The good with the bad

First, the bad.

I'm through flying our Cirrus, at least for a while.

Our insurance company raised the minimum hours required to fly the airplane from 200 to 400.

I won't go too deeply into the absurdity of that move because it won't change a thing.

Suffice it to say I don't think it makes much sense. It's a simple airplane to fly and I'd argue it's the safest airplane in our club. (I think it's also the easiest airplane to fly, including the 172s.)

The avionics are excellent, the autopilot works extremely well and the gear is down and bolted, meaning there's not much to think about except for actually flying the thing.

What really bugs me is our insurance company doesn't require the normal Cirrus Standardized Instruction Program checkout to fly the airplane. Just a 5-hour checkout with an instructor. They also don't require an instrument rating, which makes no sense whatsoever.

How a commercial pilot with an instrument rating and 300 hours who flew 90 hours in the past 12 months is a greater risk than a typical private pilot with 400 hours who flies maybe 25 hours-a-year and doesn't have an instrument rating is simply beyond me.

Aviation's obsession with hours, as opposed to actual skill, has always rubbed me the wrong way.

Whatever. It's only another 100 hours and I don't really have the time or money to worry about flying the Cirrus right now anyway.

Now for the good.

I don't have the time or money to fly the Cirrus right now because we started working on the CFI today, which is looking to be more work than anything I've done up to this point in aviation.

It's also promising to be a whole lot of fun.

I say 'we' because I'm fortunate to be working with another student and two excellent instructors.

Christine just passed her commercial checkride and it's been a real eye-opener to train with somebody else. We both have different experiences, ideas and observations which means we wind up learning from each other as well as from our instructors.

All of my training up until this point has been essentially on my own, without the benefit of having another perspective.

I'd gone back and forth on where I'd do my CFI training. My initial plan was to head to Arizona and take a two-week accelerated course to get it over quickly, figuring I'd learn anything I might miss in such a whirlwind 'on the job.'

The upside was that it would go quickly. The downside was that accelerated programs have a controversial reputation. There are plenty of instructors who feel accelerated programs don't turn out very good flight instructors.

There are also plenty who feel it doesn't really matter where you get your CFI because most of what it takes to be a good instructor depends on your attitude and what you put into earning the license.

Ultimately, I decided to do the license locally. It will take more time but I think it will be well worth it.

Today we got started on the Fundamentals of Instruction with Cheryl and Aerodynamics with Linda.

They are my two least-favorite subjects. By far.

I'm starting to warm up to the FOI because I can finally relate the theory they cover with the actual experience of presenting a lesson.

As for aerodynamics, well, they're still a struggle. What has helped a bit is reading "The Illustrated Guide to Aerodynamics". It's actually a pretty easy read and about as interesting as it gets when it comes to explaining the more esoteric points of what makes airplanes fly, turn, climb and descend.

I'll also try my best to not instill any negative attitudes about insurance companies in my students. That'll be tough.

A minor milestone

I passed 300 hours today, which is a pitifully small number when you consider I've had my license for almost 14 years. Of course, for 10 of those years I didn't fly at all, so I guess it's not quite as bad as it sounds.

Ninety of those 300 hours came in the past 12 months. I didn't realize until I added it up that I'd been flying that much. Doing an instrument rating and the commercial back-to-back has a way of piling on the hours.

I passed the mark in a somewhat ratty Cessna 172 bouncing along looking at the scenery and not paying much attention to anything.

Given that I have 233 hours in Cessna 172s, most of which were spent bouncing along looking at the scenery and not paying much attention to anything it was only fitting.

I remember as a student being in awe of pilots with 300 hours and wondering how I'd ever be able to accumulate so much time. Turns out, it's not hard at all. Just keep writing checks.

Hopefully that'll change soon and folks will start writing me checks to fly.

It's been done

Man, I wish I'd found this sooner.

Totally sweet. A 3D map of US Class B and C airspace, along with restricted and prohibited airspace and MOAs. That'll give the ol' video card a workout.



Plus, you can even overlay sectional charts.

Frickin' cool!

Glad somebody else did all that work. I can stop obsessing now.

Must stop...

... messing around with Google Earth.

I added the Class D airspace around the Twin Cities area, which starts to make things even that much more interesting. (My .KML file.)



It wouldn't be that difficult to add the rest of the controlled (Class B and D) airspace in Minnesota.

Which left me thinking an evil thought: Anybody up for a Google Earth Airspace Project? The idea would be to map in 3D all of the major airspace (Class B, C and D) in the country to then share with the rest of the Google Earth community.

Add in navaids (simple to do, actually) and you've got yourself one groovy application.

Enough already. I smell horrible so it's off to the shower for me.

MSP Class B

Well, I stuck with it and got some tips from a Google Earth user in Australia.

Anyhow, after a whole bunch of messing around I was able to display a good chunk of the MSP Class Bravo airspace in 3D via Google Earth.

It turned out to be a bunch of work, but once I figured out how build a three-dimensional circle and shade it the work was just tedious cut and paste/search and replace.

The end-result is actually sorta neat. I haven't figured out how to display the odd shaped bits of the Class Bravo that extend beyond the 20NM ring, but if I can figure out how to get the lat/long coordinates that define it I'm guessing it'll be simple enough.

Here's the .KML file if you want to download it and check it out for yourself.

Also, I couldn't find a lat/long for the I-MSP 30L localizer/DME that is used to define the distances for the airspace lateral boundaries so I used the MSP VOR/DME instead. It's close enough for this exercise.

Anyhow, it's incomplete for now until I figure out how to build the odd-shaped bits but who knows, maybe somebody will find it useful even as a work in progress.

For now, I'm going back to studying aerodynamics.

Wasting a day with Google Earth

I wasted, literally, the entire day messing around with Google Earth.

First, I thought it would be interesting to learn how to display a flight path on Google Earth, so I spent the morning learning how to create a file that would do just that.

For giggles I decided to add some waypoints for the GPS-14L approach into Crystal, then fly the approach and upload the track to see how well I did. In theory, this could be a useful teaching tool.

It turnd out to be easy enough, although my altitude is all screwed up on the map because I used feet and Google Earth wants meters. That's simple enough to fix.



I fired up X-Plane, turned on it's data dump feature and departed Flying Cloud then flew the GPS-14L approach into Crystal. A little quality time with a spreadsheet and I had my plot of lat/long/altitude to drop into Google Earth. (It was easier to just fly it in a sim than trudge out to the airport, fly the thing and figure out how to get a tracklog out of my GPS. I just wanted to see if it could be done.)

Turns out, I wasn't the first to think of this. Check out this post at Vectors to Final.

My .KML file from this exercise is here if you want to save it, load it up in Google Earth and see the thing in three-dimensions.

Then I was struck with what I thought was an even simpler idea: Create a three-dimensional map of the Minneapolis Class Bravo airspace using Google Earth. The idea was that it'd be really neat to show to students the airspace in three-dimensions.

Well, it turned out to be waay harder than I imagined. The problem I ran into is it while it's really easy to create a single circle that rises from ground level to a particular altitude (in this case the 10,000 foot ceiling of the airspace) it's apparently impossible to create a circle that starts at a particular altitude and then rises to another altitude.



In other words, creating the inner-ring of the MSP Class B was simple. Creating the subsequent outer rings is something I haven't figured out how to do yet. I can get the base of the rings to show up at the proper altitude, I just can't fill them up to the 10,000 foot level.

And I haven't even tackled the odd-shaped cutouts in the airspace yet.

Anyway, my brain is full and I'm in serious need of a beer.

If anybody out there can figure this one out I'll buy you a six-pack.

Here's my .KML file. Feel free to save it and open it with Google Earth and play around for yourself.

Back to the books

It's time to start studying again to start getting ready for my CFI training.

Today I decided to dive into "The Illustrated Guide to Aerodynamics."

Learning aerodynamics makes my head hurt, so this one is going to be a struggle.

My only salvation is knowing that it will, in theory, make me a better instructor.

Still, I'll have a hard time not saying "money" when asked what makes an airplane fly.

Mr. Clue, meet Mr. Less

I flew the Cirrus up to Alexandria this morning to get some more time in it and keep that comfort level on the rise.

Other than an impressive headwind on the trip up (114 knot groundspeed = 35 knot headwind at 3,500 feet) it was an unremarkable trip, except for the opportunity to witness both some outstanding communications and a truly awful display that left me embarrassed.

The good came up at Alex.

I started monitoring the CTAF about 20 miles out and a Robinson R22 was working the pattern. At 10 miles in quick succession a nifty Partenavia announced they were 10 miles south, a Cessna called 10 miles north and a Tomahawk announced they were five west and entering a left downwind for runway 31.

I scrapped my plan to fly the ILS to a straight-in approach and started looking for the traffic.

The Tomahawk announced they were on downwind, the Partenavia announced they were entering the downwind and, incredibly, I spotted them both. I keyed the mic, announced I had the Tomahawk and the Partenavia (try pronouncing that one correctly the first time!) in sight and would enter the downwind behind the Partenavia.

The Robinson announced final and the inbound Cessna announced they had us all in sight and would be number four for landing.

It worked out beautifully. I was just so impressed. Five aircraft all converging on an uncontrolled field at the same time and the spacing wound up being perfect. We landed one after another, each aircraft carefully and efficiently announcing their positions. It really was a thing of beauty.

Flash forward an hour.

I'd been monitoring Crystal tower for the past 10 minutes when I heard this initial contact on the frequency:

"Crystal, uh, Cessna 12345 is over the river, landing."

I'm thinking to myself, "Which river, the Mississippi? Great! That's a long river, give us a clue. How about the ATIS pal? Echo is current you know."

It went downhill from there. Another Cessna with a similar call sign was somewhere near Crystal as well and they began responding to the other's clearances while the controller did an incredibly patient job of trying to sort the whole mess out.

Cessna number two was in the game enough to figure out what was going on and began using his full call sign.

Cessna number one (the dude who was 'over the river') never got with it and stopped using any call sign at all.

So, tower would say something like: "Cessna 12345, verify that you're the aircraft on a left downwind for runway 32 at 1,800 feet."

To which what I can only assume was Cessna number one would respond: "We're over the river."

No call sign, no confirmation of the altitude, nothing.

Cessna 12345 would then break in and confirm their position, which seemed to confuse 'over the river' guy even more.

The only time things got quiet was when the exasperated controller queried: "Do I have two airplanes with similar call signs on the frequency?"

Neither Mr. Clue nor Mr. Less said a peep.

More training...

.... but only a little bit.

Kevin and I finished my checkout in the Cirrus today, so I'm now officially cleared to fly the thing all by myself.

We decided it would be good to fly an ILS and a GPS approach so I could get some quality time learning the autopilot. In between we'd squeeze in some landings and call it good.

Turns out, the most difficult part of the flight was getting off the ground. Crystal was totally swamped.

It was hard to get a break on the frequency and at one point there were three airplanes lined up on final approach for the always fun, 2,100 foot-long 24R, a cub working the grass otherwise known as 24L, a Baron departing 32L, a Lancair landing 32R and a chopper landing on 32L. And that was just the airplanes in the air.

We sat there at the hold-short line with the Hobbs meter ticking away without mercy and I finally I looked over at Kevin and said 'I'm going to call and tell him we're out of money and would like to taxi back to parking.'

Luckily things settled down and there was a gap so we actually got a takeoff clearance, but not before we'd burned a good 0.4 of an hour (or $48.40 if you want to get really depressed) for engine start, taxi, runup and just sitting around waiting for a takeoff clearance.

It was a relief to get airborne and despite not having flown a Cirrus in nearly two months I managed to more or less keep the thing greasy side down.

I set the heading bug, engaged the autopilot and when we reached 3,500 feet punched the altitude hold and we were on our way to St. Cloud.

We intercepted the localizer a good 25 miles out which was good because it took a couple tries for me to get the autopilot to actually capture and track the localizer signal. The ILS worked out reasonably well and I made a decent landing into a surprisingly strong crosswind.

The crosswind kept picking up and the next two landings were a lot of work. We did a power-off approach (note to self, the SR-20 comes down fast with no power) and I blew the first one but nailed the second.

Then it was back to Crystal to watch the autopilot fly the GPS 14L approach.

The autopilot has a nifty GPSS module, which means it'll fly all the turns in a GPS approach (or any other GPS set of waypoints you care to program in) all by itself. My job was to sit back and watch, manually make the altitude changes and make sure it was going where I expected it to go.

That last bit is more important than it sounds because the thing doesn't quite fly like I expected it to and it'd be easy to stop paying attention only to realize you were going someplace other than where you wanted.

Crystal was using 24L and the wind had really picked up. I flew a reasonable approach then sort of blew it right at the end and wound up drifting a bit. Luckily, I kept it on the runway and we were stopped with room to spare.

Back at the hangar Kevin gave me the good news. I'm now checked out in all of our club airplanes (the 172s, the 182RGs and the SR-20 Cirrus). Now, time to put some hours on the Cirrus by myself to get more comfortable with it.

The $160 omelet

Jamie and I stuffed ourselves into a 172 Sunday morning and went to Brainerd for breakfast.

I've never been a '$100 hamburger' kind of a guy. If I'm flying someplace I much prefer to be doing something useful.

I'm all about making a trip much faster and efficient through the magic of small airplanes and small airports located close to where I want to go. My obsession with speed and efficiency is a bit of a personality defect but I suppose it could be worse.

After six months of near-constant training I was ready to fly anywhere, for any reason, as long as it didn't involve training.

So Brainerd it was.

Jamie is a student pilot with maybe five or six hours in his logbook, a member of my flying club and an all-around great guy I've known for ages now.

It's easy to forget how new and exciting the prospect of taking an airplane on a short cross-country flight is to somebody who has never done it.

I handled the takeoff, got us established in cruise at 3,500 feet and gave Jamie the airplane. We've flown together before and I know he can handle cruise just fine so I decided to add some basic navigation chores for him to deal with.

It was strictly pilotage (navigating by looking out the window and following a map to your destination, which is great fun and a bit of a lost art now that darn near everybody uses GPS).

I showed Jamie our route on the sectional chart and explained we'd follow Hwy. 169 until we could see Mille Lacs and then aim for the west shore of the lake before cutting northwest into Brainerd.

It was great fun and totally relaxing as Jamie followed the highway and did a good job holding altitude and heading in the smooth morning air. I'd occasionally point out our location on the sectional chart so he could start equating what he saw out the window with what was depicted on the map.

Nearing Brainerd I explained how we'd begin our descent by reducing power and how the airplane would just keep on flying at the same airspeed. We had a quick discussion about using pitch for airspeed control, power to manage the rate of descent or climb.

Jamie did a nice job getting us set up on a downwind for 12 at Brainerd and I took over then made a mediocre landing.

After an omelet at the Wings Cafe we checked out a Citation on the ramp then piled back into trusty 1724Y and headed home.

The winds were forecast to pick up and the forecast was right on the money. There was light turbulence at 3,500 so we climbed up to 5,500 to find smooth air.

I had Jamie track a GPS direct course back. He wandered around a bit but I kept my mouth shut and let him figure it out, which he did. We talked through how to effectively scan for traffic (pick a segment of sky and scan then move on, don't sweep from side to side) and I messed around with the Garmin 430 for a while and tried not to be too bothered by our 83 knot groundspeed.

I mentioned it to Jamie who wasn't bothered at all. “That's not really the point, is it?” he said.

I had to agree that speed wasn't the issue today, although part of me still wished we'd taken a 155-knot 182RG instead.

We motored along in silence for a while and I was struck by just how remarkable it is to be able to hop in a small airplane and just go fly for the hell of it.

It's easy to forget how fortunate we are to have such an excellent infrastructure for general aviation and how lucky I am to have flown enough to think a flight from Minneapolis to Brainerd isn't a big adventure.

Jamie flew the descent down into the bumps at 3,500 feet and he did a fine job holding altitude and course without any coaching from me, which was really fun to watch.

At 10 miles out I took over. There was a fair bit of mechanical turbulence on approach and a stiffening crosswind but I managed a really smooth landing with the upwind wheel kissing down first, just like they teach it. A quick stab on the brakes and we were stopped maybe 1,000 feet down the runway.

It was a totally routine flight for me but a great adventure for Jamie and that made it special.

Paper or plastic?

Well, my new license arrived in the mail today.

No, it's not the one I'll get that says 'Commercial Pilot' on it.

It's the license that was issued after I passed the checkride for my instrument rating 71 days ago and is already obsolete.

The important license is my new temporary certificate. Despite being little more than a piece of paper with some hand-written information on it, my temporary is much more impressive to me than the nifty plastic one I just got from the FAA.

Since I received my private pilot's license ages ago, I'd only ever had an old-style paper license. To be honest, it just wasn't that impressive looking and didn't hold up very well in my wallet.

These new plastic jobs are pretty slick, what with a hologram and everything.

I can't wait to talk to a pilot who got their first license after the FAA started issuing them on plastic.

I can play 'old man' and get that far-away look in my eyes.

Me: "Yeah, I remember back in the day when our licenses were paper. I used to hang an onion from my belt because that was the style at the time. And GPS was so new only a few airplanes had them. We had to get by with LORAN. Now that'll make a real navigator out of you son."

Young pilot: "Gee whiz, you had a paper license?"

Me: "Yessir. The best thing about the old paper licenses was that you could light them on fire if you were forced down in the wilderness and needed to smoke. Now, I don't what they expect us to do. Probably have to light the darn POH on fire but then how could you fly the airplane without the POH? Shame, really."

Yeah, the conversations that take place in my head are usually far more interesting than the ones I have in real life.

No longer an amateur

Well, I'm officially a commercial pilot. How weird is that?

Last night I was fairly certain I was going to bust my checkride this morning.

I'd gone out flying yesterday afternoon and had an awful time. There were really strong surface winds so it was pretty bumpy but I still thought I flew horribly.

I made two miserable crosswind landings. The first, at Princeton, was downright scary. I lost about 10 knots on final due to windshear, poured in the power and dropped the nose and then got it all back at the threshold. So there I was, fast with too much power and getting bounced around from the mechanical turbulence of the wind whipping over the trees next to the runway. It was ugly.

Back it Crystal it wasn't much better, with moderate turbulence on final and some shear as well. I sort of bounced it in and taxied back to the hangar with my tail between my legs.

Needless to say, I didn't get much sleep last night and when I got out to the airport at 7 this morning I was less than optimistic.

By the time I completed my preflight and double-checked that all the required documents were in the airplane and up-to-date I barely had enough time to depart, do two steep turns and head for Anoka.

The checkride wound up being fun, although I didn't fly up to my typical standards.

We did some ground, got in the airplane and flew the maneuvers I've gotten so sick of.

A steep turn, some truly awful lazy eights, some stalls, some slow flight, a short-field landing (it was actually pretty darn good), a 180-degree power off approach followed by a go-around, some eights on pylons and then back to Crystal for a soft-field landing.

We taxied in and shut down. I looked over and said "I'm sorry. You didn't get my best flying today."

Turns out I didn't need to apologize because a handshake and some paperwork later and I had a nifty temporary airman certificate with commercial privileges for single-engine land airplanes to go with my nearly new instrument rating.

Now I'm ready for a break, at least from training.

Of course, I still have some work to do getting checked out in our Cirrus. And the weather is getting nice and I've always wanted a sea-plane rating. Not to mention a commercial multi-engine certificate is at least impressive at parties.

Hmmm....