Van_Hoolio
Well-Known Member
Hey this is my first post, even though I've "lurked" here for about a couple years and registered over a year-and-a-half ago.
Let me tell everyone how NOT to get their PPL like I did. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif
I started training in late May of 2002 during my last summer of college in Iowa City, IA. My first lesson was pretty bumpy and I got pretty woozy. I thought to myself, "what am I getting into?" but I knew I wanted to do it. With the help of peppermint tea I got through the next couple of lessons and got accustomed to the bumpiness. I was able to fly pretty consistently and soloed on my 13th flight lesson, a little over a month after starting and at about 14 hours. All of this flying in some elderly Cessna 150s out of the FBO at the Iowa City Municipal Airport (KIOW).
I kept at it through that summer. My first solo cross country (to KBRL)was at about 26 hours TT, 2.5 months after starting training and with 2.5 hours previous total solo time. Kept after it still. My long X-C was at 38 hours TT and it had been a little over 3 months since I started. I went from IOW-DBQ-ALO-IOW. Pretty nice X-C with the Class D at Dubuque & Waterloo and flying through the CID Class C on the way back to IOW. And Waterloo is one of those goofy Class D’s with radar service. Their departure control actually hands you off to CID approach too, and vice versa.
The problem came in when I moved 2 hours away to Des Moines, IA and I had the bright idea that I should continue training out of Iowa City. For the rest of the year following my long X-C I only had 6 lessons, including a couple month-long breaks.
Come 2003. My first lesson was on February 13. A little month-and-a-half break before that one. Then another month break, a lesson, another month break, two lessons, then another month break, then two more lessons in May of 2003. 53.5 TT. All requirements done except 0.6 hours X-C.
Then, get this, I took a whole year off of training. A whole year! It was mostly a case of “where does the time go” and partly a case of having either plenty of money and no time or plenty of time and no money.
I got off my rear end and got three lessons in at the end of last May and in early June. My original instructor was still there actually. Then summer got busy with work. It wasn’t until I was motivated by an especially bad day at work that I got back into training a month-and-a-half later. It was a situation where I got second-guessed and bitched at by youth soccer team. Apparently, uppity soccer mom chaperones don’t like it when you try to tell their little rich kids what to do. After all, I’m just a stupid second-class citizen bus driver, right? They don’t have to listen to ME. Never mind that I’m responsible for the safety of everyone on board, and my company’s $5 million insurance policy is what they’d claim against even if their own stupidity caused their own injury.
Anyway, I placed a call to the FBO in Iowa City only to find that my instructor got hired away by Chautauqua Airlines. Good for him. No big deal, I continued my lessons with another instructor. She‘s a good instructor too. I believe she went to SIU. I took 12 lessons between July 20 and September 22. A lot of review and refinement, plus I got my .6 X-C time that I needed by going on an IOW-ALO-IOW run. Good tower work in there. Before I could go on that solo, I had to get another student certificate which was a P.I.T.A. The student certificate expires after two years of course and to get another one is more difficult than when you get your initial student certificate and medical. I had to meet with a pilot examiner in person and turn in an 8710. Anyway, got that taken care of, got my solo work done and some more lessons in. Then I went ahead and scheduled my checkride. Since I had the time, I went through three more review lessons in the three days before the practical.
The Checkride
The examiner they hooked me up with was out of Burlington, IA so I soloed down there and met up with him yesterday afternoon. It went a lot smoother than what I thought. I started out by giving him all of the documents and stuff you need to present, like the 8710 and the maintenance records. And the $175 cash. I also showed him the cross-country I planned as well as the weight & balance. We couldn’t go with full fuel in the 150 so I guess it was good that I burned some on the way down.
He then asked a few questions out of the knowledge base. Nothing too difficult and luckily nothing I didn’t know. We got a chart out and I answered a few questions about it. There’s a TRSA on it over at Rockford, which was about the most ‘complicated’ thing I had to identify. There were some airspace and weather minimums questions, but I memorized those. Total oral portion was maybe around an hour, but there was some storytelling going on so it wasn’t a constant drill session.
For the flight portion, I just went through the checklist and did the things my instructors said would be expected. Normal takeoff. Did a touch and go and then out of the pattern on the X-C. The whole time I was sure to make radio calls. It was not a busy area but still. I identified things on the ground even short of my first checkpoint and that got me out of the cross country pretty quickly. While at a higher altitude we did some slow flight, stalls and steep turns. Also some simulated instrument stuff including a couple unusual attitude recoveries. Then we did a simulated engine out and got low, and then we did some ground reference maneuvers. It was a bumpy ride and the examiner was fairly understanding of the situation as far as holding altitudes goes.
Then we came in and did a cross-wind landing to a full stop, taxied in, shut it down and that was it. 1.0 flight time for the check ride. I relaxed a little at the FBO in Burlington, planned, filed and went back to Iowa City after watching the Jetstream leave for STL. It’s kind of funny how the mini airline terminal has all the security while I can just walk down the hall into the FBO part, walk out to the gate, punch in the code (which is posted airside) and walk right out onto the same ramp maybe 150 feet from where the airline passengers walk out. They must have a lot of faith in that red line painted on the ground!
So here I am with 79.0 TT (18.2 PIC; 60.8 Dual Rec’d). The examiner said I ought to log the checkride as PIC since it wasn’t really dual given or received and my last .9 was when I actually was a pilot so it took me 78.1 to get there. More than I wanted but that’s what I get for doing things like, oh, say, taking a whole year off and other months off at a time.
I don’t even want to know what I’ve spent so far, but the plane went for $50 per hour and the instructors for $30 per hour. Actually, for most of the first summer of training, the plane was $45 an hour. The instructors were both pretty kind as far as billing pre- and post-flight ground time. With all the other stuff I am probably just shy of $7000. If I had my act together I probably could have gotten away with closer to $6000. No regrets by any means, I paid exactly for what I got.
I hope everyone who reads this enjoyed reading about my PPL training and checkride. I’m certainly open to comments or questions if anyone has any.
Mike
Let me tell everyone how NOT to get their PPL like I did. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif
I started training in late May of 2002 during my last summer of college in Iowa City, IA. My first lesson was pretty bumpy and I got pretty woozy. I thought to myself, "what am I getting into?" but I knew I wanted to do it. With the help of peppermint tea I got through the next couple of lessons and got accustomed to the bumpiness. I was able to fly pretty consistently and soloed on my 13th flight lesson, a little over a month after starting and at about 14 hours. All of this flying in some elderly Cessna 150s out of the FBO at the Iowa City Municipal Airport (KIOW).
I kept at it through that summer. My first solo cross country (to KBRL)was at about 26 hours TT, 2.5 months after starting training and with 2.5 hours previous total solo time. Kept after it still. My long X-C was at 38 hours TT and it had been a little over 3 months since I started. I went from IOW-DBQ-ALO-IOW. Pretty nice X-C with the Class D at Dubuque & Waterloo and flying through the CID Class C on the way back to IOW. And Waterloo is one of those goofy Class D’s with radar service. Their departure control actually hands you off to CID approach too, and vice versa.
The problem came in when I moved 2 hours away to Des Moines, IA and I had the bright idea that I should continue training out of Iowa City. For the rest of the year following my long X-C I only had 6 lessons, including a couple month-long breaks.
Come 2003. My first lesson was on February 13. A little month-and-a-half break before that one. Then another month break, a lesson, another month break, two lessons, then another month break, then two more lessons in May of 2003. 53.5 TT. All requirements done except 0.6 hours X-C.
Then, get this, I took a whole year off of training. A whole year! It was mostly a case of “where does the time go” and partly a case of having either plenty of money and no time or plenty of time and no money.
I got off my rear end and got three lessons in at the end of last May and in early June. My original instructor was still there actually. Then summer got busy with work. It wasn’t until I was motivated by an especially bad day at work that I got back into training a month-and-a-half later. It was a situation where I got second-guessed and bitched at by youth soccer team. Apparently, uppity soccer mom chaperones don’t like it when you try to tell their little rich kids what to do. After all, I’m just a stupid second-class citizen bus driver, right? They don’t have to listen to ME. Never mind that I’m responsible for the safety of everyone on board, and my company’s $5 million insurance policy is what they’d claim against even if their own stupidity caused their own injury.
Anyway, I placed a call to the FBO in Iowa City only to find that my instructor got hired away by Chautauqua Airlines. Good for him. No big deal, I continued my lessons with another instructor. She‘s a good instructor too. I believe she went to SIU. I took 12 lessons between July 20 and September 22. A lot of review and refinement, plus I got my .6 X-C time that I needed by going on an IOW-ALO-IOW run. Good tower work in there. Before I could go on that solo, I had to get another student certificate which was a P.I.T.A. The student certificate expires after two years of course and to get another one is more difficult than when you get your initial student certificate and medical. I had to meet with a pilot examiner in person and turn in an 8710. Anyway, got that taken care of, got my solo work done and some more lessons in. Then I went ahead and scheduled my checkride. Since I had the time, I went through three more review lessons in the three days before the practical.
The Checkride
The examiner they hooked me up with was out of Burlington, IA so I soloed down there and met up with him yesterday afternoon. It went a lot smoother than what I thought. I started out by giving him all of the documents and stuff you need to present, like the 8710 and the maintenance records. And the $175 cash. I also showed him the cross-country I planned as well as the weight & balance. We couldn’t go with full fuel in the 150 so I guess it was good that I burned some on the way down.
He then asked a few questions out of the knowledge base. Nothing too difficult and luckily nothing I didn’t know. We got a chart out and I answered a few questions about it. There’s a TRSA on it over at Rockford, which was about the most ‘complicated’ thing I had to identify. There were some airspace and weather minimums questions, but I memorized those. Total oral portion was maybe around an hour, but there was some storytelling going on so it wasn’t a constant drill session.
For the flight portion, I just went through the checklist and did the things my instructors said would be expected. Normal takeoff. Did a touch and go and then out of the pattern on the X-C. The whole time I was sure to make radio calls. It was not a busy area but still. I identified things on the ground even short of my first checkpoint and that got me out of the cross country pretty quickly. While at a higher altitude we did some slow flight, stalls and steep turns. Also some simulated instrument stuff including a couple unusual attitude recoveries. Then we did a simulated engine out and got low, and then we did some ground reference maneuvers. It was a bumpy ride and the examiner was fairly understanding of the situation as far as holding altitudes goes.
Then we came in and did a cross-wind landing to a full stop, taxied in, shut it down and that was it. 1.0 flight time for the check ride. I relaxed a little at the FBO in Burlington, planned, filed and went back to Iowa City after watching the Jetstream leave for STL. It’s kind of funny how the mini airline terminal has all the security while I can just walk down the hall into the FBO part, walk out to the gate, punch in the code (which is posted airside) and walk right out onto the same ramp maybe 150 feet from where the airline passengers walk out. They must have a lot of faith in that red line painted on the ground!
So here I am with 79.0 TT (18.2 PIC; 60.8 Dual Rec’d). The examiner said I ought to log the checkride as PIC since it wasn’t really dual given or received and my last .9 was when I actually was a pilot so it took me 78.1 to get there. More than I wanted but that’s what I get for doing things like, oh, say, taking a whole year off and other months off at a time.
I don’t even want to know what I’ve spent so far, but the plane went for $50 per hour and the instructors for $30 per hour. Actually, for most of the first summer of training, the plane was $45 an hour. The instructors were both pretty kind as far as billing pre- and post-flight ground time. With all the other stuff I am probably just shy of $7000. If I had my act together I probably could have gotten away with closer to $6000. No regrets by any means, I paid exactly for what I got.
I hope everyone who reads this enjoyed reading about my PPL training and checkride. I’m certainly open to comments or questions if anyone has any.
Mike
