Look what I got in the mail last week

This is one expensive piece of plastic:

But it was worth every damn penny, believe me.

Saturday, November 21: "The Checkride"

San Diego International at dusk

I'll save you the suspense: I passed.

The checkride was probably the most stressful thing I've ever done. The examiner did his best to calm me, but it was no use. I was a big ball of nerves.

I showed up to the airport at 7 AM and ate breakfast with my instructor. An hour later, the examiner arrived, and after all the paperwork was filled out, the oral portion began. He started with a few pretty simple questions that I answered easily. Then the questions got more and more advanced. He took out a sheet of paper and drew a diagram of a weather system. He asked, "where would you be likely to find thunderstorms in this system?" I had no idea.

He asked me questions about airspace and my mind went blank (fortunately this was an open-book test; I was allowed to reference my copy of the Federal Air Regulations, which helped). An hour and a half later, about the time I started to feel like I was failing, he said, "You definitely know your stuff. I'm going to get a cup of coffee, then we're going flying."

I took a deep breath and tried to relax.

The flight test went similarly to the oral test. It started out easy, then got more and more frustrating and stressful. I performed each maneuver to checkride standards, but they were far from perfect. And the examiner let me know exactly what I was doing wrong at each step of the way. Every knot of airspeed too fast and every degree of heading off-course earned me a stern reprimand. At one point, I become completely convinced of two things: that I was going to fail the checkride, and that I was never, ever going to set foot in an airplane ever again. I just couldn't imagine putting myself through this stress all over again.

When it was all over, not only did I pass, I think I genuinely impressed the examiner. All that criticism during the ride? Just part of his job. I may have passed this checkride, but I have tons more to learn.

The next day (Sunday), I grabbed two friends and took a "victory flight" down to San Diego. I am now a private pilot!

It all comes down to this

Today is November 17th, 2009. It's been three years since the first time I sat in the left seat of an airplane cockpit, five months since I started training in earnest, 63 total hours flown (11 solo) and 153 landings. All leading up to the culminating event this Saturday: my checkride.

That was probably too dramatic. I'm psyching myself up for this but I really should just relax. The checkride is just like another lesson. I'll preflight the plane, like I always do. I'll take off, fly around and perform the same maneuvers I've performed dozens of times already. Then I'll land the plane and shut it down, same as always.

Except this time I'll be flying with someone who has the power to grant me a pilot certificate. No big deal!

On the morning of the checkride, I will present a cross-country flight plan that I am now preparing. We will talk about the flight plan and he will ask me a bunch of questions about airplanes and other things I should know about.

After that, we'll get in the airplane and go flying. Initially we will follow my preplanned flight, but as soon as the examiner is satisfied that I know how to navigate, he will have me perform maneuvers instead, like slow flight, stalls, steep turns, etc. He will pick an airport at random and I will need to fly there after making a decent estimate about how long it will take and how much fuel I will burn along the way. And at some point he will simulate an engine failure and make sure I know how to deal with that.

After this weekend, I'll write about how it went. Until then, I've got some flight planning to do!

Ground Reference Maneuvers

Sorry for the lack of posts recently. I promise I haven't given up! I'm still flying and I'm still well on my way to getting my license. In fact, part of the reason I've been quiet is that I've been spending a lot of time studying for the written exam, which I took last week.

I passed!

Now the next step is a checkride with an FAA-designated examiner, but before I'm ready for that I have a few things I need to work on, like ground reference maneuvers. There are two I have to master: turns around a point and S-turns.

During turns around a point, I must fly a perfect circle around a chosen point on the ground, while maintaining constant airspeed and altitude. An S-turn involves flying an "S" shape across a straight line on the ground, like a road or the edge of a field. The difficult part in these maneuvers is correcting for the wind, which is always evil and tries to blow me off course.

On the plus side, I've totally mastered short-field landings. During a short-field landing, I must
pick a spot near the beginning of the runway to aim for and hit it right on, or no more than 200 feet beyond. I had trouble with these for a while, but last weekend I finally nailed them. I did four in a row and hit the spot dead-on.

Some of the other procedures I'm going to have to perform are a soft-field takeoffs and landing (like what I would do on a dirt or grass runway), stalls, slips, and a simulated engine failure. I'll be practicing all these for a few more weeks, and when I'm ready, I'll take that checkride!

Flying at Night

One of the FAA requirements for a pilot's license is three hours of experience flying at night. When I'm a passenger on a commercial flight, I love flying at night. The air is smoother, the city lights always sparkle, and everyone's sleepy, which makes for a very calm and peaceful flight.

Piloting an airplane at night is not so peaceful. For me, it was very stressful. Night flying is challenging, for the obvious reason that it's really hard to see anything! Pilotage (navigating by landmarks) is all but impossible. Mountains become practically invisible. And there's no good horizon to reference.

I had no idea how hard it would be to spot airports at night from the air. I thought that since they take up so much land and are so well-lit, they would just jump out at me. On the contrary; to spot an airport from the air, you look for a dark spot! The runway lights are designed to only be visible when you're close-in. In fact, the best strategy for finding an airport at night is to look for the beacon, which is a rotating green-and-white spotlight that is usually mounted on a tall tower or on top of a building, like a nineteenth-century lighthouse guiding ships into port.

Night flying isn't all bad, though. It's really easy to spot other planes because of their bright, flashing lights. Also the air is very smooth and there is hardly any wind.

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Flying to Palm Springs

The FAA also requires student pilots to get five hours of experience in solo long-distance flights. My flight to San Luis Obispo (which I talked about here) satisfied 3.5 hours. To get the other 90 minutes, I decided to fly to Palm Springs.

And what a flight! Whereas my flight up the coast to SBP was quiet and uneventful (just look at all those pictures I had time to take), this flight was busy. It started, like my last flight, by almost being cancelled (that is kind of a theme in general aviation). Low, overcast clouds had descended over Santa Monica and were not forecast to be gone for hours. Fortunately my flight instructor, who is instrument-rated and able to fly through clouds (in a single bound!), offered to fly with me to Van Nuys airport (in the sunny San Fernando valley), where he could catch a cab back to Santa Monica and I could continue on to PSP in the plane. So we did that, and I got a little taste of flying an IFR clearance. Fun!

So the weather was mitigated, but I had another complication to contend with: Joe Biden. The vice president was in town, and with him came "temporary flight restrictions," or TFRs. So I had to plan my flight around those areas where he was planning to be.

Fortunately my flight plan worked out perfectly, and I stayed out of the no-fly zones and made it to Palm Springs in just about one hour. Unlike my last flight, this one took me through some very crowded airspace, and I spent a lot of time talking to air traffic control and didn't get to take many pictures in flight. I did get a picture of my old high school, though. I thought that was cool.

--

Believe it or not, I'm almost done. I've got all the required experience, including the forty hours of total flight time for which this blog is named. From here on out, I'm just practicing for the checkride (and studying for the written exam). I did a "mock checkride" last weekend, in which my instructor played the role of FAA examiner and put me through all the maneuvers as if I were being tested. I won't lie; it went miserably, but at least I now know what I need to practice. Stay tuned!

Adventure

I absolutely love flying, even if I'm just practicing touch-and-goes or doing slow flight and stalls in our local practice area. I can't hold the controls of an airplane without having an incredible time. That being said, I'm not getting my pilot's license so I can fly in circles around the airport! I want to go places.

And the time has come! Two weeks ago, my flight instructor told me to pick somewhere and fly there. It was an easy choice; California has about 800 miles of beautiful coastline, so it seemed stupid to fly anywhere but north. I decided that my destination should be San Luis Obispo.

On the day of my flight, the air was filled with smoke from the biggest wildfire in LA history. The area around Santa Monica was not bad, but Van Nuys airport (to the North) was reporting smoke and poor visibility, and Burbank airport (to the East of Van Nuys) was reporting even worse.

Since the area around Santa Monica was not bad, my flight instructor and I decided that I could take off, but if my route of flight took me into any poor visibility, I would make an immediate 180° turn and come back home. With that stipulation in mind, I was off. And boy was I glad I decided not to cancel the flight. All the smoke was staying over the valley, and my coastal route was nowhere near it. In fact, as soon as I left the LA basin, the weather was absolutely beautiful. I could not have asked for better flying conditions for my first long solo.

Once I was at my cruising altitude of 6,500 feet, things were quiet. There weren't any other planes around, so I didn't have much to do except make sure the plane was still pointed in the right direction (it was), and enjoy the scenery.

Somewhere around the Santa Ynez valley, it really sunk in. I was flying! I felt an incredible amount of freedom and adventure. I don't know exactly how to describe it. I took a lot of pictures.

As I got closer to San Luis Obispo, I put down the camera and began to prepare the plane for landing. I got on the radio and called into the control tower. They told me I was number two to land behind a Cessna, and that I should watch out for another Cessna that would be landing behind me. I spotted both planes and lined up for landing. In no time at all, I touched down on the runway and taxiied the plane to a parking spot in front of the restaurant. The Cessna that landed behind me pulled up next to me, and it was being flown by another student pilot, Lisa, also doing a solo long-distance flight! We signed each other's log books, and I got her to take a picture of me in front of my plane:

Lisa couldn't stay, so I headed into the restaurant by myself and sat down. I ordered a hamburger, served with fries and an incredible sense of accomplishment.

BONUS! Google Map of my route, with pictures!

Updates Coming Soon

It's been two weeks since I last updated this blog. I do apologize for that! In the past two weeks, I:

• Flew my first long-distance flight, to Santa Maria, with my instructor
• The very next day, I flew my first solo long-distance flight, to San Luis Obispo!
• Flew at night for the first time, to San Bernardino, with my instructor.

Tomorrow morning I'm flying to Palm Springs, with an intermediate stop at Brackett Field in La Verne. I promise I will write full entries about all of these things soon (with pictures)! So please check back! And thanks again for your support.

See you in Palm Springs!

Santa Maria, Here I Come!

So far in my flight training, I have not flown outside of the Los Angeles area. The farthest north I've gone is Magic Mountain in Velencia, CA, and the farthest south I've been is the south downwind leg of the Santa Monica airport traffic pattern. Well that is about to change. Tomorrow, I expand my territory to...Santa Maria!

The distance from Santa Monica to Santa Maria is 114 nautical miles. The flight should take about 90 minutes, and I'm going with my instructor. If everything goes well, I will be making the same flight on Sunday—by myself. Sweet.

See you in SMX!

My First Solo

I have a new decoration for my office wall:

As I promised in my last entry, I flew the airplane solo! Last Friday we had a temporary break in the cloudy weather, so I rushed down to the airport on my lunch break (about a 15 minute drive). First I went up with my instructor, executed two unassisted landings and taxiied back to the ramp. Then my instructor got out of the plane, wished me good luck, and I was on my own. I taxiied the airplane back to the runway and let the tower know that I was a student pilot doing my first solo. As soon as I was cleared, I took off!

I was far too focused to be very excited at this point. All that was in my head were the things I needed to do: keep the wings level, fly runway heading and climb at 80MPH. At the end of the runway, turn left and overfly the golf course for noise abatement.

I'm so used to having an instructor in the right seat that as soon as I leveled off at the pattern altitude and had a moment to take a breath, the quiet in the cockpit got to me and I actually felt a bit lonely.

That passed very quickly and was replaced by, holy cow, this is not Microsoft Flight Simulator. I am flying an actual freaking airplane in the actual sky (really!), which was quite clear and beautiful that day.

As soon as I reached a point towards the end of my downwind leg, tower cleared me to land and I began my descent. Now I was back to being extremely focused: flaps, speed at 85, descend at 500 fpm, glide, break the glide, flare, touchdown.

Back to the ramp. I marked my logbook: 0.7 hours dual instruction, 0.3 hours solo. I returned to work that afternoon with a huge grin on my face.

Weather

As I write this, I am staring at two new endorsements in my log book: certification of pre-solo flight training and pre-solo aeronautical knowledge.

This means that at 13.2 hours and 50 take-offs and landings, I am now signed off to take the plane up by myself! I haven't done this yet, though, due to weather.

The past week or so, Santa Monica has been experiencing a very annoying, persistent marine layer. We're used to low clouds and fog in the mornings, but lately these conditions have been lasting all day, which means no flying for me.

Obviously clouds are no factor for commercial airliners, so you might wonder why they are such a big deal for me. The answer is that all of my training flights are done under "visual flight rules." Visual flight rules (VFR) means that it is my job to "see and avoid" other aircraft. Air traffic control will help when they can, but ultimately it is up to me. If I am flying through a cloud, I am blind, and that is bad.

Later on, after I get my pilot's license and have at least 50 hours of experience, I can get an "instrument rating" that allows me to fly in the clouds under certain conditions. Yes, I do plan to get this. But until then, I'll be staying at least 500' below, 1,000' above, and 2,000' horizontally away from any clouds.

Plane Watching

Recently I went after work to the airport to eat dinner at Typhoon, the pan-asian restaurant whose dining room has a great view of the runway. While I was there, I got to see this beautiful plane take off:

photo by Kai Engstroem, used with permission.

He used about 500 feet of runway to take off and shot straight up into the air. He must have been climbing at least 1,500 feet per minute. Very cool! I also decided that the Learjet is my favorite business jet:

photo by Andre Wadman, used with permission.

I'm not basing that on anything other than looks. I just love that sleek nose, the blended winglets and those cool-looking, downward-facing stabilizer things on the tail. Everything about this plane makes me swoon. Now I just need to find a rich uncle...

* Both photos courtesy of airliners.net, used with permission.

Landing: Check.

I had a GREAT lesson this morning! We did nine landings, eight of which were completely unassisted, and they were all pretty fantastic. In the one that was assisted, I came in too high and attempted a "slip" to lose altitude*. I screwed up the slip maneuver, ended up off track, and my instructor had to help me out with some right rudder.

We also tried one landing with no flaps, just to see what it felt like. The result of that was we landed at 90 miles-per-hour instead of 80 and rolled down the runway about twice the distance we usually do.

I now have "landing" checked off on my pre-solo checklist. I believe the only things I have left to do are slow flight and emergency procedures, and then I'm going solo. Wish me luck!

* A slip is when I bank the airplane to one side, as if I was going to turn, but I use full, opposite rudder input to keep the plane on the same track. The result is that the nose stays pointed toward the runway, but one wing will be lower than the other, and the resulting drag from the full rudder deflection slows the airplane down considerably.

All By Myself

Yesterday marks the second lesson I've had to cancel due to poor weather (low overcast clouds).

It wasn't a total bust, though. I spent an hour on the ground with my instructor going over the pre-solo written test. I am very close to flying my first solo flight! As might be expected, I am equal parts excited and nervous about this. I feel ready. I've memorized my checklists. My last few flights have gone very well, but I still need more landing practice.

The competitive part of me wants to know the average time to solo and how I compare to it. My goal is to solo at or before ten hours (i'm at 7.6 now). Another student at my flight school recently went solo at seven hours, and I was secretly hoping to beat that, but that's okay.

After my solo, the next thing I'll be working on is my first cross-country flight, followed by a solo cross-country (in aviation terms, "cross-country" is a flight that is further than 50 nautical miles, not literally across the country). I am very excited for this, because it means flight planning and geeking out with maps! It also means flying into new airports. Not that Santa Monica and Van Nuys aren't great places to fly; I just think I would enjoy a change in scenery.

Landing!

Landing: important part of flying? Or most important part?

Last week I did an hour of touch-and-goes at Santa Monica. A "touch and go" happens when you land the plane and, without slowing down, put in full power and take off again. You "touch" the runway, then "go" again. It's a great way to get a lot of practice landing and taking off. I did eight landings in one hour and felt like I was really getting the hang of it!

That was Thursday. Fast-forward to Saturday, in which mother nature decided it was time for me to learn the crosswind landing. Due to some unfortunately-located clouds, we couldn't do any practice at Santa Monica. So we flew to Van Nuys, where the sky was clear, but a moderately strong wind was blowing across the runway (to be exact, it was 10 knots, 20° east of runway heading).

I felt like I handled the crosswind well; I was able to keep the plane headed straight down the runway center line, despite the wind trying to push me away. The problem was that the added stress of dealing with the crosswind caused me to forget everything else I had learned about landings, and they were all terrible.

Looking at the bright side, I know exactly what I was doing wrong most of the time (flaring too early and too much), and I am feeling good that by my next flight (or possibly the one after that), I'll have it down.

The Beginning

So I've decided to get a pilot's license. This means that for the next however-long-it-takes (my goal is 6-7 months), I'll be flying three times a week, studying a lot and daydreaming about the freedom I'll have when it's all done.

For each lesson, I rent an airplane for about an hour. My flight school, located at Santa Monica airport (SMO) in Southern California, owns Piper Cherokees, which are four-seat, single-engine airplanes. I sit in the left seat and an instructor sits in the right. In an airplane, just like most cars, the left seat is the driver's seat, although unlike a car, an airplane has controls on both sides.

Flying lessons are very hands-on. I fly the airplane the whole time; the instructor only jumps in occasionally to demonstrate things. If you're surprised by that, let me tell you a big secret about airplanes: they are extremely forgiving, possibly even more so than your car. They are designed to fly, and they do it well, despite clumsy control inputs by newbie students. It is very difficult to get into real trouble.

After 40 hours of flying time, the FAA says I'm eligible to become a pilot (hence the name of the blog). Realistically, it will probably take closer to 65 hours (there's a lot to learn!). As soon as my instructor thinks I'm ready, I get to take a really long written test, followed later by a "checkride" with an FAA examiner. If I pass, then I will be a pilot! I will be allowed to fly single-engine airplanes, in clear weather, day or night.

Why am I doing this? Besides the fact that it's super fun? There are a lot of good reasons. First, being the nerd that I am, I am drawn to any hobby that involves complicated machinery. Second, I love a challenge. Especially one that has such huge rewards at the end.

You know how much fun road trips are? Plane trips are like those, but better. For example: Vegas in two hours. San Diego in 60 minutes. Random little towns all over Southern California, Nevada and Arizona: here I come!

I've been talking for years about learning to fly, and now I am excited to say that I am actually doing it. If you'd like to follow along, that's what this blog is for! Welcome, and thanks for your support.