Making Money in Aviation

In my last post, I referred to having a long way to go to catch Milen with respect to FAA certificates. Why? Because in the time it took me to get my commercial single-engine license, Milen got his: commercial multi-engine, commercial single-engine, CFI, MEI, and AGI certificates. Congratulations!!!

I'm proud to say that I was Milen's first dual instruction "victim" -- and hence the title of the post: Milen is now making money as a CFI! The opportunity for dual instruction came because I was out of currency in the G1000 Cessna 182, and I wanted to get current before I forgot too much about the G1000 avionics suite. I ended up learning a bit from that flight -- more so than from my other checkout or recurrency flights. We did slow flight descents (which I've never done before), and Milen failed the PFD and MFD on me and made me land with backup instruments only. This was not so much of a challenge -- but it did make for some stick-and-rudder practice, especially with regard to power settings: if you lose the PFD and the MFD on a G1000 equipped airplane, you typically have no tachometer or manifold pressure gauge to refer to for power settings. And, while you do not need these to land, it sure does give extra peace of mind to glance over at the engine gauges to verify that the power you have set is the power you're supposed to have for descent and/or landing. Milen also caught me on some sloppy checklist usage... Yikes! It's amazing what you can observe from the right seat.

I flew the high-wing Cessna surprisingly well -- during the day, at night, and under simulated instrument conditions. It turns out that I did not really forget all that much... If I could point out one difference, however, between the Cessna 182 and the Piper Arrow II, it would be glide characteristics. The Arrow II, with its Hershey-bar wing, does not glide well at all. It's a very forgiving airplane: if you're 5 knots too fast, it doesn't really matter that much. On the other hand, you can't try the same in a Cessna: you'll end up floating in flare as the runway disappears from under you.

In the end, I'm again current in the Cessna 182, and by extension, in Cessna 172's -- just in time for the summer flying season!

I'm a Commercial Pilot Now

Let's celebrate! As of Friday, May 25, 2007, I'm a commercial pilot (single engine land). (And yes, I know I'm behind in blogging; it's been a busy couple of weeks at work with the end of the fiscal year). I'm finally starting to catch up to Milen in terms of certificates. :-) Although, I still have a long, long way to go.

The commercial checkride itself was quite uneventful, and much, much easier than I had anticipated. I guess that my CFI was right after all: I was for sure ready to be a commercial pilot. Here's what the examiner had me do:

• Of course, the oral exam. I'm happy to say that I only missed one question on the oral; that had to do with light gun signals from the air traffic control tower. So far - great!
• Normal takeoff from the airport -- to get established on course for my pre-planned cross country. That went quite well, but then again, there was not much to mess up.
• Diversion to another airport -- basically get on course to the airport, verify that you are established on course, determine how long the plane is going to take to get there.
• Maneuvers: my DPE picked steep turns and chandelles. Nice! I just nailed these!
• Stall series - both power on and power off, with and without banks, in clean and dirty configurations.
• Emergency approach and landing. This dreaded maneuver went just fine -- to my great surprise. It sure propped up my confidence for the performance landings, which were about to follow.
• Performance landings. I messed up on the short field. I was told to land right on the numbers, which were right at the edge of the runway... I slammed into the numbers, and I'm happy that Mr. William T. Piper engineered a strong landing gear for the PA28 aircraft series. On the other hand, I excelled at the power-off 180. I landed right in the middle of the 1,000 foot markers on the runway!
• Eights on pylons. Surprisingly, I nailed these as well. Even with some wind. :-)

And that was it! Wow! So much easier than I had ever anticipated.

We headed back to the home airport, and I was a commercial pilot. At the end, I was surprised that the DPE had a portable printer with him. He ended up printing my temporary commercial certificate -- so now I carry an 8.5" x 11" sheet of paper in my logbook until my permanent certificate arrives.

Cool Super-Cooled Water Video

Switching topics for a bit from the progress on my commercial: here's a cool video that someone forwarded to me: Super-Cooled Water Demonstration.

The phenomenon is this: let's say you are flying IFR, the temperature around you is below the freezing level, and you encounter visible moisture. What might happen is that the visible moisture is in the form of super-cooled water -- that is, moisture in liquid form (even though the temperature outside may be less than zero degrees C). Such moisture tends to remain in liquid state -- in fact, the more pure the water is, the more likely it is to exhibit such behavior -- unless it strikes some kind of surface that is conductive to crystallization, in which case it crystallizes (in plain language: it turns to ice). What's an example of such a surface? How about your aircraft!

This is how you may end up getting clear ice. For light aircraft, which often lack any kind of anti-icing or deicing equipment (save the Pitot Heat), this can be an extremely dangerous encounter. And unfortunately, the phenomenon shown in the video is all too common over the Cascade Mountains in the Pacific Northwest.

Well worth watching!

The Pre-Checkride

So close! The day of the checkride was coming up on Friday, and Thursday evening we were out again practicing maneuvers. To say the least I was a bit anxious, especially given yesterday's (see previous post) failure on the simulated checkride because of a botched emergency approach and landing. The focus of Thursday's lesson was just that: emergency landing, together with a review of lazy eights, and of course, eights on pylons. This time, we north of Everett, and our practice area was between Paine Field and Skagit County Airport.

How did the first emergency approach and landing go? Well, I again overshot a bit... I was actually really disappointed in myself at this point, because I should have judged the distance to the field much better. And, there were no obstacles at the beginning of the field to provide any kind of excuse for the lack of good performance. The next one was not much better either -- all because I somehow insisted of flying the pattern too close to the field. Of course, that, combined with the fact that I was making the approach just like a power-off 180 meant that I was not losing as much altitude in the descending turn. And hence, the overshoot. Once I figured this out, and managed to get it in my head, things started going better.

Power-off 180 accuracy approach landings were still a bit dicey. Out of 4, I think I made two within PTS limits, although the other two were not too far off -- but they were off, and I was not feeling too confident.

Nevertheless, I was to meet my instructor tomorrow, at 10am, to get officially signed off. My CFI was confident that I would be a commercial pilot in less than 24 hours!!

Pre-Checkride Jitters

(Note to readers: I'm a couple of weeks behind in posts, but I'm trying to catch up.)

I've been having pre-checkride jitters. The checkride was scheduled for less than a week away -- on Friday, and my maneuvers were not quite perfect just yet. My instructor seemed to think I can do them within PTS standards, but on every flight, there seems to be some maneuver that is out of standard -- or barely within it. That's not good, because it doesn't give me a feeling of consistency. And without a feeling of consistency, I cannot feel good about the upcoming checkride.

With that in mind, I've scheduled flights for Monday and Thursday after work (someone else has the Arrow on Tuesday and Wednesday). Monday's flight was a simulated commercial checkride. I guess it went semi-OK: stall series was good, and so were chandelles and lazy eights. We then climbed up to 5,800 feet (Seattle Class B started at 6,000 at the point where we were); on the way up, we went over slow flight as well as systems emergencies. The following emergency descent (steep spiral) went well also. So far so good.

Then came the dreaded emergency landing. For starters, I've been having a lot of trouble with this maneuver, probably because it's more difficult to judge distance between yourself and the ground, and also because without power, I tend to stay high on the approach and overshoot the field as a result. During this simulated checkride, I picked a field, and I thought I had it made... Unfortunately, the field that I picked had a slight problem, which I did not realize beforehand: there were trees at the approach end, which meant it was not only an emergency landing -- but an emergency landing with an obstacle! So, as usual, I stayed high -- too high. In real life, I probably would have made it into the field OK, by holding a slip almost all the way to touchdown. But, this was not real life -- it was practice -- and we have to recover by 500 feet. And in my instructor's judgment, I probably would not have made it. Yikes! That's a failure on the simulated checkride. :-(

We proceeded to do some eights on pylons, but there was too much low level traffic in our practice area... So we couldn't really do them, and there aren't too many other areas east of Paine Field to do eights on pylons at. Why? Well, strictly speaking, you have to be in a "sparsely populated" area to do this maneuver, because typically you will be less than 1,000 feet above ground level. For me (and for my CFI as well), finding this type of area within reasonable distance was tough, so we decided to head back to Paine to do some landings. The landings were OK -- we concentrated on shorts and softs; the dreaded power-off 180 would have to wait until next time.

Debrief was at Jack in the Box over some fast-food dinner. During the debrief itself, my CFI actually was far more encouraging than I had thought: he just said -- pick a field without obstacles (if you can), set up for a normal power-off 180, and execute the landing. I say: easier said than done, but I sure will try to do it on the checkride. :-)

So, the conclusion was: we'll continue working on these maneuvers next time! Since the weather for Friday looked good, I had better be ready by then! :-)