Passion for flying

My progress on my commercial license is on hold for the time being. I am right where I need to be concerning flight time; just about 10 hours shy of the minimum 250 hours required. This leaves me just enough time to really hit the commercial maneuvers hard and hopefully take my flight right at or very close to 250 hours. Between weather, the holidays and various family commitments I have decided the best thing may be to wait until after the first of the year and then rededicate myself to the task. In the meantime I am hitting the books hard and preparing for my written exam.

Even though I am not flying I still think about flying. Today I got to thinking about what got each of us into flying in the first place. Can you pinpoint a specific event or was it always a lifelong passion? I tend to believe each of us was born with the passion to fly. I know that everyone, especially as children are fascinated with and love airplanes, but what makes some of us go beyond just looking up at an overflying airplanes and go into insurmountable debt to get our rating just so we can work at or near the poverty level for years until building enough time to apply with the big airlines? I know there are a few out there who see it just as a job and a means to pay the bills but I think those types are in the minority.

So what follows is my story. If you would like to share yours or comment on this topic please leave a comment…..

Growing up, my dad worked overseas and traveled a lot. We were either picking him up or dropping him off at the airport. Looking back I felt like I grew up at Stapleton International Airport (the precursor to Denver International). I was destined to either grow up hating airplanes or loving them. Luckily for me it would be the latter. I can still remember the hours spent waiting for my dad, playing with my toy airplanes and watching those magnificent flying machines outside. I wanted so bad to be a pilot and work around airplanes all the time. I even thought the baggage handlers were cool because they were out there right next to the planes and they could even touch them.

My pilot dreams were dashed early. In 5^th grade, my mom got a call from my teacher who suggested that I get an eye exam. Seems that I was squinting a lot and he noticed that I had difficulty reading the blackboard. A few weeks later I was the proud owner of eyeglasses and I now had a lifetime of inconvenience to look forward to. At that time things like LASIK or PRK were just a dream. Heck I don’t even remember if they had contacts when I got that first pair of glasses. A visit from the Air Force Academy during 7^th grade dashed my dreams for good when I was told that I could not be an Air Force pilot due to my vision. My disappointment blinded me from the fact that getting a degree from the Academy would have been a great accomplishment even without becoming a pilot.

One day during my senior year of high school a friend of mine told me he was taking flying lessons at the local airport. I visited them and learned that they offered discovery flights for $30. I quickly signed up and was hooked after that short flight. My instructor was much kinder towards my dreams than the Air Force Academy recruiter. Instead of snuffing out my dreams like a burning cigarette he told me that I could fly for the airlines even with glasses. My new master plan was to get my license, build time utilizing Air Force flying clubs and then get out and fly for the airlines.

Mom and Dad paid for the flying lessons as a graduation present. The only catch was that I had to have my license by July since I was scheduled to leave for Air Force basic training on July 11th, 1991. That left just over 3 months to get my private pilot license. When I asked if it could be done my instructor told me that it was possible but I would have to be totally committed to the idea and fly as often as I could.

Thanks to some excellent advice from my older sister I had most of my high school requirements met by the end of my junior year. This meant that I only had to go to class in the morning of my senior year. This gave me plenty to time to fly and I did at least 3 times a week. I took that discovery flight on March 31^st 1991 and my private pilot check ride on July 9^th 1991. My sister was my first passenger on the 10^th and I left for Basic Training on the 11^th. 100 days and 53.5 flight hours from that discovery flight I was a licensed pilot.

What about that master plan? I’m still working on it; I just took a short detour for an Air Force career. My four years in the Air Force has turned into 16 and still counting.

Change of perspective

I was using the simulator at my flight school the other day and overheard an FAA examiner administering an oral exam to a perspective instrument pilot. Along with questions for the applicant he would inter-mix stories and examples from his numerous years of flying with the airlines. While listening to this I thought that here is a guy who I would like to sit down and have a beer with. Imagine the stories that he has to tell. Just a good lesson in how I feel we, as a society, do not take advantage of those who have gone before us. It is equally important for those of us who are experienced to share these stories before the time comes when you cannot share them. This is one place where I think the internet has really been a blessing to us. It is one of the reasons that I thoroughly enjoy the blog of Captain Rand Peck. Captain Peck currently flies for a major US airline and his blog is well written, entertaining, and contains fabulous photographs. In fact his blog was my inspiration to start my own. I encourage you to check out his blog at http://randsaviationphotos.blogspot.com/

Now let’s return to my original point of this story. It is amazing how quickly your perspective can change when you sit down and think about or analyze a situation. This particular examiner has an intimidating reputation and some may say he administers tougher exams than some of the other examiners my school uses. For these reasons I intentionally scheduled my exam with a different examiner. Here it is just a little over a year later and instead of avoiding him I am wishing I could sit down and have a beer with the guy.

My outlook on him changed when I began to think about my future life as a professional pilot. If I am going to fly for the airlines I will have to take check rides at least annually and they may be with some real tough instructors. I should get used to intimidating examiners now while I can still afford to learn from mistakes. You’re not always able to pick and choose your situations in life and I was doing myself a disservice by scheduling around the so called “tough” examiner. That all said I fully intend to schedule my commercial check ride with Captain Carpenter and I hope he has plenty of opportunities to share his pearls of wisdom with me during the exam.

Speaking of the simulator, my perspective on that has also recently changed. During my instrument training I hated the simulator and I had no problem spending the extra money to fly the actual airplane instead. Probably that is the reason my instrument rating seemed to cost more than originally estimated. I decided that I needed to embrace the simulator because again as an airline pilot most of your training is done on a simulator. Unlike taking a Cessna 172 up to practice engine out procedures you can’t very well take a Boeing 757 loaded with passengers up and shut down one of the engines for training purposes. Also, most airlines have a multiple stage interview process. You have an interview with the Human resource people, and then you have a session in the simulator to judge your flying ability and skills. Depending on the airline or the company the simulator I do this in may be exactly like the one at my school. I need to get used to it now while I can still afford to make mistakes in it.

With that in mind and because when I arrived at the airport this morning the wind gusts exceeded the limits of the school I booked a simulator session with my instructor. I was coming due on my six month instrument currency requirement anyways and the beauty of instrument currency is that you can accomplish it all in the simulator if you want. The instrument rating allows you to fly when you do not have the ability to see outside references such as the horizon. Clouds, fog, snow, and rain can all create a situation where you need to fly even though you cannot necessarily see outside. The FAA requires that at a minimum you fly at least six instrument approaches and you demonstrate the ability to navigate to a destination relying solely on your instruments, and that you practice holding over a navigation fix or other predetermined point. This all has to be accomplished every six months. If you fail to maintain this currency you cannot file an instrument flight plan and if you let it go over a year you have to accomplish an Instrument Proficiency Check which basically amounts to doing your instrument check ride over again.

For a pilot like me who does not fly into busy airports my holding skills deteriorate the fastest. I planned to work on those solely today and then planned to do another simulator session to knock out the approaches. Holding in its basic form is flying circles over a point. You typically fly a timed pattern which for my aircraft size amounts to flying one direction for one minute, turning to the other direction and flying to the fix and the turning around again and repeating until released by air traffic control.

The difficult part is determining how to enter the holding pattern. Your holding pattern is based on airspace that ATC has protected for you and means that you and only you have that particular area of airspace all to yourself. It is very important to understand how much protected airspace you have because at a busy airport there may be eight or nine airliners all flying the same hold over the same fix just at different altitudes. You must stay in the area ATC expects you to stay in because there may be an aircraft above and below you. There are three different ways to enter a holding pattern and depending on what side of the fix is the protected airspace and the direction from which you are approaching the fix determines the entry. The three entries are direct, parallel and tear drop. Direct is the easiest but really all three are no problem once you understand them.

For an hour and half I practiced each type of entry and flew at least 2 complete circuits in the hold. The other nice feature of the simulator is the ability to pause it if you have a question. That is not a luxury in the airplane since you very well can’t pull off to the side of the sky.

My next session I will get to do some approaches which are far more fun than holding, and unlike before I am looking forward to it.