Coming to an End

Two Days ago I had another solo flight to UMP to pick up Nathan again. I’ve been trying to finish off my instrument requirements, and we did 0.4 hours. I only have 0.5 more hours until I am done with that. I don’t love it, so I’m ready to not have to wear the hood anymore. It was pretty uneventful, but fun none-the-less.

Yesterday evening Nate and I met up for one of the last times. We completed the night landing requirement, as well as my instrument time. I am extremely pleased. Now all I have remaining are 6.9 hours of solo time, including a solo cross country which I will be making on Labor day. I’m going to go visit Lenny in Decatur, IL. I’ll leave pretty early in the morning, and then we are going to go golfing and get some lunch before my return. It will be good to see my buddy again. I feel like it has been forever, but I think only a month or so since we went to Kings Island together. I really need to fly in to see Caleb some time. I feel like I am missing out on so much!

Anyway, back to yesterday. I took off from Eagle Creek at about 8:00 pm and headed over to Mt. Comfort. I did an ILS approach on runway 25. These approaches are actually something that is done for instrument training but because we only had 0.5 hours of instrument time remaining to meet the requirement, Nate decided we would do something different. I was pretty awful doing the approach, but at one moment during the decent I was exactly on. Both my airspeed, my altitude and my location right and left of the runway were perfect, then I promptly drifted again. Of course, I couldn’t tell where the runway was, but that is the point.

After Mt. Comfort we headed back over to Eagle Creek and did two performance TOLs. We worked on Short Field a little bit because we had done the soft field the day before on the grass. They looked pretty good. After the first two performance landings we did two normal landings. I needed to do these two in order to fulfill my requirement for 10 night landings to a full stop. No more special requirements! (except for solo flight). Here are my current log book totals:

Total Time: 39.0 Hours
Total Landings: 134 (124 Day, 10 Night)
Cross Country Time: 7.7 Hours
Night Time: 4.1 Hours
Simulated Instrument: 3.0 Hours
Solo: 3.1 Hours

I have scheduled my knowledge test for September 5th. I’ll be taking it at Greenwood Executive. Nate is talking with the examiner sometime today to determine when to take my practical test (the final test). It will probably be around the 19th of September. Lets just say I think I’ll meet my goal of being a pilot by Thanksgiving.