Things Are Getting Busy Around Here

Whew! This has been one of the busiest weeks I can recall. Things are starting to get interesting at school. I'm finally done in the simulators and have spent the last three days practicing instrument approaches. For anyone getting ready to pursue and instrument rating, be ready for LONG flights.

I can understand why it takes many people such a long time to earn an instrument rating. Here in Arizona, we're blessed and cursed at the same time with our weather. It's damn hot, but you can count on flying weather almost every day. In addition, there are a dozen or so airports within a reasonable distance of KIWA with instrument approaches. There's a lot of variety.

In one 4 hour flight last night, we were able to shoot the GPS RWY23 for Casa Grande, the NDB RWY4L at Chandler, the VOR/DME RWY5 for Coolidge, the ILS RWY23 for Casa Grande, the VOR 30C and the ILS 30C for Gateway. We also did the published miss for Gateway, Casa Grande and practiced several different holds.

Doing approaches at night is a real challenge for a beginner like me. It's very difficult on the eyes to keep changing the ambient light in order to read charts. Plus, the crap weasel Cadets we use have very poor dash lighting, which doesn't help either. One nice thing about night flying, there are hardly any other aircraft out training, so there is a LOT less holding.

Oh, and it was 40C at 8:00 when we took off and still 36C when we landed at midnight. That's life when you live in Phoenix, which I lovingly refer to as "The Surface of the Sun". We were lucky to get 300FPM climb at Vy. It's times like this that make me wish we had 180HP 172's. We'd at least get 600FPM at Vy, more elbow room and much better ventilation. Oh well...wish in one hand and...you know the rest.

I was supposed to fly this morning and do it all over again except with partial panel (lots of fun). The aircraft had a dead battery, putting us off until tomorrow morning. If all goes well tomorrow and I don't bust any altitudes, it will finally be time for the stage 2 check ride required by CFR Part 141.

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It's Monsoon season here in Arizona and that means high dew point, high temperatures and massive thunderstorms. It was kind of funny on Thursday. We were just finishing up ground school and happened to be talking about weather. When we pulled up the Convective Sigmet (CB) chart, there was a cell headed directly to KIWA with tops at 59,000 feet. About an hour later, it hit brining winds in excess of 85 miles per hour. An ATP Piper Seminole wasn't properly tied down, was blown upside down and on top of another ATP 172SP. Both planes were totaled. Luckily, the person struggling to tie down the Seminole wasn't injured. A friend got some great photos. As soon as I have them, I'll post them.