Student Pilot Journal Podcast #18

Check Ride Prep

A little late, but here is the footage for the short and soft field takeoffs and landings. I also included another day in here due to the fact that my camera continued to fall throughout the short/soft video. The last half of the podcast documents our return to basic maneuvers such as power on and power off stalls and emergency procedures. As of this journal entry things are progressing as planned. We are having some difficulty scheduling an FAA examiner, though. The DPE that the club primarily uses is having a medical issue that is under review from the FAA. Our other option is an airline pilot from Merritt Island. Unfortunately due to the current Delta/Northwest merger, he has been out of reach...not sure what the deal is with that. -Enjoy

Greg

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Student Pilot Journal Podcast #17

This episode documents my long cross country from Valkaria (X59) to Pahokee (PHK) to Vero Beach (VRB) and back to Valkaria. Aside from a couple more hours of hood work, this flight marks the completion of Part 61 requirements for the private pilot certificate. To date I have logged just over 40 hours and move on to my next phase of check ride prep. Yesterday we brushed up on short and soft field landings and I will release the video footage for that later in the week. For this episode I left in a lot of radio work, since that covers most of the CC. Towards the end of the video we have some humerous audio from Miami approach which proved to be entertaining for my wife and I when we watched the orginal footage. Maybe it is one of those "you had to be there" moments but I enjoyed it. Enjoy.

-Greg

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FAA Private Pilot Written Exam.....Passed!!!

I took my private pilot written exam this morning and passed with a 92%. I can't help but be bummed that I did not score higher, but I am trying to look past it and realize that I am through with the written and can focus on check ride prep. Weather and skill level permitting, I should be able to take my checkride this month. I picked up a copy of the PTS (Practical Test Standards) and oral exam guide and we will take the PTS along with us when we fly to go over each manuever and mark them as pass/fail to get ready for the test. I need to squeeze in a couple hours of instrument but we can do that during prep. I am so excited and of course nervous, but will be glad when I can pass the checkride. Thanks for all of the emails and feel free to contact me anytime at greg@studentpilotjournal.com.

Thanks,

Greg

Student Pilot Journal Podcast #16

First Solo Cross Country!

This episode of the Student Pilot Journal documents my first successful solo cross country from Valkaria (X59) to Pahokee (PHK). Notice that I said successful. I had previously tried to accomplish it but low ceilings caused me to play it safe and turn around about 15 miles out. Better safe than sorry. I chose to get flight following for the entire CC. I have to say that flight following makes things so much easier. It never hurts to have another set of eyes on your route. This episode only shows the trip to PHK. I forgot to plug the audio cable into the camera when I changed tapes at Pahokee so the trip back was noisy. It was probably a good thing because I started back trying to hook up with Melbourne's VOR at the North side of the lake and soon discovered how flaky the VOR is. I can only imagine what my ground track looked like as I was trying to intercept it. All in all things went very well aside from my Pahokee landing which was way off centerline due to slacking on the sideslip over the runway. Crosswinds are commonplace at Pahokee airport.

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Steve Tupper From Airpseed Podcast Visit

Throughout my flight training and this podcast I have been talking back and forth with Steve Tupper from The Airspeed Podcast. Early on I learned what a huge aerospace junkie he was. I never claim to know too much about it myself....hey...I just work there. IT guys can be fairly involved in their work, you know. Forget everything else. :-) Early in the year he had made mention of a planned trip to Kennedy Space Center which is literally just down the street from my office so I offered him a tour of our satellite processing facility at Astrotech. Last week we were able to meet and it was a pleasure to have him. Of course we talked a good bit about flying and then proceeded with the tour. I am sure most of you reading this are well aware of Steve and his podcast, but if you are not please check it out here. He is just as nice in person as he is in the podcast. I hope to meet up with him again in the future. It truly is amazing how you can meet people through the podcasting medium.

Student Pilot Journal Podcast #15

Dual Cross Country

This is the video for the dual cross country from Melbourne to Okeechobee. See the blog post from Feb. 15 for details on the flight.

-Greg

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Student Pilot Journal Podcast #14

Night Flying

This was my first introduction to a number of things. Night flying, a Cessna 172, right hand traffic pattern at an unfamiliar airport, and takeoff from a towered airport. The video quality is extremely dark, so in an attempt to make things somewhat better I increased the resolution of the video to 640x480 so you might make out some objects so this is the reason for the larger download. It is still pretty dark, though. There is some good audio for those interested in what is different with night flying.

-Greg

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