Nothing in aviation is ever concrete...

I sat down and talked with Belinda regarding my commercial training and the requirements I have to meet. It turns out I'm still going to have some flight time to log before I'm done with Commercial 2. Here's how this discovery changes my last post: instead of 1 night solo cross-country, I now have two; instead of only having the one long day cross-country, I now also have 2 (possibly 3) shorter, though still fairly long, cross-countries to fly in addition to the long one; I'm going to end up logging 8-10 hours of local solo time, just flying around the valley to rack up hours.

Where I'm At

Some people are starting to wonder, I guess, so here's the latest on the aviation front. This past week I flew a very short solo cross-country to Willcox, just to get used to soloing again (it was my first solo flight of any kind since last spring). That same night, I made a local flight with Clif (the only instructor on duty all week) with a heavy emphasis on landings, to prepare me for the night solo flight I have to make. With these two flights done and over, there are really only two things I need to do to finish Commercial 2 (there are 3 phases to complete before I earn my Commercial certificate).

The first thing I have to do is make a LONG solo cross-country flight. The big requirement for the flight is one leg of at least 250 nautical miles, and our syllabus gives us the option of four options we can take to complete this beast. I'm mostly set on the option that will take me to Blythe, CA then Kingman, AZ then back to the college. I've already sat down with my sectional (you'll recall that a sectional is an aviation map) and mostly figured out my route. Now the big question is when I'll actually get to make that flight. It's sort of doubtful that I'll be able to go during the week, because I'll be gone approximately 8 hours, and they like to have all the Cherokees available for flight periods on the weekdays.

The second flight I have to make is a night solo cross-country to Tucson and Casa Grande. I can go to those airports in whichever order I choose, but I'm required to do ten stop-and-gos at Tucson. A stop-and-go is a lot like a touch-and-go, except you have to come to a full stop on the runway after landing and before you take back off. I anticipate that exercise being extremely tedious, so I'll probably save Tucson for last. The bright side of this flight is that I won't be limited to weekends; there's not much demand for planes at night, so all I have to worry about is having an instructor around after hours to dispatch me. I think I have to have 5 hours total of night solo flight, and this cross-country should take about 3.5 hours, so I'll have to maybe go back up by myself for some local time before I'm through.

Unless I've completely misunderstood my instructor, once I've met these two goals, I'll be done with Commercial 2 and on to Commercial 3. Since I'm finishing my Commercial certificate under FAR Part 61, there are only a few flight requirements left. The main focus for phase 3 is getting really good at the commercial maneuvers in the Cessna, and then I'll be more or less ready for the check ride. It's definitely possible for me to knock this certificate out before summer, God willing.

Confession

I need to get something off my chest. It's been bothering me since Saturday afternoon, and I'm hoping that confessing it on my blog will help dispel the guilt. Among the food items being sold at the airshow on Saturday were trays of nachos slathered in hot, gooey, orange cheese sauce. Since my $5 hamburger more or less completely failed to satisfy me, I decided to buy myself some nachos just after Jen and I had found a good spot to set up our chairs for the show. I wandered over to the food booth in question, paid my money and received my pile of nachos and goo. I had taken about 5 steps away from the booth, when a sudden, strong gust of wind (I'm not joking) blew the top chip clean off my pile and right onto the back of a guy in a nice, white tanktop. Of course, this left a hot, gooey, orange ring of cheese on his back, but he didn't seem to notice for the first second or two after impact. I panicked, fearing he would think I had intentionally attacked him with hot nachos, so I put my head down and double-timed it away from him. As I made my escape, I heard voices and such that left me believing he was quickly becoming aware of his situation. I hurried back to my seat and prayed he wasn't following me. As I sat and ate my nachos, though, I started feeling really guilty that I'd ruined this guy's clean, white shirt and hadn't even had the decency to fess up to the man. I'm not sure what I could have done for him, besides apologize and offer to let him throw a nacho back at me, but I still feel terrible about the whole thing. If, through some strange miracle, you were at the Douglas airshow in a white wife-beater and some jerk nailed you in the back with a cheesy corn chip and you're actually reading this, I'm really sorry about your shirt and I swear it was unintentional. If you want me to pay for your shirt, leave me a comment and we'll work out the details.

Jen and I had fun at the airshow today. I'm sure one or both of us will provide more detail and some pictures soon, but for now it's enough to say that we were at the airfield for around 7 hours, and we both got badly sun/wind-burned. Just wait til you see the pictures, friends.

Airshow!

Tomorrow is the second annual Border-to-Border Airshow here in Douglas. Jen and I have been looking forward to it for a while now, and we plan on leaving the apartment at 10:00, which will give us some time to eat tasty carnival food and look around before the actual show starts at noon. The winds have been pretty strong and gusty here the past couple days, and tomorrow is forecast to be more of the same. I'm curious how strong the winds actually have to be before the aerobatic pilots are grounded. Let's hope it takes more than tomorrow can offer.

Rated!

After a very tense, very turbulent 1.2-hour flight, I'm now officially instrument rated! Tomorrow, I get back into the Cherokee to start working on commercial phase 2. Thanks for all your prayers. And thanks be to God, who answers prayer so faithfully, despite the failures of His children.

Tomorrow

I flew a practice flight with Belinda this morning, to go over what I'll most likely be doing on tomorrow's recheck. It went really well, but that might be, in part, because the sky was like glass this morning. It's hard to screw up when there's no turbulence or wind shear knocking you around. When we got back from our flight, Belinda talked to my examiner and found out that my recheck is going to be at noon-ish tomorrow, when the turbulence and wind will be much more pronounced. The forecast for tomorrow calls for light winds, though, so it still might not be that bad. We shall all find out tomorrow.

I spent this past week sick, so I didn't get a chance to fly even once all week. And I just found out the other day that my examiner isn't going to be around on Wednesday or Thursday of this coming week, so Tuesday is pretty much my only chance before spring break to finish my instrument rating. Monday morning is my time to go back over to Libby with my instructor and work out the kinks. If I can finish the instrument rating on Tuesday, then I can get back into the Cherokee on Wednesday and/or Thursday, and fly a long (about 7.5 hours) solo cross-country during spring break. Please, please pray that the weather is favorable for flying on Tuesday. I really want to be done with instrument.

Not much of an update...

I don't have much to report since my last post. I got sick again over the weekend, with a slightly scaled-down version of the same thing I was sick with a couple weeks ago. That said, I skipped my flight period this morning. The winds have been pretty ridiculous lately, and today was no exception, so had I actually gone to my flight period I wouldn't have flown anyway. This pushes back the tentative retest schedule Belinda and I had figured out last week. And with the winds as strong and unpredictable as they've been, I'm not sure when, realistically, I'll have an opportunity to get back in the plane with my examiner and finish up that rating. God's timing is perfect, and He's got His hand in this, just like in everything else, so I'm not too concerned about it all. It'll happen when the Lord wants it to, and not a second before then. However, it would be nice if it happened sort of soon, because I want to wrap up my instrument rating before I go get my medical certificate renewed, and I have to do that before the last day of March.