October Wrap Up and November Plans

Guess who hasn’t updated in a while? ME!

I got the physical license about 5 weeks ago. Yeah, it had my last name printed incorrectly. Horray. I called the FAA and they sent me a new one in about a week. Efficient for Government work!

I haven’t been flying a lot, here is the list of flights I’ve made in the last month:
- I flew over to Muncie to pick up Erika Haskins and we went up to Rochester, IN for dinner at a Mexican restaurant. That was a fun flight. The way back was almost all at night and it was beautiful.
- I did the pilotnpaws flight mentioned below and saved 9 cute little puppies.
- I flew from EYE to SKY (Sandusky, OH) with 3 passengers to go to Cedar Point. Jonathan, Christine, Ann and I went up for a day riding roller coasters. It was really fun. On the way back we kept turning on the lights of airports with the pilot controlled lighting. Ahhh…tax payer dollars at work. In all reality, it is really nice to be able to do that and confirm where you are.
- After the Cedar Point trip on the 19th, I have only flown one other time. That was to take Kevin McCluskey and Jim Grady up for a ride. We flew over to Mt. Comfort, had them switch seats and then fly back. It was a good time. It was only about .7 hours on the Tach, but they both got a big kick out of it.

I have a couple of big flights planned for this month too. On Annie’s birthday I think I am going to fly up to the Muncie airport for dinner. There is a nice restaurant on the field there so it should be fun.

I’m flying down to Evansville during Thanksgiving week in order to hang out with my grandparents and take my grandpa up flying over his land and such. I think he will love it. At least, I hope he loves it. He was my main motivation for getting in to flying again. I wanted to be able to fly down for thanksgiving and go up with them. Maybe we will fly over to Henderson, KY or something. We’ll see…

PilotsNPaws

Today was a fantastic day to be a pilot.  As a part of Pilotsnpaws.org, Christine and I flew down to Taylor County Airport in Kentucky.  We picked up 9 puppies that would have been euthanized.  They will have a fresh new start in Appleton, Wisconsin.  With the help of Susan in Kentucky, Rhonda from Gary, Chris from Milwaukee, and Mary from Appleton, we saved some fantastic little puppies today.  Christine did a great job taking photos.  Here they are:
http://picasaweb.google.com/pilotsnpaws.lauer.magadanz/101109FirstPilotsNPawsMission#

I can't wait to do it again!

Paoli Fly-In

Coby and I went for a little trip down to Paoli for the Aviation Awareness Day.  It included free food for any fly-in pilots and some chatting with the locals.  We saw a YAK-52 on the field.  That plane is sweet, even though it is Russian.  I've attached a photo below.

Things like that make me want to get the opportunity to get to fly a couple of Warbirds.  Or at least fly in a warbird, even if I'm not the pilot.  Anyway, the people there were nice, we showed up and got our hand stamped showing that we had flown in.  I walked up to the food table and asked what we were able to get as pilots, and she said we could get what ever we wanted.  I got a burger and some chili and Coby got a burger and a hotdog.  It was pretty fantastic.  After eating we checked out the other aircraft that had flown in.  As I walked out of the hanger a guy stopped me and asked if I was the pilot of N146K.  He said that he dinged by plane with his, N9421D.  Immediately I noticed that this was another Sky-Vu plane and realized he was joking.  It was not my favorite joke, but I chuckled.

On the way back home we took the scenic route home over to Greensburg to check out the Tree growing in the courthouse window.  From there we headed back to Eagle Creek.

Check Ride

Well, I’m a pilot. Hooray! I had my check ride on Saturday the 19th and I was successful. There almost two hours of oral exam questions and 1.1 hours of flying. It was pretty windy on Saturday, but I’m going to cover that stuff after the oral. Here is what went down:

I had to plan a flight to Spirit of St. Louis (KSUS) airport. Spirit is on the other side of St. Louis and I think he wanted to see how I would treat the Class Bravo airspace. I of course am fearless and chose to go right through it. Obviously this won me points becuase people shouldn't be afraid of controlled airspace, it is actually safer than uncontrolled airspace. The flight planning portion was fine, he pointed some things out on the sectional chart and asked about them. We talked a little bit about 2 way communications and when I was required to talk to someone and then asked if the plane had a GPS. It didn't, and he was surprised, but kind of pleased at the same time.

From there we covered aviation weather and airspace minimums. I almost did this flawlessly, but overall I did a good job.
After about 2 hours of oral questions we headed out to the plane. From there he asked a few system questions about the gages and the placement of counter weights on the controls surfaces. I knew these becuase Nate has prepared me well. We took off uneventfully, even with a stiff crosswind and headed toward the first check point on my cross country, Boone County Airport. Once I had it insight, he diverted me and we did some air manuvers.

Here is the order of things on the check ride:
Take off
First check point
Clearing turns
Steep turns (we only did 180s)
Turning power on/off stalls
Spin awareness (he set up the plane where we would have entered a spin)
Hood work
- constant airspeed ascents/descents
- turns to heading
- unusual attitudes
- lost procedure (using VORs while under the hood)
Right after I took off the hood, I confirmed where we were and then he pulled the power and opened the door and window
He closed the door a little bit later but left the window open to add some confusion.
We were just south of the Sheridan airport so we landed there by gliding in. I did the soft field landing and take-off, then a short field Take off and headed back to TYQ (Indy Executive).

At TYQ we did two landings, one was short field and one was accuracy.J.C. stressed that when you were in the pattern, you should always be able to land if power is pulled out, so that the pattern legs adjust accordingly when you have a heavy cross wind. And that slips may be necessary. Also, he said when he flys his 172 (which is a 1983) he does no power landings as a norm. So I think I’ll going to start practicing them on my own. A complete no power landing is kind of nuts to me, but I guess it isn't a big deal if I practice them.

Now, with all of that said, here are the things that I think I could have focused on more:
- Gliding (all the way to landing with no power), especially in pattern
- Radio communications – I think I do a good job of it, but I wish I would have had more experience with it. (Specifically controlled airspace)
- Turning stalls – power on/off
- SIGMETs – Tango, Sierra and Zulu (I hadn’t heard of these before, but I made some good guesses about them) A sigmet is a weather advisory for the air, Tango is for turbulence, Sierra is for Icing and Zulu is for Visibility.
Overall, it was a good experience, and I probably would have had a better post if I was able to write this just after the checkride. Oh well, 2 weeks later isn't so bad.

Solo XC - Evansville, IN (KEVV)

I completed my second cross country today.  Well, half of it.  I went to Evansville to visit my grandparents for the evening.  This whole flying thing is really great.  Anyway, There isn't a whole lot to talk about, so I'll do another photo post: