Wednesday, April 15, 2009

a couple more pics



These are some pictures from IFS in Pueblo, Co. The ones from the dunes are from a detour that I took while driving home from Pueblo to Mesa, Az. A couple of pictures are from a weekend that we drove up to the Air Force Academy and found a mountain to hike up. The patch is our class patch during IFS.

A few pictures





Monday, April 13, 2009

Mississippi or bust!

We're off to Mississippi.....well, we leave in a couple of weeks, but time is flying so fast. So I finished IFS about a week ago and made the long drive back from Pueblo, Co to Mesa, Az. I soloed on the Monday before I came home wich was pretty crazy. I wasn't really nervous because I have a private pilot license already and have flown by myself a handfull of times, but once I dropped my instructor off all of the sudden winds started picking up and let's just say that the mighty Katana isn't the best in windy conditions. It is such a small/light airplane that any wind gust will blow you off of centerline. As I was doing my touch and goes the tower reported winds at 12 gusting to 20. I did a couple of windy touch and goes and then ops announced over the radio for all solo's to come down out of the pattern and make it a "full stop". On Wednesday I had my check ride. I admit I was a little nervous before the flight. The way that the military does check rides is the check pilot acts as if he knows nothing. He/she does not say a word the entire flight and does not interact with you at all, unless they need to intervene for safety reasons. Once we got airborne I wasn't really nervous at all. I got lucky because winds were calm and there wasn't a cloud in sight. I flew around for about 1.4 hours and then returened to Pueblo. After the flight we met in his office and for about a half an hour he asked me questions. Then all of the sudden he asked, "are you ready to be done?", I thought are you crazy, of coarse! I told him I was and then he congratulated me and told me that I was done and that I had passed. It was an awesome feeling.
Now the next step is undergraduate pilot training (UPT). I am scheduled to start class on the 15th of May in Columbus, MS. My wife and I are packing up the car and making the trip into a 4 or 5 day road trip. With enough fruit snacks and Yo Gabba Gabba movies for our one and a half year old I think that we should have a good time. We are leaving on the 25th of April wich will give us a couple of weeks to get our house all set up and everything before class starts. O.K. I think this post is long enough now so until next time......toodles.