The quest has officially come to an end! I’m a private pilot! I did my check ride this afternoon, and it was pretty good all around! The oral exam was about 1.5-2 hours (I lost track of time), and I logged 1.1 hours of flight time. I have my temporary license and am ready to…

Made it to 40! Showed up early today for my checkride and had to get .7 more hours. Went up in 5915A and got my .7 hours. Was unsure if it was going to start this AM, battery seemed a little sluggish. This was confirmed when I tried to start it after fueling it. NOPE.…

ALMOST THERE! So much so that I’m scheduled to do my checkride TOMORROW! WOH! So I did my oral prep, and now have my study materials to do this thing tomorrow. Wish me luck!

Checked out on the Sport Star! Now all I need is to do the checkride. Today was pretty light, just flew up to Denton and hung around that airport for a while. I also finished my instrument requirements, so that is now out of the way. We did a little porpoise like maneuver that put…

Just got back at my desk from a quick trip out to San Francisco and I realized, I FORGOT to tell you about my flight yesterday AM! I took out the same plane I did my night flight in (N80508) and went over to Alliance to do more touch & gos. Why do we continue…

Getting close now! I just finished my night cross country! It was AWESOME! I think navigating at night is actually easier if you are familiar with landmarks or study the map. I did have the GPS backing me up (I would not have done it solo if I didn’t), but I saw the destination airport…

More hood work today! Not as exciting as yesterday, but we did fly direct to the Bowie VOR so I could practice flying on a radial and see the gauge flip from TO to FROM over the top. I could also see it from the air (and saw it before my instructor did, but only…

Today was hood work. What is hood work? It’s instrument only flying. You do that in the 172 by putting on Foggles, which block your view outside. It was very weird flying that way, but it got REALLY weird was when we practiced something called unusual attitudes. This is essentially prep work for my checkride…

Made up for yesterday’s puny .4 hours today with 1.6! I just spent the time over at Alliance. Logged 15 landings!!! Really starting to get the feel and finesse of those. I am sure I will still have the occasional carrier landing, but hoping that I’m getting the hang of just having the tires kiss…

.4 hours? That’s it? Yeah… more weather. That same low level trough that has been sitting over Oklahoma has been kicking up storms around here for the latter part of the week. Before I left, everything was south and west, and moving to the north west. Then when I got there, a cell popped up…

Today was NIGHT FLIGHT! Nothing solo at night yet, but I’m going to do a solo night flight on Monday. Cross country from AFW to Sherman or Grayson County or something. I have all weekend to plan. We took off around 8:30 and headed over to Propwash. NOT TO LAND! We decided to use their…

The weather finally cleared, and I headed to the field today. This flight had a couple of new experiences for me. For one, I started using a different VFR navigation plan worksheet. Once I figured out that my mac was printing the duplexed part upside down (and I corrected that), it started making much more…

Went to go fly this AM and I was greeted with a pretty lightning show out towards my airfield. Wait, lightning? That’s bad, right? Yeah. Not so good. So instead of being up in the air right now, I’m back at the house. I’m going to be heads down all day to get 100% caught…

Did my second solo cross country today! Just a quick trip out to Possum Kingdom (F35), an airport I am becoming as familiar with as I am with Alliance or Northwest Regional. There was (and still is right now) a large area of convection north and west of my flight path, but it stayed up…