Wow it's been 2.5 months since my last update on my blog. I know I'm being lazy on writing, but I have lots of good reasons for that. One of them will be the weather is getting so much better as we are getting into summer so I can't resist the temptation of flying. I've logged almost 40 hours in the airplane and 10 hours in the Red Bird simulator since May. Another excuse would be I got distracted in May because I was buying a share in a flying club! Now I'm an "owner" of 3 beautiful Cessnas, owning them with other club members. With my own airplanes, the flying expense drop dramatically and I can afford to fly more often than before. Everything happened so fast in the last few months and I was just busy flying. Now I finally have some time to sit down and write about them. Here are some of the flights/events that are worth mentioning.
Light Sport Fun
At the beginning of May, I just got checked out in the Evektor SportStar
at Harvey and I thought I'm going to fly this plane for the next couple
month to build my cross country hours since it's only slightly more
expensive than the Cessna 152 but has a MUCH BETTER view. The view in a
SportStar cockpit is so great that I even have non-pilot friends asking me if
I was flying a helicopter. I've flown to Orcas Island once to build 2 hours of cross country time and done another local flight with a Taiwanese student who's training at Harvey.
SportStar Over San Juan Islands
SportStar at Orcas Island
San Juan Islands again
Somewhere between Arlington and Snohomish
Over Lake Sammamish
Glider Solo
It's a beautiful day on May 12th at Bergseth field, and my instructor Gary finally signed me off for my solo. I was almost ready last October (even before I soloed the C152), but the weather get into the way and the glider club doesn't operate in winter. This spring I believe we had canceled 8 out of the first 10 operation, and 1 of the operations that we had was with that crazy 30 knot wind blowing down the mountain. When the weather becomes better, my instructor was out for vacation and other instructors who don't know me well obviously couldn't let me solo.
This is a perfect day for solo, the wind is almost calm and we have unlimited visibility. After a pattern tow, Gary stepped out of the glider and asked the tow pilot to give me a 3000 ft tow and allow me have some time to experience the handling of glider by myself. I was quite nervous to be honest. I kept a very close look with the altimeter because I don't want to have an off field landing on my first solo. I landed safely 20 minutes later. I was a little high on final but I managed to use full spoiler and forward slip to bring it down normally. I had another pattern tow right after that and called it a day.
However, that day was far from over. Our tow plane has a nose over upon landing and the propeller is damaged. Though there's no visual damage on the engine, it's grounded indefinitely until it's cleared from the maintenance shop(according to the latest update, it should be back at the end of July). Just when I thought I could finally get my glider rating.......
With my glider instructor Gary after my first glider solo
Buying a Plane?
It never occurs to me that I'll become an aircraft owner this year. I always thought it's going to take me a few years to save enough money (it's really mission impossible with the way I used up all my income every month on flight training). The chances came when someone working in the same company is selling his share in a flying club. I wasn't planning to join any flying club originally because I can rent C152 at RNT for less than $90/hr at that time. The funny thing is, the FBO decided to replace the C152 with C162 the same time I saw the ads of the flying club share, which gave me perfect reason to join the club to in order to keep my flying expense low. I contacted the guy a week later and luckily it hasn't been sold yet. So I bought the share as soon as possible.
The club has two Cessna 172M and one Cessna 182P. All the planes are equipped with G430W with terrain and traffic display. The Skylane even has Aspen PFD with synthetic vision and two-axis autopilot. I finished my checkout in each of the Cessna 172M (insurance policy requires separate checkout in each plane) and also completed the night checkout as soon as possible. I did it with three different instructors in the club, including one FAA examiner. This club is definitely not in shortage of instructors lol.
First Adventure in MY Airplane
Shortly after I joined the club, I happened to find another coworker who's interested in glider training. We knew each other because I replied to his question on an email thread about gliders. Since the tow plane is down, our glider club is temperately operating at Ephrata now and we started planning to carpool to Ephrata on the weekend. However, we soon realized that we are actually in the same flying club that I just joined. So carpool became planepool, haha. We took our glider instructor Gary with us on the trip. Jon flew us to EPH on IFR in the morning, and I took us back VFR at night. Jon has his first taste of glider flight and I also get my first experience in the PW-6. We both enjoy the experience a lot, and Jon like it enough to decide to come back to our club to train for a glider rating.
Above the cloud along V2
mountain top covered with snow
It's all sunny on the east side of the Cascade
Wind mills
Ephrata
Hooking up the tow rope
Cross Country Time Building
The hourly cost for flying is much lower for me now because of the flying club. In addition, the club is billing us on Tach time instead of Hobbs time. So I have been taking full advantage of that, building lots of cross country time. I'm building it smartly that I didn't take unnecessary long cross country trips in terms of long distance. Instead, I'm trying to land as frequently as possible once I meet that 50nm straight line distance requirement between two airports, so that I can save Tach time while building up the flight hours. I easily added about 20 hours in less than a month!
Friday Harbor on final for runway 16
Friday Harbor
Our plane parking at FHR
China Southern Airline - The airline from my home town! Spotted this when I was about to start the engine at RNT
Sea-Tac Crossing
With two Taiwanese students who are currently training at Harvey, photo taken at Kelso, in front of my club's plane
IFR Training
Instrument training is probably the most "boring" thing to describe. It's been shooting approaches either in the simulator or in the plane under the hood. I got a little real IMC experience in June, but the weather has been generally pretty nice when I'm practicing IFR (or simply thunderstorm that prevent me from flying at all). I'm almost finished with the approach practices and can't wait to get into the IFR cross country stage! A little footage of one of my IFR training in VFR day can be viewed here:
Next Steps...
In the next few weeks, I'm hoping to finish my IFR training stage 2 (the approaches) reviews and stage check and also complete those 2 or 3 IFR cross country flights for the training. I need to get ready for the written exam and aiming to get the rating by the end of August.
Taking passengers up to introduce them to general aviation is another thing that I've started doing recently. However, this really depends on the weather and airplane availability. I've just cancelled tomorrow's flight because the airplane was damaged earlier this week and it's still under maintenance. Another scenic flight that I had scheduled in next week might be affected by the VIP TFR and might need to be cancelled too...
Last but not least, I'd like to complete my mountain flying checkout - flying into Stehekin State Airport with a former Alaska bush pilot. This is gonna be a super exciting and fun trip. We've already cancelled the flight once due to the bad weather in Puget Sound, and I really want to get this done ASAP now.
