Thursday, March 10, 2011

A No-Fly Zone?

So February turned out to be a bust when it came to logging any flight hours. The weather would just not cooperate - my first scheduled flight (2/14  9:00am) was cancelled due to high winds. My second scheduled flight (2/28 9:00am) was rained out, but was hopefully pushed back until later that day. However, the overcast ceiling dropped down to 1,300 ft and it was a no go. The month of March was looking up, weather-wise, right until my car went in for some routine maintenance and ended up costing my entire flying budget for the month. Now my only hope for flying this month depends on whether or not my tax refund check arrives before the 31st. Oh well, here's looking forward to April.

Work and volunteer commitments, along with the remainder of Ground School (which just wrapped up a couple of weeks ago) has kept me too busy to keep up with this blog. I'm hoping to finish writing up the Ground School lessons (as much to keep this blog complete as for practice for my written exam) over the next few weeks. My plan is to take a lot of practice tests online and take the test for real in the fall. It's good for two years, meaning I'll need to get my private pilots license within two years of passing the written exam, otherwise I'll have to take the test again. Test will cost approximately $150 each time.

In the meantime, I now have a CH Flight Sim Yoke controller to go with my CH Pro Flight Pedals for use with my various flight simulators; the extra controls available make for a very realistic experience. Trimming the aircraft is much easier and it really makes a big difference in recreating the working environment of a Cessna cockpit. Another mod to the work station allows me to have my laptop handy to use skyvector.com for aviation maps - giving my instant access to all of the FAA Sectional maps as well as WAC (World Aeronautical Charts) and Terminal maps for the United States.

The last couple of weeks of Ground School covered navigation and how to use weight and balance tables - providing all the basic tools for VFR navigation and flight planning. Now I can use the simulator to combine practicing my check lists and basic flight maneuvers (landing mostly) with realistic navigation, and flight planning calculated with actual passenger and fuel loads. Creating virtual flights to local airports (at least those within range of a C-150) that will be practice for my own cross country solo flights that will happen towards the end of my flight training.