I’m a pielott..pylot..pilote... I fly planes.

It's official, I'm a PILOT! Yesterday, March 1st, roughly 4 months to the day after I started taking flying lessons, I passed my oral and practical exam. Since the very beginning I had hoped to do it in that amount of time and within 50-60 hours of training. I actually flew 42 hours before going for my check ride, which I was really surprised to have done.

Yesterday, Melissa and I flew up to Anderson, S.C. to do the exam with her favorite Designated Flight Examiner, Randy Haralson. He was exactly the type person she described; funny, sarcastic, fair and a general smart ass like us. I felt comfortable talking with him, so I knew that things would be OK. We started with the oral exam at the FBO in their conference room, and 1.5 hours later we were done. The oral exam is basically a continuation of the written exam, but the questions are asked by the DFE. I have continued to study for it since passing the written exam about a month ago. I was more worried about the oral exam than I was the practical. It was tough! But again, Randy was fair and I learned a few more things and will be a better informed pilot because of it.

Next was the practical exam and it went as follows (I'm writing this down now before I forget for future reference): Started off with a soft field takeoff, flew my flight plan to the first check point, diverted towards an alternate airport and stated distance and time it should take to get there, slow flight, power off stall, power on stall, steep turn, simulated IFR "hood" time with recovery from an uncoordinated attitude, flew a VOR heading TO the station, with hood off we practiced emergency landing procedures, turn about a point (I actually used the VOR beacon!), soft field landing (we counted the second touch down.... it was windy!), short field landing to a full stop, short field takeoff, no flap forward slip to land, GREASED the landing. Certified private pilot!

And since today is so beautiful, I'm taking Matthew Morris up for a ride this afternoon, my first official passenger! Thanks for all of the support and encouragement, it was fun! So who wants to go fly somewhere????

Who's f@*#!&g this chicken? That's right, me!
A more "sensible" pose!
Two pilots on a joy ride back to PDK.
A beautiful sunset
This beautiful artwork was done by Melissa when I soloed. My "tail feathers" have been up on the wall at the flight school and I finally brought it home. Notice the drawing of my mom and dad on the right when they were in the tower! I was a little more politically correct that day when I landed..... Who loves this chicken?

White people

Here is article #61 on a site all about white people and our funny cultural habits. Check it out, we are pretty funny people! http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com


#61 Bicycles
February 10, 2008 by clander

A good place to find white people on a Saturday is at a Bike Shop. Bike shops are almost entirely staffed and patronized by white people!

But not all white people love bicycles in the same way, there is much diversity. First up, we have the younger urban white folks who absolutely love their fixed gear bicycles. These are seen all over college towns, Silverlake in LA, Williamsburg in Brooklyn, Queen West in Toronto, and Victoria, British Columbia. Fixed gear bicycles meet a lot of requirements for white person acceptance. They can be made from older (i.e. vintage) bicycles, thus allowing the rider to have a unique bike that is unlikely to be ridden by anyone else in town. They are also easily customizable with expensive things Aerospoke rims, Phil Wood Hubs, and Nitto Parts. The combination of rare bicycles and expensive parts makes it easy for white people to judge other white people on the quality and originality of their bicycles. This is important in determining if someone is or isn’t cooler than you.

White people also like Mountain Bikes because it lets them be in nature. It’s really not more complicated than that.

And finally, they love expensive Road Bikes and the accompanying spandex uniforms. This enables them to ride long distances and wear really tight clothes without any social stigmas. These types of riders will spend upwards of $5,000 on a bicycle and up to $400 on accessories, but will not ride to work. Perhaps because they cannot wear the spandex. It is important that you never question why someone needs a $5000 bicycle since the answer is always “performance.”

For the most part, these rules have been unisex. But there is a special category of bicycles that appeal far more to white women, the European city bike (pictured). White women have a lot of fantasies about idealized lives, and one of them is living in Europe and riding around an old city on one of these bikes. They dream about waking up and riding to a little cafe, then visiting bakeries and cheese shops and finally riding home to prepare a fancy meal for their friends who will all eat under a canopy with white Christmas lights. This information can be used to help gain the trust/admiration of a white woman, especially if you can pull off a lie about how your mother told you about how she used to do all of these things when she was younger.

And of course, it goes without saying that white people who ride bikes like to talk about how they are saving the earth. If you know a person who rides to work, you should take them aside and say “Hey, thanks. Sincerely, The Earth.” Then give a thumbs up. That white person will ride home on a cloud.

I passed the FAA written exam!

Today I took the FAA written exam for my private pilot's certificate. Out of 61 questions I only missed 7 and passed with a score of 88! When I finished the test I really felt like I missed more than that, so I was pleasantly surprised. But then again, anything over a 70 is a wasted effort! My dad said it's just more stuff that I will need to forget, which is probably true. I really thought the test had some of the "easier" questions on it. Or at least more than I thought there would be. But maybe it's easy when you know the answers..... I might have to ponder that.

Melissa and I are going up tomorrow for what may be our last instructional flight. We need to practice "diversions" from the intended route to get ready for the practical test which I plan to take in two weeks. I also purchased a book to prep for the oral exam which the Designated Flight Examiner will test me on when I go for the practical. Two weeks and counting!

Glad I wasn't this guy

I was at the jobsite when Matthew Morris called and said that a plane was trying to land with the gear UP! The pilots are an instructor and a student, and that's about all he knew. Since the houses we are building are near my house and thus, PDK, I went over there to watch. I guess you could say this is "rubber necking" for pilots! I got to the observation area at the airport and there were probably 40 people there already, along with 3 camera crews. The choppers were in the air, hovering, watching and filiming the action. When I heard about it I immediately called my instructor and it went straight to voicemail. I wasn't really worried that much because our flight school doesn't have a Cessna with retractable gears, but you never know who else she might be flying with. Safe to say, it wasn't her! Jason showed up just in time to watch a beautiful landing, even if all the gears weren't down. The instructor was even able to "taxi" the plane off the runway, or mostly. He came in at the minimum airspeed, full flaps, killed the engine, landed and crumbled the tail wheels, slid on it's belly for a while, then steered off the runway. I was impressed and pray that this never happens to me, dad, or anyone else for that matter.

Go here for the link to the 11 Alive News video.

Click on to get a better view of them on final.

Wally, this is gonna get scary....

They both "high fived" and then hugged. Both pilots and plane WILL fly again. A safe forced landing. I like it!

Brian the Builder

Here are some pictures of the house I am building with Jason and Matthew Morris. They have been in business for almost 3 years and have built 15+ homes so far. I came on board after cycling around Europe just to help them finish a couple of houses, I didn't really expect for it to turn into something full-time, but it did! My goal right now is to just learn since I have never been on this side of the building process, actually in the field and hands-on. Well, almost hands-on, I did pick up a shovel on Saturday and a broom today. Otherwise it's just making sure that things are scheduled and work is getting done to our satisifaction. So far, so good! We framed the house in 8 days, and got all of the mechanical roughs done in about 5 after that. Also included are exterior doors and windows, some concrete for posts and rear patio, fireplace, etc. Oh, and we have passed the HVAC and plumbing inspections on the first pass. Hopefully electrical and framing will go as smoothly, but I doubt it, they are pretty tough. So here's the house we're building! And you can also go to http://www.morris-brothers.com/ and check out some of their other projects.

Kitchen

Buckhead skyline view from the master bedroom! The entire front of the house on the upper level is the master suite and bathroom.

Vanishing America

I am testing a way for my friend Holt to upload audio files to his blog. So while I'm playing A/V nerd for him, I might as well plug his project. You can go to his website (still being updated to host the future blog and much more) at http://www.vanishingamerica.net/ or to his blog at http://www.holtwebb.blogspot.com/ . The blogspot address is updated currently, but will migrate to the other address in the next few months. He is traveling the US documenting places, people, communities and things that are vanishing before the end of our liftetime. Check it out!

Here is a link to my test for him, it's just Gary Allan's song 'Watching Airplanes'. This could be how his audio 'podcasts' get uploaded in the future.

Flight training is almost complete!

As most everyone is aware, especially if you live in Atlanta, we are running out of water. Well, with as much rain and craptacular weather we have had in the last month, I think our water situation is changing. It better be because I have had to cancel a lot of flights over the last few weeks.

About 2 weeks ago Melissa and I were able to do my night time x-country and we flew up to Habersham airport near Clarkesville. Flying at night is so cool, although scary because you can't see anything on the ground except lights..... I think I mentioned this the other night flight we did, but it actually is "easier" landing at night. I still don't know what it is about it, but maybe it's the fact that the lights really lead you to the end of the runway. So with that flight I completed my 3 hours of night flying with a total of 15 takeoffs and landings at night. The requirement is 10, but the first time we went up I was having too good of a time to not do a few more!

So finally this past Friday I was able to do my long x-country (over 100 nautical miles) and finish up all of my flight time for that requirement. You have to have a total of 5 hours of solo x-country to meet the requirements and I got 3.7 from this flight. I mapped out a route that was not a perfectly straight line between points going to Augusta. The first reason was to stay below the Atlanta Class B airspace (5000' ceiling to fly under it and I was trying to get to 5500') and the second reason is that there are 3 airports lined up between Monroe and Augusta that would be perfect for a forced landing, so safety was the other concern. For these flights you are only using the sectional chart, the proposed heading/ground speed/minutes between checkpoints, and literally looking at the ground to find those points. Ideally you want to have a point on the ground spaced no more than 20 nautical miles between points and sometimes that means the only thing is a lake or a power line. But both are actually great references! Since the longest leg of my journey was to Augusta, I was really hoping that I would hit my points along the way, and I did. I hit all of them within about 30 seconds, give or take a little. I even called Augusta Approach and requested Flight Following. This is a voluntary deal where you contact them and they will basically help you look out for weather and other traffic along your route. I did a touch and go at Daniel Field in Augusta and then went around because I didn't really like my "technique". :) The other one wasn't so great either, but they were both "safe"..... So then I was off to Athens! The second leg was even less eventful than the first so I stopped there and had a vending machine lunch while they topped off the plane. I spoke with my instructor and she said it looked like there might be some weather in Atlanta moving in, so I needed to get up and go. GREAT! I had just checked the weather myself and had already concurred the same thing, but it was nice of her to call. The only problem was, I needed it to take 1 hour to fly what should take about 30 minutes.... So I flew to Lawrenceville (where I soloed!) and did 4 touch and gos then headed on back to PDK. As luck would have it, it never rained and I ended up with .2 hours more than I needed with 3.7 hours total!

Now I really have to prepare for the written exam, the oral exam and the practical. The last two are what you do with the Designated Flight Examiner as your final "check ride". Melissa and I have a few maneuvers to practice in the air, she needs to quiz me on some of the oral stuff, and I still need to get 2 more hours solo time to meet the 10 hour minimum. So I'm getting close and really anxious. Who's ready to go flying somewhere?????

Blue skies