Category: Miscellaneous

Elevator stuck? Or just another typical day in the pattern for me after a month out of the cockpit?

After I win the $350M on the lottery tonight I plan on moving to Jumbolair with my brand new Cirrus SR-22GTS, and hobnobbing with Travolta and the like.

Well, no harm in dreaming, huh?

Once again my annual chance to become a plane owner has passed me by. AOPA today announced that their Sweepstakes 2006 Cherokee-6 had been awarded to Coast Guard Cmdr. Rocky S. Lee of Novato, California. So its back to the lottery for my chances of achieving 2007 aviation goal number 8. Congrats to Cmrd Lee.

I doubt I will find any dissenting opinions but I wonder just what is the point of the knowledge test. I understand that is supposed to test one’s knowledge of some aspect of what it takes to get a rating and I would be fine with that if it wasn’t for the way the questions are posed. More often than not the question is written with the aim of tricking you, rather than testing. Having to choose between NM and SM (I can never remember which one is used for what) might be a good question academically but when I’m in the air I doubt there are many who can tell if they have a 3 mile SM or NM view from the cockpit.

When I took my Commercial written 3 years ago I got a 92. I haven’t picked up the books yet but my practice tests with both Sporty’s and Gleim (my Gleim must be out of date as it has no ILS questions) are getting a steady low 80 score, so still plenty of work to do. Mostly I am missing weather questions, and HSI/RMI questions with a random mistakes elsewhere. Once I am consistently scoring in the 90s I’ll schedule an exam.

If the early morning clouds lift today I plan a short hop to French Valley for PIC and night currency this afternoon. First thing this morning, I logged onto DUATS to take a peek at NOTAMs etc, put in my departure time as 1600 PDT…. and I notice that all the surface observations have a reported time later than it is right now. Hmmm….. a little asking around and who would have thought that PST meant Pacific Standard Time, rather than Pacific Summer Time?! Ok, so every American would!

In my defence, in the UK we have BST which is British Summer Time so all this time I’ve been in CA (about 6 years) I’ve thought that PST was summer and PDT was winter. And all that time my DUATS-filed flight plans have been off by an hour!

I spent last night watching a whole bunch of aviation videos on youtube.com and came across this excellent pilot website – 160knots.com. Watching his videos has me thinking about videoing my own flights in the future. I have a bunch of cameras at home, will have to see if any of them are suitable.

I’d never really heard of the Bellanca Viking until reading Frank’s website and I must say it a really impressive sounding plane, and now I want to fly one. Prices are actually pretty reasonable and you get a lot of plane for the money in most cases. So I’ve updated my plane wishlist:

• Cirrus 22-GTS when I win the lottery
• an RV-6 if ever thought I could build my own plane.
• a Bellanca Viking come the day I just decide to go for it and get myself something reasonable

So right now I’m not current for anything and I’m beginning to ask myself whether I am going to fly again at all. I can’t quite put my finger on why I’m not flying. I’m booking planes but then cancelling them, always with some excuse such as the wind, or a sqawk in the plane that I don’t much like. Mostly I think there are two issues combining with each other. First, is money. The almost three months I was without a job hurt my pocket and I didn’t fly hardly at all during that time, and the new job pays less and I still struggle to commit dollars to flying. Second, is confidence. I find that when I don’t fly for a time I get less confident about getting back in the plane. Its not a fear, I know I can do all the things I need to do without harming anyone but somehow when I get near the plane something in the back of my mind tells me to find an excuse.

Its been over 90 days since my last flight and I am definitely in that “don’t make me go up there” frame of mind. The antidote is to just get in the plane, fly around and come back. Then the money side kicks in and says if all I can afford right now is currency flights, never any “pleasure” flights, then whats the point? And as I go back and forth on the arguments, more days tick by making me more unwilling to get back in a plane etc etc

I’d like to think this isn’t the end of my flying as I do love to fly but it sure seems like I’m going to wake up one day and discover its been a year or more since I last sat in the left seat.

I passed a milestone of sorts this evening – 300 hours total time in flight. Sad to say I didn’t do any of the flying, I was safety pilot again, so there’s no great feeling about it like there could otherwise be. My currencies are being stretched again as I struggle to juggle time and money with my new job: the Playstation 3 launches in November and there is a lot to do to make sure that happens! But I have planes booked over the next couple of weeks to extend my PIC and to (by then) renew my Instrument currency – I only need one approach for another 4 months.

Sandwiched between here in Brawley and San Diego is a little mountain range of about 5500 feet or so at its peak. This regularly means that travel between here and there, whether by plane or car, can be a little bumpy. Coming back from lunch today I looked to the west and could see two perfect looking lenticular clouds. To pilots that means strong winds and likely nasty turbulence so it was no surprise when a couple of hours later it was blowing a treat outside in the yard.

The closest weather-reporting airport to here is Imperial and a look at the METARs show the winds from 270° at 27 knots gusting to 33 knots. All the airports on the other side of the hills are showing 6 – 8 knot winds, so I think we would not be enjoying the flight home if we up there today.

I’m still looking for work so haven’t been able to justify getting in a plane since Laughlin in December. I’ll go up pretty soon though just for some pattern work, and I have a friend willing to pay half towards a Catalina buffalo burger.

Fortunately there is plenty of aviation to be had just a few miles down the road from me. At least twice a day, the world-famous Blue Angels strut their stuff overhead in rehearsal for this year’s shows. From now until their first show here on March 11 we get treated to some great shows in the sky. There is a spot fairly close to NAF EL Centro which gives a great view and, more importantly, a great feeling as those jets roar above your head.