I Hate Tests

This has been the week of tests and it won't be getting better for another week. Monday, I had my stage 3 Part 141 check ride. I passed it without any major problems. Today, I took my FAA written exam (got a 90, yeah). Thursday is my end of course stage check, which is basically a dry run for next week's FAA oral exam and check ride. I don't really know the guy that well and maybe last time he was having a bad day. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and go with a good attitude.

I'm actually more nervous about Thursday's end of course stage check than the FAA exam. The guy I'm going with gave me a hard time last time and I expect more of the same. Hopefully, expecting the worst will bring out the best in me and it will be a piece of cake.

None of this would be possible without the support of my family, my wife first and foremost. She is putting up with a lot these days. It seems like I'm never home and with 3 young children, there is very little down time for her. There's nothing I can do right now but recognize and remember all that she is doing to help me get through this. I miss being able to spend more time with my kids, too. I hope they all know how much I love them.

Here's Your Sign

The other day I was having a conversation with a friend who is a captain at Southwest. He was just curious about my progress so far and if flight school was what I thought it would be.

Anyway, this other guy walks up and sort of buts into the conversation. OK fine. We can include him. A few minutes later he interrupts and asks me in all seriousness, "Do they teach you to take-off and land?"

Now, I'm not really a huge fan of Bill Engvall or anything but I couldn't resist. I waited for it...and then said, "Nope, we just start and stop from a hover." (insert "Here's your sign" for Engvall fans)

Now that's funny...I don't care who ya are...that's funny.

A Little R&R Goes A Long Way

It's been almost 60 days since I started school and It's been a lot of 80-90 hour weeks. The mother of friend of my daughter's invited her to go to the Pointe at South Mountain on the last day of school (May 25th). The Pointe has its own water park with a wave pool, lazy river and water slides. It's a great place to stay in the summer. For the cost of taking your family to a standard water park, you can stay at a very nice hotel and get all of the amenities they offer. I personally think it's a much better deal. Check it out for yourself: click here

Anyway, since our daughter was going to be there, we decided to reserve a room for ourselves. This week I finished all of my lessons. All I had left to do was take my stage 3 written exam. I asked my ground instructor if it would be okay to take it early on Thursday and he said yes. Since I was taking that test, I asked him if I could also take the end of course written exam following a successful stage 3 test. He also agreed to that. If I passed both of the tests, I would be finished with ground school and ready to take the FAA written exam.

I passed them both and I'm taking the FAA exam this Tuesday. After that, all I have to do is pass my stage 3 oral exam/check ride, end of course oral/check and my FAA check ride. I should have my private in 10 days or so! I don't have any ground school to attend until instrument which starts around the 10th of June. I should have few distractions while preparing for my FAA check ride.

We had a blast at the Pointe. All of the rooms there are great. Even the standard rooms are mini suites with a separate living room and bedroom. My wife and I enjoyed a great meal at Aunt Chiladas Mexican restaurant and a quiet evening without kids. It was nice. Today, we spent several hours with the girls at the water park. They have a two giant waterslides that are over 100 feet tall that basically go straight down. I am getting too old for that stuff. My butt hurts! My daughter had a great time with all of her little friends and a good time was had by all. If I had only used enough sunscreen...

Some humor...

A pilot goes to hell.

A pilot dies and goes to hell. As he is waiting for the devil, he notices three doors. The devil is nowhere in sight so he walks over to door number one and peeks inside. There he sees a lone pilot, sweating over emergency after emergency, non stop bells and horns. Quickly closing that door, he creeps to door number two. There he sees a pilot going over checklist after checklist after checklist. Slamming closed that door, he steps over to the 3rd and last door. Inside is a pilot, along with three flight attendants who are pouring coffee, serving dinners and cold compresses to the pilot. Smiling he slowly closes the door and goes over and sits down. The devil finally arrives and tells him to choose a door. He laughs and chooses door no. 3. "Sorry" says the devil. "Door no. 3 is flight attendant hell".

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At one point, we were all primary students, understanding little, questioning even less, but placing complete faith in our instructor. Many of the little things necessary to get through the first few lessons before solo were done by rote, without a great deal of understanding. Such as ensuring anyone on the ground near the airplane was aware the prop was about to spin.

One instructor was working with a pre-solo student. Instead of using the phrase, "Clear prop!" before turning the key, the instructor had simply taught his pupil to use the word "Clear!", presumably shouted loudly enough that those inside the FBO could hear. Of course, primary students rarely fly in poor weather.

One day, preflight complete, the student reached for the key, looked outside the airplane, and shouted, "Cloudy!"

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Flight instructor to a student : "If your flying knowledge were written on a matchbox, there would be an ample room left for the Old Testament and few chapters from the new".

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Instructor to student : If a bird had your flying ability - it would fly backwards.

Zero to Private License in less than 8 weeks!

Well, it's been 6 very busy weeks. Today I completed my final solo before my FAA check ride. I can't believe that I've gone from zero to 40 hours in just six weeks! Since the school I attend is FAA Part 141/142, I have to complete a final stage check ride and an end of course check ride prior to the FCC check.

With the excellent ground and flight instruction I've received so far, I am confident that I will have no problems passing the FAA oral exam and check ride.

In case anyone is interested an FAA Check includes about a 2 1/2 hour oral exam where the FAA examiner quizzes the prospective pilot on: aerodynamics, weight & balance, aircraft systems, weather, cross country flight planning, navigation, airspace and federal aviation regulations. If and/or when you pass the oral portion, you move on to the flight portion. The flight portion consists of: pre-flight procedures, aircraft component knowledge, airworthiness requirements, ground procedures, adherence to checklists, unusual and emergency flight procedures, radio communications, take offs and landings including: normal, short and soft field, flight maneuvers including: slow flight, power on and off stalls, steep turns, unusual attitude recovery, ground reference maneuvers, instrument flight, crew resource managment, positive exchange of flight controls, sound pilot in command judgement, pilotage, dead reckoning, VOR, NDB and GPS navigation, V-speeds.

I'm probably forgetting some now, but it's late and I'm really tired. I started the day at 6 a.m., planned and flew a 3 hour cross country, went to 3 hours of ground school and then drove 120 miles to get to my current job. No whining or sniveling. It will be worth it.

If all goes well, I should have my private by the end of the 1st week of June. I'm so excited.

Are ailerons, engines and avionics required to be airworthy?

Here in Phoenix, we have about 350 VFR, non-sigmet days a year. Today isn't one of them, so I'm trying to catch up on with blogging, which I am new to.

Flight school is expensive. Duh. How stupid must we be to pay nearly $100K to go earn $20K our firts year? Oh well, we all know how stupid we are and that's ok. At least we will be flying, right?

Because of Arizona's fabulous VFR weather, there are a ton of flight schools here. Why did I go to Florida and look? I wanted to see if there was anything better there.

Locally, I looked at five other flight schools before I chose mine. One of the bigger ones is named after a once glamorous, now-defunt airline. The admission rep took me on a tour of their sim facilities (nice) and flight line. On the way to the flight line, he shows me their maintenance hangar and brags about their 4 diamond rating. On the flight line, he takes me to a Seminole. It's missing the starboard engine. He takes me to another Seminole, the avionics are comletely gone. Let's go check out a Cadet. OK. The first one he takes me to is missing ailerons! I'm really impressed now.

He takes me back to the offices and hands me off to a CFI and tells him to take me on a discovery flight. I tell the CFI that I know what it's like to fly in a Cherokee and have already decided that I am going to flight school. Which one is the question. Get this...he actually tells me not to go to this school. They have contracts with China Airlines, Korean Airlines and KLM. Those contract students get the best planes, best dispatch slots etc. Thinking back to my recent trip to the school in FL that is owned by a bankrupt airline that whose name is the 4th letter of the Greek alphabet, I'm beginning to see a pattern here. Stay away from schools that have large contracts with foreign carriers. Plus the aircraft in various states of disrepair ON THE FLIGHTLINE kind of freaked me out too. Scratch another school off the list. This list is getting short quickly.

I had made an appointment to see a school called ATP. They seem to be pretty large. They have locations all over the country. Well, the one here in Phoenix is rather small. They do have nice aircraft, but it seemed a little disorganized. It reminded me more of an FBO flight school than a 141/142 school. I don't really feel negative about them, it just didn't seem right for me.

At the same airport, I checked out the Mesa Air/UND pilot develpment program. Great progam for young people in college. They have VERY nice Beech a/c and it is a solid program. The man in charge is a great guy. We chatted for almost an hour and he pointed me to a school I had never heard of before: ACME ACADEMY. They just happened to be at the same airport so I dropped in without an appointment.

The admissions/sales rep greeted me and gave me a tour of the school. They have two locations: The main campus in Florida and at Williams Gateway Airport in Mesa, AZ. The fleet is not even close to being new, but the maintenance crew works hard. I don't really care how old the aircraft is as long as it is well maintained. They also didn't have a problem letting me speak with several current and former students. Other schools were kinda sketchy about that. I did more research and found out that the owner, JOHN DOE is a pretty stand-up guy. They are growing, thriving and serious about maiking GOOD pilots.

My only problem was the age of the school. They've been in business less than 10 years. They had a fixed price program that includes: private, instrument, commercial, CME, CFI, CFI-II and a CL-65 type rating from CAE aerospace. I wanted that program, but I didn't want to give them all of the money up front. They were willing to work with me. I shook hands right there and commited to them.

I started there 4/1/06. I will update this very soon with the experience I've had so far. Hopefully, it will be interesting and helpful to somebody.

Free trip to FL: $1,000 - Finding out the school I want is right under my nose: Priceless

I spend a lot of time lookng at schools. There are several out there and, according to each one, THEY are the best. Hmmm. How to decide?

For me, it came down to finding the one that best fit MY needs, had a fleet of WELL MAINTAINED aircraft and was willing to work with me on MY terms.

We went to Florida to look at one of the largest schools. I won't name names here, but they are owned by a major bankrupt airline that is named after the fourth letter of the Greek alphabet. They hammered me hard and offered to fly my wife and I from Phoenix to Orlando to visit. I was getting close to decision time and decided to bite.

What the admission rep didn't tell me was that they were sending us non-rev tickets. They scheduled us to go out the week of spring break. I asked if that was a bad week and he told me "Not at all". I explained that arranging for child care while we were gone and time from work would cost me about $750, so this needed to be a productive trip. He assured me it would. LIAR.

So we get to PHX for our 9:30 flight to Atlanta. "Sorry Mr. *******, but all flights to ATL are oversold until the 5:20p flight. We can accomodate you then. You should be able to make the last connection to MCO." So my wife and I go see a movie and have lunch (we already had the nanny and decided to make lemonade from lemons.

Our flight to ATL leaves nearly 2 hours late. OK...by my calculations we should still make MCO tonight. We are almost there and end up circling over Rome, GA for 90 minutes. CRAP. We land at 12:30 a.m. Connection to MCO long gone. Must find hotel. Doubletree or Amerisuites for $175. I hate how airport hotels pray on weather delayed passengers. Bastards. We get to the Doubletree at 1:30 and have to be up at 5 to make the Orlando flight.

Since the school is in Sanford and we didn't get in the night before, we have to get a rental car to get there. $80 to Hertz...cha-ching. $10 in tolls to get to beautiful Sanford...cha-ching.

Well, we tour the school. Uh...ok. It looked just okay. I was wondering why they were herding us so carefully and decided to make a diversion. I found a few students and chatted them up a bit. They said if they had it to do all over (meaning the school hadn't already locked up all their money), they would choose another school. They said that foreign contract students get better planes, preferential dispatch, lack of CFI jobs and a bunch of other unfair benes. Soon enough, our counselor found my wife and I and cornered us into his office for the hard-core pitch...

"I just talked to the director. He and I both agree, we like you. You're the kind of student we want here at the 4th letter of the Greek alphabet Connection Academy. You're going to be a great pilot and we need to get you started ASAP. We understand that you've been looking at a lot of other schools, but will they guarantee you a job interview?"

Right in the middle of his boiler room pitch, a window pops up on his computer monitor playing a filthy porno from someplace that features underage Philippino beauties. He insists that there is a network virus and that he knew nothing about it. Hmmm...strange. He had just finished telling us about his wife who happens to be Philippino. Anyway, my wife started digging her nails into my leg which made it even more apparent that it was time to leave. But this isn't the end of the story. Read on.

$10 more in tolls back to MCO. We drop of the car at Hertz and get to the airport. On the phone with the bankrupt airline that is named after the 4th letter of the Greek alphabet, we find out that we'll have no problem getting to ATL. Excellent. We could use a break. However, all flights from ATL to PHX for the next 5 days are oversold by at least 20 seats. Houston, we have another problem.

We discover that our best option is to get to SLC the next day and try for there to get home. At worst, we're close enough there to rent a car and drive home.

Our choise is to either go to ATL or stay another night in MCO. Gee, that's a real tough decision. $175 at the airport Amerisuites in Atlanta or Orlando, where there are a host of better places at better rates.

We were lucky enough to get a suite at the MCO airport Hyatt for $142! I went back to Hertz and they gave me another car. Again, make lemonade from lemons. We had a nice dinner at Fleming's and enjoyed much needed R&R for the rest of the evening in our suite.

The next day we flew to SLC and, to make a very long story short, got the last two seats on the last flight back to PHX thanks to a couple who missed the connection.

Lesson learned. Costs: Nanny $500, hotels $400, rental car $80, misc. food and other expenses $200. Total: >$1200 for our free trip to a school I now KNOW I would never attend.

BEWARE of free trips to the school owned by the bankrupt airline named after the 4th letter of Greek alphabet. They just might cost a little more than you think!