jrh
Well-Known Member
I was just wondering if many of the other college students here on JC have noticed something I've thought about lately...
Being in aviation and taking traditional college at the same time leads to conflicts, sooner or later, but it's worth it. Let me try to explain with a story.
Last week I went flying with an instrument student in the evening. The forecast for our home airport was to be OVC020 for the rest of the evening. We filed IFR to an airport about 40 miles away, took off, shot two practice approaches at that airport, then returned to our home airport. As we were shooting the VOR approach into our home airport, I noticed some unforecast fog rolling in towards the airport perimeter. Before we reached the airport, the fog rolled over the runway and we had to go missed.
We picked up vectors to the ILS, then just as we were about to get turned inbound the controller advised us that the RVR was 1800. We decided to continue. Inside the marker the tower advised us it was now 1600 RVR. My student did great, kept the ILS perfectly crossed up all the way to minimums, but as I expected, we had to go missed. At that point we had been in the air for 2.2 hours and had taken off with 4 hours of fuel. We considered trying the ILS again, but I figured it would be a waste of time and fuel.
The nearest airport was 35 miles away and reporting 3SM, OVC005. We got vectored for the ILS there, came in, found out the weather had actually dropped to 1SM, OVC003, and landed. By the time we landed it was 8:00 P.M. We checked the TAFs for home and it was forecast to lift to 1 SM vis by midnight. We hung out in the pilots lounge for a couple hours, checked the forecast again, and found it was calling for 1/4 SM vis and VV001 for the rest of the night. We called a friend, offered to pay for his car's gas, and left the plane where it was. I made it home and into bed by 1:00 A.M.
The next morning I went to class and bombed a calculus test, mostly because I hadn't had any time to study thanks to our little adventure the night before. I was also lost in some other lectures because I hadn't read any of the assigned reading.
But the thing is, I didn't really mind. I felt like I'd learned so much the night before that it was worth it. I had made several important decisions, gotten experience instructing in some very low weather, exercised good judgement, and generally challenged my abilities as a pilot. I felt like what I'd learned on that flight would be much more useful to me later in life than knowing about second derivatives.
So I guess there isn't much of a point to this post. Just that I've had many similar times where I've been stuck or delayed because of flying, missed out on something from "regular" life, but it's usually been worth it. I wondered if any of you have noticed the same thing.
Being in aviation and taking traditional college at the same time leads to conflicts, sooner or later, but it's worth it. Let me try to explain with a story.
Last week I went flying with an instrument student in the evening. The forecast for our home airport was to be OVC020 for the rest of the evening. We filed IFR to an airport about 40 miles away, took off, shot two practice approaches at that airport, then returned to our home airport. As we were shooting the VOR approach into our home airport, I noticed some unforecast fog rolling in towards the airport perimeter. Before we reached the airport, the fog rolled over the runway and we had to go missed.
We picked up vectors to the ILS, then just as we were about to get turned inbound the controller advised us that the RVR was 1800. We decided to continue. Inside the marker the tower advised us it was now 1600 RVR. My student did great, kept the ILS perfectly crossed up all the way to minimums, but as I expected, we had to go missed. At that point we had been in the air for 2.2 hours and had taken off with 4 hours of fuel. We considered trying the ILS again, but I figured it would be a waste of time and fuel.
The nearest airport was 35 miles away and reporting 3SM, OVC005. We got vectored for the ILS there, came in, found out the weather had actually dropped to 1SM, OVC003, and landed. By the time we landed it was 8:00 P.M. We checked the TAFs for home and it was forecast to lift to 1 SM vis by midnight. We hung out in the pilots lounge for a couple hours, checked the forecast again, and found it was calling for 1/4 SM vis and VV001 for the rest of the night. We called a friend, offered to pay for his car's gas, and left the plane where it was. I made it home and into bed by 1:00 A.M.
The next morning I went to class and bombed a calculus test, mostly because I hadn't had any time to study thanks to our little adventure the night before. I was also lost in some other lectures because I hadn't read any of the assigned reading.
But the thing is, I didn't really mind. I felt like I'd learned so much the night before that it was worth it. I had made several important decisions, gotten experience instructing in some very low weather, exercised good judgement, and generally challenged my abilities as a pilot. I felt like what I'd learned on that flight would be much more useful to me later in life than knowing about second derivatives.
So I guess there isn't much of a point to this post. Just that I've had many similar times where I've been stuck or delayed because of flying, missed out on something from "regular" life, but it's usually been worth it. I wondered if any of you have noticed the same thing.
