100 hours!

Somewhere between Van Nuys airport and Riverside airport I officially passed the 100-hour mark. Ironically it was one of the least enjoyable flights of flight training, but I feel that the mark was a milestone. This particular session was focused on instrument approaches and once I returned to the Inland Empire, it was one approach after another. In real life this particular situation would never occur, but for sakes of training, it was necessary. I think it was the frustration of having to complete multiple tasks at once that affected me, plus having an instructor next to me criticizing every move I made. I enjoy the steps in making a successful approach, it’s just when making such an approach happens in consequential order and in a matter of 5 minutes after completing a previous approach seconds beforehand.

Airports I've flown into

I've inserted a link to a google maps rendition of all the airports I've flown into. Not too impressive, but slowly growing. Check it out if you're bored.

MEL

Well it's been awhile since I received my Multi Engine add-on, but I wanted to post about the experience of the checkride. The date I had my checkride was June 9, 2007. I felt surprisingly prepared, although it seemed awfully quick for learning a completely new airplane (Seminole).

I knew which examiner I was going to have about a couple of weeks beforehand. Other students gave their insights on how he was. From their experiences and what my instructor taught me, I felt pretty prepared.

I was the first to go before my partner, Jon. As soon as we arrived at the airport, the examiner was there and he was ready to go into one of the rooms and begin the oral section. We arrived early because he was able to be at the airport at an earlier time than previously scheduled. The oral went really well. The examiner, Tom, likes to give real life situations as test questions rather than ask specific standard test questions. I enjoyed that. It was almost like we were just discussing aviation amongst each other. It seemed to end really quickly after it began.

After preflighting the plane, he arrived and I seemed to be over prepared for the flight. He asked where I wanted to go for the maneuvers and I had usually flown over Lake Matthews to perform them. He seemed like he wanted to go over San Bernardino airport for the checkride, so I said that would be fine, even though I was unfamiliar with that location. I had my terminal area chart, which I didn't use, and all the frequencies necessary for the flight (San Bernardino CTAF, SoCal approach, etc.) and I even tried to get the weather brief, which he didn't want.

We took off and headed towards San Bernardino. I made sure I kept lower than the Class C airspace for Ontario. Once we were clear, which he let me know (surprised), we climbed to 6,000 feet and began the maneuvers. Every maneuver went really well and he seemed pretty laid back (kept his eye outside most of the time, and at me to make sure I wasn't looking solely at the instruments). While setting up for a maneuver I heard Expressjet coming into Ontario and then moments later saw them fly over us at about 1,000. It was an awesome sight, I think I even vocalized "awesome".

We did an emergency decent to San Bernardino on one engine and then set up for landing. The only mistake I made, which seemed pretty existential, was that when I added power because we were below glideslope, I added a lot from the operating engine which caused us to yaw a lot towards the dead engine. I forgot to correct accordingly and the plane was yawing all over the place. Tom said, "watch that rudder!" I corrected quickly, but I felt like I made a stupid mistake. Once we went around the pattern a few times we took off and he said I could relax and he would fly the rest of the way back to Riverside.

It seemed like I didn't pass (on my own standards) but I knew that he was satisfied with my flight. He flew the entire way back and landed, then taxied back. I was very happy I had passed. It was a lot easier than I had expected, but I think I was sufficient enough to demonstrate I could fly the twin. Good times though.

IFR flights

Here are the flightaware shots of my flight from Sacramento to Paso Robles, and then from Paso Robles to Riverside. Being an IFR flight, it was the first time I flew a flight that showed up in flightaware.




Since the time building flights, I've been studying and flying the Seminole simulator. I also passed the Instrument written exam and the Instructor Instrument written exam. There are four more days until my checkride in the Seminole.

First week at ATP

I got to ATP in Riverside, California a week before the beginning of the program to build time. The minimum time for the program is around 85 hours, which I did not have. Unfortunately, the only Cessna they had was broken so there was a lot of free time I had to study and get situated. I decided to go home for a couple of days, though, before the actual start date. But the week the program started, it was a lot busier. I flew the Piper Seminole for the first time the second day and had an interesting first time.

We go around the pattern the first time and begin our "Gear down, before landing checklist". I put the gear down and I check the 3 green lights for the first time to check if they all came down. We get the nose gear and the left main gear light, but no left main gear light. My instructor and I look at each other, and he begins to troubleshoot. You can exchange the little lights so that you can make sure the light is actually working, to no avail. We cancel our landing and he tries to cycle the gear, still nothing. So we advise the tower and she verifies that the gear is in fact down. So we continue the pattern and come back around to land, leaving the gear down. We land uneventfully. It was pretty scary and exciting for my first time. Afterwards we find another plane and go up and have an uneventful flight. The Seminole is fun to fly, but very complicated compared to the Cessna that I'm used to.

We also did some time building to Sacramento Executive, Paso Robles and back in the Cessna. It took almost 8 hours of flight time, but a lot of fun. I'm obviously more comfortable in the Cessna, so I was a little more at ease. I was also able to fly through some actual IMC (instrument meteorological conditions) and fly above a marine layer in Southern California. When we turned to intercept the Lake Hughes VOR, we heard a traffic advisory for us. They were telling an Expressjet ERJ and we look to our right and see it fly past us at about the same altitude. It was a wonderful sight. Also flying back into the Los Angeles area was cool, seeing a lot of aircraft and being over the city. This evening I'll be flying to Phoenix for some more time building. It should be another fun flight. More to come...

ATP Flight School

Due to the length of acquiring my Private Pilot's License, I decided I needed something to get me through my ratings a quicker pace. After researching some flight schools, I decided to go with ATP because of their location, price and multi-engine time. Even after this decision, it took me a couple of months to actually go through with it. One motivator, and it certainly isn't the best motivator, was their increase in price for their Airline Career Pilot Program. If I could reserve a slot before June, their old price would still apply. I then went to work.

I scheduled an interview at the KSAC (Sacramento Executive Airport) location and drove up there for the day. I studied basic private pilot knowledge and felt pretty prepared for the interview. The interview was very enjoyable, and I was able to fly a simulator, which I've never done before. I was a little rusty on some questions, but I felt I did pretty well.

A couple of days later James from ATP called and said that Ignacio, the instructor at the KSAC location who interviewed me, said he would like to recommend me for the program. James then did a phone interview asking several private pilot knowledge questions. I thought I did even better during the phone interview, but still missed some information I should have known. He said I had successfully passed the interview and we began the paperwork.

As of today, all of the paperwork, including loan paperwork, has been completed and I scheduled for the May 28th, 2007 slot at the KRAL (Riverside Municipal Airport) location. I decided to go here instead of KSAC because I know some friends down there and also have some relatives who live near by.

I'm very anxious to start and I can't wait until I'm 'immersed in aviation', as they say you will be during the program. It lasts 90 days and I'll have received the following ratings and hours (per the ATP website):

• Private Multi-Engine
• Instrument Multi-Engine
• Commercial Multi-Engine
• Commercial Single-Engine
• Certified Flight Instructor:
  • Multi-Engine
  • Instrument Airplane
  • Single-Engine
• Jet Transition:
  • High Altitude Endorsement
  • High Performance Endorsement

• 200 Hours Logged Time
• 190 Hours Multi-Engine Time
  • 75 Hours Multi-Engine Cross-Country
  • 65 Hours Multi-Engine Instruction
    & Flight Checks
  • Citation Jet Transition
  • 50 Hours Multi-Engine FTD
• 10 Hours Single-Engine Time

There are a couple of downfalls. One and the most important one being that I'll be away from my wife for the 3 months. She'll be living here at our apartment while I'm there. I'm sure we'll be fine, but I know it's going to be hard. Another downfall is the loan I'm taking out. It's quite large and I'm a little skeptical of being that much in debt. Hopefully, though, I'll get a good enough job to pay that off.

I'll try to post more often on my progress and past accomplishments that I've omitted thus far.

ASEL Check Ride

Well, I promised to post about my checkride, so I will do so. It took about a year for me to finally reach the checkride due to changing schools and insufficient funds. The good thing about it taking so long was that I felt pretty confident in my flying. This confidence, however, didn’t keep me from getting pretty nervous about my solo cross-countries I flew, of which I will post on later. Anyway, I studied everyday from the ASA Oral study guide and from the PTS (Practical Test Standards). I also read a lot of posts from different forums about other pilots’ checkrides. It seemed like it was going to be pretty intense and I was a bit concerned that my nervousness would cause my flying skills to drop below the standards the examiner was looking for.

It felt like the day of the checkride came up pretty quickly. All of a sudden it was the night before a day in which I thought about since I’ve began flying. I was scheduled at 12:00p and coincidentally I drove past the examiner on the way to the airport. My instructor said that this particular examiner was a good guy.

Out 2 hours or so of the oral section of the checkride went surprisingly well and I knew most of the questions he asked. Of the questions I wasn’t sure on, he helped me search for the correct one. It took about a half an hour alone to go through the visibility and cloud clearance requirements for each airspace, and surprisingly I got every part of it right. He drew a diagram on a white board and had me fill in the requirements and after I had painstakingly told him my answers, he said at the end, “everything looks right to me, let’s go fly.”

So on to the flying portion and I felt pretty good at that point. We did all the typical maneuvers that are done for the checkride and also flew the first portion of my cross-country to KSMO. One interesting point was when I did my steep turns. My instructor helped me in quickly trimming the plane to keep a constant altitude while doing the maneuver. Add a certain amount of power and trim two-full wheel turns of the trim. However, when performing the maneuver, I trimmed two-full wheel turns in the opposite direction, AND (aircraft nose-down), instead of ANU (aircraft nose-up). I quickly realized my mistake and trimmed accordingly. The examiner laughed and said he was about to say something about what I was doing. Thankfully I corrected quickly.

The landings (short-field, soft-field) went pretty well considering I was concerned about these the most. It was pretty windy and my short-field landing was pretty hard, but I guess he looked more into whether or not I landing within the space required. After the last landing, he said that I could taxi back and congratulations. I was ecstatic, but I didn’t show it. I guess in the back of my head I knew I would do all right. What a great accomplishment though, I thought. My wife was there to congratulate me first and she was sitting there the entire time watching me fly. She spoils me, but she’s awesome.

New place, new accomplishments

I haven’t updated this blog forever. No matter, not many people read it, which I don’t mind. Maybe one of these days it’ll be read by few. Anyway, since the last post my wife and I moved back to our home town and currently live in a brand new apartment (brand new as in the just built the complex and we’re the first residents). I also was able to get a job at our local airport as a ramper for Mesa Airlines. It allows me to be around the aviation industry and it’s given me a lot of perspective.

Another huge update that pertains to this blog is that I passed my ASEL check-ride and am now a private pilot. I took the check-ride on January 22nd of this year. I’ll write another post about it later. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to fly since due to work and weather. But I hope to get up soon so that I can start gaining more time.

I’m looking into going to an accelerated school called ATP flight school more and more. It took me so long to attain my private license that I’m afraid it’ll take even longer to attain the remaining ratings I need to fly professionally. It’s quite costly to go to this school, but it seems to keep a good reputation and you go out of the school with a lot of multi-time which is very much needed. But we’ll see if it all pans out and I actually attend the school.

Throughout my training I’ve flown to some pretty cool airports on my solo cross-countries: King City airport, Camarillo airport, Santa Maria airport and Coalinga airport. I’ll also write about some of these flight as well.

First Solo at Whiteman

Well, today was the first time I soloed here at Whiteman Airport. I felt comfortable while doing some landings with my instructor, and so he jumped out so that I could do some myself. I’ve done this before, so it was not big deal. Unfortunately, my first approach I made a mistake. The tower told me to follow another Cessna on final near the 405 Freeway making a right-base to runway 12 (that is what initially threw me off because normal pattern is left-base). But I couldn’t see him, and instead of asking tower to call my base, I, for some reason, turned my base only to see the aircraft on a long final. Whoops. So tower was a little upset and asked if I saw the traffic. I let him go in front of me, but I was too close behind him to land safely, so the tower had me do “S” turns to final. But I was coming up to the runway too quickly and so I requested to enter crosswind again for runway 12. I felt dumb, but I guess we learn from our mistakes. I hope I didn’t aggravate the tower controller too much.

Then on a takeoff, tower instructed me to expedite my takeoff due to a plane on short final, so I started to go, when I realized my window was still open, so while rolling down the runway I had to close it. I don’t know if tower noticed, but he had me make a sooner crosswind, so it was OK.

Then while taxiing, I came up to a Mooney that was coming off the runway, and tower instructed me to give way to him. But I couldn’t understand, and I heard the other plane say he was giving way to me (what I thought). But I asked tower to repeat, and he just told me to stop. He sounded frustrated, but it wasn’t too big of a deal.

I just hate silly mistakes like that when I’m by myself. But I guess I learned a lot compared if I were with my instructor. I’m good to solo for another 90 days though. I’m comfortable to fly myself, but I feel uneasy for some reason. I hope that mental part goes away. I’m at 35 hours today.

Long Time Flying

So I finally was able to go up and fly today. It was surprisingly familiar to me. I was a bit nervous taxiing out, but by the time we lifted off, I felt right at home. We took off on runway 12, which faces the 4 stacks that separate Whiteman Airport and Burbank Airport airspaces. One must make their crosswind turn before these stacks or they'll end up in Burbank airspace. Another cool point was that our base leg is right over the 118 freeway. My instructor and I noticed a traffic accident on the 210 North. Cars were backed up all the way on the 118 for those wanted to take the 210 North. It was cool to see these traffic jams and I'm sure very few people get this view on a common occurrence in LA county. My landings were OK, not perfect. I couldn't maintain my 65 knot descent speed to landing, but something I'll probably fix next time. I had to work on using knots instead of miles-per-hour like the plane I flew previously, also the flap switch, which wasn't too difficult. These are some of the communication procedures I have to get used to being at a controlled airport:


Taxi and takeoff procedures:

125.0: ME: "Whiteman Ground, Cessna 4936D at Vista ready to taxi."

GROUND: "36D (winds and altimeter setting), taxi to and hold runway 12."

ME: "Taxi to and hold runway 12, 36D."

135.0 ME: "Whiteman Tower, Cessna 36D holding short runway 12 departing left closed traffic."

TOWER: "36D cleared for takeoff, left closed traffic approved."

ME: "Cleared for takeoff, 36D"


Landing procedures:

ME: "Whiteman Tower, 36D left downwind abeam."

TOWER: "36D cleared to land"

ME: "Cleared to land, 36D."


Taxiing after landing procedures:


Returning to departure:

ME: "Whiteman Tower, 36D taxiing back to runway 12."

TOWER: "36D taxi back runway 12."


Returning home:

ME: "Whiteman Tower, 36D taxiing to Vista, good night."

TOWER: "36D good night."


I also need to remember to "clean the airplane" after taxiing beyond the hold short line (flaps up, carburetor heat cool, transponder on standby). It was great to be back up there!!

Here's the cockpit:

Vista Air

I finally was able to take a trip down to Pacoima and get things ready for me to start training at Vista Air at Whiteman Airport. My new instructor is Robert. We're going to get me back up so that I can get back into flying again, since I haven't for more than a month. We'll do a cross country to KSBA (Santa Barbara) and that's where I'll probably fly for my first solo cross country. I'm excited to get back into the air. The plane that I'll be flying is a 1979 C172. The plane I flew at KPRB is a 1973 C172. The differences include: airspeed indicator in knots instead of MPH, flap extension switch is notched at each degree of flap. So instead of having to hold down the switch until the needle points to 10 degrees, I can just switch it to 10 degrees and not have to wait until it gets there. These differences will make my flying experience a little less stressful, especially when I'm solo. I can't wait to get used to being up there. Here's a picture of the plane:

New Home

This is a picture of our new dining room table from IKEA in our new apartment. We really like it.

We've moved to Santa Clarita, California finally and we've been enjoying it. The only downside is that I haven't been able to fly, for what it seems like a year. I was going to go up for a weekend to do some more flying, but it's not working out. So, I've decided to change flight schools and go to one closer to where I live. I hope that the whole thing works out. Mel's been working, which she really loves, and I'm happy for her. Other than that, it's been fun hanging out throughout Los Angeles County.

Flying, flying & more flying

I’ve been flying a lot lately, which is really good. I have about 10 hours as of today. My last lesson ended well with a pretty good landing that I made. Before that, we’ve been practicing landings and they haven’t been easy. I was getting a little frustrated until I made a pretty good landing to end our last lesson. My friend Ben was in the back when I went up, and he seemed like he enjoyed himself for the most part. It’s been really fun though. The most exhilarating experience so far was flying to San Luis Obispo Airport (SBP) and landing at a towered airport, which those of you who don’t know, Paso Robles Airport is not. It was beautiful flying back because it was near night and you could see all the lights from below. I hope I can reach my goal to get my Private Pilot License by Christmas.

Flying day!

Today my dad, Mel, her brother and I went to Paso Robles airport to go to the Airshow they were having. There was a stand there for a new flight training school that just opened up in July. We talked to the flight instructor and he was offering an introductory flight for $50.00, which is the basic price for any flight school. I didn't think, though, that I would be able to have another introductory flight since I've all ready had one in Monterey. He said I could so I was able to go up and fly with Mel!!

He treated it more like a flight lesson rather than an introductory flight since I had a good knowledge how to fly. We spent a little bit over a half hour up there and I was able to do some basic maneuvers and also talk to traffic. It was an awesome day. It fueled my desire to fly that much more.

24 Days Officially

Today is the 1st of September, 2005 and there is now 24 days left until our wedding. Things are getting crazy.

Hoy es el primero de septiembre, 2005 y quedan 24 días hasta nuestra boda. Las cosas vuelven locas.

Nuevo

I just set up this Blog for me and my future wife.