Week 6

Well, it is about time I get to work on the English section again.... sorry about that!

On monday I did my first cross-country flight with my instructor. It looked like a bad start when there was no aircraft available, but we solved this in time and had a good flight to Okeechobee and Pahokee. In the afternoon we had the first Student Council meeting, I think it was a good one. It is a new thing here so some people will have to get used to it, but we'll get there. Now it is my task to sort out the minutes and distribute them, I'll do some thinking on that.

The second group from our class arrived tonight, they had a good fllight but will be sleeping off the jetlag first.

On Tuesday I had two flights planned, both to the practice area. I need ceilings of at least 2500 feet for this so when they forecasted 800 foot ceilings it looked bleak. In the end I canceled both. That night me and a few others had dinner at the Tiki restaurant in Fort Pierce, still good food there!

On Wednesday I tried again to get my two flights done, but although the forecast looked reasonable, I took off and found low clouds at 1200 foot. Because of that I stayed in the circuit and worked on my landings. I canceled the second flight for the same low ceilings and rescheduled the flight for tomorrow morning.

And on Thursday morning there was fog! I moved the flight to 9:00 and at that time I could see the other end of the airport again. The flight went very well, although I still need to work on those steep turns...

The second flight was a dual flight with my instructor, on this flight I planned to go to Sebring, but we didn't go there as we had other things to do. One hour of the flight was an introduction to IFR flying, where you only get to look at your instruments. Nice experience but I guess that I'm not ready for full IFR flight yet! When I got back I met Barber at Operations, she had also just gotten back from her flight, and we managed to get a free dinner courtesy of the local Student Association meeting.

The Friday saw me going to the practice area again for flight S23. Spent an hour and a half there (I really know my way around there by now!) and practiced all my steep turns and stalls. The clouds were lower than expected, but they were not a problem fortunately. When I went back to Fort Pierce I got asked to stay outside the controlled airspace, but after a few minutes of 'turns around a point' I got myself a place in the que. Doing any touch and gos is no option when it is this busy but I did get a go around when some guy decided that he would cut in front of me on final. I spent the rest of the day preparing for tomorrow's flight. The instructor I will be flying with is a bit of an 'aquired taste' and has a tendency to make it really difficult to pass a checkflight. I just want to make sure that I know the answers that he is looking for.

I wanted to be at operations at 6:00 on the Saturday morning but the building is still solidly closed by that time! (Even though they do open at 5:30 on weekdays, they don't do that during the weekend) This meant a rush to get my paperwork done, but I managed it (just) in time. Joeri also had his check today with the same instructor and as requested was also present at 6:00. He had expected some time while I was flying to complete his paperwork though, and our instructor had really expected him to come along on my flight! In the end he let him stay on the ground to organise the paperwork, and we left for the airplane. First I did two touch and gos which went pretty well. Then we flew a small part of the route I planned and stayed in the practice area to look at the maneuvres.

Even though he was quit during the flight it is still disconcerting to see your instructor making lots of notes! And to top that, when I finished closing up the airplane and got back to Operations I heard quite a clash of opinions between Mark Lazarus, my own instructor and my check instructor going on! Two minutes later though my own instructor appeared with a grin on his face and congratulated me on passing my check! Joeri's flight was next so I wouldn't know what the row was about until he came back.

In the end it wasn't that bad, I didn't get perfect grades, but I passed without any problems, just a few points I needed to keep an eye on.

The Mustang on the picture was parked at the airport this afternoon, worth a picture in my opinion.

I started out on Sunday with catching up on my sleep, but in the afternoon Koen came over to ask whether anybody would give him a hand as Bart had just called that he was stuck in Melbourne, could we pick him up? So we arranged a rental car, drove to Melbourne and picked up Bart and his father and uncle who came over for a couple of days. The car they had been driving (which belongs to my housemates) had broken down, and they had been waiting for hours for us to pick them up! It gave me something to do, I don't mind driving around a bit.

That allmost concluded the week, also I arranged a flight for tomorrow and did some shopping with Rick and Joeri . Tomorrow I will fly the full route that I had planned for Saturday (saves me planning a new flight).

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