This was a fairly eventful week, full of ups and downs (luckily ending on a high). It started off slow being weathered out on Monday, then had a really good flight on Tuesday to make up for the not good flight on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. I felt like the procedures in the landing environment really started to become like second nature to me and my landings were really looking more than just "safe", they started to be consistently good. Then on Wednesday I had the chance to solo aircraft (mission C4201), all I had to do was land the plane three times and do a couple other maneuvers with the instructor before he hopped out and sent me on my way.
As you can imagine, putting a student in a plane all by himself after only 12 or 13 flights can be very dangerous if the student isn't completely ready. It is very important the student gives the instructor a "warm, fuzzy feeling" because he is the guy who will get in trouble if anything bad were to happen and of course he doesn't want you to get hurt, or damage the aircraft. I was on my last landing flying over the field at 2,100 ft getting ready to make my second to last turn before getting lined up for my final approach to land and there was someone behind me doing a "straight-in approach" (which creates a traffic conflict if I were to do that turn). Since you can't see behind you, the pilot has to be able to make a mental image of all the other aircraft just based off of the required radio calls/position reports. Well, to make a long story short I tried to make that turn with him behind me and the IP had to take the controls and do something else. Back on the ground, the IP debriefed me, went over the procedures to make sure I understood them, told me to go home and chair-fly and come with my game tomorrow.
That night of course I chair flew like crazy with Matt helping me by acting like traffic over the radios and I had to keep track of all the other aircraft while pretending to fly the jet in detail. Thursday came and I was the first flight of the morning. The weather was marginal but my IP told the supervisor we would we would go up and do a weather report when we first took off. We reported cloud ceilings of 5,500 ft, just enough for what I needed to do. I took the plane around and landed three times, one time I landed so smoothly that the instructor couldn't even tell if we had touched down! I was feeling good when he told me to come to a complete stop on the third landing. We taxied off the runway and parked on the parking ramp. The instructor jumped out, took off his Velcro name tag with his wings, took my wingless name tag and pulled it off and continued to punch on his name tag on my flight suit, upside down, and put my tag on upside down on his flight suit. As he was putting it on he said, "It's bad luck to be in a plane without a pair of wings, so I'm loaning you mine today!" At that point, My call sign on the radio went from "Panther 1-4" our squadron call sign, to "Pogo 1-4" because they instructors say we usually look like pogo-sticks bouncing around on the runway when we land. Also, that lets everyone know that a new solo is in pattern (so look out!).
The solo was great, the traffic was mellow enough that I got to do two "closed" turn which you can see on the in video and you got to do some pretty fun turning/climbing. The video quality is terrible because it was zoomed in using the "digital zoom", not the lens zoom. Basically. in the video you can see me coming in for my second landing, touchdown and take off right away (called a "touch and go"), then might be able to hear my radio call saying, "Pogo 1-4, request closed", shortly after you hear "closed approved". Right after that you see the little black pixels that are my plane become a silhouette of my plane with wings perpendicular to the ground. After I roll out of the turn I say, "Pogo 1-4, closed downwind" and say continue to the point where I make my final turn to line up with the runway to say "Pogo 1-4, [landing] gear down".
On Friday I had a instrument simulator and my third to last Phase II academic test! I was pretty happy to get it out of the way since it is the second to hardest test in the program, unfortunately we had a few failures in the class. I didn't get a 100 but passed and was more than happy for that.
That night we went to the town of Uvalde to hear some Texas country at a tavern, there were three other bands who opened up for Wade Bowen. I had never heard of him before that but he was really good. Tonight, our class sponsors bought us tickets to the annual "Wild Game Dinner" where wild dove, deer, wild hog and other wild game will be served while various prizes such as 4-wheelers, rifles, guns, and tickets for Dallas Cowboys games are raffled off. Who knows, maybe I'll leave with a shot-gun tonight???
Wow, after reading that last paragraph, I feel super Texan... Next thing you know maybe I'll be signing up to be in the rodeo!
