Aviation

Aviation has been a interest of mine for as long as I can remember.  I have fond memories of the years flying radio controlled airplanes with my dad or trying to get old versions of Microsoft Flight Simulator working on severely under-powered PCs.  However, none of those compared to the two short moments I experienced real flight with a yoke or stick in my hand.  Although I was just a young teenager at the time, actually controlling an airplane and feeling it respond beneath me was something that I have never forgotten (thanks for that, Mike).

I had a lot of preconceived notions about becoming a pilot and dismissed it early on as a possible career choice and especially as a hobby.  It wasn't until much later in my life that I actually sat down and investigated the subject and realized that a lot of the conventional wisdom about becoming a pilot is not entirely true.  The moment that sparked my curiosity was actually a YouTube video.  Now I had watched countless aviation-related videos before then, but for whatever reason Steve Thorne's (aka "Flight Chops") videos really resonated with me.  He is not your typical cocky pilot or youtuber looking for attention and a thumbs up.  Initially, he was just posting videos to solicit feedback on his flying and he had a humbleness about him that I could really relate to.  His channel and ambitions have grown since then, but I still really enjoy his style and it was his parallels with my life that rekindled my interest in possibly becoming a pilot myself.

I've shared what I've learned here:

• Misconceptions - things I wish I knew decades ago
• Getting Started - the first bites out of the learning curve
• Flight Training - my journey towards my PPL

Solo Cross Country

Posted on August 22, 2016.

After several weeks of bad weather, I was finally able to fly my first cross country solo.  Flew to UES and back.  It was an uneventful flight, which is exactly what I was hoping for.  The weather was great and everything went pretty much to plan.  The only snafu was as I returned to PWK, the winds from east were strengthening and I ended up pretty far east of the airport even though I was flying the flight plan.  I was correcting my heading as I came south, but when I made the turn over Lake Zurich, I needed to correct even more and ended up getting pushed east.  I eventually figured it out.

Stage 2 Check

Posted on August 08, 2016.

After several weeks of bad weather, I took my flight school's check for the final phase of their second training stage.  It involved taking my instructor to KUES and then practicing a diversion on the way back.  We got there fine, but I then had some uncertainty with my last checkpoint.  While looking at the chart, I got off course.  Once I figured it out, I did find the airport and landed there fine.  Lesson: don't abandon the plan, even if you think you are off course.  On the way back, we diverted to Galt (K10C).  My course was again a bit off and I ended up west of the airport, but I did spot as we approached.  In that case, I didn't immediately draw the course line and so my heading wasn't very accurate to start with.  I did fix it along the way, using VOR/DME to find myself, but it wasn't enough.  We then flew back to KPWK, which I mainly did with the VOR.

Overall it wasn't a complete success, but my instructor was confident enough to let me fly it solo.  So I will be making the same trip to KUES as my first cross country solo.

Night Swim

Posted on July 13, 2016.

I flew at night for the first time last night.  Not only was it my first time flying and landing at night, but we also did the nighttime cross country.  Sink or swim.

The cross country actually went quite well.  Had a bit of snafu when we got there as I entered the downwind for the wrong runway.  Check those instruments! Once I fixed that, getting setup for that approach was quite an interesting experience.  I would have preferred that my first night landing happen at a familiar airport.  It's quite hard to judge height, as one would imagine, so I landed flat.

On the way back, I flew under the hood for a while.  Then he spring lost procedures on me.  I found my position and figured out where to head, but then he started asking questions that made me second guess myself.  After a bit of a panic, I confirmed my position with the VOR.  It turned out he was trying to get me to explain my plan after I got to where I wanted to go.  I interpreted his comments as hints that I was not doing it correctly.  Sink or swim.

Once we got back to the airport, my second landing was better and the rest went fine.  We had a long debrief, and discussed the next steps.  Next we have a, "stage check", which involves a mock check ride of sorts.  If that goes well, I'll be doing my solo cross country flights.

Rebust the Rust

Posted on July 12, 2016.

Between work ramping up to a deadline and preparing for the written test, I took a month off of flying.  I probably should have squeezed a solo in there somewhere so keep my skills up, but that didn't happen.  I managed a 92% on the written test, and it is nice to have that behind me.  Since I hadn't flown in a month, my instructor went up with me for a couple of laps to shake the rust off.  Made a couple of dumb mistakes with ATC, but went fine otherwise.  Flew solo after that, but the airport was so busy that I only got 3 laps in before calling it quits.

I went up again a few days later for some more practice, but again it was very busy.  It's good to have practice with ATC procedures, but I also need to practice things like short field take offs and soft field landings.  They don't like having small aircraft linger on the runway when they are squeezing us between small jet traffic.  I think I'll need to head to a different airport for that.

Hectic Morning at PWK

Posted on June 08, 2016.

Flew around the pattern again at PWK this morning.  This will probably be my last flight until I get the written test out of the way.  The airport was busy and it proved to be challenging to deal with all of the odd ATC requests.  At one point we had 4 Cessnas in the pattern with small jets coming and going.

The wind ended up being rather variable and at one point I was landing with a tail wind.  I got maybe two or three "normal" circuits in the pattern.  The rest contained ATC deviations of some sort, including extended bases, short finals, and runway changes.  At one point I was getting a little too close to O'Hare and had to hover in the downwind at 50kts until I finally got the call to turn around for a different runway.  At another point, I had too much power on a short final and had to forward slip like crazy to get down to the runway.  The techniques all worked like they were supposed to though, and I didn't have any major problems.  Just some squirrelly landings.