Sixteen hours, frustration starts to set in.
Thinking back at the first 12 or 13 hours of my flight training I have to say it was mostly an experience of pretty constant enjoyment. My instructor has a mission based syllabus so all the lessons up until now have been go somewhere do something missions which I really enjoied. It means I got to go through the process of a typical flight: plan, brief, pre-flight, and execute the mission. Going somewhere (usually a nearby airport or landmark) means I got to go through the phases of a typical flight (departure, enroute/cruise, arrival) and the differing work loads associated with them. I’d exersize my skills (such as they are at this point) in various tasks such as pilotage (navigating by looking at a map and out the window), radio communication (not with ATC yet, but CTAF certainly), straight and level flight, airport operations, etc…
The last several lessons however are leading up to my first solo which is arguably the most important mile stone in a pilot’s training for any class of certificate. As such the concentration has been on me executing take off, traffic pattern and landing successfully and if I’m honest I’m really starting to struggle and get frustrated by it. I don’t know what the root cause is at the moment, part of it is trouble maintaining alignment with the center-line of the runway, which sounds easy and trivial (especially with a 32′ wide plane on a 60′ wide runway that is almost 3/4 of a mile long) but I can assure you it is not. So it kinda works out that I get overwhelemed, frustrated, and end up over-controlling the plane…
I can drive my car with two fingers, or a thumb simply hooked on the side of the steering wheel and maintain position within a hand-full of inches at 65MPH with ease. I can do the same in a boat, but put me on final towards a runway and I’m ham-fisting the aircraft, complete with sweaty palms and 180bpm heart-rate. Time, which is supposed to be a constant seems to accelerate and all the tasks I need to complete blur together… did I make the radio call for the turn to final, am I high, flaps, air-speed, throttle, descent rate… whereas I can drive a car at over a hundred miles per hour, in traffic, with barely more than a resting heart rate, doing 80MPH in this plane is a whole different story.
And I think that’s part of the frustration. I’m competent in activities that seem similar at least when measured by speed or requirements of precision, but this is still difficult. I am sure that time and practice will bring the confidence and calm that I’m used to feeling in other activities to this and I tihnk admitting this to myself is certainly going to help but at least for the time being… it’s frustrating and difficult.
And deep down inside, that’s part of why it is so great. Things worth doing shouldn’t be too easy.
Vacations
The hardest thing about vacations is coming back home and getting used to returning to the daily routines. I had a fantastic time in California as has come to be expected by now. There are a few new pictures over in the gallery. The highlights were the AOPA Summit in Long Beach and the spirit tasting and pairing at the St George Spirits distillery in Alameda. I had a fantastic two weeks visiting with wonderful friends, eating more than my share of awesome food (Izzy’s steakhouse has my vote for best steak ever and Gather in Berkley for best healthy meal ever) drinking my share of delicious wine, beer and spirits and got to take in more of California, which is never a bad thing.
I managed to get away from the AOPA Summit only spending a few hundred dollars (resisting the urge to buy a Bose A20, somehow). I took in two extremely good and interesting panels, one on flying in and around Mexico and the other on FedEx Flight 705 by the co-pilot who was on board that day. It was a harrowing tale and I think I will always remember it. It is another affirmation that the idea of becoming a pilot is a dream that I cannot wait to finally fulfill.
It is always a good feeling getting away from home and spending time in different places. I don’t think that I shall ever lose the joy of traveling, but I am certainly going to try as hard as I can to wear myself out.
Now that I am back home the weather here has of course turned cold and I am having to fight the urge to just curl up and hide from it. I am hoping that the weather stays good enough so that I can continue my flight training.
I have logged 11 hours of dual received so far and nearly 50,000 miles aboard United in the last two years, over 25,000 this year, qualifying me for Elite status. All in all a good time.
Next year my two closest friends will be moving into his first house, and getting married respectively. If all goes well I will be visiting another friend in Japan and of course I will have to find time to fit in another trek to Australia to see my dear sister and brother-in-law, Pennsic, and whatever else comes across my plate.
Surfing Safety, traveling lightly.
The dangerous part of flying
Statistically speaking flying (even General Aviation) is pretty darn safe to life, limb, and property (AOPA has some nice statistics here) however it does pose a significant risk to your wallet. Flying is of course not a cheap hobby to have in the first place but it is all the ancillary costs that you don’t factor in. Yes, you DO need that $1100 headset, yes you DO need that ‘I fly’ doormat you saw in the latest catalog that randomly showed up at your house because the FAA publishes certificate holder information publicly, and YES, you do need to get in the big sky buses to go to various aviation related events in all parts of the globe. Flying isn’t a drug or an addiction, flying is something that was always there in your blood that you woke up and now that it is awake it is no longer something you can ignore.
I didn’t get to go to Oshkosh this year but I am making up for it by attending The AOPA Summit in Long Beach, CA in a couple weeks. In the mean time I am hoping the weather will cooperate and I will end up getting 2 or 3 more hours of flight time in before I leave. Some take-off and landing work would be excellent…
Ten Hours
Today marks ten hours in the log book and a little over a month of flying lessons. I have been to (and landed at) two airports other than my home base and am starting to get comfortable with the multitude of tasks that you have to complete while operating an aircraft. The ground operations are pretty solid (preflight, planning, taxi, run-up, getting around the airport) and on smooth days I’m pretty confident during climb, cruise and descent.
Take-off and landing is coming along, now that my instructor is more or less hands (and feet) off during flight I’ve had some confidence set-backs but I can feel it coming back the more practice I get in. Unfortunately weather and work have encroached on my lessons so I have not had as many as I would liked to have by now but I can feel a lot of the stuff coming together.
We started working on emergency procedures today and I can feel some of the aeronautical decision making stuff come together.
Having a couple-week break between lessons really showed, I felt some of the rusty-ness during take-off and climb-out of SDC (my home airport) but thankfully that started to clear up once I got en-route. I still have trouble with some of the landmarks, usually heading south for some reason but I’m usually pretty confident moving back towards the north.
Radio calls are proceeding pretty well, I’ve got a good feel for it even though now and then I forget bits (most often I forget the end) so I end up with stuff like “Penn Yan traffic, cherokee five five whisky is ten miles north of the field, penn yan traffic” and my instructor will ask “and what are we gonna do when we get there?” Oh yeah, land… heh.
All in all I’m still super-glad I decided to pursue this. The whole world of aviation is just amazing and being a part of it (as well as getting to use the big blue yonder that my tax dollars are paying for) is fantastic.
Almost two hours in…
I had my first honest-to-goodness-fly-the-plane flight lesson last week and I swear I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since. I have no trouble understanding the science of flying, it all makes perfect sense to me. The best part of science though is always practical application. Sure, theorizing about the Higgs Boson is fun but when you get down to the part where you are slamming subatomic particles together at nearly the speed of light something totally different happens. Similarly when you are going down the runway at full throttle and the plane gets light and you get the nose up above the horizon it is just something you can’t quite get out of your skull.
I really do understand why flight has for most of our history captivated us. I feel supremely lucky to be alive in a time where aviation is an accessible hobby.
So far the hardest part has been the time between landing and takeoff.
1.8 hours down… next lesson in 4 days…
The heady dreams of youth revisited… flight!
Earlier this year I had the good fortune to visit some friends in California and take my first ride in a light airplane. In spite of the 29,000+ miles I have flown this year the smallest plane I had been on prior was a twin-turboprop Delta Connection flight out of IAD to ROC so this was a really unique experience for me.
We flew from AUN out over the San Francisco Bay, out to the Golden Gate Bridge and then down the Pacific coast to HAF where we went and had dinner. After dinner we flew over San Francisco back up to AUN after dark which was a truly beautiful view and if I am honest was almost magical.
I think it jarred something loose in my head. For as long as I can remember I have always been fascinated with aviation and have always wanted to learn to fly. For years though that dream sat idle in the pile of things that would be nice to do someday when I made ‘real money’ and could afford such extravagances (like air conditioning or food). I’m not really sure how much I was smiling after that first flight but I imagine you probably could have seen it from at least 10,000ft. I think I was hooked at that very moment. It really doesn’t help that my friend is a very persuasive individual when he is passionate about something, and flying is something he is exceptionally passionate about. It took me a few months, and a few more trips to convince me that it was truly something within my grasp but last week I finally got down to the local airport SDC, and took an intro flight with the resident CFII.
We flew out of SDC and then down towards my house in Fairport, circled around and came back. It was only a half-hour of flying time but it was easily the most memorable half hour of my life in the last few years. And to be clear in the last few years I have been to Edinburgh and London, Australia… twice as well as California three times. So that is a statement that I do not take lightly.
There are some logistics still up in the air but never before have I been quite as excited about anything as I am about the prospect of being able to take to the sky and explore the world of General Aviation.
While my wallet will never be quite the same again I can’t thank everyone who finally kicked me off this cliff enough. I can’t promise I will take malicious notes here chronicling my experience as I seem to have an aversion to updating this damnable thing but I am sure I will update more often than I have recently.