Ones and Zeros

Instructor M and I are looking at the radar. There’s some patches of red and yellow - colors I don’t like on that radar - moving through the area. However, once they’re past there’s clear air behind them. And, these storms are air mass storms in basically clear air and not embedded in other clouds. That is, once we’re airborn we can see any storms coming a long ways away. Or, at least M can because I’ll have foggles on as usual.

We head out to do an ILS locally and then the GPS back home. A mini-checkride simulation flight. We head up to the ILS and I make sure to give myself enough time to do the procedure turn and establish my configuration on the ILS afterwards. This works nicely, we break off to circle to land. I do the smooth descending turn again and that works, but I turn a bit too soon. No matter, it’s solid.

We head back for the GPS and that just clicks too. This is all going smoothly. In these approaches I’m on altitude, I’ve nailed my descent rates, I’m on heading, definitely in the doughnut on the dial!

As we’re taxiing off the runway at home M says, “I’m going to have to find a new student, you’re ready to be signed off for your checkride!”

Ok, I’m not done yet, I still have to take the knowledge test, and to pass the checkride, but Woo-hoo!

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 23rd, 2009 at 06:27 and is filed under aviation, flying. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.