It's been more than 2 weeks into January now and I'm getting closer and closer to my private pilot check ride. I took the written exam last weekend. It took me about one hour to complete the test and passed with a 90% score. Reading that ASA Test Prep twice did help a lot. I've also finished all the required trainings for my part141 syllabus earlier this month. What I need now is a couple weekends of good weather so that I can polish(or I should probably say recall) my skills and take the check ride. After all, I haven't practiced maneuvers like slow flight and stalls for more than 2 months.
The weather in Puget Sound is not very cooperative in January, I am forced to reschedule my trainings due to the snowstorm, otherwise I would have my license by the end of this month:(
However, the not-so-good weather is not all about setbacks, it did give me a great chance to practice crosswind landings during the first weekend. I was on a solo cross-country trip from S43 to BLI and then round robin back with landings at BVS and AWO. Winds aloft is about 40kt and there are quite a few lenticular clouds above the Cascade mountains. It's the most bumpy trip I have ever had in my life and I was being tossed up and down in every minute! Besides crosswind, I also experienced some windshear and downdraft when landing at BLI and BVS. I landed at BLI with about 4-5kt crosswind, and landed at BVS at about 10kt. It's pretty gusty crosswind considering that Cessna152 is a really light airplane. I had to crab and sideslip with no flaps to land the plane on BVS. I was amazed and proud of myself that I was able to maintain center line in that condition. After the challenging crosswind practice at BVS, there are some light rain between AWO and S43, which calms the wind down a little bit. I checked the OAT and it's well above 40F, so no need to worry about structure icing:) But it's extremely frustrating to fly in a 40kt headwind situation. So after monitoring Harvey CTAF for more than 10 minutes and figured no one is practicing patterns at this moment, I declared an extended right base approach for runway 15 to save a big trip shooting for that 45 downwind. Another fun thing about this trip is that it's the first time that Seattle radio wished me "a safe landing" when I was closing the flight plan before landing at Harvey, lol. It turned out that the wind on the surface at Harvey is actually pretty calm :)
Since the snow is preventing me from flying these days, I started editing some videos I shot during my first two solo cross country flights and I have uploaded them on youtube.
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Monday, January 2, 2012
New year resolutions and a quick review of my last year
1. Get glider rating before May
2. Get instrument rating before July
3. Fly to the legendary Van Nuys airport, or another airport that's equally far away from Seattle
4. Get tailwheel rating if still have money left
5. Should really start writing a blog about my journey on learning how to fly
So I'll start working on my resolution with a quick review of my 2011.
Jan 2011
Continue traveling in Texas after watching Fighting Illini defeat Bayler Bears and their future Heisman winner RG III in Texas Bowl.
Started the semester by welcoming a new group of transfer students. This is the 4th and last semester that I work for the undergrad admission office as a mentor for transfer students.
Feb - May 2011
Enjoying my last semester in college. Volleyball and Bowling classes are fun. Anthropology is also interesting. Don't have too much to say about my CS courses. The only thing that I don't like very much is the Zen class, which I registered to fulfill the non-western culture requirement, but sure enough as an Asian myself, I passed it without really understanding what the professor was talking about:)
During the spring break, I went to US Air Force museum in Dayton with Scot, which made the flying bug inside me growing much bigger. I'm gonna blame him if I go broke in the future.
Graduated in May. My parents came to the US for the first time to attend my commencement ceremony, and visit NYC, DC and Chicago after that.
June-July 2011
Got my driver's license and new car. Thanks to everyone who had taught me how to drive. I spent most of the time traveling, went to California, Utah, Montana, Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania. During those trips, I also started finding flight school and reading books about flight training.
Arrived in WA on July 25th. I visited the Museum of Flight on the following day. The day after that, July 27th, I had my discovery flight in a Cessna 172! We took off from Snohomish and flew south to Snoqualmie Fall and headed west to land on Boeing Field before heading back. I would spend the next 10 days or so to go through FAA and TSA to get approved to start flight training as a non US citizen. While I was waiting for TSA to collect my finger prints, I didn't waste a minute and I had my first glider training on July 31st.
August-September
My first private pilot lesson happened on August 6th, right after I got approval from TSA and pass the medical exam. Had a hard time taxiing the plane and turn the plane onto the grass a few times, lol. Taking advantage of the good weather and long day time, I was making good progress on both glider and powered airplane trainings and getting closer and closer to my first solo.
October
Summer is completely over and weather is bad in Seattle area, couldn't get too much time flying the glider. I had my first solo on Oct 16th, flying 3 traffic patterns around Harvey field, and the third landing was quite perfect! I was actually not as neverous as I thought I would be.
November-December
Glider club stopped operation starting November until March next year. Helped the club cleaning and disassembling the gliders on the first weekend. Continue my single engine airplane training and started cross country training. Cross country training during the winter in pacific northwest is absolutely painful, because it's really hard to find a good day that both the departure airport and destination airport are having a reasonable good weather. Before every flight I need to spend one or two hours to plan and complete a navigation log form, and very likely at the end the weather is not good enough to fly and I have to redo it next time because stuffs like wind, temperature and pressure is different every time. I received my solo cross country endorsement before thanksgiving week is over, but I wouldn't get my first solo cross country flight from Harvey to Bellingham done until mid December. I went on to have a few more solo cross country flights and also finished my night training on the last weekend of the year.
2. Get instrument rating before July
3. Fly to the legendary Van Nuys airport, or another airport that's equally far away from Seattle
4. Get tailwheel rating if still have money left
5. Should really start writing a blog about my journey on learning how to fly
So I'll start working on my resolution with a quick review of my 2011.
Jan 2011
Continue traveling in Texas after watching Fighting Illini defeat Bayler Bears and their future Heisman winner RG III in Texas Bowl.
Started the semester by welcoming a new group of transfer students. This is the 4th and last semester that I work for the undergrad admission office as a mentor for transfer students.
Feb - May 2011
Enjoying my last semester in college. Volleyball and Bowling classes are fun. Anthropology is also interesting. Don't have too much to say about my CS courses. The only thing that I don't like very much is the Zen class, which I registered to fulfill the non-western culture requirement, but sure enough as an Asian myself, I passed it without really understanding what the professor was talking about:)
During the spring break, I went to US Air Force museum in Dayton with Scot, which made the flying bug inside me growing much bigger. I'm gonna blame him if I go broke in the future.
Graduated in May. My parents came to the US for the first time to attend my commencement ceremony, and visit NYC, DC and Chicago after that.
June-July 2011
Got my driver's license and new car. Thanks to everyone who had taught me how to drive. I spent most of the time traveling, went to California, Utah, Montana, Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania. During those trips, I also started finding flight school and reading books about flight training.
Arrived in WA on July 25th. I visited the Museum of Flight on the following day. The day after that, July 27th, I had my discovery flight in a Cessna 172! We took off from Snohomish and flew south to Snoqualmie Fall and headed west to land on Boeing Field before heading back. I would spend the next 10 days or so to go through FAA and TSA to get approved to start flight training as a non US citizen. While I was waiting for TSA to collect my finger prints, I didn't waste a minute and I had my first glider training on July 31st.
August-September
My first private pilot lesson happened on August 6th, right after I got approval from TSA and pass the medical exam. Had a hard time taxiing the plane and turn the plane onto the grass a few times, lol. Taking advantage of the good weather and long day time, I was making good progress on both glider and powered airplane trainings and getting closer and closer to my first solo.
October
Summer is completely over and weather is bad in Seattle area, couldn't get too much time flying the glider. I had my first solo on Oct 16th, flying 3 traffic patterns around Harvey field, and the third landing was quite perfect! I was actually not as neverous as I thought I would be.
November-December
Glider club stopped operation starting November until March next year. Helped the club cleaning and disassembling the gliders on the first weekend. Continue my single engine airplane training and started cross country training. Cross country training during the winter in pacific northwest is absolutely painful, because it's really hard to find a good day that both the departure airport and destination airport are having a reasonable good weather. Before every flight I need to spend one or two hours to plan and complete a navigation log form, and very likely at the end the weather is not good enough to fly and I have to redo it next time because stuffs like wind, temperature and pressure is different every time. I received my solo cross country endorsement before thanksgiving week is over, but I wouldn't get my first solo cross country flight from Harvey to Bellingham done until mid December. I went on to have a few more solo cross country flights and also finished my night training on the last weekend of the year.
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