The Next Step in My Training - Complete

I made a big step in my learning yesterday. I completed my checkout in the two Cessna 182's my flying club owns. The first is N182SV, A 2000 Cessna 182S. It has traditional steam gauges, but a GPS and KAP140 Autopilot. Autopilots and GPSs are new to be in the aircraft. The first planes I trained with at Mt. Comfort had them, but once I joined Sky-Vu, I only had the standard 6 pack gauges and then 2 VORs and an ADF. Luckily I had a handheld GPS as a back up. Pilotage is fun and all, but terribly inefficient.

The flight in Sierra Victor was about a month ago now, due to weather being terrible. Most of the required 5 hours of flight were done in our other C182, N721ZA. This is a 2004 Cessna 182T with G1000 avionics. Because of the avionics suite, I flew about 3.5 hours in this plane, and only around 2 in Sierra Victor.

So, here is what my 5 hours of required time looked like:
First flight was in SV. We departed from UMP and headed over to Mount Comfort (MQJ) and Shelbyville (GEZ). These are all on the east side of town, and the goal was just to get used to constant speed propeller operations as well as dealing with the different power settings and V speeds. I think I picked it up pretty quickly, and with direction from my instructor, all was well. I ballooned a little on a couple landings, and I bounced one pretty good, but we made it home safe. I ended up putting on 1.8 hours.

The next flight was a couple of weeks later in Zulu Alpha. We did mostly pattern work, but went from Eagle Creek over to Crawfordsville. I did a few turns on the pattern at Crawfordsville and then headed back to EYE. I had a 7 mile run that afternoon, so I didn't get as much time as I wanted to. We ended up with 1.3 on the Hobbs and decided we'd do it again to finish up the time.

Yesterday afternoon we completed that effort. I left work a little bit early and met my instructor at Eagle Creek around 3 pm. We did quite a round about flight and I landed at some airports I've never been to. First we headed off to Frankfurt (FKR) then Kokomo (OKK) then Wabash (IWH) and finally Huntington (HHG). They are all between 15 and 20 nautical miles apart, so we had some time to get settled in the air before entering the pattern at the next airport. I had some really good landings, and on the way back home we punched through a hole in the clouds and flew back at 6500' msl. Total on the Hobbs was 2.6 and after my instructor finished off the paper work, I had my checkout complete.

I think the next thing I going to try to work on is my check out in our C172RG and combine that with some instrument training. I'm not sure who I am going to have instruct, but I'm probably going to do my 10 hours of the RG and then go back and finish out in 146K...if we still have that plane. I wish my pockets were as deep as my dreams are grand...