Friday, October 14, 2011

Stage 2!

I passed my second stage check. Given the number of technically stupid things I did (procedure turn instead of parallel entry, forgetting to start the time on the two approaches that needed it, ending up far, far away from the airport on the NDB approach), I'm a bit surprised, but the instructor could tell I knew what had gone wrong and, as he later pointed out, he didn't have to fix it. Still. I feel like I should be better at some of this by now. THAT'S OKAY THOUGH. I'm happy panda.

We did a bunch of approaches at Tacoma Narrows along with another two or three people. The approach controller finally told a guy he couldn't depart IFR out of Spanaway because he had too much traffic to deal with. Even though we were only ten or fifteen minutes away from the airport, it took him a while to get us our clearance. We went through the holding pattern somewhat legitimately for a few minutes waiting to get cleared for the second approach, thinking it was going to take at least five minutes or so, but then he told us if we could be ready for it he could give us the approach right then. So off we went. Whee.

I guess all in all I didn't do that badly, but I know I can do better. Oh well. On to cross countries.

Monday, October 3, 2011

Stage 2?

"Whenever someone's giving you crap about being young or a girl, just tell them this: 'I'm going to be a flight instructor before you even started flying.'" Jesse says the greatest things.

I think I've finally gotten used to my new instructor. We're going to do ground today, then one flight tomorrow and hopefully I'll be signed off for my stage two check. Then after that it's a few cross countries and suddenly checkride.

Honestly, until now, instrument has been a serious rollercoaster. It went from being awesomely fun to mildly frustrating to intensely frustrating to slightly improving to explode. It stayed on explode for a while and only just recently started getting massively better. When things go right, it's fun. When something goes wrong, at least for a while, it was much less fun because I didn't - and mostly still don't - know how to handle it.

Still, currently I'm a lot more comfortable with the flying than the ground stuff, and I've been studying like mad for weeks now. I took instrument ground back in January, so unfortunately I've forgotten a lot of stuff, but some of it's coming back. I've only just started to get re-motivated since Jesse left. I am getting superstitiously concerned because it's been two and a half months since I started flying with Ross, which is approaching the end of the three-month period of how often I manage to point instructors/people toward new jobs. I guess we'll see if I'm right for the eighth or ninth time.

In almost entirely unrelated news, my friend Emily Biss passed her 787 checkride! She's now allowed to fly my other favorite plane. She's been helping me study some instrument stuff. Speaking of which, I need to get back to that before I go to the airport. Yay.