Almost There

corey    Flying    

I finally took the FAA Private Pilot Knowledge Exam, which I did last Sunday. I’m a pretty good test taker, so I wasn’t too worried about it. That, and the fact that all the practice tests I took put me in the upper 80′s. What’d I get? An 87%. I wish I had gotten in the low 90′s, but 87 is certainly a passing grade (need a 70 to pass).

Next up:

# Checkride to solo, again
# Get a few more solo hours in
# Daytime cross country with my instructor (at least 50nm away from home airport)
# Daytime cross country by myself (at least 50nm away from home airport)
# Nighttime cross country with my instructor (also at least 50nm away from home)
# Daytime cross country by myself, where it is at least 150nm and I make 3 stops
# Checkride for my Private Pilot certificate

So, not much more to go now! Last time I flew (late 2003) I had just passed the solo checkride and had solo’ed 3-4 times, and was just waiting to do the first cross country with my instructor. It’s nice to have the written test out of the way, now I can focus on passing the check ride and oral exam that an FAA Examiner grill me with in (hopefully) a couple of months. If all goes well I should have my pilot’s license by mid-summer! (And about time! I’m getting too old to put it off anymore!)

Serenity (The Firefly Movie)

corey    Movies    

Yay! The trailer is now available!

Check it out:

Serenity: The Official Movie Website

Daylight Saving

corey    Flying    

I don’t have anything good to say about Daylight Savings … Saving. Whatever. It’s totally stupid. I mean really, do I care that the sun sets at 10:30p instead of 9:30p? Come on, most people go to bed before then anyways! So what if the sun comes up at 5am instead of 6am, most of us are sleeping!

Losing an hour really sucks when you have to get up early. I had drill Sunday morning at 7:30a (really: 6:30a), so that wasn’t fun. I really didn’t do jack the whole time I was there. Oh wait, I did do a 2 hour class on Disaster Preparedness. I guess the whole day wasn’t completely wasted: I was able to find out that there’s a school here in Colorado that offers an A&P (Airframe and Powerplant Mechanic) course and it’s on the list of schools that the Guard assists with tuition for. Finally, something worthwhile to use that tuition assistance on. I’ll have to call the Emily Griffith Opportunity School to see what the deal is.

One good thing did come from the Daylight Savings change yesterday: I was able to book a flight at 5:30p with my new instructor, Tim. We had a bit of a late start, but landed sometime around 7:30p and had plenty of light left. As for the lesson, well, I did better than I expected. Nothing amazing, but I did OK with the basic flight maneuvers we did. Since my instructor is pretty new to the instructing thing, I was a little worried about his abilities to teach and impart wisdom. But, he did great and I think we’ll get along just fine. I am hoping it won’t take me more than 15 more hours to get my private, but we’ll see.

I’m also taking the Ground School class at McAir Aviation, so we go in for a 2-3 hour class every Tuesday and Thursday night. We’re about halfway through and should be done in a month in a half – at which point we take the FAA Private Pilot Written test and (hopefully) pass with flying colors.

Not much else going on right now. Pretty busy at work with some interesting (to me) stuff possibly happening in the future; should keep me busy for awhile. I’ve got quite a few flights lined up, so I should have some more harrowing tales of aviation adventure in the future.

Stay tuned!