Put One Step In front Of The Other...........

I finally did it! I got my sign off from my ground school instructor Thursday night after class. So what did I do? I made an appointment on Friday to go take my written test. I called the Dallas School of Aeronautics and asked if they had an opening on Saturday afternoon. Their response was an astounding no but she did ask me if I could take it that day. I have been saying that I was ready to take the test for the last 2 or 3 weeks so I just said yes. An hour later, I jumped in the car, drove to Addison and took the test. I probably should have taken my time a little more because I only scored an 80. I missed 11 questions out of 60 (actually 81.666666 but who's counting?) so I know I could have done better. It probably didn't help that I finished in under an hour (you are given 2 1/2 hours to finish).

I am very happy that this hurdle is over. The problem is that when I finally get to the check ride part, the examiner will look at the results and grill me on them for the oral part of the check ride. I won't be able to put up the books just yet. I have to stick to working on the parts that I had problems with until I get my certificate.

Thanks to Dick, Hank and all of my fellow classmates who did a fine job every Tuesday and Thursday evening for the last couple of months. It has been a great journey.

Now on to the next phase.

The End Is Near

As we get closer to finishing our ground school class, I have come to the realization that I have been ready to take my test for about 2 weeks now. So this Thursday night will be our last night and some of the other students have commented that they want to do a pre-flight and and plan a cross country. It's funny because several of the people in the class haven't even started flying yet. I plan to go take the test within the next week and a half, while I'm home. I have taken all of the sample tests we got with our training package but to be safe, I also signed up for 5 more practice tests online. You can go to www.prepware.com and sign up for 5 test at a time for about $15.00.

The good and the bad of it are that I'm ready to take this test. I never thought I would be able to do this with my schedule.

Here's to good study habits.

Groundschool - Aircraft Performance

We got into all kinds of gooey math problems last night. It was really a lot of fun. We had an interesting time calculating weight and balance problems. It woke up brain cells that were hibernating through the difficult translation of METAR, TAF, PIREPS and............. I can't go on anymore.

Some of the problems are pretty straight forward but every now and then they would sneak in a trick answer or two. If you read carefully (really read the whole question), then it is usually easy to figure it out. My problem is that I would get in a hurry and think I knew everything but ended up doing something wrong. I'm learning.

There will be no more flying for a while. I have to go back out of town next week and I'll be too busy to get any flying done for about 3 weeks. At least I got a lot more done than I expected this week.

Ground School - Weather Services

This one is even harder than just pure weather. The average person may see their local weather guy give the weather but did you ever wonder where he gets it? There are several places a pilot can go to get weather. The FAA wants you to get your flight briefing from them. There are 3 different kinds of briefings.

First you have a standard briefing. It covers everything you should want to know about weather. Next is an abbreviated briefing that is used to update an earlier briefing. Finally, there is an outlook briefing. This is used when your departure time will be more than 6 hours in the future.

The things contained in a weather briefing are pretty cryptic unless you know how to interpret it. It's also acronym soup (in case you are hungry for this kind of thing). There are METARs, TAFs, PIREPS, ASOS, AWOS, AIRMETS, SIGMETS, DUATS, DUAT, Winds Aloft, TWEB, HIWAS, Weather depiction charts, Radar summaries and last but not least Low-level Significant Weather Prognostic Charts. That's enough to tongue tie the best auctioneer.

As a side note, I decided to take a practice test. Since I'm only half way through, I thought it would be dismal but was pleasantly surprised when I scored about 78%. To score 80% or better, you can't miss more that 12 questions out of 60. I missed 13. I'll go over the ones I missed and go back and work on those sections (and even the ones we haven't covered).

The Hard Part About Ground School Is...........

We finally got to the part I knew I was going to dread, weather. What makes it so hard is the fact the even the professionals rarely get it right. There are a lot of areas that the FAA covers in the test and it is a lot to digest. They cover everything from types of clouds to inversion layers, temperature, dew point, wind shear and even lenticular clouds (they are cool to see but stay far away). Most of the other concepts of flight make a lot of sense but this one is a little tougher to comprehend.

Next week we start on weather services. If you think weather is tough, try to get an accurate weather briefing. Where do you go? Who do you call (don't call your local TV weatherman at home and ask him for a briefing)?

I haven't studied this hard in a long time. I actually am having a lot of fun doing this. It gives me something different to do on Tuesdays and Thursdays without staying out too late and not in a smoky bar somewhere (that is for Friday nights).

Ground School Week 2

I didn't get a chance to write about ground school last week. I was a very late starter and didn't have my study material until yesterday. I had a King Schools study course but it required me to go back to Monarch Aviation all of the time and take tests there before I could advance through their course. The material was great but the production quality was less than desirable. It looked like it was shot on VHS. I did like the ability to take tests at the end of each section but the ASA course I'm taking now does the same but looks a lot better. I really liked the quality of the Sporty's stuff too.

I found out that in my first class, they went over a lot of material that I didn't know so I really paid attention. My second night was informative (I still didn't have my material) but it did cover material I already knew very well. I joined this class to try and get something more out of it than just what was in the study material. I can study this material on my own and probably ace the test. I wanted some interaction with other potential pilots and to see how I stacked up against them. I do enjoy talking to most everyone but I made the mistake of trying to catch up to where the class is and surpassing it. I did it all in one night. I ended up going 3 sections ahead of where we are. What we are doing right now (Procedures and Airport Ops), I have already covered in my old material. I am caught up until we get to weather, even though I think I need to do the weather all over again because it is really hard. There is a large amount to cover in weather and it is always changing.

Tonight will be a short post as I need some sleep. I'm too worn out from work today and helping Anna get over being sick. Here is to Thursday.