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.

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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!