Making plans...

The 182 is already reserved for Airventure 2006. I think me and my 4-year old are also going to camp with the airplane at the Texas Fly-In at Hondo, TX in May. We may just take the 172 if we don't have too much to carry. I think we'll only stay one night unless he really wants to stay longer. It will be his first overnight fly-in and I don't want him to get tired of it.

Flightaware - check it out

If you haven't seen it yet, go check out Flightaware near-live flight tracking. Go look up your own IFR flights, history of your or any other aircraft, as well as scheduled arrivals and departures to any US airport. It's very cool.

This morning I looked up my flight to Austin on Saturday and I also watched my company jet as it flew out to California at 39,000 feet.

The year in review?

I just wanted to drop a few lines on the blog so that you knew I was still here. I never got around to completely updating the Oshkosh info. I'll just sum it up by saying that after we left Rockford which is about 90 miles south of Oshkosh, it took us 2 and a half hours to get on the ground and taxi to our parking spot! There were a couple of delays on the field, as well as the flights of Bonanzas and Mooneys that got there before us that we had to wait on. My claim to fame for the week was the landing. The controller said, "Blue and white Cessna, land on the blue dot." Well, I put my best spot-landing competition shoes on and dead-centered the middle of that circle! You don't know how sweet the words, "Nice job Cessna" sound after a flight!

We had a lot of fun all week. I have never seen so many airplanes in my life! It was hot at the beginning but after the storm blew through Sunday night (now THAT was WILD!), it cooled down a bunch and made it a very nice week. We came home on Saturday with just a single stop for fuel and leg-stretching. We parked our cars in front of the hanger and spent what seemed like forever pulling things out of the airplane. We finally got done and were each home by 4:00pm after being 1000 miiles away just that morning. And in case you're wondering, we decided to do it again in 2006 before we even got back to Texas!

That's about it so far. The rest of my time has been spent raising my boys, working full time, and just trying to stay instrument proficient! Hopefully I'll get around to using that Commercial before too long.

Oshkosh review

I thought I should post something about the trip to Oshkosh. I've been so busy that I just haven't had time to keep the blog updated as I would like. Anyway, after departing Hooks (DWH) on Saturday July 23 at 6:30am , we got to our parking spot in the North 40 on row 521 at 7:35pm. It had been a long day. For our first leg we flew the airways to Walnut Ridge Regional Airport (KARG) in of course Walnut Ridge, Arkansas. It was a nice quiet stop with a friendly attendant. We were only there about 35 minutes to refuel and potty break before we were off on our way to the Greater Rockford Airport (KRFD) in Rockford, Illinois before our last leg into Oshkosh. We had seen from the weather briefing in Walnut Ridge that bad weather was present up in that area and around Oshkosh, but as we flew closer to Rockford and listened to the other airplanes on FlightWatch, it was SLOWLY improving in Rockford. It improved just enough for my non-instrument rated pilot to get into Rockford. Once there we waited over 2 hours for thunderstorms to move through the Oshkosh area enough for us to head up there...

To be continued shortly....
.
.
Where was I? Oh yes...Well the t-storms finally moved off to the southeast enough for us to head north so we got in the plane and taxied out. Unfortunately, the Bonanzas to Oshkosh group, which stages at Rockford had the same idea and they beat us to the runway. When you switch over from Ground to Tower and hear "Bonanza flight of 100, cleared for takeoff", you know you have some time to kill. Well, that's what happened to us so we just shut down the engine, took off our headsets, and turned on the handheld to listen to the proceeding. Finally about 15 minutes later we saw the last flight of 3 start rolling so we started up and got ready to depart.

New Commercial Pilot

Well, I finally made it. The airplane, weather, DE schedule, and my skills finally all came together and resulted in the statement that I have been found to be properly qualified and is hereby authorized to exercise the privileges of Commercial Pilot.

Thanks goodness that is over! I originally had hoped to be finished back in April or May before it got really hot, but between weather, schedules, and broken airplanes (mainly starter problems) it took a little longer.

The checkride didn't take very long at all. It was just barely over an hour. We had a little problem getting our information into the FAA web site so we got started about an hour late and my DE had another appointment after our ride. Before we went out we wrote down what we were going to do and in what order. We got the airplane lined up on the runway and started with a short-field takeoff. We then came around in the pattern and departed downwind on our simulated cross-country to Kerville, TX (KERV). I hit the first checkpoint within a minute of ETA which was perfectly fine considering the varying speeds from climbing. I hit the next checkpoint about 1 minute late which after a small calculation showed us to be 5 knots slower than anticipated. That was fine since I could adjust my other leg times and show that we still had enough fuel. Now my DE said, "I'm not feeling well, take me somewhere closer." Well, since I had to show how to use the navigation equipment in the airplane, I simply dialed Navasota (60R) into the GNS430 and headed for it. He said, "ok, I'm feeling better. Put your stuff away and let's do some maneuvers."

Hopefully I'll get the sequence correct, but we did a steep turn in both directions, stabilized and went right into a chandalle. Since the chandalle slowed us down a bunch we got stabilized again, dropped the gear and flaps and went into slow flight. After a shallow turn in each direction we pointed the nose down just a little to simulate an approach on short final, pulled the power and performed a power-off stall. I recovered from that and cleaned up the airplane to climb back up to our starting altitude. After getting back up to about 2000 feet he said, "Ok, give me 20 degrees of bank either direction, your choice, give me a power-on departure stall." I met the PTS requirements for that and then he said to give him the airplane so he could show me something. After I had been real careful, trying to pass the ride, he smartly yanked the airplane over into a bank and briskly pulled us into a stall again saying, "You recovered fine per the book, but keep in mind what you're really doing here. You just departed the airport, got about 300 feet above the ground, and then stalled the airplane. You are fighting for your life to avoid hitting the ground. You don't have time to drop the nose and establish Vy. You'll be cutting the grass before you ever get there. This airplane wants to fly and you've seen how it will mush along in slow flight with a lot of power and maintain altitude. Even though you're up here at 2000 feet for practice, act like you're fighting for every inch."

I liked the demonstration and promised to go back out and practice it some more later. All we had left was the eights-on-pylons so we found a couple of crossroads and did that and then headed back to the airport. Back at Hooks I did a soft field landing, soft field takeoff, and a simulated engine out, 180 degree power-off approach to a short field landing. Talk about combining stuff to accomplish all the goals!

All in all I had fun and learned some things in the process. Every time I fly with somebody new I get to learn new tips and tricks that they've come up with. It was hard work bumping around at low altitude in the noon time Texas heat, but that piece of paper was worth it! Now I hope my new permanent certificate comes in the mail before I leave for Oshkosh! I can hardly wait!

Only 1 step remains

Finished the oral portion of the Commercial checkride today. Going to fly Sunday afternoon. I can hardly wait!

Written test passed

Sorry about the lack of updates. The main news I have now is that I passed the written with an 89. As I told my friends, Would have liked to have made higher. Was afraid I was going to make lower after I got started. Pleased with what I got considering the difficulty of finding time to study.

Between work, 2 little kids, flying, and trying to find time to study for the written, there just hasn't been time to update the blog. I'll try to go backfill later but let's just say that we've been doing all sorts of maneuvers for the checkride. They guy I'll be testing with supposedly has a very real-world type of style, so in training I get a lot of stuff thrown at me that is less by-the-numbers, and more judgement and execution. As he says, everything boils down to analyzing the situation, deciding on a plan of attack, performing the steps, and adjusting as necessary. I find the actual commercial maneuvers to be pretty easy so I don't think they'll give me too much problem.

If I had to offer advice to anybody going for the Commercial, it would be to get to know your airplane before starting to learn the maneuvers. Learn how it behaves in slow flight and steep turns, and be sure you know how your airplane feels when approaching the stall. All that will help tremendously in the maneuvers because you'll be able to better feel what the airplane is doing. Add all that and be able to put the wheels on the runway exactly where you want them in any type of landing (normal, short-field, soft-field, 180 degree power off, etc) and the rest is easy.

Stay tuned. I'm flying this afternoon to finish up and depending on how everything goes, I hope to have the practical done in 2 weeks or less depending on my and the examiner's schedules.

First 2 commercial training flights

I had my first 2 flights totaling 3.9 hours this weekend. I'm using the 182RG for all my training since that's what I'll use for the checkride. Plus, I need to practice landing on a spot on the runway so I'll be ready to land on a colored dot at Oshkosh in July.

On Saturday we flew out to Brenham (11R) for some patten work and precision landing. I concentrated on landing on the same spot on the runway each time with different flap and power settings. We practiced landing engine out and had a simulated engine failure on liftoff. I'm always needing some instrument practice so I put on the Viban and headed back to Hooks where we shot the RNAV(GPS) 17R approach.

The next day my instructor had me compute heading, groundspeed, and eta for a short flight to the west. I must have remembered my stuff and did the math right because we hit the ETA's within 30 seconds. At the second checkpoint he said, "Ok, you have to divert for some reason. Take us to Navasota (60R)and give me an ETA." Well, that was some furious figuring! I glanced at my chart to pick out an approximate heading and turned the plane to it. Then I pulled out the plotter to get the correct heading off the chart. Oh yeah, did I tell you that for all this that the GPS was just a fancy com/nav that showed some satellite locations in the sky? Fortunately he told me he was going to make me do this, so I had everything close at hand. Anyway, after figuring out the wind correction and turning to my corrected heading I computed the ETA and we got within 30 seconds again. After passing Navasota we tuned the ADF to Brenham and headed over there for a little more landing work. I did a couple more power-off landings and then headed back to Hooks under the Viban for the LOC 17R.

At this point the most difficult aspect has just been getting used to the flight characteristics of the 182RG. Any type of training I've ever done before has been in the Warrior/Skyhawk class of airplane. Sure I've had checkouts in the bigger planes in the past, but checkouts haven't involved the same maneuvers or precision as training for the commercial. With the smaller planes you're always making adjustments during maneuvers such as feeding in some nose-up during turns, adding power to climb, etc. The RG, while more stable, requires smaller control inputs due to the larger tail surfaces and greater airspeeds, making the controls more powerful. The greater weight also adds to the momentum that you have to compensate for in maneuvers. The second flight was getting easier than the first, so I can only look forward to the energy maneuvers on my next flight.

Commercial Training

Well, I am finally scheduled for my first Commercial lesson this weekend. I can hardly wait. I'll put any details up later.

Poker Run

Windsock Aviation at Weiser held a Poker Run last weekend. I put my 3 year old in the 172, paid my $10 dollar entry fee and off we went.

What's a "Poker Run" you ask? It's basically a luck of the draw game to see who can get the best winning poker hand. You start at Weiser by drawing a card. You then fly to 3 other airports where a deck of cards has been placed. You draw a card at each airport and then return to the original point of departure where you draw your final card. Put all five cards together and after everyone has finished flying, the best hand wins. For this run, we visited La Porte, Brazoria County, and Houston-Southwest.

When we got back to Weiser, there was already a Full House in first place and 3 sixes in second. I knew I was holding a 10 of spades, a Jack of spades, and two 7 of spades. Not being totally poker-hand-savy, I was mainly hoping for another 7. At first I was disappointed when my son drew a 2 of spades, but then somebody said, "Wait a minute, what were your other cards?" I told him and he said, "Well that's a Flush. That beats 3 of a kind." Well, he was right, so that put me in second place. I needed to get the airplane home for somebody else to fly so we didn't get to hang around and see if anything better turned up. There were still 6 or 7 airplanes out flying so I didn't know what they were going to come back with. As it turned out, our luck held and we ended up in second place overall! Our prize will be a gift certificate for dinner at the Brenham airport diner! Woo Hoo!!!

To put it all in perspective, with the 172 costing $60/hour, us flying for a total of 3 hours, and the $10 entry fee, we spent $190 for a "free" meal... All that and we got to go flying too? Well, let me tell you, it doesn't get any better than that! Where do we sign up for the next one?

Flight to Denton, TX

We took the 182 (fixed-gear) up to Denton (DTO) last weekend, with a little side trip to Lufkin (LFK) for the fajita flyin. On the way to Denton I got my longest actual IFR flight to date. We hit the clouds at 5000 feet about 20 minutes out of Lufkin and never got another clear view of the ground until we broke out on the ILS at about 1400 MSL. It was a very windy day, but it was still smooth in the clouds with steady rain. Air Traffic Control (ATC) brought us down over Dallas and routed us directly over Love Field and DFW at 4000 feet but we were in solid Instrument Meterological Conditions (IMC) and didn't get to see anything except for solid white clouds!
I mentioned the winds earlier. Between about 3000 and 5000 feet as they were vectoring us over the big airports, the GPS was showing the winds to be out of the southwest at 60-65 knots. At one point our heading (the direction the nose of the airplane is pointing) and the track (the path over the grounds) differed by 30 degrees. When we finally turned north to go vector around for the ILS at Denton, the GPS was registering a steady 174 knots groundspeed! This is in an airplane that maxes out at about 135 knots airspeed. We were moving!
Overall it was an uneventful flight. One that I enjoyed but my wife and kids didn't as much since there wasn't anything to see but clouds. Oh well. I'd rather have them bored in the clouds instead of bumping along below them.

And I have flown it

The 3-blade prop sounds sweet! Sort of like going from an american V-8 car to a 12-cylinder. Just a much smoother sound with the 3 prop tips going around.

The RG is back in the air

Finally, after its gear-up landing WAY back on March 13, 2004, the flying club's Cessna 182RG is back on the roster with its new engine and 3-blade prop. I have to get a new club check in it for insurance purposes before I can act as PIC in it. I was going to get that done this past weekend, but the ceilings were too low for the tasks we needed to accomplish. So instead, 2 of us took up the fixed gear 182 for a little IFR practice. I get to add another .4 hours of actual IFR time to the books. That's not too bad since the part I flew took just over 30 minutes.

Links to some flying clubs around Houston

Southwest Flying Club at David Wayne Hooks
Bay Area Aero Club at Pearland Regional Airport
Hobby Flying Club at Pearland Regional Airport
Sugar Land Flying Club at Sugar Land Regional
Texas A&M Flying Club at Easterwood Field

Commercial Ticket

Ok, I've started studying for the Commercial written test. When the 182RG is out of the shop in a couple of weeks, I hope to start the flight training too.

BTW, if you are a private pilot or hope to be one day and want to get your Instrument and/or Commercial tickets then I would highly recommend the Jeppesen Instrument Commercial textbook. It's part of their Guided Flight Discovery library.

The ISBN number is 0-88487-274-2. It lists for something like $85 but you can find it cheaper with a little online shopping. I paid only about 70 bucks for mine. Let me know if you need any help finding it. It's an awesome book. I think it's probably too detailed if you're just going for your private, but everybody I've ever shown my copy to has gone out and gotten one for their library.

First flights alone with the 3-year old.

I finally took my 3 year old flying in the front seat yesterday and again today. He's flown before, but always in the back seat on trips with my wife in the front. I put his booster seat in the front, told him "DON'T PUT YOUR FEET ON THE CONTROL WHEEL" and off we went. He had a good time since he could see much better from the front seat.
Yesterday we just flew near Weiser (EYQ). I found some cows for him to look at first. He wanted to open the window to hear them moo! You can open the window in flight of course, but I doubt we could have heard the cows! Still, it was funny. On the way back to the airport at about 1200 feet I spotted some birds down below (Egrets probably). I pointed them out to him and of course he thought it was pretty neat to look DOWN at them flying. We made it back to Weiser, did one touch and go, and came back and landed. He later enjoyed showing everyone how small the cows looked from the air.
Today we tried to go down to Galveston, hoping to see a cruise ship heading out. Unfortunately, from about 15 miles out I started thinking, "Those clouds sure look low and grey." We were using flight following and about a minute later the controller told us she had a helicopter at GLS reporting an 800 foot ceiling and requesting Special VFR and wanted to know what we were seeing. We were at 1800 and getting a little moisture on the glass and quickly confirmed the quickly lowering ceilings. We did a little maneuvering to maintain VFR and loitered around the area to try to fly east along the island but the crud just kept coming in from the gulf. After about 10 minutes I figured that my son would soon get tired of just sitting in the plane so I asked for in IFR clearance back to Hooks (DWH) and was cleared up to 3000 feet. I told him that we were going up into the clouds for a little while. He looked a little concerned and said he didn't want to but I explained that I had done it before and that it was safe. He said "ok" and went back to eating goldfish (yes, the cracker type). Fortunately it was smooth in the clouds and he seemed to enjoy watching the rain run UP on the windshield and collect on various parts of the airframe. Temps were around 60 (Texas winter for you) so we didn't have to worry about ice. After a little bit of vectoring around, we popped out of the north side of the cloud bank and proceeded onward to Hooks. We punched through a couple of small puffy clouds and finally landed back a Hooks. He then helped me refuel the plane and put it back in the hanger.
All in all, he said he had a good time. He's always been an easy little guy to take care of so the workload wasn't too much greater than when I'm solo. It might be a different story on bumpy, hard IFR day though, so I'll try to stick to VFR when I can for now! Later, after we were at home he asked, "Where are we going tomorrow Daddy?" I'll have to come up with something, because it looks like it might be just a dull grey and wet day tomorrow!