Category: Blog

I have finished my Cadet written, and my pre-solo written.

The Cadet written is basically a test on aircraft procedures and checklists. This is a FlightSafety test, and was pretty long.

The pre-solo written was way longer than the original one I took when I first solo'ed. It had a lot of extra questions on it, and seemed a little excessive for a pre-solo test. Not a big deal I guess, but just weird they would require so much for it.

Tomorrow is lesson 8, and I think lesson 10 is my stage check for solo.

I had an early morning flight today, that went so perfectly.

I nailed steep turns perfectly. Stalls, slow flight, ground ref. All the maneuvers just fell together for me today.

My instructor actually used the words "If this was your checkride, you would have a rating today."

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm super psyched. I'm getting really comfortable talking with the tower. I was nervous about it at first, and I'm getting back into it again. Things are really coming together.

By next week I should be ready to solo, and I'm aiming to have my Private rating done before Thanksgiving!

After a day in Orlando with my parents, and some quality time at Disney World, I'm getting started with regular flights.

I met my new instructor today, Jeff. Nice guy, very smart, and a good teacher.

Today was lesson 3 for me, we did some slow flight- steep turns, and power on/power off stalls. Getting the procedure down is harder than the actual maneuver for me. I'm still unfamiliar with the checklists and how to set up the maneuvers.

The only thing I didn't like about my lesson today- was he took the controls from me on final once. There was a lot of traffic in the pattern, and we had to shorten our base to final approach. Instead of just letting me lose altitude quickly, which I could have done, he took the controls and brought us down to glide slope. I didn't like that, I'm perfectly capable of handling that situation.

No big deal, if it happens again, I will mention it.

Other than that it was a great flight, and I'm really getting the hang of the plane.

I have passed my ground school final with a score of 90%.

I have just passed my FAA Private written test with a score of 85%.

I feel I could have done better on the written, but I’m still happy with my score.

I have some studying to do. My final for Private ground school is tomorrow at 9am, and the following day at 9am is my FAA written test.

Cya in a few days, I’ll let you know!