Yesterday I got an email from Chuck Colgan to call the HR phone number. I did that this morning and talked to Sara Martinez. She asked me a couple basic HR questions and said that she would like to schedule an interview. So on March 17 I am going to Laguardia and having my first airline interview. I am definately excited, nervous, apprehensive, and about any other uncomfortable feeling you can have. I just finished a trip with one of my Multi commercial students that took me back to Aiken, Hilton Head and Wilmington (The place I learned to fly, The first place Anna and I made a home after leaving college, and the first airport that I flew cross country to in my multi training without and instructor) I really enjoyed the flight, but the trip down memory lane is a fitting preamble to moving on to the next step. I will calm myself, go up there and rock the interview. I now have just over 1300 hours total time and 250 multi. I have signed off 12 students ratings (two are still waiting to take the checkride) everyone else has passed so far. I think my time has maybe come. Lets hope it goes well!
I am 17 hours short of the somehow magical 1000 hours of flight time. It feels like I have been flying forever, but in reality I am still a baby in this career. I am 6 for 6 with checkride signoffs and have taught a very diverse group of people a very diverse set of lessons. Most of all I have been teaching my self to become a true pilot. As I was skipping through the clouds the other day practicing approaches with a student I looked around and had a chance to truly admire my office. I was just in a 172 doing approaches at 90 knots, but something about the sunset in the background between puffs of white surrounding my plane reinforced how much I love to be in the air. After we got back and dicussed all of the exciting events that go along with teaching that student how to shoot these apporaches and realized my comfort in a 172 I thought about what is to come. With my 1000 hour mark coming I have been thinking more about the future and wherever that may take me. The number of hours in itself means nothing significant except I have to write the totals a little smaller to make them fit, but it gets the mind thinking. I will have to learn the intricacies about the crew environment, flying up high, a whole new batch of complicated systems, and many life experience lessons to learn along the way. I am merely two steps into the knowledge that I will have when I hang up the wings and that is exciting. Tomorrow I get up and teach a newly soloed student how to navigate and then get a commercial candidate signed off for his multi engine rating. Then I get to come home to my little girl and dream of being in the clouds with her. Until then, goodnight.
It feels great to have that checkride done. It was pretty crazy. The wind was at 15 knots with gusts to 21, and it was about a 50 degree crosswind from The Runway I was using. The way Aiken’s runways are set up that is about as bad as it gets for crosswinds. The gusts made everything pretty crazy. I only missed one question on my oral (what is the voltage of you alternator), but I told him where I could find it and he seemed ok with that. When we went he asked me if I was sure I wanted to do it in this wind, I called the weather one more time and said lets go. It started with a gusty crosswind soft field takeoff. I rolled on one wheel for what seems like an eternity. It was picture perfect though, and then I turned on my heading and hit my first checkpoint to the second. He diverted me to Allendale and I punched it in the GPS and told him how long it would take, and that was done. Then we did the hood work, I did fine with my turns and then he put us in the unusual attitudes. I swear I thought we were doing a back flip. I recovered from them fine. After that we did stalls. I REMEMBERED MY CLEARING TURNS. The power off stall we did right after slow flight, so it didn’t take long to do and went well, then my power on stall we got hit by a downdraft and I almost put the plane in a spin, but I recovered and got back on my heading. He had me do it again, with a shallower climb, and it went fine. Then of course my engine “went out” and I was looking for a field to shoot for and there weren’t any. It was all trees. I finally found a little dirt spot and setup for it. I had it made, so we went around. I then did a turn around a point. I went to the right for some reason and I have never done that before. I always go left. It was Okay, but I guess he figured with the wind, if I held my altitude it was good enough. We went back to the airport for some landings and I nailed my soft field landing. (I was about 10 feet off the center line, but with the gusts it was lucky we were on the runway.) Then we went around for a short field landing and a citation was coming in, I gave way to him and right after he landed he said “man, that was a crazy crosswind”. I came in right behind him and hit dead center on the numbers and was stopped in 400ft. I don’t know any short field that wouldn’t work on. My examiner said, “Lets taxi back while we still have all the parts on the plane”, so I did. When I shut the plane off, he said that I could secure the plane and he had to go do his paper work. Then he just started walking away. I had no clue what that meant. I started packing my bag up and he had snuck around behind me and tapped me on the shoulder. He said “oh, by the way congratulations on being a private pilot”. You couldn’t wipe the grin off my face after that. Then we did the paper work I got my temporary certificate and he left. I talked to my instructor Kirk afterwards and he was as excited as I was, because one of his students finally passed on the first time. After that I called everyone to let them know. Anna came up to the airport and by then of course the wind was calm. We had a nice little flight around Aiken, and she said it was a lot of fun. It wasn’t as scary as she thought it would be. I must say it was nice to just be able to fly with normal landings and takeoffs. When I was getting fuel for the plane before taking Anna up, the ramp guy asked me if that was me that was taking my checkride in this wind, I said yeah and I passed. He said that they should have given it to me for just attempting my checkride in this wind, and that when they heard me on the radio coming back in, they all went out to watch and said my landing was dead on. Anyways that is the story of my checkride from beginning to end.
I have my checkride scheduled for tuesday at 1:00 (Nov 6, 2007). I am very excited and hav been studying for my oral very diligently. My hope is to be over prepared. I am going to fly one more time tomorrow and hopefully after tuesday I will be a private pilot. Then I will take my wife up and schedule my interview with ATP. After that hopefully I will get a start date and begin my persuit of a career as an Airline pilot. The thought that someone would pay you to fly is amazing. I am now at 60.6 hours and feel very comfortable in the airplane. Hopefully the weather and all other things will hold out and all will go as planned.
I just thought I would share this story. I have to take a break from reading the FAR/AIM.
Today I went to the Airport to take a final prog check with my instructor to get signed off for my Checkride. There was a 2000 ft cieling and 14kt winds so we didn’t go for that, but after talking about the Oral exam for a while, I decided to go do some touch and goes.
I made two great short field landings and went around for another. As I was abeam the numbers I pulled my throttle and went to pull my carb heat and the whole knob came off in my hand. It was like one of those movies where someone pulls the break and the handle breaks off. I was left with a knob with about 6 inches of cable hanging off of it 
. It was 80 degrees and I was at 1400 ft so I wasn’t too worried about carb ice, but it was amusing nonetheless. The worst part is now the plane is grounded until it gets fixed, and the other 172 has a cylinder out, so my makeup flight for tomorrow will have to be rescheduled. I work in retail now and its getting to the time of year when rescheduling is not easy.
Karma has not been my friend lately. I’ll have to go help an old lady cross the street or something.
I thought I would start one of these blogs since I spend so much time reading them. Right now I am at 52 hours and I am waiting to take my Checkride for my Private Pilot Certificate. Once this is done my plan is to get to 85hrs with 25 x-country PIC time to attend ATP at the beginning of January. Right now I am a retail store manager and enjoy the work sometimes, but don’t nearly have the love for it that I do for flying. To think that someone would pay you to fly is beyond me. I hope to instruct at ATP or anywhere else that will get me extensive Multi time when I am done with the ACPP at ATP and work my way to the regionals. I think after looking at all my options this is the better way for me, because of the immersion training methods that allow me to focus soley on flying. I have always been good at learning , but I am definately better when learning under pressure. I will probably go back through my log book and post some about my Private Pilot experiences while I can still remember them all, but for now thats it.Â