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...