It's been two weeks after I passed my check ride and I have finally received that lovely green plastic pilot certificate in mail. I have to say that I am surprised by myself that I hadn't wasted a single minute before I started reading instrument flying ground school material. This has never happened to me in college or high school. Usually after the final exams I would never want to read even one more line of textbook, but I guess it's different if I'm reading something that I truely love and passionate about.
Besides the not-extremely-interesting reading, I also managed to have four flights in the last two weekends, one flight per day.
The first one was the initial checkout of Skyhawk 172N. After spending 60 hours in the C152, Skyhawk looks like a giant plane to me. To make things even more challenging, it's gusting about 20-30 knots that day. Because the ceiling is too low for maneuver, I was just practicing patterns at S43(still great practice for ground reference maneuver). Feeling awkward with the flight control, trying to read the new call sign when announcing my position, and adjusting for the strong winds, I felt like I'm a new student again. In addition, I also had some problems on maintaining the center line on final because the plane is wider than the 152. When my instructor told me that I'm way off the centerline, I still thought I'm perfectly align with it. After a few more patterns including one or two go arounds, I finally feel better with the C172N and called it a day.
The second flight was quite a bad decision, I shouldn't takeoff in the first place. The ceiling is generally 3000-6000 in west WA while KPAE has probably the lowest around the area with less than 2000AGL. The icing level is about 2000MSL. So eager to build up the X-C time, I decided to give it a try. After filing the flight plan and getting the weather brief for a "short" trip to Port Angeles, I figured as long as I can fly around Paine field, the rest of the trip there will be only some scatter clouds at 3000. So I took off and flew around the cloud above Paine, then I noticed that the sky isn't as clear as the WX Brief reported. When I looked back to Paine, the weather situation is deteriorating quickly. I was pretty sure that I can reach on KCLM without any problem, but I really didn't think I can fly back to Snohomish in VFR condition 1 or 2 hours later. So I decided to cancel the flight and headed back. This turn out to be a good decision. In the last 5 miles before I reach Harvey, it started raining and the visibility is quickly drop to probably 3-5sm and I was flying into the pattern in pouring rain. Thank God I was not above the icing level when it rained :)
The third flight is just a continuation of the C172N check out. After finding a big hole in the cloud, we tried all those standard manuvers like steep turns, slow flight, stalls, engine failure, and went back to do some short/soft field T/O and landings. During the last landing my CFI pulled the power to idle on downwind and ask to me to have a precise short field landing, telling me I need to master that for commercial license anyway(200 hrs away from that...), and I made that landing pretty well. Got signed off on the C172N.
The last flight I had today was a little surprise. I was intending to get some night practice in the C172N, but the plane reaches its inspection time. Because the other N model at Harvey does not have a working landing light, the FBO decided to give me the S model without charging me the extra price. Sweet! I can check out the C172S while only paying for the price of a C172N. I had a few touch & go at KAWO before both my instructor and me realized that I'm not a student pilot anymore and now I need full stop for the night currency to carry passengers. So we started doing full stops, some at Arlington, some at Harvey. We also took advantage of the clear sky to finish checking out those flight manuvers in the S model. Now I just need to finish a questionair about the S model to get signed off. Because most likely I'll be training in C172S for the instrument rating, I'm glad that I get to spend some time on it now.
In addition to the flying, I've been actively looking for my next flight school for IFR training. Sent a few emails and made some phone calls to different FBOs. One FBO gave me some cold response that really pissed me off(they did the very same thing when I was looking for private pilot training, I guess they never learned). The good news is that the FBO that all my friend and co-workers had highly recommended is getting its Part 141 approved next month, meaning I don't need to build that many X-C hours to train with them now. And I need to spend a couple weeks on glider anyway. So they'll be Part141 school when I'm ready to start. What a good timing! More importantly, the owner is polite and patient on answering my questions.
With the glider club starts running again next weekend, I'll be spliting the weekend for glider training and powered airplane practices(or maybe giving friends a few rides if weather is nice). Can't wait for the next weekend!
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Passed Private Pilot Check Ride!
After 6 months of training and waiting, I finally received my private pilot license yesterday(02/11/2012)!
The check ride is actually much easier than I thought it would be. Before getting into the oral exam, my examiner Arnold spent probably more than 30 minutes reviewing my logbook and other materials to make sure that I'm indeed eligible. The oral exam is actually pretty short because I scored over 90 on the written. We basically just went through my cross country flight plan and discussed airplane operating limits and a few airspace related questions on the sectional. He did try to play a little trick on me by pointing at a little grey circle located at the top right corner of OLYMPIC A MOA and asked me what is that symbol. "Isn't that the letter 'O' of the marking Olympic Mountains", I answered. He smile and said, "That's correct. I once saw a helicopter instructor and two students discussing maps in the restaurant and asked them this same question, they spent 30 minutes researching and still couldn't figure out the answer". That poor instructor must be so embarrassed back then, lol.
After the oral it's the practical exam - Flying! The weather yesterday wasn't any better than the day I had my first solo. Clouds were broken or overcast at 1500-2500 MSL everywhere above the Puget Sound area throughout the day. Basically the ceiling is not high enough for performing flight maneuvers safely. To make thing worst, there seem to be some drizzling at the time we finished the oral session and the visibility is probably 5-7 static mile at the valley. We have no choice but wait. There's a safety seminar about NTSB accidents reviews at Harvey earlier in the morning, and apparently one of the pilots who attended the seminar thought the stories are so interesting that he want to share with more people. So I was sitting on the sofa and listening to those stupid/funny(depends on whether you are on that plane) fatal mistakes for at least 30 minutes. Since the 1pm METAR is indicating some improvement on the weather, we decided to go.
I preflighted the plane and surprisingly he didn't ask me any question about that process. He waited in the building until I'm almost finished(not sure if he's watching at all) and hopped into the plane when I completed the inspection and told him we are good to go. I taxied to Runway 15 and went through the run up procedure. Everything looked great so far. He asked for a normal take off and then cruise at 1500 MSL to stay below the cloud. This couldn't be easier, so I announced my intentioned on the radio and took off immediately. When I leveled off at 1500 MSL I noticed that I forgot something - this is a simulated cross-country flight and I should have written down the takeoff time! Normally I would remember to do it because I need to activate the flight plan with the Flight Service Station, but since it's simulated I'm not calling Seattle radio or approach at all. So I pretended nothing had happened, calmly looked at my watch, and minus the current time by 4 minutes and quietly wrote it down on the takeoff time cell on the table. I arrived my first check point Redmond at the exact time as I've calculated in the plan, so the examiner let me passed. Then we did some hood work simulating IFR, and a couple unusual attitude recovery, which I performed perfectly. After that he allowed me to take off the hood, and instructed me to land at Paine, normal landing. Generally I was doing pretty good except that I forgot the wind was blowing at 15knots gusting to 22knots and as a result I was turning base too late and ended up on a pretty long final. Landing was smooth and we taxied back to 16 and departed to the northeast, trying to find a broken area to finish the flight maneuvers. We were lucky to find a pretty big hole on the east side of Lake Stevens. The hole is in the shape of a huge football stadium and my plane is like a dancer performing in it. We did two steep turns, powered-on stall, powered off stall, slow flights, simulating emergency landing and headed back to S43. First one was a normal landing at 15. Everything went well. The second pattern was short-field T/O and landing. I had the best short field landing that I have ever had, the whole plane touch down gently (sometime during training I had to force it to settle on the ground) before any part crossing the number 15(the examiner only asked me to land as short as possible). Last patten would be a soft field T/O and landing, things were going so well that the examiner had to ask me to go around because he need to see me performing a go around. However I hadn't screw up any final approach yet, so he had to do it before I finished the whole check ride, lol. So I follow his instruction, showing him that I'm capable off going around, and finishing the exam with a decent soft field landing. And soon after that I received my license in his office.
Now it's about time to execute my new year resolutions, with glider seasons starting on March, I will be focusing on my glider rating in the next two months. Meanwhile, I'd like to checkout the SportStar LSA and also the Cessna 172, building that 50 hrs X-C time for Part 61 IFR training.
The check ride is actually much easier than I thought it would be. Before getting into the oral exam, my examiner Arnold spent probably more than 30 minutes reviewing my logbook and other materials to make sure that I'm indeed eligible. The oral exam is actually pretty short because I scored over 90 on the written. We basically just went through my cross country flight plan and discussed airplane operating limits and a few airspace related questions on the sectional. He did try to play a little trick on me by pointing at a little grey circle located at the top right corner of OLYMPIC A MOA and asked me what is that symbol. "Isn't that the letter 'O' of the marking Olympic Mountains", I answered. He smile and said, "That's correct. I once saw a helicopter instructor and two students discussing maps in the restaurant and asked them this same question, they spent 30 minutes researching and still couldn't figure out the answer". That poor instructor must be so embarrassed back then, lol.
After the oral it's the practical exam - Flying! The weather yesterday wasn't any better than the day I had my first solo. Clouds were broken or overcast at 1500-2500 MSL everywhere above the Puget Sound area throughout the day. Basically the ceiling is not high enough for performing flight maneuvers safely. To make thing worst, there seem to be some drizzling at the time we finished the oral session and the visibility is probably 5-7 static mile at the valley. We have no choice but wait. There's a safety seminar about NTSB accidents reviews at Harvey earlier in the morning, and apparently one of the pilots who attended the seminar thought the stories are so interesting that he want to share with more people. So I was sitting on the sofa and listening to those stupid/funny(depends on whether you are on that plane) fatal mistakes for at least 30 minutes. Since the 1pm METAR is indicating some improvement on the weather, we decided to go.
I preflighted the plane and surprisingly he didn't ask me any question about that process. He waited in the building until I'm almost finished(not sure if he's watching at all) and hopped into the plane when I completed the inspection and told him we are good to go. I taxied to Runway 15 and went through the run up procedure. Everything looked great so far. He asked for a normal take off and then cruise at 1500 MSL to stay below the cloud. This couldn't be easier, so I announced my intentioned on the radio and took off immediately. When I leveled off at 1500 MSL I noticed that I forgot something - this is a simulated cross-country flight and I should have written down the takeoff time! Normally I would remember to do it because I need to activate the flight plan with the Flight Service Station, but since it's simulated I'm not calling Seattle radio or approach at all. So I pretended nothing had happened, calmly looked at my watch, and minus the current time by 4 minutes and quietly wrote it down on the takeoff time cell on the table. I arrived my first check point Redmond at the exact time as I've calculated in the plan, so the examiner let me passed. Then we did some hood work simulating IFR, and a couple unusual attitude recovery, which I performed perfectly. After that he allowed me to take off the hood, and instructed me to land at Paine, normal landing. Generally I was doing pretty good except that I forgot the wind was blowing at 15knots gusting to 22knots and as a result I was turning base too late and ended up on a pretty long final. Landing was smooth and we taxied back to 16 and departed to the northeast, trying to find a broken area to finish the flight maneuvers. We were lucky to find a pretty big hole on the east side of Lake Stevens. The hole is in the shape of a huge football stadium and my plane is like a dancer performing in it. We did two steep turns, powered-on stall, powered off stall, slow flights, simulating emergency landing and headed back to S43. First one was a normal landing at 15. Everything went well. The second pattern was short-field T/O and landing. I had the best short field landing that I have ever had, the whole plane touch down gently (sometime during training I had to force it to settle on the ground) before any part crossing the number 15(the examiner only asked me to land as short as possible). Last patten would be a soft field T/O and landing, things were going so well that the examiner had to ask me to go around because he need to see me performing a go around. However I hadn't screw up any final approach yet, so he had to do it before I finished the whole check ride, lol. So I follow his instruction, showing him that I'm capable off going around, and finishing the exam with a decent soft field landing. And soon after that I received my license in his office.
Now it's about time to execute my new year resolutions, with glider seasons starting on March, I will be focusing on my glider rating in the next two months. Meanwhile, I'd like to checkout the SportStar LSA and also the Cessna 172, building that 50 hrs X-C time for Part 61 IFR training.
Image1: Airport visited through out the private pilot training.
Image2: Books I used for the private pilot training. In addition, I've also completed two online ground school training: Kingschool and MZeroA.com.
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