Day 78 ( 142.7 TT, 67.8 MET )

I passed the instrument check ride today! I feel like a giant rock fell off my shoulders. I don't know why I stress out over these check rides so much, sometimes I think my hair will start turning white. The ride was with Max Krull, and he is a great examiner. The oral was about 2hrs, flight about 1.5hrs. Compared to McColgan (see Day 38 below), he is what a good examiner should be. I don't feel like I got an easy pass, we covered most of the key knowledge areas, and at the same time he actually taught me a few things. On wednesday I'm flying back to Denver for Christmas, and boy I miss snow! Finally I will get to see my family and maybe even get some skiing in. Below are a few shots of my recent flights:




Above is a picture of Venice, Florida, which has water canals running between houses and entire neighborhoods - just like the real Venice in Italy!








Above are pictures of flight on top of a cloud layer and then in between two layers. Now I will move on to my time building stage, which is said to be the funnest part of this whole program.

To everyone reading this blog, Merry Christmas!

Day 67 ( 134.7 TT, 59.8 MET )

Well I'm almost done with my instrument training. Passed stage III check today. Still have to pass the end of course with Pierre (he is easily the most experienced pilot in the school, former fighter pilot and holds a PhD in aerodynamics), and then the check ride. With memories of my last check ride still fresh, I really don't look forward to it, even though I will do it with a different examiner. I really hope to finish before the 21st (I'm flying back to Denver for Christmas, can't wait), so that I can begin my time building early next year.

There are major issues with the planes right now, a lot are down for maintenance and inspections. They even tried to shut down flight operations for wednesday, so that the mechanics could "catch up". A lot of flights were canceled, including my stage check. That almost caused an uprising (most students don't like to sit at home and pay rent, while the school deals with their ancient fleet) so by noon all of the available planes were back up.

On a more positive note, today's flight added 1.5 hrs of actual flight in meteorological conditions to my logbook. These hours are hard to come by here in florida, since it's been mostly clear these past two weeks, but really windy and turbulent. Anyways, we took off in pretty gloomy conditions, it was getting ready to rain. Miami center assigned us to 5000', and we broke out of the "soup" at about 4500'. It's a different world up there. Its a perfectly calm, blue sky with the blinding sun illuminating a white carpet of clouds below. Its in moments like these that I remember why I wanted to be a pilot in the first place. Sorry, I don't have a picture to post, I was really busy navigating, but a picture wouldn't do the view justice anyway...

Day 55 ( 115.1 TT, 40.2 MET )

This was a busy week. On thursday, Aviator hosted a Thanksgiving lunch for all of the students that didn't have a chance to visit their families. Which was like 70%. The food was made by the students and was really good. Now that I have to cook myself, I pay a lot of attention to new tasty dishes.

Did a lot of flying under the hood, progressing through the instrument lessons pretty quick. Started working on approaches, the workload is now tripled, compared to visual flight. Its really easy to miss things on the checklist when you have to fly the plane, setup and brief the approach, and work the radios. Everybody says that I will get used to it, but for now I come home dead tired and squeezed of any energy.

Today I drove to the cape to watch the launch of NASAs Mars Lab, another rover that will once again, surprise, look for life on Mars. It seems like they can't come up with a different mission profile for a multi-million dollar rover. Anyways, I will never get to see a live shuttle launch, so I decided to at least see a rocket launch. Below is a shot of the rocket as it flew through several cloud layers and quickly vanished in the sky.

Day 45 ( 106.6 TT, 30.7 MET )

My first aviation milestone! I passed 100 hrs total flight time this week! Finished the instrument ground school today, so now I will have more time to fly. This week I have been averaging three flight hours a day, so moving through this instrument training pretty quick. Did my first ILS approach, DME arcs, and holds. Passed my instrument stage one check as well, which was fairly simple, VOR, NDB, and localizer intercepts, and all the basic maneuvers, except everything is done under the hood of course. Next week will be a lot slower since a lot of instructors are leaving town for thanksgiving. That's actually a good break for me, I need the time to prepare for my instrument FAA written test.

And now for the usual incident report. Only one this week! During a night flight, had some weird gear issues (didn't want to come up, then only two out of the three would lock down), finally we just did a manual gear extension and got the "three in the green". Didn't want to risk it, so we flew with the gear down all the way back to the airport. I'm starting to get used to these planes, so whenever something goes wrong I now know how to calmly look at the problem and follow procedures instead of being emotional. So in a weird way, flying 35 year old planes will make you a better pilot then a new one!

Day 38 ( 94.5 TT, 19.6 MET )

I'm both sad and happy to write this post. Happy because I finally got my multi-private rating this morning. Sad, because it took two weeks of waiting, a drive up to the Orlando FSDO because of paperwork problems, and worst of all, a practical test failure. I should have listened to my fellow students when they said "don't fly with McColgan, he will fail you to make more money on the retake. People don't like him, so he doesn't have a lot of students." I didn't believe that, but now I think it happened to me. I needed to save some time, other examiners are booked up for months but this guy is always available. And for a reason.

The entire check ride went fine, did all my maneuvers within PTS (practical test standards). When we were flying back to Ft. Pierce, he asked me to do a short-field landing. Under the conditions (landing 10R, wind 040@15kt gusting to 19) the landing was really good. Wind correction applied, on center line, and airline soft. BUT I touched down 250' after the thousand foot markers. The PTS allows only 200' but that's under ideal weather, and the examiner should, at their discretion, curve the results a bit. McColgan's discretion was to fail me, and do a retake (another $250), which I passed with no problems this morning. So if there are people out there reading this, if you plan to attend here, avoid John McColgan. He will scream at you during the entire flight, point and grunt instead of giving you clear directions, and get even more upset when you ask to clarify. The school has two other designated examiners, and you can always call the FSDO for an FAA examiner (and save $400)

Anyways, lesson learned. I'm happy to move on to my instrument flight training. Right now I'm looking for a different instructor (my guy got hired with American Eagle and is packing up for an early December departure, I'm jealous). Below is the weather we have been getting lately, not very Florida like.

Day 29 ( 91.1 TT, 16.2 MET )

This is the post where I will whine a lot. I don't mean to be so negative all the time, I just want to get the facts out and be realistic for anyone considering Aviator. I waited for my EOC ride for several days, delayed by weather and maintenance problems. Then I waited for a designated examiner for more than a week. Today was finally the day for my multi-private check ride. Got to the airport at 7am, got my $400 bucks ready and waited. The examiner NEVER showed up. He forgot, even though I was on his schedule for more than a week. If a student doesn't show up for a check ride, he/she will be charged a "no show" fee, I wish that would work both ways! Now I have to wait two more days until wednesday. Keep in mind that I haven't flown for a week, and I can't start my instrument flying until I pass this ride.



This is a typical schedule for Aviator. The first 12 aircraft are Duchesses, the rest are Cessnas and Pipers. As you can see, two airplanes are down for more than a week (red) and others for several days (yellow). The aircraft are constantly squawked for different issues, however the instructors DON'T squawk everything, because there would be no airplanes to fly!


On friday I back-sat a flight during which we had a door pop open at 5500'. This is apparently quite normal around here, and most instructors said that it's "good practice". Except we had to fly back to the airport to shut the door, and at the rate we pay, that poor guy paid around $90 for that wonderful "practice" time. During which, as you can see in the picture, he is hanging on to the door with a scared look on his face, and the instructor is flying the plane.

On a different note, an open door in the dutchess produces as much drag and yaw as a failed engine, so if you lose a left engine in flight AND the left door opens, you will have a bad day! (in this case there may not be enough rudder authority to counteract the yaw and roll of the aircraft)

Day 16 ( 86.9 TT, 12 MET)

Finished the multi-private ground class on thursday. The end of course test was pretty easy. Flew a couple of flights late in the day, so the landings were at night. Had a funny moment during an approach: I couldn't figure out why the runway lighting was so dim, and the runway so hard to see. Then I realized that flying at night WITHOUT your sunglasses on is actually a lot easier:) Lots of single engine inoperative practice, in the pattern, at 5000', Vmc demoes and one engine out landings.

On friday I back-sat a night cross-country flight to Daytona Beach, then Okeechobee and back. They had to do ten full stop landings (it was a student starting his commercial training) so we left Ft. Pierce at 8pm and came back 2am.

Tomorrow will be my end of course ride (for my multi private) with a different instructor. If I pass, I will get my real check ride with an FAA designated examiner sometime later this week.

Below is a pic of the night cross-country, short final for 7R at Daytona.

Day 9 ( 80.2 TT, 5.3 MET )

Had some weird weather over the weekend (or so the locals say) so I had to cancel two flights. Spending three hours a day in class, one hour in the "dead bird" (a cabin section of a crashed duchess that was cut off and is now used for chair flying) and trying to fly once a day. Tons of homework. The flight on saturday was in pretty bad weather, and I lost visual of the runway on final. The instructor had to take over control and shoot the ILS approach. On monday did a maneuver I had never done before, which was an emergency descent. Throttles off, pitch for 140kts, and drop out of the sky from 6000' to 1500' over the ocean, while doing S turns. Scary at first, but then get used to it. As long as you clear your ears on time (pressure changes RAPIDLY), it's actually quite fun. The weather improved greatly on monday so I finally accomplished my first unassisted landing.

Today had the longest flight yet, did maneuvers, and worked on the landings. A second instructor back-sat on this flight, and the performance of the plane was not effected one bit by the extra weight. Weather was beautiful today, awesome sunset and views over the ocean. It's too bad I only had seconds to look at the scenery, staying pretty busy flying the plane.

Below is a shot I took while back-sitting one of the flights.

Day 4 ( 76.1 TT, 1.2 MET )

I usually don't post every day, but today is of note. Today was my first multi-engine flight and first in-flight "incident". We took off, turned south and followed the coast. The plane climbs like a beast and I was "behind" the plane for a little while. Did some steep turns, basic stuff. My instructor then proceeded to do an engine out demo. Cut the mixture, prop is windmilling, secure engine, feather, etc. It looks really strange when the prop stops in the air. Anyway, during the restart I heard a popping noise, it was a breaker. Lost the transponder and comm 2. When the breaker was reset, thick, pink colored smoke started coming out of the panel, somewhere behind the transponder. The instructor quickly ran the electrical fire checklist while I flew the plane, and shut off anything we did not need. Then we turned back to the airport. Landed in some moderate rain. Needless to say, I was happy and grateful to be on the ground. Today I got a taste of how old these aircraft really are...

Day 3

Over the last few days I moved into a house at Vero beach with two other guys (the housing is not 5 star, but decent), got a huge pile of books and manuals, and took care of hundreds of small tasks associated with moving to a new location. Had my first class, multi-engine ground, and a general orientation.

So far I have THREE disappointments with the school. FIRST, six months of housing is included in the PRO course as advertised on their website. But, since I already have my PPL, I'm getting five months, something their site fails to mention. SECOND, all of the books and uniform I had to purchase on my own, even though I called a few weeks ago and was specifically promised that the material for ground instruction is provided by the school. And THIRD, besides back-sitting a flight yesterday (tagging along as a passenger), I haven't logged a single flight hour, and I've been here 3 days. Hopefully things will improve once my instructor is back into town.

Below is the house at Vero beach.

Ft. Pierce, FL

As expected the drive was exhausting, but I'm finally in Ft. Pierce. Google maps showed total drive time to be 32 hrs, the GPS 27 hours, and reality turned out to about 30. Visited the beach (I haven't seen the Atlantic in 13 years), and drove past the Aviator school. Staying in a motel tonight, hopefully tomorrow the housing will be assigned so I can unload my overloaded Ford Focus.

Seven days and counting...

Getting ready for the trip. I'll be driving to Florida from Colorado, and the thought of driving solo for 32 hours depresses me. I'm enrolling in the pro-pilot course which takes on average six months to complete, so driving down there makes the most sense. I'm excited but I haven't popped a textbook open in two years and that scares me. The staff at the school told me that I can learn at any pace, basically as much as one can take, and I have a feeling that my brain will overheat the first few weeks.

I will try to run this blog entirely from an iPad, which, surprise, needs an app to do so. My primary purpose for the iPad though will be as an electronic flight bag. I downloaded ForeFlight and bought a Dual GPS receiver (after buying the wi-fi only version of the iPad, it was my great "joy" to find out that a gps chip is only installed into the 3G iPad) How useful, if at all, an iPad EFB will be at Aviator, I have yet to find out. I'd hate to have to buy paper charts. Paper backup would be a good idea though...