Ground school, and a surprise

Ground school was all that was scheduled for today – to go over some weight and balance problems, performance problems, and to do some final review for my phase check on Friday. Turns out this took all of 20 minutes. When Richard said “So, do you want to go fly around a little?” – what was I supposed to say? No? Impossible. I checked to be sure the plane was available, and off we went.

Van Nuys has two parallel runways – but the short one (if you can call 4000′ short) that we normally use for touch and goes is closed until Friday. The result – the place was loaded with traffic. The tower eventually ended up not authorizing any touch and goes due to traffic. We decided to head over to Santa Monica (SMO) to see how it was over there. The wind and ceiling were great, but it was hazy – maybe 5 miles visibility. I had a hard time even FINDING the airport once we were over the hill. I was cleared to land about five miles out, and suggested to Richard that as long as we were there, and it was lunchtime – maybe we should eat. He agreed. It might have been a nice lunch, except I came in WAY too high, and had to do a go around. Once we were off the south end of the runway, we noticed a cloud layer moving in rapidly. Good thing we didn’t stop for lunch – we might not have been able to leave – at least not VFR, anyway!

We headed back to Van Nuys and were cleared on the downwind as number 5. The place was a zoo. Lousy landing, but safe. Oh well – any flying is better than no flying.

1.0 hours/31.2 total

Once more for good measure

Today was just one last run around the pattern before my pre-solo phase check with another CFI (his name is EJ) on Friday. The weather was marginal, but fine for pattern work. I really concentrated on doing everything perfect, and things went just fine. The bottom line is this – the chances of everything working […]

Polishing those landings

The weather was very marginal today, so we decided to just work on polishing my landings. Sounded great to me – they are the hardest thing to do if you ask me. Very focused today. Besides being a bit long (maybe 200 feet past the numbers), my first landing was PERFECT. RIGHT on the centerline, […]

A bit farther away

The weather was forecast as rain and low clouds in the morning, and was COMPLETELY wrong. Clear skies, but very windy. No problem – I need the crosswind practice anyway. We got a clearance out to Camarillo airport (CMA) for today, and actually got to fly there. CMA was reporting calm winds, with Van Nuys […]

More landings, but better now

The weather sucked again, so we had to stay in the pattern. Richard showed up as I was midway through my preflight, and said he had a conflict with another student. Unsure as to why it was ME that should get bumped, I BEGGED to go up. He pushed the other student back an hour, […]

More landings

The plan today was to fly out to Camarillo (CMA) to get still more experience at another airport. I took a bit longer than usual to preflight the plane, thanks to a nav light that was out and needed replacing. By the time we got airborne, there was a layer of overcast over the entire […]

Out to lunch

Today was an early flight – 7:00am – to see if I could get back in to the office by 9:00am. Turns out that was no problem – with a 300′ ceiling and less than 1/4 mile visibility, I was in the office by 6:30am. I monitored the ASOS (pretty much every 15 minutes, I’m […]

Class Charlie, here I come

Still waiting for the medical, Richard and I continued to work through the syllabus as if I had already soloed. Plenty to do, really – I just want to go up alone because I know I can. Patience. Weather was perfect today – clear, no wind, visibility 10 miles. During my preflight I found something […]

Fun in the wind, and a new location

Weather was much more accommodating today. Clear skies, light wind. The skies stayed clear, but the wind picked up pretty significantly. We started off with three trips around the pattern at Van Nuys. Each landing was better than the last – I’m really getting the hang of it now. After that, Richard suggested we head […]

Around the patch – in the rain

Started ground school with Richard this week. Not because I’m not learning well on my own (I really feel like I am), but because I think it’s good to talk with other pilots, get their perspective, and learn the subject matter from a live person. It’s $139 for about 30 hours of training, which is […]