Posted by Kevin, on December 9th, 2004 I’d just like to take a minute to thank my instructor Brad and the rest of the Ottawa Flying Club for teaching me so much about flying and helping me to get my private pilot license. Yes, I did my fair share of bitching and moaning when things didn’t go as I would have liked them to, but I’m going to chalk that up to my own frustration at not being able to get things done quicker. Hey, they can’t control the weather and as for the planes…you can only work with the budget and resources you’ve got. At any rate, despite my complaining, I’m still very happy to have done my training at such a great club. [...]
Posted by Kevin, on December 6th, 2004 Well that’s it! I’m done! Well actually I should say that I’ve only just begun since I plan to continue on with my training. As one instructor said to me, “Now you’ve got a license to learn” If you can’t tell what I’m talking about, I had the rest of my flight test today and I passed! I’ll put it on the record that my forced approach was VERY ugly but I managed to make the field and pull out a pass so I’m trying to put it behind me. All I need to do now is fill out the appropriate paperwork and send everything off to Transport Canada and then I get my license. In the meantime, once I’ve got all the paperwork filled out and checked over, someone (Andrew or Gerry) will stamp the back of my student pilot permit and that will serve me until I get my license in the mail. [...]
Posted by Kevin, on December 1st, 2004 Well after a night and a morning of stressing out about my flight test today, I can breath a sigh of relief. Obviously (well only obvious if you were in Ottawa today) I didn’t get to do the flight portion of the flight test today, but I did get the ground portion done. That means…if the weather cooperates on Monday and I don’t completely suck, then I may have my license by Monday afternoon! The test today went really well. Bill is a super nice guy and puts you at ease for the test. Kind of reminds me of Andrew (the club’s CFI) in that respect. I wont say too much about it, except that I’m glad Brad was so hard on me and made me worry so much. Thanks to him, I had the answers to all the questions that Bill asked me. You da man Brad! [...]
Posted by Kevin, on November 30th, 2004 Holy crap! Flight test is scheduled for tomorrow! I’m freaking out a little bit here… Must make sure to get everything done tonight that I can, and then get all the variable stuff done nice and early tomorrow so I’m ready. I may have to take the day off work. [...]
Posted by Kevin, on November 29th, 2004 Went flying with Brad again today. Talk about a beautiful day! The club still hasen’t got their new fuel tank straightened out so that caused a bit of a delay, but they got the esso truck to come down and fill us up, so it was all good. Started the flight with a soft field takeoff and then went out to the practice area for…practice – how about that! Started with a little slow flight, followed by a few stalls, and then a forced approach and also a precautionary approach. After that we did a couple of spiral dives and then a forward slip before heading back in. For the landing, it was a short field landing. [...]
Posted by Kevin, on November 29th, 2004 Friday was a beautiful day! I couldn’t believe it when I woke up and looked out the window. Clear blue skies and a light wind. I thought to myself, I’m definitely getting my cross country in today! Unfortunately, Friday was also a somewhat crazy day at work. I was told the night before, just before I left work, that I had to do some regulatory testing on Monday at a location on River Road. I was also told that I needed to get the equipment gathered together and tested before it was shipped out to the location on Friday afternoon. That meant a lot of running around and no time to do my pre-flight planning that was necessary. Not good. I did manage to get some of it done, but not everything. In the end, turns out that the testing got pushed back to Thursday so I was able to leave without any worries. Whew! [...]
Posted by Kevin, on November 20th, 2004 Went out with Brad on Friday afternoon to finish up my required instrument time and to practice forced and precautionary approaches. To be honest, the first one of each that I did, sucked big time! Not too sure what was going on, I guess I was trying to rush through them or something. I was being very indecisive when it came to picking a field too. It was somewhat frustrating. After the brutal time I had with the forced and precautionaries, we did a diversion. I had to get from Fitzroy Harbour to Wilson’s Corners. That actually went quite well, I found Wilson’s Corners without too much trouble, but it did take me quite a while to figure out what heading to fly. The other thing I didn’t consider was the MOCA for when we got over the Gatineau Hills. [...]
Posted by Kevin, on November 12th, 2004 …and yet I didn’t go flying this morning as scheduled. Why? Cause both 150s were left outside last night and were covered with frost. Why? Cause there was a big honkin’ trailer in the hangar taking up most of the space. Why? Cause apparently it was very important to keep VGT nice and toasty warm even though it’s got NO WINGS and is not used for training. Why the hell couldn’t that huge ass trailer have been left outside so that a few planes could have been stored inside overnight? As you can maybe tell, I’m a little on the pissed off side of life right now. I got up at 6:30 this morning (after going to bed after 1 am) so that I could be at the club on time for my 8 am booking only to find this out. ARGH! [...]
Posted by Kevin, on November 10th, 2004 As I mentioned in a previous post, I need to get some more instrument time done before I’m able to do my flight test. I had hoped to get that done last night, but alas, it was not to be. More on that later. Since 150s are in short supply these days, Brad suggested I book some time on one of the 172s that the club has. His reasoning was that I was going to have to get checked out on them eventually anyways, so why not start now. Good point. I showed up at the club for my 12:30 booking. It was a bit windy today and man was it ever cold! In reality it wasn’t that cold, I’m just not used to it yet. The walk around was not comfortable, but I got it done with no problems. Checking the stall horn on a 172 is somewhat challenging. [...]
Posted by Kevin, on November 7th, 2004 Went up for a pre-flight test with Brad yesterday. We had previously done the ground portion of the test, so it was just the flying part. I didn’t think we’d actually be going because it was quite windy out. Brad said that if I could handle it, he could…so we ended up going. The good news is that I didn’t ‘fail’ anything, but apparently I came close on a couple of things. I wont get into the details (at least not right now) but after it was over, Brad told me how I did and what I should work on before the flight test. We’re going to go up a couple of more times before the real flight test. I also need to get some more hood time, I need another couple of hours! [...]
|