BMG Aviation – KBMG

This has got to be one of the best FBO’s I’ve ever been to in my life. When I got to Texas I decided to build some single engine cross country time and fly a Cessna 172 to Michigan. During this process I had to make at stop in Bloomington, IN for gas. When I got there, things started to go downhill quickly. I came back to the plane after eating dinner (which I was able to get to because of the crew car BMG Aviation provided), I found that the airplane was eating more oil than I’m used to. Then I realized I’d have to race a thunderstorm up to Ann Arbor, THEN a fuel gauge stopped working and I threw in the towel for the night. These guys hooked me up with their crew car overnight and got me a discounted rate on a local hotel. I don’t know, nor do I care how much I paid for gas here; these guys bent over backwards to make sure I wasn’t sleeping in my plane that night.

Beech Aviation – KSAT

Great FBO that let me and Austin hang out during a storm and didn’t even charge us any ramp fee’s even though we only purchased about 10 gallons of gas. These guys seem to mainly be an FBO that caters to jets, but they treated us great!

Williams Aviation – KPVW

I’m pretty sure it was Williams Aviation that we stopped at. Whoever has their gas price on the side of their building, and I believe is on the north side of the field. Cheap gas here and real nice people and a cool crew car. Also has 24 hour self serve.

Today I took my CFI add on check ride, making it the last check ride I’ll do for a while. In the last week I’ve done my MEI add on and CFI add on. Not much to really report about either of these rides; I was over prepared and both rides went fine. We almost were not able to do the MEI ride due to low clouds, but we managed to find a hole south of the airport. The CFI ride went well except for us having real gusty conditions. This was a standard ride for this examiner, straight down the PTS with no tricks.

Now I’m finally a real CFI, having my CFI/CFII/MEI ratings. I’ve got a few more quick time building flights in the twin to finish up, but my training is done here. I can’t recommend Skymates enough to anyone. Arlington is one heck of a place to fly out of, and it has developed a lot of skills that were not used back home. Collision avoidance, dealing with having 8 other aircraft in the pattern at a non-towered field and density altitude issues were all tackled head on. The instructors at Skymates are top notch, and have more than prepared me to go out and be a professional flight instructor.

I’ve also got to plug what I think is the absolute best part about Skymates – the maintenance. The three mechanics that Skymates employs bend over backwards to make sure planes are ready to go for check rides. As an example, on my MEI ride we had the cylinder head temperature gauge break on us, and the mechanics had the problem fixed within ten minutes of me taxing back to the Skymates ramp. They went looking all over the field for a new temperature probe for the engine and worked their butts off to get me back in the air so I could complete my check ride. This is just one small example of what the mechanics here are willing to do to help the people that fly here.

If anyone that has read this blog has any questions about Skymates, feel free to e-mail me at john@johnherreshoff.com. I’m more than happy to plug this place as I feel that I have received absolutely wonderful training at a great price. If you are on the fence about where to train, come and check Skymates out and see if it’s for you!

I need to get the crap out of Texas! Skymates has rocked it, but I’m getting real sick of this state and need to get back to Michigan ASAP.

Got to the FSDO and we started with explaining how I would teach a student to do DME arc’s. I explained to him my DME trend method (turn 090 from the radial at the proper DME and correct in the DME for trend). He said that it worked, but that I should teach the turn 10 twist 10 method, as that is what is accepted by the FAA these days. He said that my students, “would get giged” if I taught them like that. Fair enough.

Then we started looking at the maintenance logs and the fun began! Turns out that on the last inspection cycle the mechanic did the inspection correctly, but made a small error in the sign off in the logbook. Long story short, he said that the next inspection was due when he had done the one that he just completed, instead of 50 hours in the future. It was obvious to the inspector what he did, but he had to come in to cross out the number and put in the proper one. It was a real simple error to make according to the inspector, and not a big deal. Thankfully the mechanic works next door and we got things squared away.

The flight was very straightforward. VOR/DME approach at Bridgeport, GPS 35 at Denton, ILS 16L at Alliance. 1.9 on the hobbs and done. He showed me some interesting ways to put students into unusual attitudes. At one point I thought he had done a wing over. On the last one he did it with the attitude indicator covered, making things a little interesting.

The ride was, when it comes down to it, real simple. It just happened to take forever because we had to wait for the mechanic to come over, then I had to wait out a thunderstorm to get back to Arlington. I actually ended up filing from Alliance to Arlington, which are about 23nm apart. Approach didn’t seem too happy about, but flight service said I was probably going to need to (so approach can suck it).

Finally back in Arlington relaxing for the first time this week. MEI ride on Monday, CFI on Wednesday.

I got there and the inspector asked me for all the documents that you need for a practical. You know, pilots license, medical, endorsements, written reports. WRITTEN REPORTS!? I managed to leave them on my bookshelf back at the crashpad. So I had to take an hour and drive back to Arlington from Alliance airport to get them. So after making a complete ass of myself, I got back to the airport and we started the oral.

Things were very straight forward. The examiner didn’t dig, he did a lot more probing than anything else. He would ask a few questions out of each subject area and if I answered quickly and knew what I was talking about, moved on. I like check rides like that. He said this ride normally takes a lot longer, but because I knew what was going on he wasn’t going to drill me. That was, until he got to systems knowledge of engines.

Turns out I don’t know jack about engines. Little did I know this guy is an A&P and an IA, so he grilled me pretty hard and let me dig myself a hole. Long story short, he said he wouldn’t bust me on this information because it was a CFII ride, but if this had been a CFI ride he would have to bust me, and gave me a heads up on what to study for my CFI ride with a DPE. Overall I learned a few things about Cessna’s during this process (the guy was a Cessna test pilot for 5 years) and had a good experience with him.

But the ride isn’t over yet, I still need to pass the flight part of the practical on Friday. I was going to do it today (Wednesday) but the president came into town and shut down all the airspace. MEI ride is hopefully on Monday or Tuesday, and CFI on Wednesday or Thursday.

w00t

We did the pre-flight planning and performance calculations for the airports we would be going to be at on Thursday. We decided there were a few airports we didn’t want to depart with full tanks, but we should be fine with all our departures. Then the fun starts.

We were going to get going Friday evening, but then the plane fell apart. We had the left electric fuel pump fail on us before we departed, so we were not going to be able to make our departure out. A mechanic checked it out and got it working so we would get out the next morning.

We got up early Saturday morning, kind of went overboard on the pre-flight with the problems that we had with the plane, but decided it was airworthy. We started up, got to the runup area and we notice the left alternator had failed. We taixed back, told the mechanic and he said he didn’t think it had failed, but it was just not paired up well with the other alternator. He did some adjusting, and sure enough the left alternator came back up online and didn’t give us any problems for the rest of the trip. In fact the plane performed very well, giving us no problems at all.

We got to about ABQ and called flight watch to see if we were going to have any problems getting over to St.John’s Arizona. When we had left there were no storms that were on the route that would stop us. There were a few isolated cells that didn’t look like they would prove to be any problem. By the time we got to ABQ about 5 hours later the situation had changed completely. We checked the weather, but the situation had became much worse than what any of the briefers thought it would.

We made a stop at Double Eagle in ABQ to check the weather ourselves and the southwest was a disaster area. Starting at about ABQ and going to what looked like California was filled with thunderstorms everywhere, lots more than the one or two isolated small cells that were there earlier. I called a briefer to see what was up, and he said that moisture from Hurricane Emily ended up getting thrown into the southwest, and with the heat that is in that area it turned the entire region into the breeding grounds for thunderstorms. This happened yesterday between the time we left and the time we got to ABQ because the briefer that we talked to when we left Arlington told us that the area was espically dry and that we shouldn’t have a problem making to Phoenix. So much for forcasts.

When we checked the weather in Arlington it looked like we could get to PHX without much of a problem but the situation changed en route. The moral of this story? Have a plan A, plan B and a place C. Our first “go” decision was at Arlington in the morning when it looked like we could complete the flight. That decision has to be re-evaluated throughout the flight to make sure that it is still the best thing to do. When we got to ABQ, it looked like the situation had changed and that we were working with old information that needed to be updated. That meant that we needed to stop, get out of the plane and check the weather to see what had happened while en route. At this point we revaluated the situation and decided that it was not a smart idea to continue the flight, even though earlier in the morning everything had looked good and we launched. Our planning looked something like this:

Plan A - Try to make to PHX

Plan B - If we can not make it to PHX, stop somewhere, check the weather and turn around, there is NO reason to continue a flight into conditions that your aircraft can’t handle just because you were able to make that initial “go” decision. Plan A needs to constantly revised to make sure that it is still a viable option.

Plan C - Get a hotel where we stop (happened to be ABQ) and wait out the weather. We could have gotten out early the next morning before any lifting activity had started.

I know this is old news to a lot of people, but when you’re just starting into the cross country phase of learning how to fly it can be hard to not focus on the goal and realize that sometimes you can not complete a flight as planned, even when things looked fine when you started. What you need to remember is that you need to have multiple ways out of any situation you get yourself into while flying, and that the process of continuing a flight is a constant re-evaluation of whether it is prudent or possible to continue the flight.

The next day we did a flight up to Oklahoma City, same thing. We canceled today after doing the runup and finding that the suction pump wasn’t working. The mechanic had told us before that it was going, not dead yet, but going. I think we just sent it to the grave today as it wasn’t producing anything more than 4.6 on a Seminole (lower limit is 4.8).

Flying under the hood from the right seat means that you need to turn your head to the left and look down. Try it sometime, then make a lot of turns (don’t do this without a safety pilot/instructor with you!), your head will spin. The worst I think was steep turns to the right because all I saw was a bunch of blue out the left side of the aircraft from under the hood while I was in the turn. I might as well have been in a 90 degree bank. After all this we shot the GPS runway 34 approach, then the VOR 34 approach to Arlington and finished with a full stop. It was becoming more natural to fly from the right seat by the end of the flight, and it should get easier as things progress.

More lesson plans this weekend, and hopefully some time building with Austin in the Seminole. We were supposed to fly this afternoon but Dallas got hit by a bunch of thunderstorms so we hung out at the crashpad instead.

In other news, I have to throw up a plug for a local Detroit back called Arizing. When I was still playing in metal bands back in the day, I played a lot of shows with the singer of this band. I’ve always dug what his bands are throwing down, and if you’re into music go and check out their new demo “Terror” and if you like what you hear buy their CD!

Check out Terror, the brand new mp3 from Arizing!

Listen now at myspace.com/arizing!

Let us know what you think by leaving a comment!