the ILS into Worcester. It was a nice introduction to actual IFR as we had about 45 minutes worth of actual instrument conditions (flying through the clouds and not being able to see any outside references). We broke out at about 2000 feet and landed in Worcester. We taxiied back and immediately requested a new clearance flying back to Norwood.

Friday - May 8th, I met with Josh as usual first thing in the morning and we decided to head south to try and get some more actual instrument conditions again since the clouds have been hanging around. We filed a flight plan and flew down to Martha's Vineyard to shoot the ILS 24 in the 172SP. I filed on the way back and we pretty much received radar vectors the entire way back. That is the one problem with flying somewhere relatively close - approximately 50 nautical miles - that they assign you a route but usually end up giving you radar vectors to your approach instead.

Saturday - May 9th, Nice and cloudy....at least getting there. First off, I met with Josh as usual at Horizon Aviation in Norwood where the broken cloud layer was up at 10,000 feet. No chance at touching those clouds....for us at least. We looked over the weather all over the area - the south shore, cape and islands, providence, and even southern connecticut were all fogged and clouded in to a point where it was below minimums and we probably would not be able to even land. So we decided on going out to Barnes Municipal Airport in Springfield, MA heading towards the incoming clouds. We spent the first 1/2 hour in visual conditions, but we eventually came head on with all the clouds. The rest of the time out there we were in the clouds and shooting the approach we broke out of the clouds at 800 feet above the ground with the airport and runway in sight! That was freaky, yet at the same time, so much fun! We landed, took a little break in the FBO and filed the flight plan for the return trip. We departed Barnes and by the time we hit 2000 feet we were back in the clouds again. We were in the clouds for the entire trip back. We were being vectored back for the visual approach into Norwood for runway 17 when Boston Approach told us to descend from 3000' down to 2000' and report the airport in sight 2 miles at our 2 o'clock position. When we hit 2000' the clouds had come down so much that we just barely, and I mean barely broke out as we were still in the lower haze of the clouds! It took us a minute but between the two of us scrambling around trying to find the airport we managed to catch a glimpse of it and were cleared for the visual approach and began our descent in. That was insane! Had we been much later we probably would have had to have requested the localizer approach with the clouds below 2000 feet! All in all, 2.2 hours round trip, I had 1.6 hours of actual instrument flying today! It was a busy week! Next week I get to do some night flights and go back up for my end of course check ride.

Stumbling Blocks

There's a reason they exist....and probably a good thing too especially since I am talking about flying with sole reference to your flight instruments. There is very little margin of error that you can afford to play with as one wrong action could potentially have catastrophic results when you are flying with no outside references - particularly when shooting various approaches into different airports. I thought I was ready, but one simple mistake on the first approach forced interaction by the chief flight instructor and a mandatory repeat of this particular approach. I opted to keep going and try to complete the rest of it, but at that point I was so distracted by my immediate disappointment in myself that I just couldn't keep it within test standards and decided to call it off and get a review flight and ground lesson in before I go up again. It was so simple that I couldn't believe it...I forgot to make the procedure turn at the Initial Approach Fix as I was looking at it only as the missed approach hold as it overlaps over the same point. I was furious at myself as I hold myself to the highest of standards. I wanted to scream. I communicated with Providence Approach that I wanted to cancel my IFR flight plan and proceed directly back to Norwood under VFR. I flew the pattern and made a nearly perfect landing. After getting back in the chief flight instructor told me that if he could pass me on copying and repeating the clearance and the landing alone, he would, as they both were picture perfect. It felt good in that alone that I did some things right. I partially attribute my shortcoming due to the fact that I haven't been able to do ab IFR review flight with my instructor in the last 3.5 weeks due to weather and getting my end of course checkride pushed back. Time to get refocused and put my nose back to the grindstone!

Instrument End of Course Ground and Sanford, ME

On Thursday of this past week, I went into Horizon Aviation as scheduled and met with Radek as we went over what he would cover in the ground portion of the End of Course check. I had to plan out an IFR flight plan to Syracuse NY based on all current weather conditions in a manual flight plan, explain how and why I chose the routing (ie. altitudes, TEC Routes, Preferred IFR Routes, etc), different communication scenarios, lost comms, holding procedures, etc. As I reported the weather to him just before covering all of this, the wind was forecasted to be gusting up to 30 knots at the surface when we would be coming back for landing. Going up wasn't the problem, getting back in would be. And it just so happens that it was blowing at a 30 degree angle to the runway, which would cause a crosswind of approximately 15 knots. The plane's max demonstrated/structural crosswind is 15 knots from the manufacturer, and my max demonstrated was 12 knots. Knowing this, it put me outside of my comfort zone, so I made the decision to scrap the flight for Thursday and rescheduled for next week - where I will the the VOR A approach into Danielson, an ILS into Providence, and the Localizer 35 back into Norwood. I should be able to handle that without any problems!

Yesterday I had the fine pleasure of being able to take my grandparents up for a flight. I took them on a cross country flight up to Sanford, Me. I got to take N1608S up, which is the newest addition to the fleet, the Cessna 172SP Skyhawk with G1000 glass cockpit. I think they really enjoyed it and especially the opportunity to share something like that! It was truly a flight that I will remember forever! Here's a picture of the brave aviators...

Change: Laconia NH and 172SP G1000 - first review!

Instead of shooting up to Bangor, which would have taken much much much longer, longer than the time we had alotted, we opted to fly into Laconia, NH up on Lake Winnipesaukee. It would have taken us about 2 hours to get up there and around 1 hour 40 mins to get back. But, the trip up to Laconia (86 nm away) took just about an hour. The Cessna 172SP is an amazing aircraft - although a little heavier than the 172R's I'm used to flying, it still handles like a dream! The leather seats are well padded and extremely comfortable. I could see myself flying this plane in complete comfort to its extent. The G1000 - in one word - WOW! It was absolutely amazing. Truly experiencing the capablities of the G1000 first hand was a little daunting at first, but everything has it's form and function and is fairly easy to pick up and use after some simple instruction. The layout of the ribbons and flight instruments on the display really makes it feel like you're flying in a simulator, though you do get that sense of reality when you pick your head up and look outside and realize you're actually in the air, still flying the aircraft as you've been trained to do. The engine has 20 more horsepower to bring it up to 180 hp, which is incredibly smooth, and MUCH quieter! It was possible to carry on a conversation at normal levels with the engine running before putting on our headsets. The controls are incredibly smooth as well! The ground control during taxi is almost effortless, the controls are very tight and responsive. The flight management system on the multifunction display has a lot of different tools to offer! Live weather information with radar view around the aircraft, full-color topographical and GPS displays displays, a variety of navigation screens, engine performance information which makes it incredibly helpful to obtain the best lean of peak to conserve your fuel, and the most helpful especially in congested areas - like Boston on our way back to Norwood - is the Traffic Information System, which shows other aircraft in the air around us with their altitude and ground track in relation to us. There were 7 different warnings given to us by Boston Approach of other aircraft in our vicinity within 2 minutes. 3 of which were heading in opposite direction and ended up passing us not more than 100 yards away and one within 150 feet of our altitude! This made traffic spotting so much easier to be able to find the other traffic instead of the tried and true method of just scanning the sky in the direction that ATC is telling us to look in. Overall, it is an incredible system coupled with an efficiently designed new aircraft that I can't wait to do more of my training in!

The flight into Laconia was uneventful. It was nice and smooth at altitude on the way up there and the way back. I took some nice shots of the lake and distant views of the snowcapped Mt. Washington with my camera and will post them this evening. We made a quick landing at Manchester International Airport on their nearly 11000ft runway! Almost 3 times as long as Norwood! We took off again and headed home. All in all it was a great flight and can't wait to finish up my instrument rating in the next couple weeks so that I can really hone in on my G1000 skills and commercial rating!

Make the best out of it

I was originally scheduled to go up for my end of course Intrument Check Ride today....however there was a scheduling conflict and it needed to be rescheduled. Due to my plans that I already have for the weekend I had to push it back until next week. Sigh....it will get done eventually. BUT, I did not let the day go to waste! It was a gorgeous day out today! I planned a flight out to Chatham, MA on the Cape as one of my Commercial Cross Country flights. It was a great day to fly! I flew over a small patch of scattered clouds that extended to the coast, but ended as soon as I reached the Cape Cod Bay, as you will see in the pictures. It was an uneventful, but very fun flight. At altitude, 5,500 feet on the way out, and 6,500 feet on the way back it was incredibly smooth. Although, it was pretty gusty down on the cape and made the landing a little interesting, but fun nonetheless to go into an airport that I haven't been into before. Tomorrow I get to fly another Commercial Cross Country flight up to Bangor, ME, but this time I am starting my transition into the new Cessna 172SP w/ G1000! I can't wait! I will definitely have pictures and stories to share after tomorrow's flight. Before it gets too late, I've got to get to the planning. I like to do a manual flight plan every now and again to keep my planning and mind sharp. Until tomorrow.....

Winding down and a little confusion

I walked in on Thursday afternoon fully expecting to go up for my End Of Course Check Ride with the Chief Flight instructor for my Instrument Rating. Except after sitting there for about 15 mins with him nowhere in sight, Paul the check flight instructor asked me if I knew that I was scheduled for my Stage 3 check with him instead of the End of Course with Radek.......grrrr I was a little annoyed. I was mentally prepared and ready to do my End of Course check and study a little extra for it......I just wish I was called to be informed of the change.

At any rate....I sat with Paul for about 45 mins and covered some oral quizzing of all the most recent ground material and knowledge based information for the flight that we were going to conduct. We filed an IFR flight plan for a found robin flight from Norwood to Providence and back to Norwood. Everything went really well, I shot the ILS 23 into Providence with a stiff headwind that gave us a ground speed of 63 knots....the controller must have been going nuts seeing us come in so slowly as he was squeezing us in between jets that were landing and departing the same runway. At one point we even had to pull a tight 360 instructed by the controller to smooth the flow a bit...more likely so that they could release more impatiently waiting commercial traffic. We flew the missed over the runway and got radar vectors back to Norwood where Paul helped me shoot the GPS approach to runway 35. I held the course very well in the 12 knot crosswind all the way down the final approach that just before tower came on instructing us to break off and circle to land, he asked how I felt about doing a 12 knot crosswind landing. I told him I'd give it a shot. He then requested the straight in landing on 35 from the tower and they granted permission. It was pretty crazy....a steady 12 knot crosswind directly from left to right. I held the centerline perfectly all the way down. I flared and ballooned a little bit, but regained control and allowed the plane to settle back down...just before touchdown banking the wings to the left to touch down on the upwind (left) wheel first, then right wheel, and the main. It was nice and soft and a perfect crosswind landing. Out of anything....that was the best part of the check ride. It was incredible! Such a rush!

I am scheduled for next Thursday morning to go up with Radek for my End of Course check ride. It should be fun!

Final Paperwork and Stage III test

I passed my stage III written test with flying colors. We completed the last chapter covering emergency procedures and I even got some oral quizzing in there to practice for my upcoming stage 3 check ride, end of course check ride, and FAA check ride. No flying today. It doesn't look like I'll be flying tomorrow either with the way the forecast is looking. So far the cloud ceiling is forecasted to be around 300 feet.....which is below landing minimums at Norwood Airport. We'll see.

Test test test.....5 hours later

All in all it took me 5 hours to take 2 tests on Saturday.....that was incredibly mentally draining! I was so nerrvous getting ready to take the tests, and throughout all of the tests as well. I had such a horrible feeling that I would not do as well as I did. When it came down to it, to click the button to score my tests, there was a slight hesitation and the few seconds it took the computer to grade each test seemed like an eternity! But, none the less, I passed both tests. I was so relieved! Now I can continue on with the 3 flights I have left to get my instrument rating. I'm so excited at the same time to be starting my Commercial License within the next couple weeks as well because I get to start flying the retractable gear airplane......AND....we are getting almost new Cessna 172SP's at Horizon Aviation - all with G1000 glass cockpits. I saw one of the first that will be coming up to Norwood while we stopped down in Providence last week. It was beautiful! I cannot wait to get going in both 172SP and the RG!

Finishing up IFR and Studying

I finished up my last couple flights with my instructor this week. We just did a couple review flights where we went out and shot a couple approaches each flight. Thursday I flew a VOR approach into Danielson, the ILS approach into Providence, and the Localizer approach back into Norwood. Today I went up with Josh into some actual instrument conditions down to Providence shooting the ILS approach there to a landing, stopped in at Horizon Aviation there and refiled a flight plan back up to Norwood. We flew back up to Norwood and shot to Localizer approach there.

Now I have been studying my butt off all week and night tonight especially since tomorrow morning I am taking both my Instrument Written and Instrument Instructor Written test. That will take up most of my day tomorrow. Then next weekend I am up for my Stage 3 Check Ride and my End of Course Check Ride. Then I go up for my FAA oral exam and Check Ride hopefully the week after that. From what I hear, I will be going up with Ray Collins again, who was the examiner for my Private Pilot Check Ride. I am so close it is getting really exciting!!!!

Millionaire or Million Air

Yesterday was my long Cross Country flight for my instrument rating. The flight at to be 250 nautical miles round trip, with at least one leg being at least 100 nautical miles and must have 3 different types of approaches. Oy.....that's a mouthful! We started at 1030AM on Friday morning and got our IFR clearance and flew directly to Albany, NY. There wasn't too much wind aloft so it made for a nice flight out there at 6000 feet. We made it to Albany, NY from Norwood, MA in just under an hour and a half. I shot the ILS 1 approach into Albany. I held the needles right down the middle for almost all of the approach, my only problem was that I carried a little too much speed and allowed myself to stay fast. Upon landing I floated down the runway for about a 1000 extra feet than I needed to. But, none the less it was a really soft landing! All in all it was a really great leg out there. The FBO......Million Air at Albany is really really nice - ie complementary cookies, coffee, soda and popcorn as you walk in. The staff is extremely friendly and helpful. They even have their own little cinema in there with leather reclining chairs! The crew car was available, so we got to take the BMW 535 out to grab some lunch while we were there. Not a bad ride in the lap of luxury for lunch! We got to pretend. It was all good. I love my Hyundai. It does the trick. Haha. We left Albany shortly after 2 and flew direct to Providence where I made my second, but poor attempt at the GPS approach into Providence. First, I really hadn't done too many GPS approaches, so I was really behind the briefing and was missing the radio clearances on the approach. They vectored us onto the final approach path, but I had thought they were going to have us shoot the full approach from the initial approach fix. When they gave us clearance for the approach, boy was I ever confused. It was really frustrating trying to shoot the approach, and not being ready for your mid-air IFR clearance to Norwood, our final destination. I had thought that they would just give us radar vectors like they had in the past from our practice approaches, but you get a new clearance since you are still on an IFR flight plan. Oy! That was really confusing and I was really lost. Then we finally shot the Localizer 35 approach into Norwood, which wasn't really a problem either, but at the end I was getting really tired and was off a bit to one side or the other rather than really keeping the localizer needle centered. We circled and landed on Runway 10. That was not one of my prettiest landings let me just say.........so we got back, debriefed and I had Josh spend a few extra minutes on the GPS to review it again.

Next week I am up for 2 review flights before I go up for my Stage 3 check ride and End of Course Check Ride the following week. Then up for my oral and practical exam with the FAA examiner a week after that. But, in the meantime, I am studying up for my written exams. I am taking both the Instrument Written and the Instrument Instructor Written, since they are practically the same test. At least they will be out of the way! Time to hit the books!

Stage 2 IFR Check Ride......PASSED

Needless to say any further....I passed my Stage 2 IFR check ride! Hooray!

I was really more anxious than I probably needed to be...however I was definitely ready for it. There were a few things that I was a little hazy on....but over all it was a great review! I met with Paul Jacob the Check Flight Instructor at Horizon Aviation after work on Tuesday evening at 6PM. We sat down and jumped right into the oral portion of the check ride. We covered all the areas that we would be going over that night. We started with looking at the approach charts and dissecting all of the information needed to make an approach followed by some of the regulations and requirements of instrument approaches. We then took a look at theIFR enroute low altitude charts where he explained our flight and asked a few questions regarding procedures and basic instrument flight as to how I would accomplish certain things in flight or what certain things meant on the charts. After an hour discussion we went out and pre-flighted the plane and got it topped off with fuel - by this time the sun had already set and the lights were on at the airport. This was going to be a night check flight, and since I hadn't flown at night in a while I was actually really looking forward to it.

We took off from Norwood to the North and held a 20 nautical mile DME arc off of Boston's VOR up to the 268 radial and performed the hold at the WHYBE fix. After a couple laps around the hold we departed to the North and got on with Boston approach to receive radar vectors to shoot Bedford/Hanscom AFB's ILS 11. I got a little distracted and completely missed the approach course and shot right through it. Approach caught onto this real quick and gave me new vectors to reintercept the course, which I did and shot the approach down to decision height. We went missed and got back on with approach who gave us radar vectors back to Norwood so we could shoot the LOC 35 approach there and then circle to land Runway 17. 1.5 hours of flight time later I passed my check ride. After talking with Paul for a little while afterwards, I drove the long tiring hour ride home after a full work day and having been up since 6 AM made it a 17 hour day for me as I got home shortly after 11PM.

All in all a great check ride! Stage 3 IFR cross country flights here I come!

Lunch at Martha's Vineyard and Stage 2 review

I've been getting behind a little lately on the whole blogging thing. But, here goes nothing in an attempt to update you with the latest and greatest from this week. On Thursday I went in as usual, except this time I got pushed back a little since my instructor picked up an earlier lesson before my usual at 8AM. So we started at 930 instead. We planned to shoot 3 approaches. We shot the ILS approach into Providence, TF Green Aiport, the back course localizer into New Bedford, and capped it off with the VOR 6 approach into Martha's Vineyard. All went well going into Martha's Vineyard - only one exception - while we were being provided with heading vectors to intercept the VOR 6 final approach path, Cape Cod Approach's last vectors they gave us would have put us straight through Restricted airspace 4105A just Southwest of Martha's Vineyard. My instructor and the chief flight instructor who was back-seating the lesson noticed this and quickly gave me a new heading to turn to in order to avoid crossing into the restricted airspace. Even though we didn't enter the airspace, I still filled out an aviation safety report and submitted it to NASA to have on file - just to cover my butt. Then we stopped off at the Cafe at Martha's Vineyard for lunch and had an infamous "$300 club sandwich."

We then filed an IFR flight plan to practice an approach into Providence on the way back to Norwood. Sure enough, when we received our clearance, the controllers gave us a totally different flight plan up the coast toward Plymouth. So we took the clearance and shot the ILS approach into Plymouth. In this case, was the worst approach I have shot. I was so far behind the airplane and the approach that we were already going missed because there was too much traffic and I hadn't even briefed the missed approach yet! Normally, you have everything briefed a few times before you even actually shoot the approach. (to give a little reference point) So I wasn't happy with my performance going back to Norwood. After we got back and debriefed, Josh had told me that regardless of my less than outstanding performance on the way back he still wanted to put me up for my Stage 2 checkride. At that point I was utterly embarrassed and furious with myself and my poor performance. I requested an additional review flight before my check ride. My check ride was scheduled for the first thing Friday morning. It ended up being rescheduled for Saturday and then pushed back again due to scheduling conflicts. So now, due to weather coming in for tomorrow (Monday) I am scheduled to go up for my check ride on Tuesday evening after work.

Friday I got to do my review flight with Josh where we shot another approach into Providence and executed the missed approach as published and entered the hold 12 miles to the Northwest of the airport. We circled in the hold until I established a 1 minute inbound leg. This took a couple times around since I was battling a rather strong quartering head/tailwind. On the way down to Providence it was such a strong headwind that we had a ground speed of 58 knots. Coming back into Norwood for the localizer approach on Runway 35 took us no time to get back to from Providence. It literally took us a little more than 10 mins to get from Providence to Norwood! We had a ground speed of 154 knots - which equates to approximately 177 mph!!!

It was a crazy week. Going into Stage 3. This is going to happen incredibly quick as it only consists of about 6 flights and 8 hours worth of flight time. We are going into cross country work and my long instrument cross country flight will most likely be to Albany, NY. I should be finishing up my instrument rating in the next 3 - 4 weeks with a total time for this rating being somewhere between 35-40 hours. (35 hrs is the FAA minimum for part 141)

Actual

Today was a good and productive day. I ended up switching with another student at Horizon Aviation for an earlier lesson time. I was in at Horizon Aviation at 8 this morning. We filed an IFR flight plan and received our IFR clearance from Norwood Ground. Thankfully it was a short clearance so I didn't have much to copy down. I read back the clearance to the controller and was told my "readback is affirmative" - meaning I correctly copied down the information that was just read to me and read it back correctly. Today was the first day that I actually started handling some of the radio calls on top of flying the airplane at the same time. It was exciting today because the clouds were overcast in the area at 2000 feet. Our initial assigned altitude was 2000 and to expect 4000 in 10 minutes. At just over 1200 feet Norwood Tower switched us over to Boston Departure. We contacted Boston Departure and were immediately cleared up into Boston's airspace to 4000 feet. We climbed through the clouds at 2000 feet - and what an erie feeling it was to lose sight and reference of everything that I am used to seeing visually - the ground, the sky, the sun......all gone. Thankfully the cloud layer was only about 1000 feet thick and climbed through it cruising above it at 4000 feet down to Providence. I made all of the radio calls back to departure on the way down there as we were instructed to descend to 2000 feet breaking through the clouds again and receiving radar vectors to put us on course to intercept the ILS glideslope to perform the approach into TF Green Airport, which I performed incredibly today compared to my previous attempts. I have made serious improvements on my approaches. Then I received instructions and radar vectors to depart Providence's airspace and flew through the clouds for most of the trip back up to Norwood. It was enough where we started to pick up rime ice on the wheels and the windshield. We requested to descend and were granted approval by Boston Approach. I flew the rest of the way back to Norwood under my foggles to keep simulating flying in actual instrument conditions. We completed the flight with Runway 35 localizer approach straight in to Norwood Airport. All in all a great flight with great improvements. I go up for my Stage 2 check ride next week!

Then afterward I "backseated" on my instructors next flight as he was instructing in the Diamond Star DA-40! It seemed so wierd to ride in the back and not be in control of the aircraft. Nonetheless it is an amazing aircraft and can't wait to transition into it in Stage 3 of my instrument training.

1st Comm Cross Country and more approaches

Wow! I haven't posted in the longest time.....I'm really falling behind here! So I will give you an update on what I've done for the last week and a half...last Saturday the 21st I completed my first Cross Country flight toward my Commercial License. I flew from Norwood, MA to Farmingdale, NY on Long Island. It took me about 1 hour and 40 mins to get there as we had a pretty stiff headwind, and then it took us just over 1 hour to get back with the help of that tail wind and flying direct. It was a pretty uneventful flight, but exciting nonetheless to fly down there dodging clouds on my way down and then dodging them once we made it almost all the way back. Below I included some pictures of the CT coastline, the Long Island Sound, and Long Island. I flew down there at 4,500 feet and at 5,500 feet on the way back. Just to give a little perspective from how high those pictures were taken. That was 3.6 hours completed of the 120 hours I need for my Commercial License. Whew! A long way to go!

So far this week I have flown 3.7 hours in 2 days. I went in to Horizon Aviation on Wednesday night after work. Got there just before 6 and went up shortly after getting there and shot an approach into Providence, New Bedford, Plymouth, and back in Norwood. Shooting 4 approaches in 1 flight is certainly draining! I didn't even handle the radio calls yet! That is going to definitely start to push me to my limits. But, with practice I will be able to handle all of it like a pro. Today, Thursday Feb 26th I was back in at Horizon Aviation at 8AM after only leaving there 12 hours earlier! It almost seemed I never left! We got in N172SJ and taxiied over to the runup area next to Runway 17 where we were going to take off from. Except, during our runup of the airplane we discovered that the left magneto had failed - we couldn't take off. So we scrapped the flight and taxiied the airplane back to the hangar so it could be brought to maintenance to be repaired. But, we hopped in another plane and took it up so I could at least get one flight in. We didn't go to Martha's Vineyard as we had originally planned with stops along the way in Providence and New Bedford to fly the approaches there. So, we just flew to Providence and did the 23 VOR DME approach and the 23 ILS approach with the missed approach procedure included to fly the hold pattern. Then we flew over to New Bedford and flew the Runway 23 Back Course Localizer, landed and took right back off again back up to Norwood to fly the Runway 35 Localizer in and circled to land on Runway 17. All in all it was a better day and I'm improving, but there are definitely a few things I need to work on. All of which I am about to cover as part of my homework tonight. I might get some actual instrument flying in tomorrow since it looks like the clouds will be low enough! That will be a nice change!

(You can click on the pictures below to see the full size picture)

Approaching more Approaches

I am now well into Stage 2 of 3 of my IFR flight training. I am actually about 1/2 way through for this rating. I am now working on the different types of approaches coming into different airports. I originally scheduled this past Saturday to be my first flight of my Commercial license, but we ended up using it to do more instrument approaches to really nail down the procedures. As I did for the past couple days - we flew into Providence first and flew the VOR/DME approach there into Runway 34. We made a low pass (150' above the runway) and took off back on with Providence approach giving us vectors to New Bedford's Back-Course Localizer Runway 23 and then circled to land 32. Then finally back on with Providence Approach only to be switched over to Boston Approach and track the localizer back into Norwood on Runway 35 where we made the full stop landing marking the end of the lesson. We shot all 3 approaches in 1.5 hours, which is really quick actually thinking about all the approach procedures involved. This picture I've included shows you one of the approach plates used for flying into Providence using their localizer. This is just to give you an idea what I am referencing while flying under the hood. (all of this being done with a view-limiting device that does not let me see outside the aircraft) Next weekend I will be starting my 1st Commercial Cross Country flight, which has to be at least 100 nautical miles in length between stopping at a destination airport - we have decided to fly to Farmingdale, NY on Long Island.

Good Day Bad Day

It was a good day and an eh day today. I started off right into Horizon Aviation as usual on Thursday mornings. Except this one certainly was a battle from the get go. Traffic was horrendous getting out there causing me to be about 15 minutes late. I sat down with Radek, the Chief Flight Instructor to cover the ground portion of my Stage 1 IFR check ride. After about an hour dicussion/quizzing I passed - the ground portion. Next onto the flight portion. It was a whopping 8 degrees outside today, my hands were completely numb and frozen by the time I finished the pre-flight on 172SJ. We went back inside the terminal for a few minutes to let our hands warm up so we could feel them again. We went back out to 172SJ, and hopped in and tried to start the plane up...well it would crank and crank and crank and crank, but wouldn't turn over. We tried several more times, but I guess the heated coils isn't enough to start this plane in really cold weather! So then we went over to 9905F that was parked right next to it to see if we could just do a quick pre-flight on that plane and take it up - EXCEPT.....this plane hadn't been plugged in and needs to be plugged in on cold days for at least 2 hours in advance to heat the coils to make it an easier start on the engine. So, this one was a no-go too! Ugh, the gods were working against me from the start. Thankfully, Josh came back in 721SA, they swapped a couple things around and allowed me to go up today in 721SA because they would rather have gotten that out of the way then try to reschedule and skip around with other lessons. So, I went up in 721SA with Radek for the practical portion of the flight test. Finally, able to get up and fly after the 2nd switch! First off - I passed. But, all of my maneuvers and tracking VORs were not up to par where I was last week. It was a bad day. I passed, so I really can't complain.....then a bad day got a whole lot better. I just got a phone call from my instructor Josh telling me some great news! The Diamond DA40 with G1000 new home will officially be Norwood in 9 days! I can't wait to be able to put that glass time on my resume! Here's a picture of the plane that will be joining the Horizon Aviation Norwood arsenal.

VOR, ILS, DME Arcs, and Stage 1 Exam

Wow, I've definitely fallen a little behind here. I guess I haven't posted in nearly a couple weeks which is unfortunate. But, I'll try to get you up to speed right now, since the last few lessons have been building a foundation for my instrument skills. As I am working on my instrument rating, as a reminder, everything I am doing is "under the hood." This means that as soon as I take off I am wearing my view-limiting glasses which only allow me to see the instruments and nothing outside the plane. The last couple lessons have been spent refining my control of the plane while in flight. Everything is about small corrections. Small corrections to headings, small corrections to altitude, small corrections to bank angles and power settings. With all of these small corrections it really has allowed to have greater control and fly with finesse. The foundation is built upon tuning, IDing, tracking and intercepting VOR radials (which are later used in Instrument Flight planning for navigation). And since I was doing well with that each time so far coming back in my instructor has had me following the ILS (instrument landing system) into the airport, as it lines you up with the centerline of the Instrument Approach runway, which I do while wearing my foggles until I am about 300 feet above the ground. It's crazy to see how well this system really works!

Today we went up and did some repeat and refresher on VORs and did another VOR/DME arc using the Putnam VOR. I tracked into Putnam on the 080 radial from the station then performed a DME Arc 10 miles out from the VOR station to the Southeast to simulate intercepting the approach path radial to the station. It was great practice because I was able to hold the plane around the 60 degrees of the arc within 2 tenths of a mile of the 10 mile mark. We then flew out on the 095 radial from the station and practiced my precision and non-precision descents. We then tracked the localizer into Norwood and entered the left base for runway 28 and landed. Another 1 hour even of simulated instrument time! I am up for my stage 1 exam tomorrow and my stage 1 instrument check ride next week. This rating is going to come quickly! I just need to find some time to start scheduling some time in to start my commercial cross country flights in. AND....hopefully they will be bringing the Diamond up from Providence so I can get checked out in it and get some G1000 glass time to put on my resume!

Instrument continued

So now that I only fly two days of the week, I am condensing my posts a little bit. However, I am still getting my 3-4 flights in per week as I now have double blocks on Thursdays and Fridays.

Thursday was a little interesting and COLD to say the least! We covered an about an hour of ground material before going outside in the frigid temps to uncover the plane (172SJ) and attempt to start it up in the freezing cold. Since it was so cold we first tried under-priming it a little bit since we didn't want to do too much too fast. Better to under-prime than to over-prime. We definitely underprimed it to start and it didn't even turn over. Then we went to the opposite extreme and ended up flooding the engine....gave it a rest to drain and they almost got it started, then it just putted out. So that was a disappointing start. Thankfully, I was the only one in there for a lesson on Thursday so we just uncovered another plane (721SA), hopped in and kept our fingers crossed that it would start up right away. Sure enough, first try, kicked right over. So, up I went for about an hour and a half with Josh to practice my maneuvers under the hood. Nothing to eventful, everything was good, I just had some trouble holding my heading and altitude a couple time, within 30 degrees and a couple hundred feet. But, the kicker is, when you start filing and flying IFR flight plans, you may get a call from ATC if you're off by a couple hundred feet as that is the max they allow to be from your assigned altitude. Gotta work on that a bit!

Friday was just as cold! We took 721SA right away since we knew it had the better chance of starting up right away. Josh and myself went up for about 3.3 hours broken up into 2 blocks. We spent the morning flying around the South Shore and then followed the localizer, Instrument Landing System into Plymouth. The ILS is basically an invisible crosshair in the air that guides you down, both vertically and horizontally to the middle of the runway it is assigned to. It's a really neat instrument in the cockpit and amazing at how well it really works. It's really wierd to be coming down from altitude getting really anxious as you know you are only a few hundred feet above the ground still wearing your view-limiting glasses (so you can't see outside), when Josh tells me, "OK, take off your glasses." Low and behold we are perfectly lined up with the center of the runway on a short 1/2 mile final. It's truly amazing what you can do when you learn to trust the instruments more than you trust your own seat of the pants instincts, because often times in flight, what your body is telling you is the opposite of what you're actually doing. We went up and practiced tuning and tracking VORs, turning to different VORs, slow flight, stalls - both landing and take-off, steep turns (which were really bad, I could have done better, but that's what practice is for), unusual attitudes, and threw in some partial panel flying, which is when we simulate a vacuum failure and fly with the attitude indicator (pitch and bank) and directional gyro (gyroscopic compass) covered up so you can't see them and fly with limited instrumentation. All in all I did really well and am progressing nicely. In 2 more weeks I will already be at my stage 1 written exam and checkride!

Dual Enrollment and First Passenger

Wow this was a busy week! Unfortunately on Thursday it was too windy to go up. But, we still managed to make use of our time - we ended up doing all the necessary paperwork to enroll me in both my Commercial and Instrument rating simultaneously and covered the first couple sections of material. On Friday, we made really good use of the day. I'm not sure if I mentioned, but I changed my schedule of lessons so that I now have double blocks on Thursday and Friday only. Still have 4 scheduled lessons per week, but now I have Saturdays off. On Friday we went up right away and flew to Plymouth, landed, and for the second lesson we flew back up to Norwood with an hour of instruction between each take off and landing. My instructor told me that I did everything very well for being the first two times of flying by instruments only. It was still rather gusty, bumpy, and choppy with the turbulence that was out there. But, I still managed to hold all of my maneuvers within Practical Test Standards. We were done with 2 hours of flight by reference to instruments only by 130. We came back into Horizon Aviation in Norwood and completed the ground lesson on the instrument systems as I need to learn how all of the instruments actually work. The way we are going to cover the material moving forward is basically doubling everything up per lesson that I have. Unless of course I need to slow down to absorb the material. But, if all goes well I should be able to cover my instrument rating fairly quickly, while simultaneously working on my Commercial license.

So after the 2 hours of lessons and an hour of ground work, I waited for my first victim to show up......my brother, Nate. Nate showed up, but we had to wait while Ken, the manager of Horizon Aviation Norwood, and Radek, the Chief Flight Instructor were up in the plane we were to take for my first passenger flight. We ended up going up about half hour later than we expected, but it was a great flight! We headed up just as the sun was setting and with what little sunlight was left, Nate was able to snap a few decent shots of the setting sun and the surrounding area. He even managed to take a couple videos - one of our take-off from KOWD and one of our landing at KOWD. I had left the dash lights on during our descent and landing at Norwood, which I normally wouldn't do, but left them on so Nate could see what he was doing while he was taping the approach. It was pretty funny when Nate told me he had no idea where were landing as we kept getting lower and lower until we made our turn from base to final approach into Norwood Memorial Airport. Mind you - it was a little windy on Saturday. Landing with a direct 11 knot crosswind with gusts up to 19 knots was a little tricky.
Link to Pictures

It's done! Well at least the first part........

Today was the day - Judgment Day - I really got to find out if all this hard work studying and flying has really paid off. And thankfully, the answer was YES!!!!!!! Since today was the big day, I spent the entire afternoon and night yesterday all the way up to 12AM reviewing all of my material to make sure I was prepared for my oral exam and practical exam that I had today. I even got up at 500AM to look over the material again before jumping into the shower and running out the door to Horizon Aviation for my FAA oral exam and check ride at 830AM. Since I wanted to be more than ready I arrived at Horizon Aviation at Norwood Aiport at 715AM. I went in and looked at all the weather information as usual and updated my flight plan. I then kicked back for about 1/2 hour to try to calm my nerves while I waited for the FAA Designated Examiner, Ray Collins to arrive. I was a complete nervous wreck up until I met Ray and we started off.

First thing is first - print off the application and review my logbook to verify that I have completed all the necessary requirements. After that, he quickly briefed me as to how this whole process was going to work - we would first cover the oral portion covering various topics including my flight planning, weight and balance, and all different types of regs and aviation information that I should know as a private pilot. Then we would go out to the plane to perform the practical portion of the check ride.

I am going to cover this in a little bit more detail as I know there are others getting into aviation now, or already in the aviation community that may be curious to what was covered. On the other hand if you're not interested in all the fine details, feel free to just skim through. Haha.

First and foremost, Ray Collins, is an incredible individual, very welcoming and although he is there representing the strong arm of the FAA, he was really genuine in his demeanor and representation that he really wants to see you do well and wants you to pass. He is very knowledgeable and I was able to accomplish my secondary goal of learning something new from him in the process. I really look forward to flying with him again in the future when I am going up for my other check rides. We went over into the briefing room and started right into it. He briefed me on what are some of the areas that we would cover in the oral test before heading out to the plane to fly the practical portion. He needed to make sure that I really knew my stuff, since you can't always rely on a great test score, he really wanted to put it into real-life scenarios and applications so that I could directly relate and explain the material as it corresponds to its given operations and processes. The topics that we covered included my weight and balance and short field take off calculation based upon today's current weather information. We then segmented right into my flight plan and used the sectional chart to examine the different types of airspace - the difference between class b, c, and d airspace, restricted airspace and what it was, what the meaning of and the difference between the two tower symbols were, specifically the height differentiation. He also point to one of the airports along my planned route and asked me to explain everything I could tell him about that airport just from looking at the information on the chart, he touched on recommended safe altitudes, Flight Service Station communication options, diverting to another airport, emergency procedures and frequencies, wildlife areas, VFR check points, visibility and cloud clearance requirements for the different types of airspace, clearance difference between class c and class b airspace, a little bit of the airplane systems, the engine, static pitot system, and the gyroscopic instruments. He also then drew out a couple scenarios of wake turbulence caused by a larger aircraft and had me tell him where I would take off and land with regard to larger aircraft, we also discussed briefly spin recovery awareness, as well as a few of the airport markings including the hold short line, a displaced runway threshold and blast pad, and finally the closed runway. We surprisingly did not touch on any of the weather charts and reports, which I was really worried about, but since I had spent so much time on them, they are now stuck in my head. All in all, the oral exam portion took almost exactly 1 hour. Given that there is way more information to cover than time available, the exam itself was more about breadth than the depth of a few specific areas. We covered a lot of material in that 1 hour of oral testing. He then sent me out to preflight the plane so that we could go up for the practical portion.

I preflighted the plane as usual, except this time I was in 9905F since the others were out. Ray came out and asked me a couple quick questions regarding the airplane before we hopped in. He asked me about the ram air for the pitot port, where the static port was, what the purposed of the fuel vent was, and even the opening for the stall warning horn at the leading edge of the wing. We hopped in and got the plane started. It took a couple tries since it was a little chilly this morning, but it started right up after that. I then obtained the ATIS information and he explained to me exactly what we would be doing for each portion of the practical. We would stay in the traffic pattern in order to complete the short and soft field take off and landing requirements. The first take off was a soft field take off followed by a soft field landing. Then the next take off was a short field take off to be followed by a short field landing - except when I was about 50 feet above the runway he wanted to simulate that a truck had just pulled out onto the runway so we diverted back up into the pattern to perform a go-around. Except this time, he called up to the tower and let them know we would be departing to the Northwest to begin the cross country portion of my check ride. I turned to my heading after reaching a safe altitude above the noise abatement area, and immediately tuned and identified the Boston VOR. Since he wanted me to show him where we were a couple different times along my route, I tuned the radial that we were off of combined with my outside visual references to pinpoint my location. I did the same thing again about 2 mins away from my first check point and Ray, seeing that I was very aware of my position and heading told me he'd seen enough of that. He took the controls so I could put my foggles on to simulate entering into IFR conditions. He performed one unusual attitude which I had to recover from, which was rather mild compared to the attitudes that my instructor had put me into on previous lessons. We also completed straight and level flight and turns to headings under simulated instrument conditions. He also simulated an engine failure, but didn't want to actually pull the engine out in this really cold weather, so we just discussed what steps an procedures I would follow to perform the emergency landing. He then had me tune and ID Providence's VOR and track it to the Providence station. He'd seen enough of that and asked me to turn to a heading of 240 and set myself up for slow flight with 20 degrees of flaps, did a few turns to a heading under slow flight, transitioned back to cruise flight, did a power on stall, and steep turns - one in each direction. He then said, here listen to this, and turned up the ATIS frequency for Norwood Airport and asked me to take him back to Norwood. On the way back, we simulated an electrical fire and the flaps being the cause of it. So, he had me land in a clean configuration without the use of flaps. It wasn't the best landing to end the check ride, but we did make it on the ground again in one piece. All in all a successful flight. We taxied back to the ramp and as I parked the plane - Ray turned to me and said, well I won't keep you in suspense any longer - you passed. Just a couple minor things that he touched on that I would need to watch out for next time. While I pushed the plane back and tied it down, he went inside to print up my temporary Private Pilot License. He congratulated me again, and I thanked him greatly for his time and told him I looked forward to seeing him again in the near future as I progress toward my other ratings. And so that was it, the end of my check ride. There I was utterly speechless and couldn't believe that I had achieved my first license in 3.75 months and 57 hours of flight time. I can honestly say now I feel like a real pilot. I look forward to jumping into my instrument and commercial ratings starting at the end of next week! But, for now I am ready to take passengers and go out flying if anyone is willing........any takers?

Judgement Day: Friday January 2nd - 830AM

Holy crap! I cannot believe that it is here!!!!! I just checked the TAFs (weather/cloud forecasts) for Boston, Providence, and Worcester. The clouds are forecast to be at 8000 feet tomorrow morning. More than high enough for me to go up for my FAA checkride for my private pilot license. Oh boy, here come the nerves!

Last week I had completed my end of course checkride with the Chief Flight Instructor at Horizon Aviation in Norwood. The flight portion of that checkride was very solid and I really didn't have any issues. There were a few portions of the oral quizzing that I found had slipped from my memory. So, at least I have one more day to review everything before I go up for my license. The best analogy for my progress in terms on learned knowledge from all my lessons is best described as "drinking from a fire hose."

My FAA checkride tomorrow morning is to be with an FAA designated examiner, Mr. Ray Collins - whom I understand from my research and reading on other blogs is a professional veteran aviatior. I look forward to the opportunity to fly with him and learn as much as I can from him at the same time during my check ride. The FAA check ride consists of two parts: The first portion being an oral exam, more like Q&A on the nitty gritty details of aviation. For instance, I will probably field questions on weather and the different types of weather reports available to me as a pilot, to the basic regulatory principles set by the FAA for Private Pilots, to the airplane systems and components, the surrounding airspaces, as well as emergency procedures. He will check to make sure everything is up to date on my log book and everything is accounted for at Horizon Aviation for all the hours I have logged up to this point. Then after I pre-flight the plane, he and I will go out to complete the flight portion of my check ride, which will include, but not be limited to my cross country flight planning, short and soft field take offs and landings, flying the pattern and radio communications, turns around a point, steep turns, unusual attitudes, and even some basic instrument flying. I imagine that he will also throw in tuning and tracking VORs, as well as even seeing a simulated emergency landing in there. Then I imagine he will have me come back to the airport for possibly a couple more maneuvers, and then back down to the ground from where we once left. Then this will be the judgment time to see if I pass.....oy. I'm nervous!

Now is the time I need to take to go over my cross country flight planning, weight and balance, and review all my material. I just have to go into work for about an hour tonight, which will be my mental break, but then I will be back to hitting the books again and double and triple checking my checklists to make sure I have everything I need for my check ride tomorrow.

I will be posting again tomorrow - hopefully with good news of my success of achieving my private pilot license!

Update: 54.5 hours Total Time

So here's one more quick update. After yesterday morning's jaunt out to the Southeast and Southwest practice areas to practice all of my maneuvers, which included steep turns, S-turns, turns around a point, clean and dirty stalls, clean and dirty slow flight, slow flight maneuvering, a practice diversion, and even intercepting and tracking VORs. Then I just flew back to Norwood and practiced my short-field take offs and landings, as well as my soft-field take offs and landings - all simulated of course - and even managed throw in a forward slip in there. My landings are nearly perfect! After 2.1 hours of flying I am now up to 54.5 hours of total flight time!

I am scheduled to go up tomorrow at 1 with the Chief Flight Instructor for my End of Course Check Flight. But, with all this crazy snow that's coming down outside, we'll have to see if I can even get out of the driveway by then! We're expecting somewhere between 6 and 12 inches of this fluffy white stuff called snow. Ugh. After that check flight, the only one that is left is for me to go up with the FAA examiner for my private pilot certificate check ride. So close!

Stage 3 Flight Check and FAA Private Pilot Written

After a very short night sleep since we lost power for the last 2 days with the ice storm that came through 2 nights ago, I managed to have a very successful day! Today I went out to Horizon Aviation in Norwood as usual, except today I went in for 8AM as I was up for my Stage 3 Flight Check with Paul Jacob, the Check Flight Instructor. I had previously planned out a mock cross-country flight down to Hyannis with all the necessary calculations for headings, fuel consumption, timed check points, and the weight and balance as usual. I had about 1/2 hour to 3/4 of an hour of oral quizzing on different information that I need to know about. No real hangups there. But, he did manage to throw a few trick questions at me! It was some really interesting stuff though to learn about. Haha. Went out to the plane and pre-flighted it as usual, it was exceptionally cold though! Thank god for gloves and winter hats! It should be interesting to see how I bare it in a couple months in the dead of winter in New England!

We simulated calling up ground and asking for VFR flight following and simulated calling up Boston Approach and opening my flight plan through the Flight Service Station. I flew to my first checkpoint and a little beyond it toward my second checkpoint as scheduled when he pulled the power back slighty to simulate an engine problem and had me divert on my own to the closest airport. I chose Mansfield since it was slightly closer than turning around and heading back to Norwood. This time, the diversion went really well - I took my time, talked out all my steps, made a quick best guess heading and added for variation, and confirmed my best guess by double checking with the GPS. We made it to about 5 miles away from the airport when he said that was good enough, I had maintained great situational awareness and was able to divert myself without a problem. We then went into my maneuvers including turns around a point, steep turns, stalls, slow flight, instrument flight, emergency landing procedures, unusual attitudes, and flew back into Norwood to complete my short-field and soft-field take offs and landings. That was it! All of which took me just under an hour and a half. No major problems, so it was safe to say I passed. Then I was out the door driving down to Providence to take my FAA Private Pilot Written Exam - I passed it with a 93! I needed a minimum of a 70 to pass. No problems there either.

The only hiccup is that I am still 2 hours shy of solo flight time that I need to make up before I can go up for my end of course check with the Chief Flight Instructor. And since he is not up in Norwood on Friday, that seems like it is only going to leave Saturday, which would mean that I will have to bump back my FAA Check Ride until after the holiday.....since I've made it this far this quickly, I guess I can wait another week. We'll see, things might work out differently, but I am definitely finishing up soon!

Back to work tomorrow.....ugh!

Grey skies

Saturday was a great day! I flew my last cross-country flight. My first leg was from Norwood to Hartford-Brainard Airport. Pretty uneventful on the way down there, except for the first portion of the flight being rather bumpy. But, it wasn't anything I hadn't encountered before. Though, when I did get down into Hartford and picked up the ATIS information from the airport, it turns out there was an active TFR (temporary flight restriction) just east of the airport around a stadium over there with a 3 nautical mile radius up to 3000 feet. Thankfully I picked up this information while I was still 20 miles from the airport. After I realized my mistake of having the volume too low on the radios, I was on with Brainard Tower, and they were kind enough to give me headings around the restricted airspace and bring me right into Brainard Airport. No problems getting in there otherwise.

After I closed my flight plan and called my instructor to let him know I made it there safely. I jumped back into the plane and took off on my next leg - to Southbridge. Yes, Southbridge does have an airport!!! Haha. It's nothing too major but does have a 3501 foot runway sitting at the top of the hill in town next to the old dump. My parents, brother, and grandparents drove up there since it was only a few minutes from home to see me do my thing. My brother Nate took some real great shots of me around the airport and coming in to land. I'll try to post the link to those soon. I stopped long enough to give everyone a hug and show the plane off to them. They were very impressed. As I took off from Southbridge back to Norwood, I saw them waving at me...so with a quick couple flicks of the yoke side to side I gave them a wave with the wings of the plane. They caught on pretty quick and found it to be pretty funny. Other than that it was straight shot back to Norwood for a total of 2.4 hours of solo flight time. I'm a little short on solo time, so I will being taking the plane up next week to the practice area to get all my maneuvers down before I go for my final check rides. I'm 2 short weeks away. Time to get back to the books and study!

Testing.....testing.....is this thing on???

So no flying today....I ended up going in and taking my Stage 3 Exam and passed it with a 90. It took me a little over an hour to take because the performance side involved some math and calculations. Overall, not bad. I got one more test out of the way. I am definitely down to my last 2 weeks. This is how the plan looks (lets hope the weather cooperates:

Friday December 5th: Finish up flight lesson 24 with my instructor.
Saturday December 6th: Cross country flight - Norwood, Hartford, Southbridge, Norwood and End of Course Test.

Thursday December 11th: Stage 3 check flight with check flight instructor.
Friday December 12th: Review flight (if needed), FAA Exam.
Saturday December 13th: End of course flight with Chief Flight Instructor.

Week ending 18th, 19th, 20th - Up for my FAA Oral Exam and Private Pilot Check Ride!

Norwood to Northampton and everything in between

Saturday was a great day!!! I had such a great time flying, especially seeing it's coming so close to the end of my private license training. I basically have a couple cross country flights to do since I'm a little short on cross country time, one more flight with my instructor, the end of stage 3 stage check with the check flight instructor, and my end of course check with the Chief Flight Instructor at Horizon Aviation. Then I have to take my written and I get to go up with an FAA examiner for my private license practical test. All of this I am hoping to accomplish in the next 2 weeks, as long as the weather cooperates!

So at any rate, back to Saturdays adventures. First thing in, I flew my next solo cross-country flight from Norwood to Northampton, MA, which in case you didn't know is just Southwest of UMASS Amherst, and a little North of Springfield. It's a tiny little airport nestled between Rte 91 and the Connecticut River and a couple hills. Along the way I took some great pictures of the scenery above Framingham and around Worcester/Shrewsbury, and the Quabbin Reservoir too. I'll post the link to the pictures I took that are on my facebook page a little later on. I flew back to Norwood without any problems, and even on my way back over Shrewsbury I was able to snap a shot of the CRL building where I work from 3500 feet!


http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=63769&l=e59de&id=513641713

Once I got back to Norwood, I took a short break and then went right back up with my isntructor to the practice area to practice all my maneuvers again: slow flight, steep turns, stalls, instrument hood work, unusual attitudes, and even a diversion to Taunton Airport. All was well, except for my steep turns which need a little fine tuning. The end is coming up very quickly!

Passing Cells

Today was an interesting day to say the least. We were planning to go up for my first flight and finish up lesson 23 by flying down into Providence TF Green, fly back and do a few short and soft take-offs and landings. Everything was going as planned except for one thing.....there was a nice little storm cell passing through the area right during my lesson. By looking at the weather reports, the clouds were shown to be at 4000 feet. Well, when we got up there, we were only able to go up to 1400 feet!!!!! The clouds were right above us! Then the rain came....we got about 1/2 way down to Providence when the conditions worsened. It was really getting into marginal VFR conditions...it was making me uncomfortable, really. So, we turned back around and headed back to Norwood, where we practiced my short and soft field take-offs and landings and called it a day. It wasn't looking any better to the West, so my cross-country flight is postponed until tomorrow. Tomorrow I am flying to Northampton, MA - 64 nautical miles.

To current, I have 43.7 hours total flight time which includes 113 take-offs and landings. Needless to say....my landings are coming along very nicely! Haha

Hopefully I'll be able to snap a few pics on my flight tomorrow to put up...

Windy windy windy

Boy was it ever windy out there today! Even though it was really gusty, Josh decided that since I was far enough along that he at least wanted to get me up there to experience those kind of conditions before I actually get my private pilot license. We went up for an hour and a half today and worked on my maneuvers - slow flight clean and dirty, power-on and power-off stalls, unusual attitudes, simulated instrument flight, turns around a point, s-turns, steep turns, and pattern work around an untowered airport with full stop landings and take offs in Mansfield. We then flew back to Norwood for a couple more and called it a day. We finally covered our last section of ground work. I am up for my stage 3 exam next weekend, with a couple more solo cross country flights - one of them being the long one. The following week a couple more review flights with my instructor, the FAA written test, and check flight with the Chief Flight Instructor, and then the week after I should be up for my oral exam and check flight with an FAA examiner to go for my license......3 short weeks away.

Slow Flight Video

Slow Flight at 15 knots ground speed (17mph) just North of Wrentham Village Outlets next to I495.

A whole new meaning to grounded!

Today I arrive at Horizon Aviation as usual, just before 1. Talked with Josh about the plan - a longer review flight in the practice area to cover all of my maneuvers and cross-country applications that I have learned up to this point. I preflighted 721SA as usual, got out to the before take off run-up area and started going through my checklist. Right at the crucial part....the check of the magnetos, led us to a mechanical problem. Upon switching to the left magneto, engine rpm dropped by 300 rpm, which in this case is enough to ground the airplane. We tried running up the engine a few times to see if that would resolve the problem, but with no avail we taxied back to the parking area. The other planes were booked up, so my lesson for today is postponed until tomorrow. Since I am so far ahead of the game in terms of my progress, I didn't mind pushing the lesson off until tomorrow.

Since I am getting so close to the end, I am now spending a lot of my time outside my lessons and work as review time. At the end of the course, which is literally within the next 5-6 flights, I have to take my FAA Exam, Final End of Course Flight Check with the Chief Flight Instructor, Oral Exam and Practical Test with an FAA Designated Examiner......oy. Lots of studying to do.....so close - I'm so excited!