CFI Pilot

Stall Recovery

2011-07-02T23:52:00.000-06:00

Last week I flew with David, a client of mine, and had him try stalls. This flight was to be his second attempt at entering and recovering from a stall. On his first flight I did a couple of demonstrations and then let him try and he did them quite well and even enjoyed it. He was quite nervous before the flight and was pleasantly surprised how uneventful stalling was. This second flight was a bit different. Instead of doing another demonstration I just let him try a power off stall. He set up correctly and began to pitch up, the stall broke, and then he pushed down. He pushed kind of hard. I wasn't expecting that since he had done so well just a few days before. I thought it was funny. He thought it was scary. Scaring him was not my intention and it never helps a person get excited for more. After recovering I did a demonstration and then he tried again and it went as expected. Good.

Lesson: a second demonstration should be done no matter how well it went the first time. It may have been luck.

David and I flew again today and we did some more stalls. Today I was sure to do another demonstration before he tried. As I raised the nose I pointed out where I had the yoke and what I would do to recover. The stall broke and I held the yoke exactly where it was. I did not push nor pull. The nose came down, we gained speed, I added full power, the nose came up and only then did I need to push a bit (to prevent a second stall). Then he tried. His first attempt was almost perfect. The trick? Don't force the recovery. Just let it happen. Cessna aircraft will mostly recover on their own and today was no exception (most light aircraft will).

David had fun today which is always a win in my book. Flying should always be fun!

Turning Stalls

2011-06-24T22:59:00.000-06:00

Today I had the pleasure of flying with a new client. It was his first flight after a nine month break in his training. He was quite close to earning his Private Pilot certificate and after our flight today I am confident that he will be prepared quickly and earn his much awaited certificate.

During the flight he was practicing stalls and I had him do a couple of power on stalls while turning to the right with a 15-20 degree bank. He did a really good job and then commented that he had never before done a stall while in a turn. Many clients have said this same thing to me during the past few months. I am not quite sure why this training is left out. Stalls while turning is not only important but also quite fun! I always enjoy it.

The Practical Test Standards mention turning while executing stalls and I highly recommend the experience. Not only will you be prepared when you appear for the checkride, you will learn a valuable skill along the way. If you haven't yet done turning stalls then ask your instructor to teach you how to do them on your next flight. You will have a great time!

Safe flying!

Congratulations Michael

2011-06-24T22:48:00.006-06:00

Congratulations to Michael Groll on passing his Commercial Multiengine checkride today! It has been a pleasure working with Michael and I look forward to continuing to work with him in preparation for his Multiengine Instructor rating.

Next Generation

2011-05-26T23:02:00.000-06:00

Congratulations to my good friend Eric Lenk on passing his initial Flight Instructor check ride today! Eric is an excellent pilot and is going to be a great instructor!

Eric passing his check ride is also a big day for me. Eric is the first person that I taught to fly. And now he is passing on the joy of aviation to others!

Above, Below , and Rain

2011-05-14T16:47:00.000-06:00

The trip to Phoenix for Mother's Day was warm and bumpy. The trip back was quite a bit different. The temperature was much lower and the clouds were everywhere. I departed from KGYR rather early in the morning and climbing through 7000 feet I was dodging clouds. By the time I got to Prescott I was over a scattered layer that was getting thicker and thicker. North of Flagstaff the layer was broken and getting higher and at the Grand Canyon I was barely on top at 14000 and it was a solid overcast. About 15 miles south of Bryce Canyon it had turned back into a broken layer with tops around 11000 and then I hit a wall. There was a wall of clouds up into the flight levels stretching west to east across Utah.

With the reports of ice I had no choice but to drop below the layer and turn West to St. George and hope for an opening to the North. The bases got rather low nearing Cedar City and North of there it was solid IMC so I landed at KCDC to wait it out. It didn't take long for the storm to come in force. It rained most of the afternoon and snowed for about an hour and a half. Yep, early May and stuck in a snow storm. Lame!

After about six hours on the ground it finally cleared enough for me to get to Milford and then it was easy riding all the way into Salt Lake. Of course it started pouring again right when I shut down so I got soaked pushing the plane into the hangar. It was a great adventure! At least the trip back was smooth and turbulence free. Enjoy the pictures!

Over Prescott (KPRC)

Near Flagstaff (KFLG)

Over the Grand Canyon

West of Lake Powell

Near Bryce Canyon (KBCE). See the wall ahead?

Passing Kanab

After the snow storm in KCDC

Somewhere between KMLF and KFOM

Nearing KFOM

Central Utah

More Central Utah

Near Nephi (U14)

South end of Utah Lake

Drunk Pilot

2011-05-14T16:15:00.000-06:00

My siblings decided it would be fun to surprise our mom for Mother's Day. They asked if I could find a way to get from Salt Lake City down to Goodyear near Phoenix, AZ. It was a rather last minute idea and I didn't want to pay last minute airfare. A few months back a friend offered to lend me his plane and I decided to take him up on the offer. I borrowed his Diamond Star DA40 and flew down. It was a rather bumpy day with unstable air and lots of thermals.

I don't often get the chance to fly solo on long trips so I took the opportunity to learn the KAP 140 autopilot better. I understand some of its functions much better now. Probably the biggest thing that I learned is that it has a rather hard time keeping up with a bumpy summer afternoon. I sat there laughing at the plane. It felt like I was along for the ride with a drunk pilot. It wallowed all over the place trying to keep up. I switched back and forth from autopilot to hand flying because I could only handle the drunk pilot for so long.

Enjoy the pictures!

Southern Utah

The Pilot

Grand Canyon from the Tuckup Corridor looking East

MEI

2011-03-26T20:05:00.000-06:00

Today I completed a long held aviation goal by passing the check ride and adding a multiengine rating to my Flight Instructor certificate. The oral exam was rather straight forward. I taught the examiner engine out principles, single engine flying, VMC, systems of the piper Seminole and a few other random things. We then strapped into the airplane for a rather short flight. We started out with some landings and they mostly went well. On one lap around the pattern I got a bit low on base and announced to the examiner that I would hold my altitude until back on glideslope. He didn't like that too much apparently because right when I turned final he failed an engine. I barely would have made the runway and may have come up short. He quickly gave me the engine back and mostly just wanted to prove a point. He said that if I ever get low in the pattern that I should not hesitate at all and just climb back up to glide path or pattern altitude. We did a couple more circuits with a failed engine once or twice.

The upper air work was all straight forward. I just marched right through all of the maneuvers teaching as I went. After I shut down and secured the engine I went through my flow procedure to start it back up. I was using the checklist but apparently skipped a step because I was a bit nervous. I managed to start the engine with the propeller still feathered. It is an awesome plane because it started right up no problem. I quickly felt that it didn't feel right noticed the problem and shoved the prop lever forward. The examiner just chuckled, said he was surprised it started so easy and we moved on. I taught him how to do an emergency descent and then a short field landing and we were done.

Flight Instructor
CFI - CFII - MEI

CFI Candidates and Lesson Plans

2011-02-20T00:49:00.000-07:00

Recently I have had the opportunity to work with initial Certified Flight Instructor (CFI) candidates, those who are getting their first CFI rating. It has been a pleasure to work with these individuals and help them add to their aviation knowledge base and learn how to effectively teach what they know to others. A common trend has been revealed to me through working with this group and it is that few pilots seem to give much importance to where they learned what they know about aviation. And I mean specific sources. Ask most commercial pilots any random question and you are likely to get a usable answer, not always but often. Be it regulations, aerodynamics, engine operation, instrument rules, you name it, pilots at this level will at least be able to tell you what they would do in a given situation and they cannot always tell you why. And I like to know why. I have found that if you ask for a reference text it will take them quite a while to find the answer if they can at all.

Becoming a flight instructor is often the first time in their aviation career that a pilot is expected to know the answer AND know why. I think knowing 'why' is one of the biggest hurdles that these candidates have to overcome during the training for the CFI certificate. They will put together some decent lesson plans and think they are pretty close to done. They present them to their instructor and the questions begin. The instructor picks apart the points in the lesson and they want you to go one level deeper, and then another level, and then show how it correlates to the last lesson, and how it flows into the next lesson. The instructor asks, "Are you sure?", and the candidate usually gets nervous and pauses to think. They run through it in their mind and make sure they believe it themselves and often feebly say they are sure. Why do they stumble at all? It is because they aren't sure. Yes this struggle is part of the learning process but I think it shows a lack of preparation. If the lesson had been put together after closely studying a few references then the knowledge would be more fresh and they would be much more certain of their answers. But the knowledge fades overtime and that is where including references comes into play. We just don't remember it forever and when an instructor is asked something they don't know for sure they should never guess. They should always look it up and make sure they are correct before teaching it (remember law of primacy). If those references were included in the lesson plan then the answer will always be close at hand.

As an instructor you either know it or you don't. If you don't then just say so to your client and that you will look it up. And if you do know and the client asks you why you know or where you learned it, you should never ever say, "That is what my instructor taught me". Word of mouth is not a reliable source. If you ever find yourself about to say that phrase, then please stop yourself, and go look it up.

Happy flying!

IFR Practice and Actual IMC

2011-01-27T23:44:00.003-07:00

The past two days have provided some opportunities to go play in the sky a little bit and luckily these trips have been done IFR (Instrument Flight Rules). Yesterday a friend and I took and made a short flight from KSLC to KPVU in a Skylane 182T. It was a bit overcast so we filed IFR. The routing around Salt Lake is never quick due to high mountains and even higher minimum vectoring altitudes. This flight in VFR can be done in less than 30 minutes easily but this IFR flight took about an hour. The overcast layer was not very thick so we didn't spend much time in the clouds but it was nice to get a taste of clouds for a couple of minutes at least. We broke out around 3000' AGL (above ground level). By the time we got there it had cleared enough to make the trip home VFR so we just made the quick hop back.

Tonight a coworker was going to move a company plane up to Logan, UT for some maintenance. I asked if I could join and we started getting ready. The airport went IFR and he wasn't current but luckily I am so we filed IFR and off we went. The clouds had thickened up quite a bit so we were in actual for a decent amount of time on the way to Logan. We also left after dark so it added to the experience quite a bit. We had to climb through a layer and descend through a layer into Logan. After landing in Logan we hopped in a plane that just had its 100 hour inspection and came back. Again we had filed IFR. Logan is an uncontrolled airport in a deep valley with no radar coverage so departing is always fun. We called Flight Service to get our clearance and they gave us a 25 minute window before the void time so we had plenty of time to get out. We climbed through a layer up to clear air but were still below minimum vectoring altitude. The controller told us to go direct to CARTR intersection when we got to 12000 and we were only at 8000. We were following the ODP(Obstacle Departure Procedure) that was taking us in the wrong direction and Cessna 172s don't exactly climb like crazy so we opted to to break off the ODP and turn on course and assume our own terrain clearance which was easy enough on a fairly bright evening. The flight back was rather uneventful. The descent was pretty exciting because the overcast over Salt Lake had thickened up a lot. We were in the clouds for about 7 or 8 minutes during final vectoring to the ILS. The bases were around 700-800' AGL. That was the lowest base I had ever experience in actual conditions. It was a pretty sight to see the runway straight ahead when we broke out. Good times!

Back At It

2011-01-06T09:23:00.002-07:00

I have made some comments on here from time to time about my desire and intention to return to aviation for my full time profession. It didn't take long before I couldn't stand being away from aviation any longer. Back in November, I left my job working as a software developer and returned to working as a Flight Instructor. It was definitely a great decision and I am very happy to be back.

I am working out of Salt Lake International (KSLC) which provides an interesting opportunity of teaching people to fly in rather busy Class B airspace. Learning to fly in Class B helps a new pilot to quickly get quite comfortable talking on the radio with many types of air traffic controllers and we go to a nearby non-towered airport for practice so they get practice with CTAF as well. Our company has recently acquired a Piper Seminole and will soon acquire a Red Bird Flight Simulator which will be a great help for proficiency and safety and will allow us to keep training even when Utah winter weather tries to ground us. There has also been some talk of acquiring a tailwheel aircraft, I will keep you posted.

Pursuing an aviation career is my dream and I am thrilled to pursue it full time! Safe flying!

TBM850

2010-11-21T19:08:00.003-07:00

Cory, a friend and fellow flight instructor, called me last week and asked if I could accompany him on a flight in the TBM850 that he flies. Of course I agreed. The mission for the flight was to dead head from Salt Lake (KSLC) to Carlsbad (KCRQ) to pick up his boss and then fly his boss to Wickenburg, AZ (E25), then move the plane to Phoenix Sky Harbor (KPHX). It sounded like an exciting adventure and I was more than happy to accept an experience like this.

We departed KSLC on Sunday the 14th around 6pm. Cory asked if I wanted to do the radio work and I gladly accepted the task. One thing about flying in Utah with your average Cessna 172 is lack of experience working the IFR system due to really high MEAs (minimum enroute altitude) and icing conditions most of the time. So I gladly take any chance I can to talk on the radios and work with the controllers to gain experience doing IFR flights. We departed KSLC into thick clouds with some snow falling and started picking up some light rime ice. No problem as the plane has pneumatic boots on the wings to knock the ice off. The boots were turned on and allowed to cycle and the ice quickly disappeared. We were in the clouds up to about 14000 feet and then were in and out until about 16000. We pretty quickly got cleared up to FL260. That was a fun clearance to receive and repeat back to the controller as it was the first time that I have been in the cockpit with a clearance into Class A airspace (airspace above 18000 feet).

We were out of the clouds and ice pretty fast and the rest of the trip was smooth and clear. The flight to KCRQ took a bit under two hours and we waited about an hour for his boss to arrive. The flight to Wickenburg was an hour long and the boss hopped out and then we were shortly on our way to Phoenix. I learned to fly out of the Glendale airport near Phoenix and actually never landed at Phoenix during or after my training. Last week when Cory and I landed there was the first time that I had ever been in the cockpit for a landing at Phoenix. About time!

It was a great trip and I am glad to have friends like Cory that allow me to gain experience in parts of aviation that are not readily available to most of us. I learned quite a bit about working in the IFR system that night. Most of it is stuff that I had read before and seeing the practical application of it always helps to seal it in the mind and make me a better pilot. Hopefully I will have more experiences like this in the future!

Commercial Multi Engine License

2010-10-29T18:02:00.007-06:00

This year I have been working full time as a software developer in Salt Lake City. I know that my blog title would cause one to think that in fact I am a full time Flight Instructor. Sorry to mislead you. My goal is a career in aviation and I plan to return to instructing full time before the year is out!

Although I have been spending way more time behind a computer than is probably good for anybody, I have still done quite a bit of flying this summer. At least software pays well!

Twice this year I have made a weekend trip to Phoenix and on both occasions a good friend was kind enough to let me borrow his Cessna 182. The first trip was back in late March. We departed Salt Lake on a day with scattered storms and showers along our route all the way to the Grand Canyon. At one point while flying under a cloud a bit of precipitation started falling and we picked up a tiny bit of ice. Luckily the cloud wasn't that wide and by the time I noticed the ice it was already melting off. We crossed the Dragon Corridor of the Grand Canyon and the air was clear all the way to Phoenix. The weather was wonderful that weekend and a nice break from the cold winter of Salt Lake City. The flight back was uneventful and we crossed the same corridor over the beautiful Grand Canyon.

The second trip to Phoenix was made in mid July and those of you that have been to Phoenix know that this was a hot trip! The weather was pleasant the entire flight down and when we arrived over the valley after sunset the temperature at 11000 feet was around 60 F. By the time we reached 4000 F the temp was up to 90 in the cockpit and around 105 on the ground. This was Michelle's (my girlfriend) first trip to Phoenix. Not the time of year to convince people it is a nice place to be! The trip back was a bit more exciting. There was a lot of convective activity over the Grand Canyon so we had to divert west to Mesquite, NV to get around it. Then a line of storms north of Cedar City caused us to land and wait it out for a few hours before making it back to Salt Lake that night.

I did a couple of tailwheel flights this summer but the endorsement still eludes me. The closest tailwheel instructor I know of is an hour drive away and with a full time work schedule it isn't always easy to get away. I am still looking to finish the endorsement soon and can't wait to rack up some tailwheel time!

Many friends have joined me on random short trips around Utah and Michelle has been on many flights with me. She always takes the left seat now when we fly which is fine with me. She is becoming a rather good pilot with an interesting logbook. Almost every flight that she has done has been a night cross country flight. Night may not be the easiest time to learn the basics of flight but she catches on quickly. In no time at all she will be doing all of the flying herself!

The biggest aviation accomplishment this year has been completing the multi-engine add-on rating to my Commercial Pilot Certificate. That means that I am now allowed to fly airplanes with any number of engines. I passed my check ride two months ago on the 26th of August 2010. I flew a Piper Seminole for the rating and it was a great adventure. There was a bit of a delay in the middle of the training for some aircraft issues and a not so short trip to AirVenture 2010 in Oshkosh, WI. The delay was well worth it. I have a done a few flights in a twin since then and am now working on the Multi Engine Instructor Certificate which I plan to finish within a few weeks. The days are quickly getting shorter here in Utah so hopefully those few weeks don't get stretched out too long!

EAA AirVenture 2010 at Oshkosh, WI

2010-08-06T21:32:00.006-06:00

Every year pilots and aviation enthusiasts from around the world convene in what many consider to be a somewhat unexpected place: Oshkosh, Wisconsin at the Wittman Regional Airport. This airport is the home of the Experimental Aircraft Association known as EAA. They held the first airshow and fly-in in 1953 and since then it has become a yearly gathering place for many to share their love of aviation.

AirVenture, also simply called Oshkosh, is a big event. And when I say big event I mean really big. This year it is estimated that around 10,000 aircraft flew in for the event and around 36,000 people camped in the various campgrounds on the airport grounds. Typical attendance during the week of the event is usually over 500,000 people.

Luckily, I was able to attend AirVenture this year and I was there for the duration of the event which runs for one week. This was my first trip and it was worth every penny and every minute that it took to get there. I arrived in Oshkosh, WI on Saturday the 24th of July and returned home on August 2nd. I camped in Camp Scholler the entire time. A good friend of mine whom I trained for the Private Pilot rating came up from Texas and we camped together and were able to enjoy the event for a few days before he headed home.

I camped on 43rd. Huge campground!

There is a lot to do at AirVenture and it is super easy to stay busy. As a matter of fact it is quite difficult to not have something to do. I felt like I was moving non stop from the time I arrived until after the final airshow ended on the last day.

To fill my time I attended many of the free forums and workshops that were held everyday throughout the week. I attend forums about Single Pilot IFR, how to survive engine failure, LSA Maintenance, airline pilot jobs, teaching aerobatics, tailwheel flying, GPS and WAAS, becoming an A&P, preparing for checkrides, how turbine engines operate, PT6 familiarization, and probably more. I attended workshops where I got to do fabric covering and do riveting with sheet metal. I also spent a few hours wandering through the four huge hangars that housed the myriad of vendors that came to show off their stuff.

Many hours were spent wandering around all of the aircraft displays. They had warbirds such as the P-51 and P-38. Some of these aircraft have amazing stories such as the recovery effort of the P-38 Glacier Girl that was recovered by drilling down over 200 feet into a glacier. I saw more ultralights than I can count. Many LSA aircraft were on display and some of them look like a blast to fly. Many of the bigger companies were there as well such as Cessna, Piper, Diamond, Aviat, and American Champion. I saw aircraft from TBM, Beechcraft, Quest, Liberty, and many many others.

Aircraft Parking

Sikorsky 38

In addition to all of the static displays there was also an airshow everyday at 3:30pm. Performers Sean Tucker, Gene Soucy, Jason Newburg, Matt Younkin in the twin beech, Chuck Aaron in the Red Bull helicopter, the Iron Eagles, the Aeroshell T-6 team, and many others came to perform and they put up some impressive shows. They also had a night airshow which was spectacular!

Heritage Flight

Right in the middle of all of the activity is a huge cement pad know as Aeroshell Square. During the week many amazing aircraft were on display. The C-5 Galaxy, Osprey, F-16, F-18, Harrier, DC-2, DC-3, DC-7, KC-135R, Ford TriMotor, B-17, Erikson Sky Crane, and jets from American Airlines and Southwest Airlines. It was kind of funny to see a Southwest 737 next to the C-5 Galaxy. The 737 looked so small!

B-17

Laying in the back of the KC-135R at the refueler station

Wing of KC-135R

Landing gear of C-5 Galaxy

Osprey

Erikson Sky Crane

Aeroshell Square

DC-3

DC-7

I was able to meet many aviation podcasters and friends from Twitter throughout the week. I met Jack Hodgson, Dave Higdon, and Jeb Burnside from the Uncontrolled Airspace Podcast, Steve Tupper of Airspeed, the guys from The Pilot Cast, the guys from Pilot Journey, and a few more. It was a pleasure to meet these guys that work so hard to keep aviation news and stories and excitement close at hand. They have provided many many hours of entertainment and knowledge and I hope they provide many many more.

AirVenture at Oshkosh was an excellent adventure and I plan to attend as often as possible and hope that I can attend many times to come. I made many new friends and hope to be able to maintain these new friendships and make many new friends in the future. Thanks EAA for putting on such an amazing event.

Bird Strike at Night

2010-05-29T18:09:00.003-06:00

Last weekend I went up with a local pilot so that he could get night current and he also wanted me to provide some instruction on how to use his autopilot. We took off around 9:30PM and spent some time doing landings at the Ogden Airport and then flew around north of the airport on the autopilot. Around 10:30PM we started heading back to Salt Lake International when we heard a thud and felt a small bump (surprisingly small). Given that it was dark it was rather hard to see outside the cockpit to see if anything may have happened. After a couple of minutes of looking with my flashlight I could see some bent metal out on the left wing and believed we had struck a bird. After landing it was confirmed. Birds don't play nice with airplanes.

We had been on autopilot when it happened and the pilot immediately disconnected the autopilot. Luckily coming off autopilot no control issues were detected. The plane flew just the same. Even during the landing we didn't notice anything unusual.

The bird caused quite a bit of damage. The leading edge of the wing is obviously damaged. The lower panel rippled due to the main spar getting bent on impact. We got lucky that the bird hit the wing and not the windscreen. I am not so sure how the windscreen would have handled that hit.

Given that it was night we didn't see anything and have no idea what kind of bird it was. But whatever it was, it probably didn't survive!

Blue Sky

2010-01-20T20:47:00.003-07:00

The weather in Logan has been less than desirable lately. Yesterday was a nice break from the dreary winter weather and we were able to see the beautiful blue sky for a while. I rode along on a couple of training flights and shot a few pictures of the beautiful day. I tried to get some videos but my camera wouldn't record longer than 30 seconds and none of them worked out right. Apparently I changed some settings and need to change them back. Oh well! Better luck next time!

Preston Idaho airport. Umm...I think they need to plow the runway!

Cache Valley

Just hanging out in the back seat and taking some pictures!

Last Minute Trip to Boise

2010-01-01T18:03:00.002-07:00

On Tuesday I was at the airport for a while and our company mechanic mentioned to me that one of our flight school aircraft developed an alternator problem during a flight and the pilot opted to leave the aircraft at Delta airport (KDTA). The mechanic (also a pilot) had flown down the day before to fix it and bring it back but took the wrong replacement alternator by mistake and the plane was left again. Another storm came in so there was no hope of retrieving the plane until New Year's Eve. On the evening of the 30th I left a message to the mechanic telling him that I would be glad to go with him to retrieve the plane on the 31st and to give me a call. Early morning on the 31st, the mechanic called me and asked if I wanted to ride along with him to Boise. Huh? Boise? I thought we needed to go to Delta? Turns out he needed to go to Boise as well. I gladly accepted and hurried to the airport.

The weather was fairly good. We had some low clouds that we had to weave around to get out of Cache Valley but once out it was clear all the way to Boise. The mechanic flew down to Boise and he let me fly back. We had a great trip and the air was incredibly smooth for almost the entire flight. The clouds and snow made for some amazing scenery!

Whidbey Island and Windy Clouds

2009-11-08T17:34:00.003-07:00

I made a last minute trip to Seattle this past week and had a great time. On Wednesday I rented a Cessna 172 at Paine Field in Everett, WA and flew out to Whidbey Airpark on Whidbey Island. The strip is 2400 feet long and surrounded by tall trees. It was the first time I had ever landed at a strip like that and it was a lot of fun. We made three landings. First we landed to the north to get a feel for the airport. We turned around and departed to the south and then made left traffic and made two landings to the south. After each landing we taxied back and departed to the south because the north end of the runway has really high trees. We captured some video during a takeoff and during one landing to the south. Enjoy!

Whidbey Airpark

Whidbey Airpark up close

Looking to the North

The next day I went back because the weather was super crappy and I was hoping to get some actual instrument time. We filed KPAE - AWO - OKH - KPAE and flew the NDB 34 at AWO, the GPS 7 at OKH, and the ILS 16R at KPAE. When we departed Paine we were cleared to 2000 feet and given vectors to final for the NDB approach. I was definitely rusty on the approach but did okay. We went missed and got vectors out to Oak Harbor and flew the GPS 7 approach. On the way out we were cleared to 4000 and entered the clouds. We were in the clouds for a while but dropped back out during the approach. On final for runway 7 we were getting some strong wind shear with our airspeed jumping from 80KIAS to 40KIAS. We quickly went missed and got vectors for the ILS 16R into Paine. We climbed back up into the clouds on the way back to Paine and it started to get pretty bumpy. It was difficult to maintain altitude and I was getting deviations of 200 to 300 feet constantly. The airspeed showed 100KIAS and the groundspeed on the gps was about 45kts. It took quite a while to get back to Paine but I got lots of actual so it was good. The landing was kind of exciting with winds around 22kts gusting to around 30kts but only about 20 degrees off the runway. I really enjoyed the flight and the chance to get back in the clouds and file IFR again.

Wave Flying

2009-10-25T18:25:00.003-06:00

Yesterday started with some interesting looking weather (lots of low clouds) but proved to be a great day for glider flying. A group of five of us launched between 2:15pm and 3:00pm to try out the predictions of wave flying. I was the last to launch and everybody was climbing like crazy after release so I took a short tow and released after a 1600 foot tow and enjoyed a nice climb. The climb was almost constant and I eventually made my way up to 14000 MSL. I was still climbing but stopped there because I was not carrying oxygen. The other guys made it up to 18000 MSL. I was not well prepared for the day because I had not planned on the glider flying and I got rather cold. It was probably about 10 degrees F at altitude and gliders don't have heaters!!

I spent most of the flight in a small area just east of Logan Airport and from about one mile north of the field to a few miles south. The wind was strong out of the west. When I got up over the ridge and turned toward the west my groundspeed was probably around 10 knots. After hanging out for a while I tried to run along the ridge just east of Logan to the South but quickly found an area of rapid sink and turned back north. I was able to hang out over the ridge directly east of the field for a while and then tried to run North for a bit and again found lots of sink. The wave was starting to die out and I worked my way to the West towards Logan Airport and found some mild lift. I wasn't working it too hard because I was cold and didn't care too much anymore and landed after 2.5 hours aloft.

That was my longest glider flight (2.5 hours), highest altitude gain (7900 feet), and the highest that I have ever flown an aircraft. It was a great flight. Next time I will be more prepared with winter clothing and make sure that I take my camera. The only thing I had was my cell phone so the images are sub par.

Carburetor Ice

2009-10-12T22:16:00.003-06:00

Yesterday was a gloomy overcast and rainy day and I was lucky enough to go flying for a bit. We jumped in the 182 and fired her up and started taxiing to the runway. After doing the runup and checking magnetos and carb heat, setting the mixture and checking the prop we pulled the throttle all the way to idle to make sure it stayed running. The RPM continued dropping and was soon going to die so we opened the throttle and then tried again with the same result. We pulled on the carb heat and the engine slowly picked up some speed as it melted away all of the accumulated ice. That was my first experience with carb ice and I am glad it happened on the ground rather than in the air. I am amazed how quickly it happened. It wasn't really a surprise since it was lightly raining and only about 6 degrees celsius but still an interesting experience. Winter is here and we have to be extra careful with many difference aspects of flying. At least the airplanes perform so much better to make up for the cold and dreariness!

In other news, my coworker and fellow flight instructor Cory just got a part time job flying a Citation XLS as second in command. It is just a part time gig for now and I can't think of a much better way to spend part of your time! Congratulations Cory!

I recently passed the 500 hour total time mark. I almost have 200 hours as a flight instructor as well. Before I know it half of my flight time will be as a flight instructor!

First Student Check Ride

2009-09-17T23:43:00.002-06:00

Congratulations to Eric Lenk! Eric was my first private pilot flight student. Eric passed his check ride today and joined the ranks of pilots!

New Engine and Lots of Flying

2009-08-29T00:20:00.003-06:00

The FBO (Fixed Base Operator) that I work for has a flight school and a maintenance facility. Our mechanic recently replaced the right engine on the Piper Seminole that the school has. Yesterday evening he invited me to go along with him to break in the engine. He is a Commercial Multi Engine pilot and does most all of the maintenance flights like this one. I don't have my multi engine certificate yet but he let me do most of the flying. We had a great time. We spent two hours flying in and out of all of the hills from the airport to about 40 miles north of the airport. We stayed quite low to keep the engine producing maximum power to help seat the rings in the new engine and we went fast! It is great to get a chance to just fly for fun from time to time rather than always be instructing.

This morning at 7am I got a phone call from the mechanic inviting me to go along again. Another instructor was going to join him but didn't show up so I went again. We did a bit longer flight this morning and flew from Logan up to Idaho Falls, over to the Palisades Reservoir near Afton down the east side of Bear Lake and back to Logan. We saw lots of beautiful terrain, many people fishing and quite a few dear. There is some beautiful country around here and what an awesome way to experience it!

First Solo in a Glider

2009-08-19T12:17:00.003-06:00

Around 11am I went up with my instructor Adam Kite in the Blanik L-13 99951. We took the first tow a bit above 2000' AGL and practiced some slack line recoveries and all went quite well. After release, I did some slow flight and practiced stalls and steep turns and then we returned to the field doing a slip to a landing on the way in. We took a second tow just above pattern altitude to practice one more landing. The landings went pretty well. I bounced on one of them but full air brakes quickly planted me on the ground. After the second landing we hopped out and Adam filled out my logbook and gave me the solo and aerotow endorsements.

I hopped back in the glider, did my pre takeoff checks, hooked up to the tow plane and I was off. Without Adam in the glider I was airborne within about 200 feet, maybe less. The climb out was also a bit faster. On the first tow we hit a strong thermal and I quickly got slack in the line and thanks to the training knew exactly how to fix that problem. I released at 1500' AGL and wandered around for a minute or two and then joined the pattern and landed. The second solo flight was much the same as the first. I released at 1500' AGL and wandered around for a bit. I found a couple of week thermals which kept me at about zero sink and other than that I found no lift so I quickly returned for a landing.

Both solo landings went quite well and I have now soloed a glider. The commercial glider add-on requires 20 solo glider flights and now I have 18 to go. I will be a glider pilot in no time flat!

Glider Fun

2009-08-12T17:44:00.005-06:00

A few days ago I did a few more training flights with my instructor Adam in the Blanik. We started out with a pattern tow and shortly after takeoff another glider announced that he was coming in so we decided to do a higher tow and I practiced boxing the wake. I got down through the wake fine, then out to the left and up the left side. Getting over to the right was no problem and then I pushed too hard to slide down and got quite a bit of slack in the line which was good as it gave me a chance to practice some slack line recovery. We released from the tow and came in for a landing and then did a second tow. Adam released around 250' AGL and I did a 180 turn for a landing. It is amazing that we only lost 25 feet on the turn and had to use full airbrakes to get down to the runway. Those gliders just don't want to be on the ground.

On the third trip we took a high tow over by the ridge. We got into some pretty good lift right away and had a great flight. We got into some good ridge lift and worked our way about 20 miles north along the ridge. We went from the Logan area to about five miles or so north of Preston, ID. Along the ridge we attained a maximum of 11,400' MSL. Not too bad for a big old training glider. The total flight time was 2:15 and is now my longest flight.

When we got back to the Logan area we were around 9000' MSL and had a hard time getting that glider to come down. I pitched over to 95 knots and we were only descending at 100 ft/min down. I opened the dive brakes and slipped and it only got us about 200 ft/min down. Needless to say it took a while to get down that afternoon. We were in a large area of light lift and it was just holding on.

I had planned on soloing the glider this week and may still do so. A large glider competition started at Logan this week so the tow planes have been working hard and the competition doesn't want us up practicing stuff when the people are returning from the contest so we haven't been able to find a good time to get up yet. I will let you know when I solo and get that much closer to my commercial glider certificate.

Dogs on the Roof

2009-07-16T09:56:00.003-06:00

Bentley and I were walking down the street yesterday along with a lady from the ward where he served his mission. On our right a dog was walking around on the roof of a house. It walked to edge turned a few circles as dogs tend to do before they lie down. It found its spot, laid down and spent some time soaking up whatever sun it could get during this not so cold Argentina winter. Why did it lie down on the roof? Who knows? Maybe because it has never seen grass in its life so a cold roof seems just as good as the cold ground but with a better view!

Oh, and I felt like jumping!

Buenos Aires

2009-07-11T15:19:00.004-06:00

I arrived in Buenos Aires on Tuesday morning. My friend was supposed to meet me at the Atlanta airport for our flight down here but his plane got delayed in New York and he missed the flight so I got to enjoy the 10 hour flight by myself. I had no idea if he was able to get on a different flight or not so I just hung out at the airport for a couple hours until I could figure it out. Luckily he was able to get a flight to Santiago, Chile and then over to Buenos Aires so he got in about four or five hours after me.

We stayed Tuesday and Wednesday night in a hostel in Buenos Aires and had a pretty good time there. We met all sorts of fun people from Brazil and Europe and a few from Mississippi. We spent Thursday and Friday in a hotel on Calle Lavalle in Buenos Aires. It is a type of strip mall and a huge tourist attraction. There were people from all over the world. It put us close to transportation and some famous sites. This morning first thing we found which bus to get out to Baradero (the last area of my mission) and out we came. It was about two and a half hours and we passed by three of my other areas on the way. We weren't able to see much just passing through but we will stop on the way back.

When we got here to Baradero we wandered around a bit and found the place where they have church and found the apartment I lived in during the mission. Hopefully we will find the missionaries here so we can find what time church starts and track down some members.

Happenings

2009-05-28T09:21:00.002-06:00

Working as a flight instructor has been a lot of fun. It is great to be able to dedicate most of my time to studying aviation and trying to learn all that I can about it. I have one client in primary training that is highly dedicated and flies three times a week. He did his first solo about two weeks ago and we are now into the cross country stage of his training. He has been doing the landings pretty well and unfortunately he always flies in the evening so he has not had much good cross wind landing experience. We often do cross country flights to Pocatello, ID and it tends to get quite windy up there so that should be good for him. I have a couple more clients in primary training and it has been interesting to see the different levels of progress and speed of learning. The other guys do not fly as often and have a harder time retaining what they learn but they are still progressing.

I have done a couple of flight reviews since I have been here and have had the occasion to go flying with a couple of local aircraft owners in their planes to work on instrument currency and proficiency. I have also flown with a few guys that had not previously flown for over 15 years. It is interesting to see what people retain after 15 years on the ground. Some remember almost everything and are just naturals and some are basically starting over.

Over the past two months I have logged most of my hours in a Cessna 152 and the Cessna 172. I have been able to get some more 182 time and I also got a little time in a Piper Seminole. I plan to finish my multi engine commercial add on rating and get my multi engine instructor rating before the end of summer so every little bit of multi time helps. I also got to ride along in a Cessna 172 RG and Piper Aztec although I didn't log that time.

Spending time at the airport has been a blast and I have met many different people. It is fun to watch the retired guys that come out to fly almost every day even if they only go up for twenty minutes. They just love to be at the airport and enjoy the friendships made there.

"I Am a Flight Instructor"

2009-04-20T09:36:00.003-06:00

Last month Leading Edge Aviation offered me a job as a Flight Instructor at their Logan, UT location. I started working about four weeks ago and I have been loving it. I got the job through a bit of luck and networking. A friend of mine that got his Flight Instructor Certificate about a year before had been working part time in Spanish Fork. A couple months back he had an interview with and was hired at Leading Edge. They asked him if he knew of any other Flight Instructors looking for a job and he gave them my name. They contacted me for an interview about two weeks later and I went in for two interviews. The first interview was your typical interview. They asked many of the normal HR questions and then some questions about my reasons for wanting a job with them, career plans, and what I would do to find my own clients.

They asked me to return a couple days later to teach them some ground lessons so they could evaluate my teaching skills. They asked me to teach turns around a point and slips to a landing. We talked about those subjects for a while and then they offered me the job. They explained pay scales and we decided on a start date and that was it. I asked about the firmness of the job offer based on flying skill and they said that they were pleased with my teaching ability and knowledge of aviation and that if there were any issues with flying skill that they would train me.

Later that day I put in my two week notice to my employer and started planning my move from Provo to Logan. It didn't take long to find a place to live in Logan and two weeks later I moved. It has been a great experience so far. I have a few regular clients now and the company works hard with the instructors to advertise and find people that are interested in learning how to fly.

My aviation career has officially begun and I am thrilled that when asked what I do for a living I can say, "I am a Flight Instructor!"

Instrument Instructor

2009-04-15T17:59:00.005-06:00

About a month ago on the 16th of April I took my check ride for the Instrument Airplane Instructor certificate, commonly known as the CFII. I wanted to tell about the check ride so that others that go in for the check ride in the future will have some idea what they will get to experience.

The oral portion of the exam went quite well. I had all of my lesson plans with me and we simply went through the required Areas of Operation and the examiner asked a number of questions from the various required tasks. A lot of it was rather standard and the questions were nothing out of the ordinary, he was just checking to make sure I actually knew the stuff. He did spend some time talking about compass turns. He asked what bank angle to use when doing compass turns and I said standard rate to which he replied that people often give that answer and that unfortunately it is wrong. He explained that there is a compass error that only exists when you exceed around 30 degrees of bank and in a right turn the compass will never show west even when on a westerly heading and in a left turn the compass will never show east even when on an easterly heading.

He emphasized the requirements for getting the instrument rating and said that he unfortunately has had to turn away many applicants because they did not yet have the required number of hours for the check ride. He said there seems to be some confusion regarding the numbers so we went over it. One of the biggest problems is the required number of cross country hours when training under Part 61. The regulations say the applicant must have 50 hours of pilot in command cross country flight time. Many applicants show up with 50 hours of cross country without realizing that three or four hours of cross country from the private pilot training were with an instructor and do not count as pilot in command time. He also pointed out that the regulations require 40 hours of actual or simulated instrument time and the problem arises because under 61.109(a)(3) it says that a private pilot student must receive three hours of training solely by reference to the instruments and it phrases it differently than the requirement for instrument training so some examiners will not accept those three hours as instrument time.

After finishing the oral, we got into the aircraft and as we started taxiing I explained how to do a cockpit and instrument check and after the runup we were airborne. We departed on runway 12 from Spanish Fork and made a right turn around to the northwest to intercept the Provo Three departure. He had me enter and hold at CALUB intersection. There was a rather stiff wind so the holding pattern took some effort and I was able to get the inbound time pretty close to one minute. We departed the hold and then I set up and recovered from both a nose up and nose down unusual attitude. He then vectored me over to the intercept the VOR 13 approach to Provo. We intercepted the 040 radial from Fairfield out to the northeast and then proceeded outbound, did a procedure turn and then back inbound. The VOR approach was all partial panel. We completed the approach with a low approach with a left turnout and then he vectored me back to the north.

As we were traveling back north he decided to show me the compass turn error that I mentioned above. He had me roll into a 35 degree banked turn to the left and hold it. As we were turning he pointed out that the as we neared north the compass was close to north and on west it was close to west and then on south it was close to south and then on east it was close to west. He showed that it never indicated east when turning left and that if I rolled out of the turn when the compass indicated west while on an easterly heading that once level the compass would spin 180 degrees and land on east and it surely did. He then had me do a right turn and we saw that the compass never indicated west.

After doing compass turns he provided vectors to final for the ILS approach. I executed the approach all the way to a touch and go landing and then we returned to Spanish Fork.

It was a rather simple and straight forward check ride. The examiner was really chatty so we spent a lot of time together and probably half of it was him telling stories.

I passed the ride and was issued my new temporary certificate and am now certified as an Airplane Single Engine and Instrument Airplane instructor!

Chase the Sunset

2009-02-18T23:46:00.002-07:00

A few months back my friend Eric asked me if I could help him out with an idea for Valentine's Day. He wanted to take his girlfriend up for a flight and he wanted it to be a surprise. Eric ended up taking her out of town for the weekend of Valentine's so we made the flight today instead. He told her that he had a surprise for her and she figured it out when they got to the airport. This evening with flew in a Piper Arrow (PA28R-201). It is the same aircraft that I used for my Commercial and Flight Instructor training and I really enjoy that plane.

We took off around 5:55pm. The sunset time today was 6:05pm and we had planned to do a sunset flight and ended up taking off a bit later than we wanted. There were quite a few scattered clouds around and they blocked the sunset a bit so right after we took off I climbed all the way up to 11,000 MSL to try to get above them. We had a decent view of the sunset and taking off a few minutes earlier would have been better. You can see in the track a few circles to the south west side. That is where I made some climbing turns because there were a couple large clouds to the north and south of that area blocking our view to the west for the sunset. After we got up to that altitude we started heading toward Salt Lake and then dropped back down for a better look downtown.

When we got to Point of the Mountain (south edge of the Salt Lake valley), I called up Salt Lake approach to request traffic advisories for a flight around the area. As I got near downtown they passed me off to Salt Lake Tower and then I got cleared into the Class B and was given permission to fly some circles over downtown Salt Lake to get a view of the area. After a good pass around the area we headed back south and when we got back to the Provo area I requested a transition from Provo Tower to enter the airspace to fly over BYU campus to let my friends take a look and then we returned to Spanish Fork.

A friend and I are planning a trip out to Eastern Utah this Saturday and we will probably fly to the Vernal airport. Maybe not the most exciting destination but it should add some nice variety to the tracks on here. Check back soon!

For those of you that may be interested in seeing what you can do at GPS Visualizer you can download the GPX file of this flight.

Happy flying and remember to put the gear down!

Holds and Approaches

2009-02-10T22:10:00.003-07:00

On Saturday I went up with my instructor Bret to practice teaching holds and approaches in preparation for my Instrument Flight Instructor check ride which I plan to take in a couple weeks. The flight went pretty well and you can tell from the altitude profile that I am still getting used to doing hood work from the right seat. I taught how to enter a hold and from Spanish Fork I demonstrated receiving a clearance to hold west of the Provo VOR (PVU) on the 280 radial. The approach we made to the VOR dictated using a parallel entry and then we did one complete hold after the entry and then departed to the west. After departing to the west I shot two ILS approaches. Upon reaching the decision altitude (DA) after the first approach we went missed to the east and Bret gave me vectors to final to do it again. Both approaches went quite well. Next time we go up I need to practice the approaches partial panel without my vacuum gyros to simulate flying the procedures if I were to lose the vacuum pump while flying in the clouds. Hopefully that never happens!

Happy flying!!

GPS Tracks

2009-02-09T20:21:00.005-07:00

After a number of invitations my friend Rico finally joined me for a flight this past Thursday evening. We flew a Diamond Eclipse DA20-C1 which is referred to as a Katana. It is a nice two seat aircraft with a low wing and a bubble canopy. It is an excellent trainer and quite a joy to fly. We departed from Spanish Fork airport and soon after takeoff I turned the controls over to my friend so he could give it a try. He did most of the flying and had a good time. We flew over the Provo area for a bit and made a pass over BYU so he could take a look. We had made no plans on where to go during the flight and we ended up drifting north up towards the city of Alpine near a place we call The Point of the Mountain. It is a small hill that divides Utah Valley with Salt Lake Valley. When we got to that point Rico asked if we could fly up towards Salt Lake near where he grew up and we flew right over his old neighborhood.

It was a great flight and quite a view at night. It is always fun to see details at night that just don't exist during the day. Looking up Provo canyon you can see the lights of all the cars and it paints a line of red and white through the canyon. The freeways often jump out showing a perfect stream of color. Too bad it is the middle of winter because it is always fun to see a baseball game going on underneath the lights in the summer and fall on a big green grass field.

Rico has a handheld Garmin GPS that he brought along to record our track. The GPS records track and altitude and I was able to use the site gpsvisualizer.com to get the images below. One image shows our track and the colors on the track indicate altitude. The other image is our altitude profile during the flight. Rico did a good job flying and it was his first flight so the altitude drifted quite a bit with some larger variations to get down for a better look at the ground. I am going to try to borrow his GPS from time to time and continue to post tracks and elevation profiles for the flights I make.

Happy flying!

Diversion

2009-01-24T12:20:00.003-07:00

Yesterday afternoon, I departed Spanish Fork airport with my friend Alex and his father Ken. Ken flies a Cessna Skymaster on the East cost and has not spent much time flying in the mountain west and wanted to go up for a bit. Ken was at the controls and I was in the right seat. When we departed there was plenty of sunshine near the airport and out to the west and the mountains to the east were mostly obscured. We flew out to the west for a bit and Ken showed me some slow flight and stalls and a few chandelles. Then we took a quick trip down to Nephi and Ken made a touch and go landing at the airport there. He spends most of his time in Cessna aircraft and wanted to get a few landings in the Piper Arrow.

After the touch and go landing we headed back to Spanish Fork and found it covered in fog. This was quite unexpected since it was bright and sunny when we left. The fog was not too thick so we flew the pattern at the airport and when we turned final we couldn't see the runway at all until we were right above it. We went around and tried again a few minutes later. Still nothing. Luckily Provo airport had cleared up about this time but they were still reporting 1.5 miles of visibility. We requested Special VFR and were cleared to enter the airspace and land on runway 31. All in all, it was a pretty normal return and landing with the exception of it being an airport other than our intended destination. That was my first diversion due to visibility problems and luckily Provo is only about 6 miles from Spanish Fork so it was easy to get a ride back to the car at Spanish Fork airport. Flying is a safe activity and we keep it that way by knowing our options if our plans just won't work out. Always have an out!

High Performance

2008-11-25T13:57:00.002-07:00

In my pursuit of learning how to fly everything with wings, I decided last week that the time had come to get my High Performance Endorsement. As a reminder, a high performance endorsement is required to act as Pilot in Command of an aircraft having an engine of more than 200 horsepower. Even if you have a twin engine airplane and each engine is 200 horsepower giving a total of 400 horsepower, it still does not count as high performance. It must have a least one engine with 201 or more horsepower.

To make this happen, I looked around Salt Lake to find a flight school with something to satisfy the requirement. Turns out quite a few schools have Cessna 182s (usually 230 horsepower). I also found a school called Air Center of Salt Lake at Salt Lake Municipal 2 airport that has a Cessna 206 for rent. I called up there on Saturday and they only had a 182 available that afternoon so I was going to do that. About twenty minutes after scheduling a flight, they called back to say it had just gone down for the 100 hour inspection, and the other high performance aircraft available for rent were gone all day. We then scheduled a flight for early this morning the 25th in a 182. Then I received a call yesterday saying that the 182 I was scheduled for today, also flew past its 100 hour and was down for maintenance so I switched to the 206.

When I arrived this morning, I met with the instructor and we spent some time talking about systems commonly found on high performance aircraft. Systems such as turbochargers, superchargers, cowl flaps, and constant speed props. I have studied these systems before so the discussion went quickly. We made our way out to the airplane and did a standard preflight, and he pointed out some differences in the way the 206 is built compared to a 172. Mostly, it is just a beefier airplane!

Engine start was super easy. Mostly because they put in a new engine which has almost 100 hours on it. It was quite easy to taxi although the nosewheel was a bit unresponsive and it took quite a bit of movement to make it move. Before takeoff, we taxied into position on the runway and leaned the engine after applying full takeoff power. The takeoff was as normal with no surprises there. We quickly reached altitude as we were under the Salt Lake Class B shelf, and I had my first chance to adjust the cowl flaps. I have been trying to use the CGUMPS acronym to configure the airplane, even though the planes I have been flying don't have the C (cowl flaps or carb heat), so it wasn't too out of the ordinary. After setting cruise power, we headed to the south to do some maneuvering.

We did some slow flight and stalls and then headed back to the airport. Using CGUMPS, I set up for the first landing and about 50 feet off the deck, the instructor called a go-around. Full power, first notch of flaps, don't forget to open the cowl flaps, continue climbing and clean up the airplane. Pretty standard procedure with the new addition of opening the cowl flaps. One more trip around the pattern for a full stop landing. The speeds in the pattern were the same as for the Piper Arrow. I had heard the it takes a lot of strength to flare the 206 for landing with only two people because it is quite nose heavy. I trimmed the airplane well and the flare was not nearly as bad as expected. Sure, it doesn't flare as easily as a Katana, but I was able to do it with one hand just fine. Nice easy rollout and that was it.

The instructor said he was comfortable with my knowledge of the systems and ability to handle the aircraft and I now have a shiny new endorsement in my logbook. No longer am I limited to aircraft with under 200 horsepower. Now I need to get my tailwheel endorsement to further open my possibilities for flying adventures!

Flight Instructor Checkride

2008-11-18T23:54:00.004-07:00

The day started at 6am which is much earlier than I like to roll out of bed. I got to the airport by seven and found the Arrow (PA28R-201) covered in frost. The weather has been so nice here for the last two weeks that it didn't even cross my mind that there would be frost on the plane. Had I remembered that tidbit, we could have put the airplane in a hangar so she would have been nice and warm for me to fly up to Salt Lake. It took a long time to get the frost off, because I was the only one at the lonely little airport and had nobody and nothing to help me out. Then I think I flooded the engine and it took a while to get it started.

After struggling with the plane, getting fuel, and being told to hold over downtown Salt Lake for about 15 minutes, I finally made it to Salt Lake around 9:15am. My instructor met me there and drove me to the FSDO office. When we arrived nobody was answering their phone and they don't have a receptionist anymore so it took a while to find the Examiner. We finally met with him just before ten. My instructor stuck around until we made sure that all of the endorsements were in order and then we started the oral. Luckily I had scored well on the FOI (100%) and FIA (97%) written exams. The examiner seemed impressed with the numbers and hinted that the oral exam would go faster.

To start the oral, the examiner pulled out a few pages listing the areas of operation and then he opened the PTS and read the Note for each area to see what Tasks had to be done. He then said that he would pick the task for the odd numbered Areas and I would pick the Tasks for the even numbered areas. We went through all 14 areas taking turns picking Tasks. He said he let me pick some so that he would not have an unfair advantage over me. I thought that was incredibly nice of him. On top of that, he only selected the minimum number of tasks required and didn't make me do anything else. After we had selected all of the tasks we started into it.

For the Fundamentals of Instructing, I was to teach Task B (Human Behavior and Communication) and Task F (Flight Instructor responsibilities). I only got about halfway through teaching Task B when he said that was enough and we moved on to Task F. We spent a decent amount of time talking about responsibilities of instructors and it was mostly a discussion rather than me teaching a lesson. He really stressed the importance of being a responsible instructor and making sure the students learn what they need to be competent and safe pilots rather than just learning the minimums.

We talked briefly about logbooks and endorsements and how they are done and when they are needed. Then he spent some time talking about how much responsibility we have as instructors to only give endorsements when the student is truly ready to handle the responsibility themselves. After that I chose to teach him Task J (National Airspace System). He said that was the first time an applicant had ever chosen to teach about airspace and I am pretty sure that I won some points because of that. I talked about Class A, B, and C and then he decided to throw a couple trick questions at me. He asked about flying special VFR into Salt Lake International. I couldn't remember offhand so I opened the FAR to make sure I answered correctly. This led me to Part 91 appendix D which contains a list of airports where special VFR is prohibited and Salt Lake is not on that list. Then he asked if he could fly through class B in his 1947 Cub that does not have an electrical system (91.131). After that question he told me he was comfortable with my knowledge of airspace and we moved on.

For the preflight preparation section, he decided we would talk about systems and that we would do it out by the airplane. For the Maneuver lesson, I chose to talk about eights on pylons and I chose it because I had talked a lot about it recently and felt it would be easy to cover thoroughly. I used the lesson plan that I had prepared and it went easily. He then asked me how to teach this maneuver on a day with absolutely no wind to which I responded it would be just a turn around a point. He said that instead of picking a stationary pylon that you can pick a moving object such as a tractor, train, or car on a road and the wind will be simulated. He said we would do that on the flight as it was a calm day.

We then went out to the airplane and did a thorough preflight. He said he would quiz me about the systems as I was doing the preflight inspection. When I got to the aileron, he asked why it had grooves in it and I explained that they were there for strength as the aileron is quite thin. He asked quite a bit about how the landing gear worked. We talked briefly about the fuel system, nothing about the prop, and a little about the static system. He asked about the holes in the bottom of the stabilator and I explained they were used to drain water that may get inside. He also asked about every antenna on the airplane.

When we finally settled into the plane, we talked briefly about weight and balance as I had already done the computations, and we did a passenger briefing. He emphasized the importance of doing that with all passengers. I walked him through the engine start procedure and then he had chosen to talk about taxiing for Area 5 (Preflight procedures). After engine start, I explained to him all of the taxiway markings that we saw. We got our clearance and contacted ground and began taxiing to the runway and I continued pointing out markings and signs and gave tips on how to keep the airplane straight and the speeds and how much power is needed to taxi. He said that students always tend to look just past the cowling onto the taxiway which causes them to swerve back and forth and that when they start looking a few hundred feet away they taxi better. Luckily, we had a short taxi so I didn't have to spend too much time on the topic.

After getting our takeoff clearance, I demonstrated a normal takeoff and talked about power settings and communications during the climb. As we got to our assigned altitude I explained transitioning to cruise flight and then we finally turned out to the practice area. As we followed the Class B transition route, I talked about and emphasized the importance of scanning for traffic and it was useful as we passed about five aircraft in the few miles to get out of the airspace.

When we got to the practice area, the first lesson I taught was straight and climbing turns. I taught basic attitude flying and how to set the power for a climb and emphasized the need to check for traffic above as we climb. When we got up a couple thousand feet I talked about clearing turns and changed direction and then demonstrated a power on stall and followed that by a demonstration of power on stall with a secondary stall. He pointed out that I could have combined the two maneuvers and taught climbing turns and then led that into how inattention can lead to a power on stall in a climbing turn.

After the stalls, I taught steep turns and did the demonstration. On my first turn, I lost about one hundred feet but regained it before the turn was complete. I pointed out the error and why I got low and talked about how to correct the error. The turn in the opposite direction was right on altitude the whole time. Next we did another clearing turn and I taught lazy eights. I talked about picking a good reference point and showed him the points I had chosen. We were lucky to be in an area where we had about an eight mile stretch of straight freeway and a mountain peak at the end. The lazy eight went well although I did not gain as much altitude as I wanted to and explained that insufficient altitude is a common error. He commented that it was a well done and symmetrical maneuver and then he demonstrated a couple more dramatic lazy eights. When I did them I gained about 300 feet and when he did them he demonstrated about 600-700 feet of altitude change.

Next came the turn on a pylon. There was not a breath of wind that day so he asked me to demonstrate a turn on a pylon using the white semi on the freeway as my pylon. In other words, he asked me to do a turn on a pylon with a 70 mph wind. It was a lot of fun. I paralleled the freeway to catch up to the semi moving in the same direction. As soon as I started the turn I had to pull the power to idle and dive to stay at pivotal altitude and I probably lost over 600 feet. I explained exactly what I was doing and why throughout the turn. As I came around to the second half of the turn, the airplane simply did not have enough power to climb up to pivotal altitude as quickly as needed so I got off altitude pretty fast. He said that it was obvious that I understood the maneuver and how to teach it so that was that.

We then had a discussion about unusual attitudes and how to introduce the maneuver to students. Then he pulled the power back to 15" on the manifold pressure gauge, and said that I just lost power and we were in a partial power situation. I slowed down to best glide and then started to pick a landing area and told him that the airport was close enough we could probably make it with partial power and I turned to the airport. He said he didn't want to interfere with traffic so we just stayed in the area. We talked about troubleshooting a partial power situation and then played with flap settings to find the lowest sink rate. After that he pulled the power to idle and we had a discussion about the drag created by the propeller. First he had me glide we the propeller at low pitch (full forward) and we had 1000 ft/min sink rate. Then we adjusted the propeller to high pitch (full back) and our sink rate dropped to close to 600 ft/min.

After cleaning up the airplane and getting back to cruise he told me to head back to Salt Lake. I mentioned that we had not done the landings yet and that we could do them at the nearby Tooele Valley airport. He said we would just do them at Salt Lake. About two minutes later, he changed his mind and told me to do a touch and go at Tooele. I asked him what type of landing and he said whatever I wanted which I found strange since he said I was going to do a power off 180. I was sure he was getting ready to do something but he did an excellent job of distracting me from what he was about to do. I just started explaining procedures to enter the traffic pattern and made the radio calls. After we got onto downwind and had the gear down, he said I just lost my engine and pulled the power to idle. Of course! He had said earlier that I would be doing a power off 180 and here it was. I did not declare a landing point and he didn't ask. I was aiming for the PAPI lights but I didn't tell him. I turned a bit too early and was high so I slipped hard to lose speed and altitude. I held the slip through the round out and straightened out just before touchdown (about 400 feet past the point). I taxied off the runway and stopped. He said I handled the emergency well and properly demonstrated and explained power off 180 techniques. He also commented that he felt extremely comfortable and was not scared at all with how I handled the situation and that I acted promptly as I should do if that were a real situation.

I taxied back to the runway for departure and he said that I would teach a soft field takeoff and that he would fly. Before entering the runway I explained the maneuver and mentioned some common errors. He laughed and said he was a bit disappointed that I covered most common errors and he wasn't able to have as much fun with doing it incorrectly. He executed a nice takeoff and then we flew back to Salt Lake. He was on the controls all the way back and I handled the radios and continued teaching what I was doing the whole time. (I had been told that some examiners mostly stay quiet if you talk and teach the whole time, and that when you stop teaching they start asking hard questions.)

Luckily, Salt Lake International comes to almost a stand still in the afternoon so there was almost no traffic (GA or airline). Actually, we were on tower frequency for about eight minutes and it was silent. The examiner even keyed the mic and asked, "Still there?", to which we got a "yep" reply. The transition brought us directly above the approach end of runway 35 at which point we were cleared to land, so I then taught the examiner (he was on the controls) how to perform a normal landing from that point. He made a nice landing and taxied clear of the runway.

And that was pretty much it. He made a few comments about postflight procedures and then we went inside. We didn't talk about anything else, and he printed my temporary certificate. I had passed and am now a Certified Flight Instructor!!

Overall I felt it was an easy checkride. If you know your stuff thoroughly and are able to go above and beyond in your explanations, it will be the easiest ride you have ever done.

It is such a relief to have passed and be able to move on. Now I just need to find a job as an instructor and get some experience dealing with all of these common errors that we had talked about. I am extremely excited about starting a career in aviation and flight instructing. As many of my friends know, I am not looking to a career in the airlines and instructing is where I plan to be for a long time to come. If any of you know of any opportunities or openings for flight instructing please let me know!

9 Years

2008-11-18T15:39:00.001-07:00

9 years ago today I got my Private Pilot Certificate!!

Fundamentals of Instructing

2008-10-07T13:07:00.003-06:00

This morning I made my way down to Million Air Aviation here in Provo to take the Fundamentals of Instructing exam. I took many practice exams and read the Aviation Instructor's Handbook and it paid off. The test took about ten minutes and I walked out with a 100%. Hopefully I do as well on the Flight Instructor Airplane exam. The FOI exam only had 50 questions and the Flight Instructor airplane has 100.

Yesterday after work I met up with my instructor Bret. He got back a bit late from his flight before mine so I was able to get the pre-flight all done before he arrived. When he finished up with his other student we climbed into 230DS, a G1000 equipped Diamond Star DA40. This was my first flight with a G1000 and I was excited. He pointed out some quirks of the DA40, like leaning the mixture for taxi to prevent flooding the engine, and to remember to set the three altimeters (G1000, backup, and autopilot). The startup procedure was rather straight forward and then we taxied out to runway 30. After a thorough run up we departed. The DA40 just wants to climb and with only the two of us we were easily climbing at 1000 fpm which is impressive for a density altitude over 5000 feet. Bret had me do some slow flight and stalls and then we returned for a few landings. The DA40 will glide forever so it required pulling the power back almost to idle abeam the landing point while on downwind and a wider than normal pattern didn't even give us time to drop too low on the approach. After three landings we called it good. Now I need to grab a safety pilot and go shoot some approaches and really get familiar with the glass cockpit.

New Lights and Improved Runway

2008-10-03T21:01:00.004-06:00

Spanish Fork airport has been undergoing quite a bit of construction during the past two months. The runway was completely surveyed and upgraded and made completely level. Any prior incline is now gone. The runway has been nicely resurfaced and the lines repainted. A new lighting system is being installed as well. The new runway lights have made operations at the airport interesting. The FAA requires that any construction be a certain distance from the center line of the runway for the runway to remain open. Unfortunately, Spanish Fork does not meet that requirement so while the contractor worked on the lights the runway had to be closed. Rather than close the entire runway, they decided to do installation on one half and leave the other half open. That left us with a 2800 foot runway. That is plenty of room to take off at sea level and even here it is enough, but with density altitudes over 6000 feet during the day, 2800 starts to feel kind of short.

This evening my friend Alex joined me on a short flight. Putting my short field take off technique to use we were off the runway with room to spare. We started the roll from the middle of the runway so our altitude at the end of the runway was much lower than it normally is so the buildings seemed much much closer. We departed to the south and I spent some time practicing slow flight. Then I practiced some power off stalls. The Piper Arrow III is a solid airplane. With the power all the way out and the yoke in my lap, you can fly the thing mostly stalled and keep the wings level with the rudder with not too much effort. The descent rate in that condition is a bit over 1500 feet per minute. Then I did a couple power on stalls and after that I practiced a simulated engine failure. On the way back to the airport I let Alex take the controls for a few minutes and practiced teaching some basic flying techniques. Alex has about twenty five hours of flight time so he didn't much need the lesson but it was good practice for me.

After an overflight of the airport we set up for runway 12 so we would be landing in about the middle of the runway. The wind had picked up quite a bit on the way back and we were getting bounced all over the place. The wind was appreciated today as it helped keep our landing short. We had plenty of room to spare and didn't even need the brakes at all.

Next week I am starting my ground school and flight training for the Flight Instructor Certificate. Hopefully the check ride won't be too far away. Also, I am going to start flying the Diamond Star DA-40. The DA-40 has a G1000 and I am excited to start flying a glass cockpit.

Vectors via Nevada?

2008-09-30T22:40:00.002-06:00

My Commercial Certificate is tucked away safely in my flight bag anxiously awaiting an opportunity to be put to use. I still have not had the opportunity to exercise privileges of my Commercial Certificate but I have only had it for about three weeks now so I am not too concerned. Utah is not overflowing with flying possibilities but I am on the look out for sure!

During the past few weeks I have had the opportunity to act as safety pilot for a friend. Life got in the way and Peter had to take a twelve year hiatus from flying. He is an Instrument Rated Private Pilot and he has invited me along to help him get comfortable flying on instruments again. We have been flying in a Diamond Katana with a Garmin 430. Having earned his rating twelve years ago, a moving map GPS is new for him so we have spent some time focusing on getting familiar with it. Peter is an excellent pilot and is rapidly getting back to PTS standards in his flying. He is going to get signed off soon for his Instrument Proficiency check and then dive into his Commercial Certificate.

Last week Peter and I filed IFR from Provo to Ogden. After picking up our clearance (which was only to the first fix) and getting our release we headed out. We were cleared to 11,000 feet which takes a while in a Katana. Luckily we reached altitude before completing the departure procedure and received our clearance to Ogden via vectors. Our first Vector was approximately heading 300 and the controller left us there for quite a while and we ended up almost to the west side of the Great Salt Lake. We began to wonder if he forgot about us and was going to left us drift off into Nevada. Luckily he had not lost us and vectored us to a 15 mile straight in ILS to Ogden. It was a great flight and it was good to get in the system again. Other than for training, filing IFR between two airports with a Class Bravo airport half way in between is not the best idea if you are in a hurry. We almost got vectored through Nevada!

I have been studying almost non-stop for the Flight Instructor exams. I am consistently getting 100% on the practice exams for Fundamentals of Instruction and hope to take it by this weekend. The Flight Instructor Airplane exam is coming along and I plan to take it next week. I have been gathering lessons plans and trying to fill in the gaps and get prepared for my check ride and new career. I am so excited to be able to teach flying. Getting in the airplane whether I am the one at the controls or just along for the ride sure beats sitting in the office all day.

If anybody has tips or advice for CFI preparation or hears of any flying opportunities to exercise my Commercial Certificate I would love to hear about it. Happy flying!

Commercial Pilot Certificate

2008-09-10T21:40:00.003-06:00

On Tuesday the 9th of September I took my checkride for the Commercial Pilot Certificate and I passed. I am now a Commercial Pilot and way excited about it. The training was a lot of fun. As mentioned I did most of my training in a Piper Cherokee Arrow III. It has been fun to spend time in a heavier airplane with a lot more power.

Overall the checkride went well. The oral portion was easy. I have been studying a ton over the past two months trying to get it all down. The oral portion was probably just under an hour. The examiner sure liked to tell stories so we were probably chatting for over two hours. The flight portion also went well although maybe not quite as smooth as the oral portion. The weather wasn't exactly perfect and it rained on us during a good portion of the flight. It also provided some bumps so it was hard to keep the airplane exactly where I wanted it and that made the landings a bit tricky. All of the flight maneuvers went quite well. They were all rather straight forward and we went through them quickly. I struggled a bit with the landings and made a few go-arounds but finally got them all done. When we were coming in for the last landing the tower forced us to do a touch and go and didn't let us do a full stop. We tried to request a full stop and he got mad. He had just received an IFR clearance for a jet and didn't want any delays. So I ended up doing two short field landings.

Now I am trying to decide what to train for next. I had been planning on going to straight to the Flight Instructor training and now I am thinking I may do my multi engine training before that. I am certainly going to start working on both and we'll just see which one comes together first. A lot of flying for the multi-engine and a lot of studying for the CFI.

I now have the Commercial ticket in hand and I am that much closer to getting a job in aviation. I still need a lot more flight time and training before I will be able to do much and I am excited to get there. A career in aviation is just around the corner and it is going to be an exciting ride.

250 Hours

2008-09-03T23:05:00.003-06:00

The training for the Commercial Certificate has been tons of fun. It has been a blast spending so much time in the Piper Arrow. I fly a few times a week and love every minute of it. The maneuvers are coming together quite nicely and I feel almost prepared for the upcoming check ride. Yesterday I spent an hour or so working on upper air work maneuvers. I did quite a few steep turns, lazy eights, and chandelles and a steep spiral. Today I went up and just worked on landings. I did about eight short field landings and six power off 180s and I hit the target on most of them. A few more flights of fine tuning on all of the maneuvers and I will probably be good to go.

Last week I made a few cross country flights. I did one night solo cross country from Provo up to Ogden airport to finish up the required night solo time and I also went with my instructor to complete the day and night supervised cross country flights required for the commercial certificate.

As of today I have completed all requirements for the commercial pilot certificate. My total time is now 250.2 hours. The Commercial Certificate is super close and I am thrilled. I will let you know when I have my certificate in hand.

Gas Station Man

2008-08-28T13:07:00.003-06:00

On Tuesday morning I pulled into a gas station to put some air in my tires. I stopped next to the compressor, grabbed my pressure gauge and went to it. Almost instantly I managed to break the valve stem on my right front tire. The tip on the compressor hose was having issues and I think it helped me break the valve. It was also really noisy which turned out to be a good thing. A moment later a man walked up and asked if I was having problems with the air compressor. I told him what happened and he said he had an extra valve stem in his truck and he promptly replaced the valve stem in my tire. He started to add air to my completely flat tire and also noticed the problem with the compressor nozzle. He walked back to his truck and grabbed a new one and repaired the hose! Then he told me that he maintains that chain of gas stations. Lucky me!! I just happened to have that problem right when the station handy man was right there. It definitely saved the day (or at least a good half hour of tracking down a new valve stem).

That is the second time now that I have managed to break the valve stem on my right front tire while putting air in at a gas station. It has only happened to that tire. That is also the second time that somebody noticed my problem and immediately came to help out. Thank you both for taking the time out of your day to help me from losing my time. I will do my best to pay it forward.

The world isn't so bad as many people believe it is. There are still good people in the world willing to help a stranger just because they can!

Crosswind Landings

2008-08-09T23:49:00.004-06:00

My instructor and I went up for some maneuver practice on Wednesday and the winds were quite stiff. During the steep spiral there was a drastic different in bank from the steep side to the shallow side to hold the circle around the point. Flying on a windy day may just help you to learn the maneuver a bit better as you really have to be constantly changing attitude to make the plane go where it needs to go. We did a few Chandelles and I think I just about have those down and I am quite sure they are already at the level required by the practical test standards. I again tried my hand at lazy eights. They are coming along and maybe a bit slower than I had hoped for and I am sure I will get them down in time for my check ride.

When we returned to the field we flew over once to get a look at the wind. It was almost perpendicular to the runway and slightly favoring runway 12. We entered the pattern and came around and on final I had full right rudder and held the left wing low and the rudder was not quite enough to keep the airplane lined up with the runway. It wasn't until the last 100 feet above the runway that the wind was slow enough that we were able to get lined up. We did a touch and go and made one last landing. The final landing was great! I don't have a lot of good crosswind experience and that landing made me happy. It was an excellent one wheel landing, holding off the downwind main wheel for a few seconds.

The weather has been pretty crazy this week with quite unstable air and a large system pushing through all week. I made my way down to the field yesterday afternoon and had to wait out a storm for about an hour and it was worth it as the weather was so beautiful after the storm cleared. Today I made it to the field again but the wind was a bit too much for a useful flight today. I wanted to practice some ground reference maneuvers and short field landings but I don't think I would have gained as much value from practice with such strong winds today. The wind was probably around 25 knots with about a 10 knot crosswind. Next week is forecast to be more pleasant and I plan to fly four or five times next week!

A few pictures from my flight on Friday. My friend Hayley came along and snapped a few photos!!

Power Off 180s

2008-08-03T16:02:00.002-06:00

I have been flying a few times in the past couple of weeks working on my Commercial Certificate. I have been flying from the right seat to help get prepared for the Flight Instructor Certificate. Things are going well. The Arrow is still new to me and I am finally getting used to the plane and just being in a complex airplane in general. On Tuesday we went out to the practice area to work on maneuvers. The Chandelles are coming along well but I am still struggling a bit to stay coordinated while sitting in the right seat and not having the turn coordinator in my scan. I have only done Lazy Eights and Eights on Pylons a couple of times and they didn't seem too difficult. Some solo practice after some more time with my instructor should help those to come together quite nicely.

Yesterday we spent the whole time in the pattern. When we first took off the tower had us fly left traffic for runway 13 which we did for two loops around the pattern and the rest of the time we were right traffic. That was kind of good to be able to do both sides of the pattern in one flight. We did short field landings and power off 180s. The short field landings are coming along and I am slowly getting more consistent with my touch down point. The power off 180s have been more difficult. I only have about ten hours in the Arrow and am still learning to judge the sink rate. We did five power off 180s yesterday and only one was within the allowable range. The others were still a couple hundred feet off but narrowing in on where they are supposed to be.

The training is a blast. I love to spend time working the controls and really trying to feel out the airplane and perfect my stick and rudder skills. This week will be more of the same with a few trips to the practice area and some time in the pattern. I am also going to try to finish up the required night solo time and night landings at a tower controlled field this week. The two cross country flights with an instructor will probably be next week. I'll keep everyone updated and hopefully the commercial certificate won't be too far away.

Sailplanes and Arizona Heat

2008-07-05T00:25:00.003-06:00

One of my goals in life is to be certified to fly many types of aircraft. First airplanes and also gliders and helicopters. A few years back I took a few lessons in helicopters and loved every minute of it. The high costs kept me from pursuing the certificate at the time and I continued on with airplanes. Recently I have wanted to take to the skies in a sailplane and try my hand at flying without an engine. Today was the day. There is a small school near Lake Pleasant in Arizona called Turf Soaring. I scheduled a flight today and met up with Roger to give it a try. When I arrived Roger and I chatted for a few minutes about my experience in airplanes and gave me a basic rundown of what we would cover today. He told me the basics of the chosen sailplane for the day which was the Schwiezer SGS 2-33. He said we would spend most of our time cruising around at 45 knots or so looking for thermals and trying to ride them up.

The tow plane was only 200 feet away. Can you see it?

We got ready to go, strapped in, hooked up to the tow plane, gave the signal and we were heading up. The tow plane today was a Piper Pawnee. The field elevation is 1600 and we were towed up to 4500. As soon as we released we immediately rolled left to catch a thermal that we passed through and a few minutes later we made it up to 7500 feet. It was impressive how quickly we climbed. In a powered plane on a hot day we always worry about density altitude. Today, we were loving the thermals generated by the heat and mostly we were going up about 800 feet per minute. Not bad! We just cruised around for a bit and chased some thermals around. I must mention that it was hot today and probably close to 110 fahrenheit. Flying during a Phoenix afternoon can be brutal and can you make a bit sick if you are not accustomed. We flew for about half an hour. Too much longer and I may have realized how unaccustomed I am to the heat. Turbulence doesn't bother me, flying in an oven gets to me a bit! Thank goodness Utah is a bit cooler!

Roger told me that you have to stay on the rudder while in the sailplane as adverse yaw is quite noticeable. I have always been a fan of using the rudder so this was fine with me. After flying around for a few minutes I decided to test out banking with no rudder. Wow! Push the stick left and you turn right. Without the rudder you make the plane slip with just the ailerons! Rudder is highly important and sailplanes will show you why. Any improvement with rudder handling will be appreciated and I look forward to getting certified to fly gliders. I may make one or two more flights while I am in Arizona. However, I am planning on getting my glider add-on rating after I finish my commercial certificate up in Utah.

The trusty ride! N1232S

Don't forget about the rudder when you are up flying and remember to step on the ball!

Warm Water, Yay!!

2008-06-24T16:22:00.005-06:00

There is a natural crater here in Utah formed from a natural hot spring with high calcium and mineral content. The water is about 96 degrees. From the outside, the crater just looks like a giant dome about fifty feet high made of rock. On the inside it is also dome shaped and there is a hole about ten feet across at the top. Before the crater was discovered the water flowed out the top. Some people carved a tunnel through the side to make it easier to get into and they installed a floating dock inside. The water is now close to 60 feet deep.

This awesome formation makes for some fun scuba diving. The water is so warm and it feels wonderful to swim in. You never get cold. This afternoon my friend Lauren and I did our first open water dive in the crater. We practiced some of the basic tasks like clearing a flooded mask, recovering the regulator, buoyancy control, alternate air sharing, and just moving around. Tomorrow we finish up the class and will be certified open water scuba divers!!

We forgot to take a picture with our gear, this is what we looked like!

The water was quite clear and a really pretty blue!

And this is what we look like.

Oh and the guy working the counter at the crater is a pilot. Excellent!!

City Lights

2008-06-22T00:13:00.002-06:00

Flying at night is fabulous. Last night I took a friend up for a short hop. We departed from Spanish Fork (U77) around 9:30pm and flew north to downtown Salt Lake and then returned home. Darkness erases most of the details on the ground but a sea of yellow lights is always an enjoyable sight. Not to mention the traffic is usually quite light. I monitored Salt Lake approach the whole time and only about five airliners arrived in the 40 minutes we were in the area. As for GA traffic we probably saw four other planes. If you are not night current grab an instructor and do what it takes to be comfortable at night. The view is spectacular!

Scuba Diving

2008-06-21T23:32:00.003-06:00

I forgot to get a picture at the pool so I put on my mask back at home for your enjoyment!!

A good friend of mine recently signed up for a scuba diving class because she is taking a trip to Bonaire in a couple of weeks to do some diving with her family. For years I have wanted to get certified and even signed up for a class at BYU once and then decided against it for time reasons. Let me just say not doing something you want to do because of lack of time is just dumb. Well, I guess it is not dumb if everything that is filling up your time is something that you love. Yes, school is a great thing, I just can't say I absolutely love spending all of my time on homework. Scuba diving would have been better and made better memories.

Anyway, enough with the rambling. When my friend told me she signed up I decided I would join her. No time is better than the present. The course consists of reading a book, attending two classroom sessions, two pool sessions, and two open water dives (natural water, not a pool). We have already completed all but the open water dives which we will be doing on Tuesday and Wednesday. It has been a blast. Let me just say that diving is much easier than I expected. Not that I imagined it was too difficult because if it were people probably wouldn't do it much on vacation. So this past week I went scuba diving for the first time. Sitting on the bottom of the pool and looking up to the surface knowing that I could just stay at the bottom was amazing. Without an air tank, my view from the bottom has always been short lived. Breathing underwater is a much better way to go than holding your breath.

To anybody that has been wanting to get certified and either you think you don't have enough time or that it will be too difficult or scary let me say it is none of these. The course has required little time, the book was easy reading and the concepts are simple. The pool sessions lasted about three hours each including driving there and back. Breathing underwater is a natural thing. It was much more natural than I thought it would be. So don't let any trivial excuses keep you from doing it. You will love it!!

This blog is focused on aviation so I want to mention some issues with scuba diving and flying. As pilots we experience changing pressure on every flight. As a scuba diver you experience much greater changes in pressure. While scuba diving the body absorbs excess nitrogen due to the compressed air that a diver breathes. After ending the dive it takes the body a while to rid itself of the excess nitrogen that is absorbed into the blood. For this reason, after scuba diving it is recommended that divers do not ascend to higher altitudes for at least twelve hours after diving. Yep, that means that you can't go scuba diving and then hop in your plane to fly home. It also means you can't drive to an area of higher elevation. You must wait. If you don't the excess nitrogen could create bubbles in your blood stream which is a potentially life threatening situation. So remember, if you are a scuba diving pilot or are going to be taking the airline home after a dive trip, give your body some time before you board the plane.

ILS From the Right Seat

2008-06-14T22:32:00.003-06:00

This morning I went along with a friend to act as safety pilot while he performed some approaches. He has the check ride for his instrument rating on Tuesday and wanted to get in some extra practice and some more insight from somebody other than his instructor. He started out with a GPS approach, followed by a VOR approach and he ended with an ILS. He did an awesome job on all approaches and I believe that he will get through his check ride just fine.

Right after he went missed on his third approach I donned the Foggles and took the controls. I wanted to get in a couple approaches of my own for instrument currency. Rather than land and switch seats, I decided to give it a try from the right seat. I shot two ILS approaches and I must say they went quite well and I was able to keep the localizer and glide slope both within four degrees of deflection on both approaches. Not too bad for my first attempt from the right seat. Wow, looking over to the instruments across the cockpit definitely adds some confusion to the scan. If it looks centered from the right seat, then you are going to be way off. It was a good introduction for getting my CFII and hopefully that won't be too far away. The flight today left me sitting with exactly 222 hours. Commercial Pilot Certificate here I come!!

Aviation Merit Badge

2008-06-13T19:34:00.002-06:00

A couple days ago, a flight instructor friend of mine called me up and asked if I could help him out with some boy scout flights. He had a group of boy scouts coming for rides to complete their Aviation Merit Badges and the other pilot couldn't make it. I gladly accepted the invite to fly some of the boys around. We both took a Diamond Katana and did the flights one boy at a time. I took four boys up. We made each flight about fifteen minutes long. The boys loved it. The first and fourth were quite the talkers and it was a bit hard to get them to stop so I could talk on the radio. The third boy I took up was quite shy and only said about three words and he seemed to enjoy the ride. It was a fun experience. For the last boy that I took up, it was the first time he had ever been in an airplane. I hope I made the experience a memorable one for him and that he will forever love aviation!!

Night Flying

2008-06-07T14:51:00.002-06:00

Last night things finally worked out and the plane was in proper condition for a night flight. I started my flight around 10:15pm at Spanish Fork (U77) airport and stayed in the pattern. I was not night current at the start of the flight so I made a few stop and go landings to get my night currency up to date. After making five landings at Spanish Fork I made the quick trip over to Provo (KPVU) to do some landings there. The runway is much nicer at Provo so I like to do landings there. The automated weather said the winds were 320 degrees 12 knots and I was landing runway 31 so not a problem. After my first two landings I listened to the weather again and not it was saying 320 degrees 14 knots gusting to 18 knots. This made the next couple landings a bit more exciting but still a piece of cake with the wind just about straight down the runway.

Doing pattern work at Provo Airport at night is quite the experience. Both runways at Provo have the traffic pattern to the west side of the field. Immediately west of Provo airport is Utah Lake and beyond the lake are mountains. This setting means that there are no lights west of the airport. Last night I was taking off to the north and making a left pattern for runway 31. Making the left turn to crosswind is interesting because there are no visual cues at all. The lake and the mountains beyond were purely black. I had to look for traffic so I kept my eyes up as much as possible and I also had to make the first turn mostly on instruments. It made things exciting. The turn to downwind and base were fine because I could see the city lights of Provo off to the left which provided the visual cues needed.

All in all it was a great night. I added some night solo time to my logbook and am getting closer to my Commercial Certificate. I need to do my ten night landings at a towered field which may be interesting here in Utah because the only tower open after dark is Salt Lake International. So hopefully the tower guys won't mind me joining them for some midnight touch and goes!!

Pre-Flight Checks

2008-05-16T00:07:00.002-06:00

One of the first things that a student pilot learns in their training is to do a pre-flight check. With a checklist in hand and an instructor watching over, the new pilot walks around the airplane and inspects every item that is listed under the pre-flight check. Together they make sure that everything is in proper order and that the aircraft is safe to fly. The new pilot learns this right away because it is highly important to the safety of flight. The pre-flight check will always be required for every flight, even if the plane just returned ten minutes ago. There is no way to know for sure that something did not happen during the last hour that would be sufficient cause to have a mechanic take a look.

Last night I made my way over to Spanish Fork airport for a night flight. I had plans to go up and make a few landings at Provo and Spanish Fork airports to renew my currency and build night solo time needed for the commercial certificate. A few hours earlier I had called ahead to reserve the plane for the late flight and the owner quickly checked to make sure that all lights were working. When I arrived and started my pre-flight check I quickly noticed that one of the white rear facing lights was burned out. On the Diamond Katana there is one on each wing tip. Both are required at night. I stopped right there, closed up the plane and came home. My pre-flight inspection revealed a problem. In this case, it was not an airworthiness condition but a legal concern. The FARs require certain lights when flight at night is made.

Tonight I made another trip out to the airport with plans to take up the same airplane that I had planned to take last night. Again, I called ahead. This time to make sure that the airplane had all lights checked and new bulbs put in place of the burned out bulbs. When I arrived the plane had just returned from a flight and the pilot had just climbed out. We spent a few minutes chatting of current training and future flying plans and then he left. I started doing my pre-flight check. The lights were all in working condition so I began inspecting the aircraft. I had made it almost all the way around and I came to the right main wheel. A quick check revealed a flat spot with threads showing through the rubber. A wheel in that condition is not a risk I would like to take on a dark runway at night. This time I did consider it an airworthiness problem and would not have flown even during the day. I hope that the wheel was not in that condition when the other pilot departed because I hope he would not have missed it. It is possible that he made a tight turn while taxiing and held down the right brake too hard while turning which caused the rubber to wear off. Either way I am glad the tire did not blow out when he landed.

Two nights in a row I found a problem during the pre-flight check that prevented me from flying. Luckily, these types of problems do not occur all that often. Howevery, most pilots will experience a situation that will prevent a flight a few times during their primary training and I think it is a wonderful experience. It teaches the new pilots that safety is number one. It also teaches them how they should respond when they go out for a solo flight or with non-pilot friends and there is nobody else to help them make the go/no-go decision. The desire to fly can be a dangerous thing when an unsafe situation arises, which is why it is so important to always put safety over convenience or time constraints. Nothing is so important that it cannot wait until tomorrow. I really wanted to fly tonight. I haven't been up for almost two weeks. I am happy though because I will be able to fly another day.

To Idaho or Bust

2008-05-04T18:47:00.004-06:00

Friday afternoon brought some wonderful weather to Utah. Skye and I had plans to go flying and he chose a trip to Pocatello, ID via Victor 21. We left Spanish Fork around 5pm and headed north. We quickly picked up flight following just east of Provo and transitioned through the Salt Lake class bravo airspace. We remained on the east side of the Salt Lake valley for the transition and I was kind of surprised how quiet the radio was. After we were passed off to the controller handling the north approach sector I realized why it had been silent. Salt Lake was landing to the south. For the next fifteen minutes we passed many airliners off to our left as they were approaching Salt Lake. It is always a fun sight to see, long lines of the big jets off in the distance making their slow decent into the Salt Lake valley.

After passing clear of the class bravo to the north, we were handed off to Salt Lake Center and the radios went back to their mostly quiet state. We only passed one other aircraft from that point all the way to Pocatello. The winds were calm in Pocatello and the tower was landing traffic on runway 21. Skye set up for the GPS Runway 3 approach and was a bit worried about the opposing traffic. I told him to continue on. About fifteen miles out we gave the tower a call and told them we were on the approach for runway 3. He told us to continue inbound. We reported at the final approach fix and he cleared us to land runway 3. That is the great thing about a control tower. It doesn't matter which runway is in use. If the pattern is not too busy and the wind is light, they usually let you land however you want. And Skye made an excellent approach.

First trip to Idaho(what a small plane!!)

We parked the airplane and stepped into the FBO for a quick break. Skye poked his head through the hangar door and we saw a Cessna 560 Citation 5 Ultra and a King Air B200. We asked the lady working the desk what kind of business they do with the aircraft. The King Air is used as an air ambulance and they get a lot of business out of Jackson, Wyoming with the Citation. She then told us we could go out and climb inside both airplanes if we wanted to. Why not??!! We went out to the hangar, took a few pictures and enjoyed a moment sitting in the luxury of a nice comfy seat in a seven million dollar jet. It would be quite the life!

Cessna 560 Citation 5

Inside the Citation

Inside the King Air B200

The return trip was excellent. I quizzed Skye on rules about instrument flight and he did quite well. Skye shot the ILS approach into Provo, we went missed at the Decision Altitude and then landed back in Spanish Fork. What a great day!

Right Seat Craziness

2008-04-24T22:30:00.002-06:00

This morning I took a flight in the Arrow III. I took an instructor along to teach me some of the commercial maneuvers and I decided to do it instructor style. My instructor for the morning took the pilot seat and I took the right seat. All airplanes have controls at both seats so I flew from the passenger seat. To become a Certified Flight Instructor I have to learn how to control the airplane from the right seat so that I can teach new pilots how to fly from the pilot seat.

We took off and headed out to the West from Spanish Fork. The ceiling was about 2000 AGL over Spanish Fork and out to the West about ten miles there was a large hole in the ceiling. We went to the hole so we could climb up and practice maneuvers. My instructor showed me how to perform a Chandelle and I then proceeded to do about four more. A couple to the left and a couple to the right. By this point we were up pretty high so we performed a steep spiral to practice the maneuver and to descend back down out of the hole we had found. We returned to the airport and did a couple of power off 180s and a couple of short field landings. It was fun trying to land from the right seat. I had one really smooth landing. The rest were kind of what you might expect after transitioning over to the right seat for the first time. For the checkride I have to be able to land the airplane on a certain spot within 100 feet beyond that spot (maybe its 200). We were pretty close today but not perfect so I will keep working on it.

Long Solo Cross Country

2008-04-19T12:25:00.004-06:00

It is a straight line distance of 288.7 nautical miles from North Las Vegas Airport (KVGT) to Spanish Fork Airport (U77). 14 CFR Part 61.129 (a)(4)(i) says that an applicant for a Commercial Pilot Certificate must fly a solo cross country flight of at least 300 nautical miles total distance with landings at a minimum of three points, with one point a straight line distance of at least 250 nautical miles from the original departure point. I completed this requirement last Saturday (April 12th).

About two weeks ago, my friend Kellie mentioned that she had a conference to attend in Las Vegas and then jokingly said that I could fly her down there. I quickly got to thinking that it might just be far enough away to fulfill the requirement. After some checking I came up with a plan. I would take her to North Las Vegas and the return solo flight would be used to fulfill the requirement. The straight line distance was met so I just needed to make sure I got 300 total miles. On the return from Vegas, I made landings at St. George (KSGU), Cedar City (KCDC), Milford (KMLF), Richfield (KRIF), and ended up at Spanish Fork (U77). This made the total return trip approximately 318 nautical miles. Now I can check off the requirement and start working on the others.

Not only was I able to complete the cross country requirement, the weather was perfect for flying that day. The forecast for the entire route was winds calm and visibility greater than 10 nm. Turbulence was non-existent and the airspace was not busy at all. We picked up flight following about 20 miles out of Spanish Fork and headed to St. George. We opted to make a quick stop in St. George just to say we did! A small commuter landed right behind me at St. George and taxied to the terminal. After parking the plane, we walked into the terminal for a quick break. A missionary had been on that small commuter. Getting home from the mission, what a crazy day! After our quick rest we topped off the tank at the self serve pump and departed for Vegas. We had a bit more traffic near Vegas but it was rather calm. After a rather high speed landing, we arrived at North Las Vegas.

And you think gas prices are bad...

We got a ride on the courtesy shuttle over to the food court at a nearby casino. I must say that I am happy that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. For the few minutes that we were at the casino and seeing the people there and the lifestyles they lead I am glad to live in the bubble of Utah. I don't understand why people think they will find happiness in a casino.

We returned to the airport where Kellie had to wait about an hour for some friends to pick her up and I returned to the plane and departed to the North. I had to return the plane by 7pm and was unable to wait with her. I stopped again in St. George to top off the tank and then finished the flight. The air was quite smooth on the return flight. I did encounter some turbulence between St. George and Cedar City but nothing bad. I got to see a lot of Utah and really enjoyed the view.

A view of Zion National Park

The view from here is better than from that freeway down there!

Long cross country flights like that can sometimes be a bit less than entertaining especially when there is no traffic around to even keep you busy but I loved it. I would much rather be 'bored' while flying an airplane across the country than be bored while crunching numbers at a desk somewhere. The view is so much better from above!!

My 'boring' flight

On Monday this week I went along as safety pilot for Skye. We made a quick trip from Spanish Fork to Delta. Skye was under the hood the whole time and did an excellent job. The trip to Delta is a quick trip and there is almost never any other traffic so the workload is rather low, which is good when you are trying to hone your basic instrument flying skills. Skye had been wanting to make a trip to Wendover via the Salt Lake City class bravo airspace to experience the higher workload and learn how to maneuver through it all. Skye and I finally made the trip to Wendover on Thursday the 17th. We had tried to make the trip a few times and weather always stopped us. Our trip on Thursday was quite the adventure. The weather was nice and I think everybody in Utah decided to go flying that day. We picked up flight following just north of Provo (PVU) and requested a transition through Salt Lake class bravo and they gave it to us. There was plenty of traffic to keep me busy though so I was on the radio the whole time. Skye was under the hood so I took the radio since all the calls were for traffic. The Garmin 430 showed traffic hits all over the place. After leaving the Salt Lake area the rest of the trip to Wendover was pretty quiet. We picked up flight following with Clover Control and Skye did an excellent job flying the VOR approach into Wendover.

A few minutes after we arrived a Boeing 737 landed with a Casino Gambling Tour charter aboard. It was unique to have such a large plane follow you in on the downwind to such a small airport in the middle of nowhere. "Wendover traffic, we are a boeing 737 on a 15 mile downwind for runway 8 into Wendover." When I heard that call on the radio he definitely had my attention because other than him we were alone.

The return trip was a little more eventful. On reaching the class bravo, the controller kept us about one thousand feet above the ground and about every 60 seconds he gave me a traffic call where the traffic was usually at my one o'clock about 3 or 4 miles. Lets just say I was definitely busy looking for traffic. Skye did an excellent job on the trip. I was throwing vectors at him every two or three minutes to negotiate around the mountains and the traffic and our low altitude. He did a good job holding his headings and altitudes. He is in the beginning stages of his instrument training and making some excellent progress. It has been a blast flying with him.

Safety Pilot

2008-04-07T22:06:00.002-06:00

The other day I went for a short cross country flight with a fellow pilot named Curtis. Curtis is working on his instrument rating right now and needs to build both cross country and simulated instrument time. On this short flight from Spanish Fork to Delta, he donned the foggles and took the controls and I rode right seat and looked for traffic. We departed Spanish Fork and he took us straight West to intercept V21. The Initial Approach Fix for the VOR 17 approach into Delta is along V21 so this set us up nicely. It was a bit windy that day so I had him do a circle to land approach which he executed quite well. After a landing and taxi back we began our trip back to Spanish Fork. Curtis does not have much instrument time yet and I thought he did a great job on the flight. He will be a natural I am sure. It was a lot of fun to act as safety pilot. I passed the checkride for my instrument rating back in November so this was a great chance to really review my knowledge of instrument flying. He had a lot of questions so I really had to rack my brain trying to recall it all. I am going to be doing these flights regularly with Curtis and another guy named Skye. They are both working on their instrument ratings. On Wednesday Skye and I are going to make a trip over to Wendover. That will allow us to spend some time talking to Clover Center and help Skye get used to the workload that comes with instrument flight. It is going to be great!

Zero G

2008-03-28T00:05:00.003-06:00

Last week was a wonderful week for flying and I took advantage of the beautiful weather on Wednesday and Saturday. I decided to take some friends along that have been wanting to go. On Wednesday morning I took my friend Kate along with me. We stayed in the Spanish Fork area. I shot a few touch and gos. I wanted to work on my short field landings so I practiced getting as slow as I could on final. At first, the Katana is a somewhat intimidating airplane to do short field landings with because the approach speed is so slow. I have not do too many short field approaches during my flying so they are a bit intimidating to begin with and the Katana just makes it more exciting. A regular approach is supposed to be about 55 knots which feels like a crawl. My landings weren't the best short landings so I definitely need to work on that a bit.

On Saturday afternoon I took my friend Lauren up. We hopped down to Nephi airport and on the way back I showed her a little bit of weightlessness. On the flight with Kate we also did a little bit of weightless maneuvering. I had never done that before with friends so it was fun. They both loved it. After we got back Lauren said that was definitely her favorite part of the flight.

It was a great week and two flights made it amazing. I haven't been up this week. I was going to go up this evening to be safety pilot for a guy working on his instrument but the winds were around 13 knots gusting to almost 20 knots so he decided to just wait a couple days to let the wind calm down again. I may have to see if I can get a plane for tomorrow or Saturday so I don't miss a week!!

Landing Gear Didn't Come Down

2008-03-15T11:55:00.003-06:00

On Monday night, my flight instructor and I went for a flight to complete my training for the complex endorsement. We took off from Spanish Fork airport around 9pm and headed over to Provo airport for some landing practice. After five or six landings we headed up north of the field so that I could practice intercepting and shooting the ILS approach in the Piper Arrow. I received my instrument rating back in November of 2007 and had only done approaches in Cessna 172s and Diamond Katanas so it was good to do an approach in a more complex and faster airplane. We did only one approach. It was not super easy to stay on the glide path as I am not yet very familiar with good power settings to get the Arrow to glide like I want. I kept the needles from full deflection so it was somewhat decent. We went around and I started a second approach and my flight instructor pulled the circuit breaker for the landing gear (I didn't realize he had done this). I got lined up on the ILS and went to put the landing gear down and nothing happened. It took me a second to realize nothing was happening and then I started the emergency procedures to figure out why it didn't go down. I found the circuit breaker and pushed it in and the gear quickly came down as expected.

When the gear didn't come down I maintained my altitude to trouble shoot the problem. By the time the problem was diagnosed we were still lined up with the runway and well above the glideslope. Then my instructor pulled the throttle to idle and I went through the engine failure procedures. We proceeded to land so I put the plane into a slip to drop back to the glideslope. We landed a little long but it was good. We taxied back, took off again, and this time did a soft field landing. The soft field landing went well. We took off and headed back to Spanish Fork. My instructor wanted me to do a short field landing. I tried to keep the speed lower on final but I was a bit too fast and landed much longer than I should have. I definitely need to work on those landings. For the Commercial Pilot Certificate, I must be able to land on a chosen spot on the runway within 100 feet. The Practical Test Standards specify minus 0 and plus 100 feet of the chosen spot. It will be fun learning how to do that every time.

After the flight my instructor signed me off for the complex endorsement and I am now able to enjoy the Piper Arrow on my own. It is now time to dive head first into training for the Commercial Pilot Certificate. I will publish a post listing the requirements that I have to complete before the checkride and I will keep you informed of my progress. It is going to be a wonderful adventure.

During my training for the Commercial I would also like to start some training for the Multi-Engine rating. The flight school in Spanish Fork only has the Diamond DA-42 Twin Star. Does anybody know of another flight school in the greater Salt Lake area that does Multi-Engine training?

Across the Country

2008-03-09T19:59:00.003-06:00

For a long time I have wanted to fly a small plane across the country. The chance to cover so much ground and see so many different places has always sounded like such an adventure. It would be an amazing job. I would love to deliver aircraft for people. Whether that be picking up a new plane at the factory to take to its new owner or flying an aircraft from its home base to a maintenance facility for repairs or upgrades. My dream is to cover the United States in a small plane. I want to see it all and land in all fifty states. I want to participate in some cross country races, take some leisure flights across a few states and just have fun. So if ever you would like someone to join you in the cockpit for a long distance flight, just let me know. I am always up for an adventure!! And if you need someone to go pick up or deliver an airplane for you, then I am your man.

Stalls

2008-03-01T09:47:00.000-07:00

On Thursday morning I met up with Leith (flight instructor) to do some more flying in the Piper Arrow. In a prior post I mentioned that I flew it a couple of times while working on my complex endorsement which allows me to fly airplanes with retractable landing gear and adjustable propellers. When I arrived at the airport it was starting to warm up a bit and I think the high was close to 50 that day. We were the first flight of the day and there was still some frost on the wings. While I did the preflight, Skye went around with a towel and rubbed the frost off the airplane. Skye came along on the flight because he hasn't flown for a while and is going to start again. He wanted to just sit and watch to be able to remember a few things.

We finally got in the air and did a few touch and goes and the landings were decent. We then headed out to the southwest of Spanish Fork to practice some stalls. In an airplane, we use the term stall to mean that the wings stop working usually because the plane is going too slow. Now you may be wondering why we would ever allow that to happen. Causing the airplane to stall is a very common part of training and we do it so that we learn how the airplane handles when the wings stop working. Normally when we stall, we just go to the point where the plane shudders a little and then we add power and recover from it. Yesterday we let the stall progress a bit further and went to a full break stall. That means we just kept it going slow until it really started to drop. The arrow performs really well in a stalled condition. Okay, yes the wings have basically stopped working and we lose altitude quickly but it is easy to control the plane and keep the wings level.

After a couple stalls we headed back to the Spanish Fork airport (U77) to do some more touch and goes. On the way back we passed one airplane and about three helicopters. It was quite the busy day up there. The weather was really nice on Thursday but the sky was not all that clear. Here in Utah Valley we often get nasty inversions that trap a bunch of crud in the air at low altitudes and the sky gets quite hazy. It made it hard to see much more than a couple of miles. We climbed up to around 10,000 feet for a while and got above the haze and the view was spectacular. Yet another reason I love to fly. If the pollution gets annoying, I can just climb into a plane and a few thousand feet off the ground I can be above it and back in clear blue skies.

May I Have This Dance?

2008-02-27T21:06:00.000-07:00

This semester I am taking a ballroom dance class here at BYU. So far we have learned Foxtrot, Cha-Cha, and the Waltz. Dancing is quite big at BYU and it seems like everybody has taken a dance class at some point during their years at BYU. Honestly I am a bit sad that I waited so long to take a dance class because I have loved it. Foxtrot has not been my favorite dance. I struggle a bit to stay on the rhythm when dancing Foxtrot. Cha-Cha and the Waltz are a blast though. We have been focusing on Foxtrot and have not spent as much time as I would like on the others. Today we tested for Foxtrot so now we get to spend more time on the others and I am quite excited about that.

Last week, BYU held a large social dance. It is the only ballroom dance that they are having this whole semester. It was fun to go to the dance because for the first time in my life I knew that I was going to a dance where I actually knew how to dance and that was a great feeling. Sure I am still a beginner and most people were way better than me. The dance was really crowded because probably every dancer at BYU came to it so it was hard to move more than ten feet and not bump into another couple. That made it a bit tricky because I still haven't mastered the fine art of maneuvering around other couples and staying on beat. It was good times.

The Slopes

2008-02-20T00:25:00.000-07:00

Monday was President's Day for those of you who may have missed it. It is a holiday that happens once a year! :-) Brad, a guy in my ward, wanted to go skiing so he invited a few of us along. Brad, Kate, Lizzy and I went up to Sundance. The holiday made it pretty crowded so there was a bit of a line at the lifts. Brad and Lizzy were both on skis and Kate had never done either and she wanted to learn to snowboard. So I decided to put on my teachers cap, and a snowboard, and teach her what I know. Luckily Kate caught on really fast and did a great job. We did about three runs together and then I took off my board and grabbed my skis. Brad and Lizzy had taken off and came back about the time I got my skis. Then all of us made a few more runs together. It was good times. The weather was great and the snow was pretty awesome. I can't believe that was my first trip this season. I really need to go again before the snow is gone. And can I just say that I love to ski. Snowboarding is good but I have a long way to go in that area!!

Snow Covered Beauty

2008-02-08T23:58:00.000-07:00

Today dawned sunny and bright, the clouds were few and far between and the winds were non-existent. In my world that means a perfect day to hop in an airplane and fly around. I went to work this morning and had a couple of classes so I scheduled an airplane for 4pm. My last class let out at 3pm and I headed straight home to do a little planning for the flight. I checked the weather out to the south of Provo and filed a flight plan to Delta which is a small town to the southwest of Provo about 60 miles. My intention was not to make a stop just to go somewhere and not just fly a circle around Provo yet again.

My friend Kiera came along with me. She has wanted to join me on a flight for quite some time now and today worked out great. The plane was anxiously waiting for us when we arrived at the airport. It had been flown not too long before so it was still a little warm so it was not too hard to start. After we got some fuel we hopped in line to take off. Yeah, there was a line. The weather was so beautiful that everybody decided to go flying today. I had to wait for two helicopters and one Pilatus to take off and quite a few other aircraft to land. Once we were airborne we made a turn south and headed to Delta.

It is hard to describe how breathtakingly beautiful the view was today. It was just after 4pm when we took off so the sun was getting low in the sky. (Which means I had the sun in my eyes for about forty minutes on the way there.) The sun reflected off of every mountain peak that you could see and they all just shimmered in the sunlight. It was like a hundred snow covered mountains smiling for the first time in weeks because they were graced by the warm sun. Not too many people go hiking in the winter so it is not often you are able to enjoy that incredible sight. I loved every minute of it. Kiera had a great time as well. It was her first flight in a two seat airplane so she was a bit nervous. Her palms got a bit sweaty but she had fun!

We arrived at Delta and I set up for a landing on runway 17. The landing at Delta may have been the smoothest landing I have made in the past two years. I definitely did not feel us touch down, I just heard the sound of the wheels as they came up to speed. Kiera closed her eyes a bit before we touched down because she was a bit nervous and was pleasantly surprised to experience the smoothest landing of her life!! The landing back in Spanish Fork was pretty good, the rough runway takes a little of the joy out of it though.

It was great to be back in the sky again today. I wish I could share my love of flying with everyone I know. The sky is often referred to as the heavens for a good reason. I was meant for the sky and I plan on spending a lot more time there throughout my life!!

Great Expectations

2008-02-07T22:14:00.000-07:00

A few months ago I had the desire to read some classic books. So many times I have heard people quote one of these 'classics' or make some sort of reference. Great Expectations came to mind. I don't think I had read anything else by Charles Dickens and I had no idea what I was getting into. It has been a slow read. I started a little over a month ago and I am dying. The motivation to read is almost gone. I do want to finish just in case it comes to an awesome conclusion but right now it sure doesn't look good!! I may never know what happens to Pip.

Other books that I am considering are Catcher in the Rye (Becca, it had better be good!), A Clockwork Orange, and Jane Eyre. Have any of you read these before? Any thoughts? Any other recommendations of must reads??

Stick vs. Automatic

2008-01-26T14:25:00.000-07:00

Can I just say that I love to drive a stick? They are great!!

Fancy ID Badge and Somersaults

2008-01-23T12:09:00.000-07:00

The interview must have gone well because they offered me a job. That means that my life as a hobo, short lived as it was, has come to an end. I started work yesterday. I spent some time filling out paper work, getting my new computer set up, attended a couple of meetings, got a run down of what my first project is going to be and I got a fancy new ID badge. The company is located in the Novell buildings here in Provo and the company I work for rents some office space there. This means that all employees get a Novell ID badge. It makes me look cool! You should see it.

On the way to get my ID picture taken, a coworker showed me the break room. There is a hot chocolate machine. Yep, thats right. We get all of the hot chocolate we want. And considering it is freezing here, that is going to be amazing.

My ward has paired up with another ward to do activities together and to help each other out. This Sunday half of my ward attended the other ward which is actually a Spanish Branch. It was a lot of fun. The reason we are working with this branch is so that we can go and tutor the kids in the branch once a week and help them with whatever homework they have. After sacrament the Branch President told us we could attend whatever class we wanted to, so my roommate and I went to primary. Yep, that's right! For two hours we got to hang out with the little kids, watch the little boys do somersaults and hit each other, sing songs in Spanish and just have a great time. It makes me miss primary. Talk about fun!

Something New

2008-01-13T17:41:00.000-07:00

Winter semester has started here at BYU. One week down and quite a few to go. I decided to change things up a little bit this semester so I moved. I left Foxwood and moved over to Santa Barbara Condos. The complex is just south of campus and the location is awesome. I live much closer to most of my friends now and I am loving it. The ward here seems to be great. I look forward to making a bunch of new friends this year. Not only is the ward nice, it is also a nice complex. It is so much nicer to have only two roommates instead of four.

I had a job interview a couple days ago with a company here in Provo. Hopefully they will make me a good offer this week so I can get back to the business of making money and flying. It seems like a great company. I will keep everyone posted on whether I get a job or continue life as a hobo!! Hmm, I wonder which is better?

A capella

2007-12-16T16:57:00.000-07:00

Some people think singing a capella makes them sound really cool. Unfortunately, sometimes it makes them sound the opposite of cool.

coming and going

2007-12-16T16:47:00.000-07:00

this week brought some interesting emotions my way. the other day i started missing provo. that is strange because i am still here and have no plans to leave anytime soon. then i realized that i was just a bit sad that my time at byu is coming to a close. i have six months left at byu. six months that will end the best three and a half years of my life. i shouldn't say 'end' because i planning on making life even better after that. the unknown is just a little intimidating sometimes. it does provide some good motivation to get my commercial pilot certificate and a job flying so that i can more easily move around the country and visit my friends. college has been an amazing time of life. friends everywhere and lots of excellent memories of many rather simple things. i love provo. i love byu. i love friends. i love life.

Zip Up

2007-12-13T23:06:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday afternoon I sat down in class and settled in for the lecture. About two minutes later I realized my fly was open. All the way open. Hmmm ... I wonder how long it has been that way. I thought about it for a minute and figured that it must have been that way for at least half an hour. I was at home for lunch and walked straight to class. It was about a fifteen minute walk. I did stop and chat with one friend on the way. Apparently she didn't notice. I probably lucked out because I had my hoodie on and it probably covered the general 'fly' area. Or should I say everybody else probably got lucky they couldn't see anything.

I wonder how often I do that and never notice...

Bleeding

2007-12-05T21:07:00.000-07:00

Last week my roommate ask if I would sign up for the blood drive. He added me to the list and I showed up to give some blood. Unfortunately, the wait was long and I had to leave with all of my blood. Yesterday, there was another blood drive on campus so I decided to stop in and donate. There was no line so they got me done quick. It was an interesting experience. I had donated only once before about three years ago. That first time they forgot to recline my chair and I almost passed out so I was not terribly excited to try again.

While he was preparing everything, I must admit that I was a bit nervous. Not nervous about blood leaving my body but about a needle entering my body. A bit of a wimp!! He poked me and it wasn't a big deal like it never is. I was done in five minutes. He timed it. He said it was a fast bleed and that is usually takes seven or eight minutes. So while it is good for giving blood it is probably not ideal should I accidentally get cut. Apparently I lose blood really fast. And no, I am not scared of needles!!

snow and beanies

2007-12-03T23:53:00.000-07:00

Some snow finally found its way to Utah on Saturday. It snowed most of the day and left about three inches on the ground here in the Provo valley. And the snow actually stuck. It is still on the ground and doesn't look to have much a chance to melt before the next storm. I am excited. It means the ski resorts will open up soon and I can hit the slopes again. Time to pull out the jackets and beanies because the cold is here to stay.
I have to admit that I have never been one to wear a beanie all the time. I pretty much only put it on during snow activities like skiing or sledding or when I walk around looking at Christmas lights in freezing weather. I pulled out my beanie today and quite enjoyed its warmth while walking around campus. Why didn't I ever take it with me before!! When you have a beanie and a hoodie, who needs a jacket??
With the snow and winter storms it makes it much harder to fly. It is supposed to storm through Sunday so it looks like my next flight is going to have to wait until next week. At least I can look forward to the slopes!!

Stardust

2007-11-29T00:39:00.000-07:00

I saw the movie Stardust for the first time last night and let me say it was amazing. The main character Tristan is trying to impress a girl named Victoria and one night they see a falling star. Tristan tells Victoria that he will show his love for her by finding the star and bringing it back to her. To his surprise, he finds the star and it happens to be a women named Yvaine. Undeterred he tries to bring this star back anyway and together they have quite an adventure. It was funny, romantic, had some action and was just plain fun. I highly recommend it!!

The movie made me think about goals in life. I think sometimes people set goals so firmly that they miss the journey along the way. This movie reminded me that often times some of the best experiences and most wonderful things in life are the unexpected situations that arise as we work toward our goals. So keep your eyes open and enjoy all that you experience along the way!!

four baggers

2007-11-26T22:38:00.000-07:00

Today in my bowling class I got four strikes in a row. A four bagger. It has been a while since I have done that. It was nice. The game ended up at 190. And at the bowling alley they give you a free game if you get a four bagger. Yay for free stuff!!

If ever you want to go bowling, just let me know. I would love to bowl a game!!

the iPod world

2007-11-26T22:20:00.000-07:00

About two weeks ago my roommate gave me his month old 3rd gen iPod nano. I am now a member of the iPod community and have been enjoying it. A couple weeks before getting the iPod I started listening to an aviation podcast on my computer. I had plans to put the podcast on my new cell phone and listen to it from that but that changed when I received the iPod. I actually use my iPod for podcasts more than I do for music. I have a rather small music collection. The entire collection fits on my 4GB nano. I am subscribed to four podcasts. Three on aviation and one spanish podcast to help me keep current with the language. I really enjoy the aviation podcast done by Jason Miller of The Finer Points. It is a great way to constantly be learning about flying.

So it finally happened, someone made me a member of the iPod community. The music is great and the podcasts are fun. My roommate mentioned to me it is fun to have a soundtrack to your life. I don't think I listen often enough to say that but I guess it is kind of fun.

Now if only I could find a podcast that would help me find an airplane...

8 Years

2007-11-18T15:23:00.000-07:00

Today makes eight years since I received my Private Pilot Certificate. It seems crazy that I have been flying for that long. I have had a few pretty big gaps during these eight years and those will be the last. No more breaks in my aviation career. I love to fly!! As I mentioned in my last post, I just recently passed my Instrument Rating checkride. I have not been flying since then because school was a bit crazy last week and this week I will be traveling to Phoenix for Thanksgiving. As soon as I return I am going to go finish up my Complex Endorsement Training in the Piper Arrow. On finishing up the endorsement I will start training for my Commercial Certificate. I can't wait to get started.

It took me eight years to do my instrument rating after my private certificate. Year nine is looking to be a much better year. One year from now I will be a Commercial Pilot and CFI with multi-engine privileges. This ninth year of flying is going to be the best!! Wish me luck!

Instrument Rating

2007-11-10T23:03:00.002-07:00

Yesterday morning I met with the examiner for my instrument checkride. As many people are, I was nervous for the checkride. I spent most of my time this week studying to make sure I would be ready for whatever the examiner might ask. The oral exam went smoothly. We just discussed the different things that go into planning an IFR flight and then discussed some of the specifics of the Salt Lake City class B airspace. Some talk of weather followed and then we were ready to fly.

The flight went quite well. Before take off, the examiner acted as ATC and gave me a clearance for departure. He cleared me to depart on runway 12 and make a right turn to heading 230. I missed the right turn part and started a left turn on departure. Luckily he wasn't too worried and we quickly went right. We first did some stalls and steep turns as well as an unusual attitude. After the manuvers he gave me a holding clearance at a nearby VOR. After a couple loops around he had me shoot an ILS approach followed by a partial panel VOR approach to runway 13 that ended with a circle to land on runway 18. We made a full stop landing, did a 180 on the runway and departed on runway 36 and then he gave me vectors to final on the GPS approach to runway 13 using the Garmin 430. We went missed and then departed back to Spanish Fork.

After going missed he said we were done and I removed the foggles and made the landing back in Spanish Fork. He printed off my temporary certificate and that was that. It is nice to be done with the rating. I have flown 60 hours in the past four months in pursuit of the rating and it has been a blast. I can't wait to start working on the manuvers for the Commercial Certificate and hope to have that done by summer!!

I had an eye exam today. While there is nothing too exciting about that, I was quite surprised how big my pupils got when they dilated my eyes. Check it out!!

Playing Chicken with a Deer

2007-11-04T22:35:00.000-07:00

The weather was absolutely amazing yesterday and I didn't want to miss out on flying so I invited my friend Hayley and we headed out to the airport. I took care of the preflight and briefed Hayley on what I would be doing during our flight. We taxied over to the fuel station to get filled up. While I was standing there putting fuel in the plane a car drove up and the man told me I probably should not use the runway for a while because he had just hit a deer and the carcass was still on the runway. A few minutes later a couple of trucks drove out to the runway to clean it up. After a half hour delay we finally were able to use the runway and we left.

As I expected it to be the weather was perfect. I was happy that it was so smooth as it was the first time my friend had the chance to go up in a small plane. There were no bumps at all. The air was glassy smooth. Fabulous!!

Oh, and I guess the game of chicken was a tie. The deer and the plane both held their positions, and they both lost. The wing on the plane was totaled and the deer was turned into steaks!!

Complex Endorsement

2007-11-01T22:43:00.000-06:00

Yesterday, I flew a Piper Arrow for the first time. It was a fun experience. I have been flying the Diamond Katanas lately and those little planes are definitely not overwhelmed with power. The Arrow has a lot of power. The takeoff feels a bit sluggish but once it is up it just goes. The Arrow is considered a complex aircraft because it has retractable landing gear, a constant speed propeller and flaps. I have flown many airplanes with flaps but never with the other two. The idea of putting down the wheels before I land doesn't seem to hard to understand. Since I have never had to do it before I will definitely have to make my pre-landing checklist an absolute priority to make sure I never forget. The propeller is definitely new. I understand the idea of adjusting the pitch of the propeller, now I just need to learn the ins and outs of when to adjust and how much and whether I adjust the throttle or the propeller first. I can't wait to fly it again. The fact that the airplane has a high useful load is also exciting because I will be able to take multiple friends at a time!!

The instrument training has hit a few snags. The Katanas that the flight school owns have had some issues. A few days ago the fuel pump failed in one of the planes. The vacuum pump failed in the other one, and then today one of those two had an electrical system failure. So needless to say, I have not been able to do much flying in the planes that I plan to take my checkride in. Hopefully, the parts arrive soon so that I can take my checkride and get my rating. Maybe next week!

Flat Tires

2007-10-28T13:17:00.001-06:00

On Thursday morning I went over to the airport. I had a flight scheduled with Ben to practice and polish up some instrument skills. We taxied out to the run up area right by runway 12 and did a run up. Everything was good to go so I stepped on the left break to turn towards the runway, added some power and started to move. I quickly realized that with full left break I was still going straight. I thought the right brake my be stuck. Ben grabbed the controls to give it a try. We were hardly moving and barely able to go straight. Ben finally hopped out to find a flat tire. I shouldn't say flat, more like, the tire was coming off the rim. We couldn't taxi like that so we pushed the plane off into the dirt to allow others to get by and called the mechanic. He came and picked us up. We went back to the hangar to get some tools and right as we pulled up the mechanic had an idea. About two weeks ago, one of the DA20s was on a flight and the engine died. The guy had to land in a field and unfortunately hit a ditch. This broke the nose wheel and put the plane out of commission for a while. The mechanic had the idea to take one of the main wheels off that plane and put it on the one I was going to fly. So we did just that. We swapped wheels and then I headed skyward. About five minutes after we took off the mechanic called and told us he needed the wheel back. The NTSB was coming to inspect the plane that landed in the field and it had to have all equipment that it did when it went down. So we flew back and that was that. Talk about a short flight. A nice ten minute hop. Good times!!

Return of the Snow

2007-10-23T12:58:00.000-06:00

My internship in Seattle came to an end on the 17th of August and I have since returned to Provo. The internship was a great experience in my life. The opportunity to live in Seattle was fantastic and maybe someday I will return to that beautiful weather. I learned much about the field of Computer Science and a bit more of what it is like to work in the industry. I also learned that while I enjoy Computer Science a great deal, I truly love to fly!

While I was in Seattle I began working on my instrument rating. That rating allows me to fly in and out of the clouds and through weather that is often life threatening to a pilot without it. The training went really well and I loved the opportunity to spend some time in the clouds. Back in Provo, the flying has slowed down a bit. I have been finishing my training at a local flight school that has only two instrument instructors. One that only works in the mornings and another that is soon leaving for a job with an airline. It has been difficult to schedule flights with them so I have made some attempts at self training over the past month and a half. I have completed all requirements for my rating except for my check ride. I will be going up with an instructor on Thursday to get my endorsement to take the check ride and hope that next week I will be a newly rated instrument pilot.

As soon as I get my rating I will begin working towards my commercial pilot certificate. I need only 75 hours more before I can take that check ride and be legally certified to fly for hire in the United States. I have been dreaming about that day for many years and cannot wait to make it a reality. Hopefully, I can make it happen by summer.

Life back in Provo has been wonderful. It is always great to move into a new ward and have 150 new friends given to you. I have made many new friends in the past two months and it has been just wonderful. I love hearing their stories and finding out what makes them tick. Some love business and politics, others psychology, accounting, computing, soccer and many other things. Meeting new people always reminds me that sitting behind a computer for the rest of my life may not be the best way to continue making new friends and hearing new stories.

It is getting ever colder here in Provo. A big storm came through over the weekend and it made for an interesting football game on Saturday. The rain was merely a drizzle for most of the day and even through the first half of the game. A few minutes into the third quarter it started to pick up a little and the fourth quarter was full on snow. The field went from green to white in just a couple of minutes and the players had a pretty hard time staying on their feet. Luckily, BYU was so far ahead by that time that there was not much worry about losing the game. The snow let up right after the game and came back that night. We woke up to snow covered ground on Sunday morning. It was the first day where the snow actually stuck around for a while. By noon it was all melted but it will be back soon I am sure.

School is going great. It has been a nice semester. I am nearly finished with my BS in Computer Science and that seems crazy. It will be hard to leave college. These have been the best years of my life. Luckily, I plan on life only getting better.

As for bowling, I have not done too much of it lately outside of my class. I wish I had another high score to talk about but the best I have to show for this semester is 218. I was quite happy with it, and hope to replace it soon!!

Canada

2007-08-16T00:22:00.000-06:00

On Saturday a few of us made a trip to Canada. My friend Susannah and I had been planning on going for about a week and the night before we left we convinced Crystalin and Lindsey to come along with us. They had to scramble to find their birth certificates and in the end it all worked out great. We left a little after 8am and after about an hour wait to get past the border we arrived in Vancouver a little after noon. We found a little bakery of sorts for lunch. It ended up taking really long to get our food so they refunded our money and gave us a free pie. You can't beat that!! We took the lunch to go and drove to Stanley Park and sat on a blanket in the grass to enjoy our free meal. After lunch we saw some of the sights around the park and then walked around the city for a while. In this picture of the water, I was just enjoying the amazing view and Susannah just sat there and laughed at me!! We met up with my friend Vanya who lives there and he took us out to a suspension bridge just north of the city. It was pretty awesome. A couple hundred feet in the air with two waterfalls almost directly below. We dropped Vanya back at his house on our way back to Seattle. The border crossing only took about five minutes coming home and right after we crossed back in we found a little Mexican place called Paso Del Norte and got some dinner. The food was really good. I was impressed to find such great Mexican food about half a mile from the Canadian border. We ended up with some Canadian money form our lunchtime craziness and were able to use it there so it worked out well. All in all it was a great trip and for the girls it was the first time all of them had been to Canada.

The flying continues to go splendidly. I flew last night and again tonight getting 2.1 hours on both flights. We did five approaches at Paine Field both times. We just made the flights VFR hoping to save a little time. I am not so sure it did! We were talking with Seattle Center most of the time so I still got some good radio practice which is a good thing. I have really enjoyed working with Air Traffic Control so much and getting comfortable with using it. Last night I did my first ILS precision approach. I kept the airplane on course very well on both attempts. I was afraid I was going to be a bit more squirrelly and it ended up great. We did two VOR/DME approaches and they went pretty good as well. Tonight we did the VOR/DME approaches partial panel. To do that we used a piece of paper and covered up the Attitude and Heading indicators. I did much better at the approaches than I thought that I would. Tomorrow we are going to start practicing holding procedures. Holding is usual a challenging feat. I hope I do well!

The internship comes to an end this week. My last day is Friday. It went by so fast. It was a great experience. I learned many new skills that will be of great use in my career in the Computer Science industry. I hope that everything I learned will make next semester at school that much easier! We'll see what happens.

Through the Clouds

2007-08-08T15:43:00.000-06:00

Yesterday dawned with cloudy skies and it made me quite happy. I had plans to go flying last night and was hoping for the opportunity to fly in the clouds. Something I had never done before. I got to the airport around 6:30pm and after some confusion with air traffic control we received our clearance and departed from Renton airport to the south. The ceiling over Renton was a little above 3000ft. Soon after takeoff the visibility started dropping and after about 30 seconds in and out of the fog we disappeared into the clouds. It was awesome. It had been a little dark below the clouds and as we climbed up it got brighter. The clouds bounced the light from above all around and made the cockpit light up. Beads of water quickly formed on the windscreen and the wing struts. Pretty soon water was running up the windscreen. It was like a light rain and it was not raining at all. We were in the clouds for a little over twenty minutes on the way back North to Paine Field in Everett. We were vectored to intercept the 9 DME arc of the Paine Vortac and I made my first VOR/DME approach in the soup. I was a little outside the arc although quite close. We turned inbound, descended to the missed approach point and started again back up in the clouds. This time I held the arc much closer. My instructor had explained a little trick called 'Tune 10 Turn 10' to help stay on the arc. It allows us to fly short straight legs rather than a long shallow turn. We made another descent to the field and went missed and then got vectors back to Renton. We were up in the clouds and it was now dark. The cockpit lighting in the plane was not the best so I was happy to be heading back to land. We soon dropped out of the clouds and landed back at Renton. It was an excellent flight. VOR/DME approaches are coming together and I finally got to log some 'Actual Instrument' time in my logbook. Seattle is a great place to fly instruments!!

New High Score

2007-07-25T14:22:00.000-06:00

Last night was the final night of my summer bowling league. It was a great league. I made some friends and greatly improved my bowling skills. Last night I was hoping to end it well and leave with some good scores. My first game was 156 so I knew I had to step it up. I wanted to at least get a 200 hundred. The second game went much better and I scored a 241 which beat my previous best of 233!! The third game I scored a 203! Nice, two games over 200. So, I averaged 200 last night and I am ok with that. I plan to do that more often. :-) If you ever want a good bowling match just let me know and we will go play a few games!

Cucumber Boats??

2007-07-22T18:31:00.000-06:00

For FHE on the 16th, we went to park nearby with a sack full of cucumbers and decided to carve them into boats to race down the stream. Everybody spent some time cutting and decorating and then we set off to the stream. We quickly learned that cucumber boats do not float that well. All of the boats sank to varying degrees. Even though they were mostly under water they went pretty far. It was a good time.

The weather was pretty rainy this week. I liked that because it cooled it down quite a bit. The problem was that it was so cloudy that I was not able to go flying on both Wednesday and Friday. I had scheduled to go up with Josh and the weather said no. We were able to get Thursday. This time I got to try my hand at stalling the airplane with the power on and off. The plane I fly wants to spin really bad when I stall it at full power. Don't worry though, I don't let it. I also practiced some steep turns and more slow flight. Basic maneuvers yes, but all with a visor on so I can't see outside the airplane. The only thing I see are the gauges. This picture is pretty much all I see when I fly. In the next few lessons, I may start working a little bit on approaches and hopefully I will get some actual experience in the clouds before the summer ends. Flying is great! I want to do this forever!! Anybody want to sponsor my training??!!

Work is going great. I have been working on a project this past week that is almost entirely javascript. I have learned a ton about javascript and it is pretty amazing. The application is almost all javascript. I want to convert it to pure javascript before the end of the internship. I have to give a presentation in about two weeks to the higher ups. They want to see what we have been working on this summer. It will be fun to see what the other interns have been up to.

I made a trip out to Olymyic National Park last Saturday. My friend Julia came along with me. We went on three short hikes. We hiked back to two waterfalls and up along a ridge overlooking part of the park.

We stopped at Lake Crescent for a while and just enjoyed the view. The water was amazingly clear. And nobody was on the lake.

An awesome place to go water skiing. I saw some people getting ready to go tubing right as we left. It is so beautiful up there. The weather was really great as well. It was a wonderful day. I hope to make another trip before heading back to Utah.

The bowling is still going well. I had a rather rough time at league on Tuesday. I scored a meager 117 my second game. I don't know what happened so I focused a lot more on the third game and walked away with a 198. That was nice. This Tuesday is the last league game. I am going to have to start looking for a league to join back in Provo.

Here are some photos from the rafting trip. Yeah, I drank a lot of water on the ride and I am glad they got a picture of it.

The Surly Bonds of Earth

2007-07-07T21:56:00.000-06:00

Anybody notice the date today? 7/7/07!! Good times! And what a great day it was. This morning was one of those days when I am excited to get out of bed. Not long after getting up and ready, I made my way to the Renton airport where I met Josh, my flight instructor for the day. After filling out the necessary paperwork and getting a quick rundown on how things work around the Flight School, Josh and I talk about what we will do on our flight. Cessna N20559 waits for me outside. I anxiously make my way outside and to the airplane. After spending some time checking the plane over and asking about some quirks, Josh and I strap ourselves into this plane that looks like a classic Pepsi can. Some radio adjustments, a quick chat about the airport layout and the engine roars to life. We taxi to the run-up area and make sure all is well with the plane and make a call to tower. "Cessna 20559, cleared for take off, runway 33", announces the controller. Lights on, transponder on and we are barreling down the runway. 40 knots, 50 knots, 55 knots, 60 knots, rotate, and we slip the surly bonds of earth. A feeling of excitement comes over me that I hope that never goes away. The runway falls beneath us and soon we are over Lake Washington just south west of downtown Seattle. A few trips around the pattern, some landing practice and we head out to the northeast to practice some maneuvers. Josh knows I go to school at BYU and having attended Utah State, he is familiar with the LDS culture even though not LDS himself. He points out the Seattle Temple just on the other side of the freeway. After about an hour of dancing around the sky and getting acquainted with the feel of it again, we head back home. We land on runway 15 and taxi back. What kept me away so long?? I love the sky!

After my flight, I made my over to Sun Villa lanes to bowl a few games. Today was a great day. My first 600 series. Scores were 231, 210 and 169. I think I wore myself out too fast and the last game was not so pretty. I was quite content with the scores. My best run today was five strikes in a row. Not too bad!

Amazon took all of the interns river rafting down the Skykomish River yesterday. It was awesome!! We started at a small town called Index and rafted about 11 miles down the river. The adventure was about two and a half hours. Each raft had six interns and one guide. During the trip only two of our guys fell out of the raft. That happened within the first half hour. I think everybody figured out how to stay in after that. Unfortunately, I stayed right where I was and did not get to experience the invigorating 44F water. It was cold! The company that does the trip provided the necessary gear. We all wore wet suits, booties, splash jackets, life vests, and helmets. The wet suits kept us nice and warm. It was a great trip! Not only will that make an awesome memory of my Summer in Seattle, it is also nice to get paid to have fun!! Thank you Amazon!

On Thursday night, my roommate Scott and I went to the Seattle Art Museum with a couple of girls from the University First Ward. We had a good time. The museum is huge. We spent a couple of hours. Call me uncultured, I am just not the biggest fan of art. There were a couple of sections of photographs of people. Normal people. That was probably my favorite part. Something I could actually relate to. I guess I don't get along real well with people that have two eyes on one side of their head or that run around wearing large eagle masks. Although, there was a wooden box with a sound coming out of it. It was the recording of the box being made. The guy recorded sawing the wood and nailing it all together. And now it is in a museum!! The picture was taken right after we left the museum. For some reason unknown to me there are pig statues all over the city.

Happy Independence Day!!

2007-07-05T00:07:00.000-06:00

The 4th is always such a great day. People get together just because they are friends and nobody expects any gifts. It is a celebration of friendship and a celebration of the amazing country that we live in. I love the United States of America!!

This afternoon I went with a group of people to see The Transformers. It was a pretty good moving. The graphics and effects were amazing. Not the best plot line. It did have some pretty good comedy to keep you entertained though.After the movie, Josh Goodwin invited us to his place in Monroe to enjoy a nice barbecue. We just sat in the grass and enjoyed some time chatting together. Josh also had a barbecue on Saturday. We spent all afternoon there on Saturday playing games and hanging. This is a picture of a couple of the guys playing the Wii.

After the barbecue tonight I made my back to Seattle and watched fireworks from a high school football field just north of the University of Washington. The closest show was at Gas Works park. We were kind of far away but the show was so good that we could see it really well. It was excellent!

I took my instrument written exam on Saturday morning and passed! Now it is time to start flying. I contacted a flight school and arranged to go flying on Saturday morning. I renewed my aviation insurance and now I am ready to go. I scheduled a flight for today and then realized my insurance expired on the 3rd so I had to postpone until Saturday as my new insurance doesn't go into effect until Friday. Oops!

Last night my bowling league. I got there about fifteen minutes early so I walked around the Seattle temple grounds. The temple grounds are connected to the bowling alley parking lot. I snapped this picture while walking around the grounds. I bowled pretty descent last night. My high game was 183.

Next weekend I am going to try to make a trip out to the coast and maybe make a stop in the Olympics. Who knows, maybe the Olympics will be too awesome and I will just spend the day there. Either way, I just want to go out and do some exploring and see some more of this beautiful state!!

Project Craziness

2007-06-28T00:40:00.000-06:00

For the past month I have been creating a website that allows Amazon employees to upload images for use on the website. It has been quite the adventure. For the most part I have felt that I have made really good progress. However, the last few days have just been nuts. I feel like the upload page is done and yet we just cannot seem to finish. The team spent some time this week putting it through its paces and they turned up a few bugs that I have had to correct. Then all of today, I worked with Kelly to organize things a bit better. When I started this website, I came up with a design of how I would organize all of the files and the team helped me organize the database structure. Then yesterday, the team decided the files needed to be organized like they are on the Seller Central website. That is fine and all but it took all day just to move some files around. Kelly and I sat in front of my computer while she told me how to use all of the crazy software that Amazon uses to save files, and I did the typing. It was good to learn more about the systems at Amazon and wow they are complex. I sure hope that I learned a few things from our adventure today. At the end of the day we had everything moved and then we tried to open the website and it didn't work. Maybe better luck tomorrow!!

It has been a lot of fun working on this project. Days like today are a bit crazy but good. It is awesome to see how a company as big as Amazon with as much software as they have keeps track of it all. They work very hard to make sure the organization is perfect otherwise chaos prevails and productivity drops. It has taken some time and it is good to finally see it all come together. The next website that I make should come together a lot easier than this one has. It will be great!

Every Wednesday, a group of us get together to play volleyball. Last Wednesday, I had the bad fortune to land wrong and sprain my ankle. Luckily it was minor and I recovered quickly. By Thursday night I was able to walk mostly normal again. I tried to play tag with some people during FHE on Monday. Running around did not hurt, my ankle just felt a little weird when I tried to turn. Straight is good!

Luckily when I bowl, I walk straight, so no problems there! Last night was league night and I had a good time. I ended up bowling with a guy who is not a good loser. Unfortunately for him he had to do it three games in a row. I only beat him by a little. Who knows, maybe that was worse. Too bad he couldn't just have fun and enjoy the night like everybody else. Oh well!

There was a huge Young Single Adult Conference this weekend. It was held in Bellevue. Greg Simpson performed on Friday night. Saturday was a service project and various speakers. Jon Schmidt performed on Saturday and it is always a treat to see him. He is an excellent performer. On Sunday, there was a fireside by Elder Pinegar. It was amazing. He was a joy to listen to. Overall, they did an excellent job with the conference and I got to see many friends from BYU.

2007-06-20T00:45:00.000-06:00

Work at Amazon continues to go well. I have been working on for about a week and a half and I hope to finish that in the next couple of days. We discussed some test cases for it today and I am going to try to burn through all of those tomorrow so that I can move on to the next part of my summer project. Actually, when I left work this evening there was a bug that I could not figure out. When I ran my test script it worked fine, and making a call to the page through a browser worked fine, but the call through the AJAX failed. I hope I get that resolved first thing. A night away from it usually makes it easier to find!

Another intern joined my team at work yesterday. He is from Stanford and has been working towards his Masters degree. It should be fun to work with him. Maybe I can get his opinion on graduate school and see if that changes mine at all. That seems unlikely though as I have never planned on graduate school!

Tuesday night is bowling league and I had a good time tonight. We always bowl three games and tonight my scores progressively went up (168, 196, 203). It is usually the other way around. They passed around the scores from last week and I was happy to find that I scored the high handicap series last week which incidentally is also the new season high handicap series. I guess it means that I am the most improved bowler, not necessarily the best bowler!! My average tonight was 189 and my ten game average is 158. The scores are getting better and getting higher. Now my next goal is a 600 scratch series.

On Saturday afternoon a couple of friends and I decided to go play some frisbee golf. We looked up a course on the internet and got the directions, sort of. We started driving and got to a road with the same name as the park we were looking for so we turned. Strange thing is that we found a disc golf basket standing in some random backyard but not a full course. It was crazy. The odds of finding that in a backyard when we were actually looking for a course. It turned out the course was about a mile from where we were. Not bad though, we came close. One hole may not have been to exciting though!

Some friends in the ward invited my apartment to join them for spaghetti and a movie on Sunday afternoon. We had a good dinner and then watched Sons of Provo. That was quite the interesting movie. Good mormon humor I guess. After that we played Harry Potter Scene It. One of the girls happens to know everything about Harry Potter so she one before my teammate and I had even moved one space. I guess I need to get caught up on my wizardry!!

The studying for the instrument is coming along well. There is a YSA conference this weekend so it looks like I am going to push the test to next week. Then back to the skies!!

2007-06-13T00:08:00.000-06:00

The internship is going great. I am finally quite comfortable working with Perl and Mason and that makes my job much easier. I have put together a decent framework and am now working on adding some of the tools that my team has already created to the new framework. The work is a lot of fun. It is a great experience to work with these people here at Amazon. A lot of bright people work here. It makes me realize how much I have to learn!!

On Memorial day I went on a nice hike up to Lake Serene. It is about an hour drive from here. The hike was wonderful. It probably took about two hours up and we spent about an hour eating lunch and talking at the edge of the lake. The lake was so beautiful. It was nestled right below a huge mountain covered with snow and half of the lake was still frozen. The temperature was perfect for hiking. Just a little bit chilly which make it perfect for walking around. Along the trail we crossed by a couple of waterfalls. The first one we found was around 100 feet high. We went with a group of about fifteen people and had a great time!

I am on a bowling league this summer. I thought it would be a great time to give it a try. I have been getting much better. My average is around 160 now. Two weeks ago I bowled a new high score of 233 with a total of nine strikes in the game. We are half way through the league so I hope I can beat that score before it finishes up this summer.

My friend Nicki and I went hiking around Discovery Park yesterday evening. We went in a few circles at first trying to find our way around and eventually we made it to the edge of Puget Sound. We found a beach covered with drift wood with a light house about a quarter mile from us. It was quite picturesque. The park was so beautiful and huge!! There is a small historic neighborhood right in the middle of the park. The buildings are almost 100 years old.

I signed up for Instrument Ground School about a month ago and the class just finished this past weekend. I have been studying for the test and hope to take it some time next week. Wish me luck!! Then after that I am going to choose a flight school and get back to the sky. I can't wait!

Seattle is amazing!! Everybody should take the opportunity to visit this city at some point in their life. There is so much to see and so many beautiful places to pass the day. And you just cannot beat this weather!! :-)

The Amazing Race

2007-05-16T00:58:00.000-06:00

I started my internship at Amazon.com on Monday May 7th. It has been fun. I am on the Media Services team. The team creates software to handle the images that are uploaded to the Amazon website for products and various other things. They have a project lined up for me along those lines. So far I have just been doing some training and learning yet another programming language. It is going to be a lot of fun working there!!

I have been able to do some more sight seeing. On Saturday, the 12th, the Single Adult Committe for the area put together 'The Amazing Race'. They made a good course for us to compete on. We started out at the institute building and were given a paper with pictures of some destinations in downtown Seattle. We had to take the bus and get some pictures and find the names of the places. Then using certain letters we had to unscramble them to find another destination. We had to make a kite at one point and play with some water at Golden Gardens Park and ride in a paddle boat at Green Lake park and finally back to the institute. My team came in second place of twelve. It was great fun!! And for those of you who have seen Ten Things I Hate About You, you may remember this troll!

I have been able to spend some time with the research group that is here from BYU that my friend Johnny is with. We get together for movies, to watch the Jazz games, dinner and just fun times. On Saturday after the amazing race, I went to dinner with Shyla and Nikki at a nice little cafe on The Ave near the University of Washington. They had some good food. Then later that night the whole group got together to watch Catch Me If You Can.

Some friends and I went to a barbecue on Friday night out in Sammamish. I was so amazed by how beautiful the yard was that I had to take a picture. We had some burgers and then we sat around for awhile with our feet in the hot tub. We then made a trip to my roommate Scott's house where we played some cards and then we ended the night at a little dance party.

Things are still going great here. Look forward to some more pictures!!

Welcome to Seattle

2007-05-02T04:13:00.000-06:00

About two months ago there was career fair on campus at BYU where I attend. I met the guys from Amazon.com and they got me way excited about the possibility of working there. I had a set of interviews a few weeks later and shortly thereafter I was offered an internship position with them in Seattle. After that I just wanted school to end so I could make the move to Seattle. The time finally came! I am now living in Seattle! I just drove here on Saturday and it is now early Wednesday morning.

I am living about a mile and a half west of downtown and the location is amazing. I am also about a mile south of the University of Washington and just a few blocks from Lake Washington. This is a picture of the street I live on. Right when you turn on the road there is a sign that says 'Rough Road'. And it is!!

This city is awesome! I still cannot get used to how green it is. The trees are huge and there is grass everywhere. Every crack in the sidewalk has grass and every wall has moss on it! I am loving it. I have been able to drive around and see some of the beautiful neighborhoods. I spent some time down by the docks today and drove around the East side for a bit.

This evening I went to institute and was shocked to see an old friend there. My friend Johnny Harrop and his wife were there. I had no idea they were coming to Seattle. I was happy to see them. After class we talked for a bit and he introduced me to some other people that are here on the same internship that he and his wife are doing. Afterwards, I went out and got some hot chocolate with my new found friends!!

Seattle is the rainy city and I have only see it rain once since I arrived. The weather has been amazing and I hear that Summer is absolutely beautiful here. This is going to be one amazing summer. I will try to get some pics up in the next few days.