Day 47, M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E!

Guess what I flew over today everyone?!
Click on them for full resolution! Pretty cool huh?!

Day 46, All Over Florida

Well I've tallied up my hours so far... 228TT, 95 multi engine hours and 47.8 of which have been during this cross country phase. 16 more hours and I'm done flying 5-6 hours a day all over the east coast and FL especially. Part of me is really gong to miss flying so much and seeing different cities. The other part me can't wait to get past my commercial certificate and start studying for my flight instructor ratings. Over the last two days Yash and I flew from Jacksonville - Naples - Jacksonville - Atlanta - Daytona Beach - Naples - Jacksonville. Almost 13 hours in 2 days. While in Naples I was able to meet up with Ken Wright who was kind enough to pick us up and show us around beautiful Naples, FL. Unfortunately we only had about an hour to spend together but it was fun getting to see more of a city than just the airport terminal and nearby restaurant. Here are some of the pictures I've taken over the last couple of days. You can click directly on them to blow them up to full scale resolution. Most are shots of Naples' coastline as well as what I believe are endless lines of orange trees and a cool photo I took of our shadow on top of the clouds as we flew over. I should be done with my cross country phase in 3 more days.

Day 44, Cross Country Time Building

Hey everyone,
Just wanted to drop an update while I had time and have internet access. As I said in my earlier posts I've been flying an average of 5 hours a day building up my cross country pilot in command time as well as my total time for my commercial certificate. Yash and I flew from ATL to Raleigh Durham, NC. Then from there to Trenton, NJ. Slept in a hotel and woke up at 8am to fly back down to Raleigh and then to Jacksonville. Combined we logged 11 hrs each in two days. I should be done with my cross country phase in another week then it'll be back to normal as far as training again for the rest of my certificates, and I'll go back to having more free time to update the site. Here are some photos I've taken over the last few days!

Day 40, Panama City and Jacksonville, FL.

Hey all, Today I was assigned to fly another student to Madison County, Alabama for his commercial ceckride. So I have plenty of time today to update and relax from two long days of flying. Yesterday I flew down to Panama City, FL. again with Tim and half way down we got an alternator annunciator light on the panel. Looking at the amp gauges it looked like possibly the left alternator was out since it was carrying any of the load. I started to increase the electrical load by turning on the nav lights and the landing light as well as both electric fuel pumps. Nothing was happening to the left gauge but the right alternator was definitely carrying an increased load so I shut off all the lights and the pumps I had turned on to get the load back to around 20 amps. Once we landed in Panama City, I reported the issue to dispatch and they asked if we felt comfortable flying the plane east to Jacksonville for maintenance where we'd pick up another bird to fly home for the day. I agreed since the worst that was going to happen was a complete loss of electrical power. The skies were crystal clear so I'd be able to find my way using visual ground references to Jacksonville in case I did lose all electrical power. Hollywood would have you believe that if a plane loses electrical power, the small piston aircraft will fall out of the sky like a rock and crash because you've lost all power and the laws of physics that govern aerodynamics all of the sudden cease to exist when aircraft lose their engines. There are two very bad assumptions here. FIRST when a smaller general aviation piston aircraft, like the Seminole I'm flying, looses electrical power the engines do not die on you. The engines are driven by magnetos which keep the spark plugs in line and igniting the fuel as it enters the cylinders. The fuel is pumped into the engine from the tanks by engine driven pumps. So no electrical power is required to keep the engines running once they've been started. SECOND if your engine/s do die, aircraft (depending on their specific coefficient of lift) can continue to glide down to the earth at decent distances. The farther up you are with no engines the better glide range you'll have to land at an airport near you. Another common misconception is that there are only so may airports in the U.S. like the major international ones we all know about. when in fact there are MANY MANY airports strewn about the country. A loss of electrical power on my trip to Jacksonville would have meant I would have lost my GPS, Lights, Radios, Turn Coordinator, Navigation equipment like VOR's. But I would have still had Airspeed Indicator, Attitude Indicator, Altimeter, Vertical Speed Indicator, and Heading Indicator, and I would have had to use the emergency extension on my landing gear since the hydraulic gear pump is electric. So the only big thing I would have lost was my communications since I was filed on an IFR flight plan. I was in VFR conditions so I could travel east bound to the coast and find Jacksonville and then look for light gun signals from the control tower for clearance to land. Fortunately none of that was needed but I guess it's good to know I was prepared for the worst, and if it happened I could maintain control of the situation. Once at Jacksonville we picked up another Seminole and flew home. Here are some photos from the trip!

Day 39, Cross Country Madness

Hey everyone I just wanted to say thank you for all of your congrats and wishes... I've been extremely busy since earning my instrument rating. I'm going to try my best to keep updating the site over the next week or so but if things continue along like yesterday did it may be a several days before I can find the time to update the site.

Yesterday was my first student/student cross country flight. Meaning no instructors. This phase lasts a max of 25 days but never takes that long. In about the period of 10 days I'll be racking up about 65 hours of cross country time toward my commercial certificate. Yesterday I woke up 8am drove an hour to Fulton Co airport to fly out with another cross country student. We were told by dispatch down in Jacksonville FL to fly to Panama City, FL from Atlanta. Once we got there we ate lunch and had to head east toward Craig Airport in Jacksonville. The second leg was insane... we cruised out at 7000 ft and the tail winds were 60 knots. It took us 90 minutes to travel 230 miles. We were cruised out 140 knots indicated and our ground speed was 200 knots.
From Jacksonville we headed home and I got back to my apartment at 10pm. A very long and tiring day... It looks like that's the standard for the next 10 days. Again I'll try to take some great photos and movies and keep you all updated during these next few days.

Ben, I saw your comment asking me to explain a full SDF approach with a partial panel circle to land and a published missed. The best I can do right now, given that I don't have much time is tell you that an SDF is a nonstandard localizer type guidance system. It has greater lateral limits than a regular localizer. Either 6 or 12 degrees versus the standard 3 degrees. So the horizontal guidance is less precise also the SDF can be off center from the runway up to 3 degrees so it may not be a perfect line up. Partial panel means that the examiner will cover up certain instruments to simulate losing them in flight. You must continue to shoot the approach without the use of those instruments (i.e. attitude indicator and heading indicator/HSI) . Circle to land means that once you have the field in sight at your minimum decision altitude, if the winds are favoring landing on the the opposite runway you can circle around the airport at no more than a given distance based on your category of aircraft and land on the opposite runway heading. Published missed means that you will be following the missed approach procedures that are printed on the approach plate that you are using to shoot the approach. Sometime when you go missed ATC will just vector you toward your alternate rather than have you hold as per the published missed approach procedure on the plate. But for evaluation purposes during training and the Instrument checkride they want to see you follow the published procedure.

Gotta run guys.... Heading to Panama City AGAIN... bye

Day 36, New Instrument Pilot

Sorry I haven't updated in a few days but its been very very hectic here. Two days ago I went out with Bill to shoot one of the possible profiles that I may have seen for my checkride. It was hands down the worst flight I've ever had as a student. I think I messed up almost all of my approaches that day and my confidence level went through the floor. After our flight we landed in Madison Co. AB for some lunch. When we got on the ground we saw Mr. Clyde Shelton, my examiner for the next days instrument checkride. We spoke to him for about 20 minutes and he remembered me and the fact that I was a Naval Academy grad. He told Bill how smooth my previous checkride had gone and in the back of my head all I could think about was how disappointed Clyde was going to me the next day (yesterday) based off my performance that day in the air with Bill.

Yesterday I flew back out to Alabama to take my checkride with Clyde and it wasn't as bad a flight as the day before but it certainly wasn't a great checkride. Several things happened that threw wrenches into my ride. Most of you won't understand what I'm talking about but I'm going to explain anyways, especially for those pilots that do understand. My checkride consisted of 2 non precision approaches and 1 precision approach. I was to do a full SDF partial panel approach w/ a circle to land with the published missed procedure, than an RNAV GPS approach at a second airport which IAF started right 2 miles from the published missed I'd already be holding at. Then after going missed on the RNAV GPS approach I'd be vectored by approach control for the ILS single engine approach into the same airport. After going missed again I'd quickly have to switch to the nearby VOR freq. to intercept the 070 radial outbound and conduct a 10 DME arc to the 044 radial and then shoot that inbound for some unusual attitudes and then he simulated a PAR approach into the airport where I'd land with my foggles on by him vectoring me and giving me descent rates and headings to come to. All of this would take about 50 minutes.... It was a very TIGHT course.

My first hiccup was when Approach cleared my for the full SDF approach, I was 1 minute from hitting the IAF to start timing for my procedure turn and Approach calls up to cancel my approach due to another a/c beating me in to the airport. So I held at my IAF, or at least started to. Approach called up as soon as I started my parallel entry and said I was cleared when able. Clyde wanted me to turn back to the right and conduct my procedure turn instead of continuing in the hold until in a better position, so I got established on my procedure turn but I had already started trying to clear out the active approach in my GPS because I was intending on holding at the IAF and not doing the procedure turn since our clearance had been cancelled. I finally got the GPS right and came inbound on the procedure turn. Then I got a call from approach saying you're cleared for the SDF approach, maintain at or above 2500 UNTIL ESTABLISHED, frequency change approved. I repeated it back to the controller and started to descend. Clyde asked why I was descending and I explained that the controlled cleared me to do so before being established and he said "no no no maintain 3000 until established." I climbed back up and started my descent once I was established. I understood where Clyde was coming from as that is the normal way approaches go down, and I should have played it safe and stayed at 3000 anyways until established but I guess since the controller for some reason said I could descend I figured I'd get ahead of the game by starting my descent early and not having to possibly chop and drop later in the approach. the rest of the approach went well enough, I circled to land, did a touch and go and took back off to do the published missed. After one circuit of the hold at the IAF we called to get clearance for the RNAV GPS approach into Madison Co. We got our clearance and as I'm descending on my step downs Clyde idles one of my engines... I went through my emergency procedures and maintained heading. He started getting fussy about maintaining my glide slope... First of all I knew he wasn't supposed to be simulating an engine out on this procedure and secondly there IS NO glide slope on an RNAV GPS approach because it's non precision. I turned to him and said, sir, this is an RNAV approach. He immediately realized that somehow he had forgotten what approach we were on and cut my engine one approach to soon. Needless to say the nerves, stress, tension, was getting thicker by the minute. I came around and conducted the rest of the ride well enough to standards but due to the time of day the sun had been glaring in my foggles most of the ride and it was driving me nuts because I couldn't see the instruments very well. I tried to make as best of the situation as I could given all the circumstances. But there was plenty I knew I needed to work on after the ride. The important thing is that I past the ride and hopefully these last couple days has made me a better pilot.

Tonight I'll be going on a cross country with Jermaine, an instructor. Tomorrow I'll start my cross country phase of ATP where I'll be building hours for my commercial certificate.

Day 33, Tieing Up Loose Ends

Well yesterday I simmed for 4 hours, leaving only 2.5 more sim hours left before my checkride. I'll be knocking those out today and preparing for my last training flight tomorrow. Today will also be a big study day for the oral exam portion of my checkride. I'll let you all know how tomorrow's flight goes with Bill.

Here's some more Raleigh movies:

After holding short on the taxiway after landing, I repeat ground's taxi instructions to Bill as I fill a regional jet taking off.


Holding short on a taxiway after landing, a Continental aircraft taxied right by.



Some Pics of Columbia South Carolina as we came in on an approach. This is Bill's old hometown where he grew up.

Day 32, Friday the 13th...

Sorry it's been a couple days since I've updated the site... It's been a long couple of days. Ever since the 6.6hr trip to Raleigh, NC we've been cramming ground, simulator, and flying in before my checkride on Monday. As of right now I'm the only guy who's kept his initially scheduled checkride date. Yash, a guy who started a week before Jerry and I, has fallen back from having his checkride scheduled on the 10th to the 16th with me now. Jerry has also moved back and is indefinite right now on when he'll be ready for his. Needless to say there is alot of pressure to stay on pace... Actually the typical days alloted for an ATP student to go through his/her instrument phase is 27 days. The 16th, this Monday, would mark my 23rd day so I'm actually going faster than the already blazing pace. I hope that fact does not come back to bite me during my checkride. I have one more long day of flying left before my checkride. It'll take about 6 hours and should be on Saturday or Sunday. Yesterday I flew twice, once in the early afternoon, and then again in the evening. First flight was more training in IFR, shot three separate approaches into three different airports. Then the evening flight was actually to fulfill a commercial rating prerequisite. We flew over to Fulton Co. and conducted 10 night full stop takeoffs and landings at towered airport. Good news for you supersticious folks, it's Friday the 13th and I'm not flying.

Day 30, Cleared to Land Rwy 23L

Well the trip to Raleigh NC and back took a total of 6.6hrs yesterday. Of course it would have taken a lot less time if we didn't have to stop twice along the way to shoot instrument approaches at a couple of other airports as part of my training. First stop was a Localizer approach into Athens, GA where we got to see UGA's football stadium. After going missed out of Athens we headed east for a GPS approach into Columbia, SC where we over flew Bill's old house he grew up in and took some good photo's of downtown (which I'll be posting later today or tomorrow). Then it was off to Raleigh, NC where we shot the ILS approach for runway 23L. It had just started getting dark so the runway lights were illuminated and there was a bunch of taxiing traffic on the ground once we landed. We took some pictures and photos which, again, I'll be posting later today or tomorrow. We stopped longer than we had planned because one of Bil's friends from college came by to pick us up and we went to Applebee's for dinner. All in all it was a very long but exciting trip for both of us. Landing in such a busy airport was really fun. Seeing the Southwest and FedEx jets taxi by us was pretty cool. We got back in to LZU around 1130pm. Asleep by 1215am. I'll try to upload photos and movies today if I'm not flying.

5 more days until my Instrument Checkride.

Day 30, 6.5 Hour Flight to Raleigh Durham, NC.

Today I'll be going on a long cross country flight from Lawrenceville, GA to Athens, GA to Columbia, SC to Raleigh, NC and back. The entire flight will probably take 6.5 hours and will be in poor weather so I'm really looking forward to it but I'm probably going to be exhausted by the time I get back to Lawrenceville. I'll be updating you guys on the flight tomorrow when I get a chance and I may even be able to take some photos... Speaking of which. Here is the photo I took of downtown Atlanta at night the other day. The photo isn't that great but it's good enough that you can see some of the great buildings lit up. You can see and download the full size version on my flickr photostream (under Personal Aviation Pics) to the right------>

Day 29, Early Morning and Late Night

Well I was able to get a day off on Saturday to drive home to Knoxville and finish moving my house with the help of my family. I left to come back to ATP at 8am and got in town around 11am. No one was around for some reason. Bill had flown with a student the night prior and didn't get on the ground until 1:30am so he asked me not to show up until 11am-12pm. Once Bill showed up he flew with Yash, another 90 day student who started a week before me. Once they got back I preflighted the aircraft and called for my weather briefing. We got in the air around 6pm and flew for 2.6 hours. The flight was smooth. I shot 3 separate approaches. 2 precision ILS approaches (with simulated engine outs on both) and then a partial panel RNAV non precision approach which was fun to actually do in the air for once instead of the sim. As I was setting up for the RNAV approach we were flying right over downtown Atlanta all lit up at night. Bill told me to grab my camera and take some pictures... I grabbed my camera and scrambled to find a memory stick to take the photos. I ended up taking some and hopefully they came out OK. I'll be looking at them later today (maybe during lunch) and uploading them, as long as they look good, for you all to see.

It was a very long day for me but I'm having a blast flying and last night I received a great compliment from Bill. Once we were back on the ground and secured the Seminole for the night, he told me that I was one of his best students he's had so far. He said he was very confident I could pass my instrument checkride ( 4 flights into the instrument program) but that, of course, I have to wait to finish up all my allotted flights ATP schedules, which is fine by me... obviously the more practice the better I'll get. I'll upload the photos as soon as I can.

Oh yeah and Happy Birthday Dad.

Day 26, Making the Best of a Sick Instructor

Well Bill was sick yesterday and never showed up. Lucky for me I had already set up with Pete, another instructor with other students, to sim with him at 8-10am (typically before Bill shows up). I simmed with Pete working on some new stuff like VOR DME Arcs. After two hours Pete asked if I wanted to go fly. I let him know Bill was supposed to be flying with me around 11am. Pete called Bill and everything checked out, I would be flying with Pete for two hours. Turns out, after we had landed from a pretty decent flight, that Bill was not going to be coming in because he was feeling sick. After my flight with Pete I went to another instructor and was able to log two more hours of sim time before the day was done.

My flight was pretty interesting. Pete definitely has a completely different way of teaching. It's very interesting to see how different instructors can teach the same subject matter. I learned a long time ago in military high school, the Academy, and the Navy, that when faced with the opportunity to be led/taught by more than one person, take the best attributes from each individually and incorporate them into your teaching methods... If these attributes and methods help you to learn more quickly they may very well do the same for your students. I'm definitely taking the good from all the instructors I've been working with and storing it, and discarding the bad attributes. Hopefully this will help to make me a better flight instructor come April.

As for the flight, it was smooth as glass yesterday in the air. Unlike the turbulent fiasco the other day. I handled all radio comms with approach control and flew 3 separate approaches a three separate airports within a 55nm radius... For my second IFR training flight this was alot to handle and VERY fast paced because ATP requires students to conduct approach briefings and call outs during the approach legs... I was busy from takeoff to landing for 2 hours exactly. Pete also simulated losing my engine on my second approach by idling the throttle. So I flew my first simulated single engine approach, followed by my first VOR DME Arc circle to land approach. Very cool stuff. There are definitely areas I need to work on, and I will. But for the most part my flight was as smooth as the air was today.

Day 25, Turning Up the Heat

Well I've got 11 days till my IFR checkride and I still have 11 flights to conduct as per the ATP syllabus... I've technically only flown one of the 12 flights required... Talk about accelerated!! Fortunately the FRASCA sim and I have become best friends and I spend most of my free time during the day flying in it, with or without an instructor and it has really helped me nail down precision and non precision ATP procedures. It makes shooting the approaches in the plane SO much easier. Especially because normally you aren't going to have an equipment or engine failures on approach as I do 90% of the time I shoot one on the sim... thanks to Bill lol. Yesterday I shot 4 more approaches in a 2 hour window on the FRASCA with Bill, again he killed my engine just before glide slope intercept and on my last approach he killed both the heading and attitude indicators on a circle to land approach. The amount and level of training he's giving me in the sim I know is really helping because when and if these things ever do happen to me in the real plane I'm going to feel that much more confident that I can handle the situation and not freak out. I've noticed most the other students aren't getting the same training on the FRASCA as Bill's giving me... I guess that makes me the lucky one. Most of the other instructors, it seems, only go as far as cutting an engine out on their student, but with all these extra instrument failures I'm receiving I feel like I'm getting the better more rigorous training.

I'm supposed to fly and sim today, I'll let you know how it all goes tomorrow. Sorry for the misspelled words sometimes in my posts... I usually update the blog first thing in the morning at the executive terminal before heading to ATP so I don't have much time and the spell check on this blog site is horrible... seems like it doesn't catch single letters like "o" instead of "to" or "do". Glad to hear you shared the same turbulence yesterday Rod... Except I don't feel the least bit bad for you since you are flying a freakin' F-18!!!! Thanks for the comments Ken, Rod, and family.

Day 24, Worst Flying Conditions

I went up with Bill yesterday and let me tell you it was by far the worst turbulance I've ever been in. I had called the Lockheed Martin Weather Briefer to get the weather for the area I was going to flying in and to file my IFR flight plan. He had told me there was an AIRMET TANGO out for moderate turbulance from the surface to 12,000ft. This normally isn't something that you may consider cancelling a flight over but after having flown 2.3 hours in it from takeoff to landing, it definitely was not fun and we were the only ones to fly yesterday ue to the winds. By the time we landed the winds were gusting to 30kts. As for the weather and the flight, everything went well... It was pretty cool because we got o fly right through Atlanta Hartsfield International Class B airspace and flew right over downtown Atlanta. Visibility was unlimited. We flew into Fulton Co. airport for an ILS approach, went missed in the interest of time, flew direct to West Georgia Airport for a second ILS approach, went missed again, and flew direct back home to Gwinnett Co. LZU and shot a 3rd and final ILS. By the tail end of the flight we were being tossed +/- 150 feet with every wave of turbulence we flew through. I'm just glad I didn't end up getting sick. After I landed I had my lunch and simmed on the FRASCA for 2 hours. But because I'm partnered with Jerry I didn't end up leaving to go to the apartment for dinner until 8:30pm because I needed to watch him sim for 3 hours starting at 5:30pm...But today's a new day.

Day 23, Things Come Together

Yesterday I was supposed to fly with Bill in the morning but due to the freezing levels being reported at 4000ft, we cancelled the flight and spent the day in the FRASCA again. The day went very well for me and very poorly for Jerry. For some reason Jerry can't seem to remember to calm down and think when he encounters an engine out scenario in the sim. Bill keeps trying to coach him and tells him to not do anything for 5 seconds after the engine dies (just to gether his thoughts) but that seems to only be working some of the time. The other times Jerry starts smashing and bashing levers and gets himself way off course on final approach. Yesterday, Jerry was so focused on his engine he actually crash landed his plane onto the runway with his gear up. He had forgotten to put his gear down and Bill let him crash land the plane for lessons sake and shock factor. "Why did you crash Jerry?" After 3 or 4 seocnds he realized he had never put his gear down. Jerry became very frustrated and definitely needed a break in my opinion.

My time in the sim went pretty smooth yesterday, thankfully. Bill failed an engine on me as well, so Jerry didn't feel left out, and I landed just fine. Then Bill cut out my heading indicator and my attitude indicator at the same time. At first I was like "Are you kidding me" Bill just told me, "Stop whining and land (jokingly), I wouldn't push you this hard if I didn't think you could do it." I shut up and concentrated on everything thing I was doing and was going to do during my approach and did everything very well, and landed. The only thing I forgot to do was simply procedural, in that I dropped my flaps when I normally should have but during this circle to land approach I'm not supposed to drop my flaps until after I've acquired visual of the runway. In the grand scheme of things that wasn't a big deal so I was happy with myself. Now it's just a matter of memorizing my procedures for a non precision approaches.

I should be flying this morning with Bill. I'll let you know how it goes.

Day 21, Welcome to Fulton County

Today Jerry will be taking his Instrument written so Bill wanted the two of us to meet him out at ATP's other Atlanta in Fulton Co. where Jerry will be taking his test. While Jerry is busy taking his exams I will be with Bill in the FRASCA building some more of the mandatory 50 hours of sim time required during the instrument phase of the program. I have 13 of the 50 so far... After today I may have 3 more hours to add. I just may be able to watch the Superbowl tonight not that I care to much who wins but it'll be a nice break from the training. I'll let you all know if anything out of the ordinary occurs today but for the most part it should be a quite day. Although Fulton Co. I've heard is a pretty bad area of town. Some ATP student's have had their cars broken into... at least Jerry's driving us there hehe.