Numbers

Among my favorite Christmas presents this year was a framed certificate commemorating my first solo. It was dug up out of my parents' basement and long forgotten by yours truly.

Because my original logbook was stolen I had only an approximate idea of when exactly that momentous occasion took place. Turns out it was July 20, 1983 and I was all of 16 years old.

Funny thing then that 23 years later to the day I passed my CFI check ride on July 20, 2006.

It's been a good year for flying. 170 hours PIC, plus another 20 in the simulator. 65 of those hours were as an instructor and those are the 65 hours I'm by far the most proud of.

So, by some measures it wasn't a lot of flying, by others it was a ton. Not many people get to log nearly 200 hours in a year, although a select few get to log many times more than that.

Regardless of the measure, I spent enough time in airplanes in 2006 that it feels weird to go more than a few days without flying.

The toughest part about flying so much is forcing myself to treat each flight with the respect it deserves. Truth be told, flying a 172 takes about as much thought as jumping in my truck to drive to the store. It's a good feeling, but also a dangerous one.

I never want to get complacent about flying, so I work on being as methodical as possible and on never forgetting that I'm actually flying an airplane. It's tougher than I thought.

My students all do their own pre-flight inspections, for example, and they do them very, very well. So it's rare that I actually preflight an airplane and I'm getting used to having somebody else take care of that chore for me.

Left to my natural tendencies the wing could be falling off and I might not notice, so I force myself to ask about the oil and fuel levels, inquire about the status of the annual inspection and query my students about the paperwork or the weather.

I'm starting to understand the old adage about the most dangerous airplane being the one piloted by two flight instructors. It's true. Seriously, never fly in an airplane with two CFIs at the controls. Ever. Bad mojo that.

2006 was a year spent acquiring ratings and earning the honor to teach others. I started the year a private pilot without so much as an instrument rating and finished a CFII. Amazing.

2007 is looking to be a busy year. I'm starting with both a primary and an instrument student next week and there are some other promising instructing opportunities on the horizon.

My logbook shows:

C172: 307 hours

C182RG: 88 hours

SR20: 14 hours

SR22: 9 hours

PA28: 6 hours

PA46: 0.5 hours

Instructor: 65 hours

Pitiful by most accounts, but that's nearly 18 full days spent in the air and each and every minute has been a blast.

Except, of course, for the minutes when things weren't going so well and I wished I was someplace else, of which there are many.

Making the Switch

Doug asked a question I've seen, or been asked, several times: What's it like to leave a 'real' job for a career in aviation later in life.

The best advice I can give is to have a spouse who works. Barring that, have a pile of money that you can live off of while you're getting established.

I'd also suggest trying it out while you still have a 'real' job. Instructing, or even flying professionally, isn't for everyone. I know I'd be bored out of my mind as an airline pilot, for example. I was pretty certain flight instruction would be a fun job after I flew as a safety pilot for a few people and realized I had something to offer and enjoyed the experience as well.

The brutal truth is that after leaving journalism, where I was paid pretty well, I don't make enough money from flight instruction to live on. Making the switch required a fairly significant change in our lifestyle. Luckily, we don't have children to feed or send to college, my wife has a good job so the mortgage is taken care of and I make enough to pay some of the other bills.

I planned my move for over a year, which meant I was able to save enough cash to see me through my training. But it was still tough to have zero income for seven months while I was spending a fair amount of cash flying.

Financially, switching careers is tough, takes some planning, requires discipline and most of all requires the full support of your spouse.

The upside, at least from my perspective, is that I'm doing something I enjoy and something I've always wanted to do. It's a difficult job with a level of responsibility I'd rather not ponder but it's also hugely satisfying at the end of the day.

The pay is lousy, especially considering the responsibility but also when you factor in all the time spent driving to and from a lesson, waiting for a student to show up, preparing for a lesson, studying stuff you've forgotten, time spent working to land new business, following up with existing clients and generally dealing with all the things that go into running a service business.

I'm not terribly worried about the pay, at least not yet. I've only been doing this since September and I knew going in that it was going to take some time to get established. As far as I'm concerned, I'm still in training. I learn every lesson, both about flying but also about teaching effectively and about offering a service.

I also know that there's a market for mature, professional instructors that is potentially fairly lucrative. Not hugely lucrative, but big enough that an instructor could make a decent living off of it if they're willing to work hard to develop their skills and build that business.

Let's face it: People who can spend $500,000 or more on a new airplane aren't looking for the cheapest flight instructor they can find, they're looking for someone who knows what they're doing, who they can relate to and who they can go back to year after year. For that, they're willing to pay a premium. I'm not that person yet, but I'm getting there as quickly as I can.

I was talking with an instructor a few months back who flies a Malibu part-time. He had met another instructor who specializes in teaching the Malibu. Turns out the guy is fully booked in 2007, which is probably an indication that he's not charging enough. So, it's certainly possible to make a decent living as an instructor but it's not easy.

Likewise, a successful business person who has always wanted to fly and finally has the time to do so just won't be satisfied by the lack of service that's typical at a lot of traditional flight schools.

Call it a leap of faith, but I've always thought it made sense to choose a career or a job based on how much you enjoyed the work, not on the pay. The pay will come eventually but life is too short to do something you don't enjoy.

Just make sure you have a spouse who works.

Trying to stay busy

A quick update.

My primary student and I haven't flown together in a few weeks, although he has been out flying solo a bit. That's fine because he needs to get some solo time in.

My instrument student and I have kept on keeping on and we're hammering away at approaches. We've been doing a lot of work in the Elite, particularly getting him up to speed on the Garmin 430. If I have my way, he'll be proficient as hell with the 430. It's one of the best tools in the airplane, but only if you know how to use it.

I picked up a second instrument student so he and I are working on basic attitude flying. He bought a 172 from a flight school and I was stunned at how nicely it flew, despite having almost 12,000 hours on the airframe.

Teaching instrument flying is challenging but also a lot of fun. And I'm glad I got my CFII as quickly as I did because it's the instructor rating that will probably bring me the most business.

I may have picked up a third instrument student through my club. He's making all the right noises and is a really nice guy so I'm looking forward to flying with him.

From the 'when it rains it pours' department, I think I've picked up another primary student as well. Again, we'll see what happens after the holidays but he was eager and I think he's ready to get going.

Such is the life as an independent flight instructor: The only work you get is the work you hustle to get. Some months there's almost no flying to be had then next thing you know you're looking at potentially having five students going at once.

Of course, 10 students would be better. This job is seriously fun and it's almost a crime to call it a 'job' because I enjoy it so much.

One theme I've picked up from each student is a dissatisfaction with 'normal' flight schools. My instrument students did their training at a flight school. The fact that they're not returning there for their instrument ratings illustrates a fundamental problem: Passing students around to two or three flight instructors isn't the way to get return business.

They all know I'm not the best or most experienced instructor around, but they also know that I'll be here to see them through their rating and that I'll work hard for them.

And that's enough.

Flight instruction is a service business and it pays to give good customer service. It's amazing how many conventional flight schools don't realize that.

Simple as that, really.

I actually flew an airplane

One of the downsides to instructing is that although I spend a lot of time in airplanes as PIC it's rare that I actually get to fly one.

It's been over a month since I logged a landing, for example, which means it's probably been over a month since I actully touched the controls as well.

My club requires 3 hours within 180 days, or a checkout flight with an instructor, to fly the Cirrus and 182RG and, well, it had been ages since I'd flown the Cirrus so I wasn't current.

I decided to grab an instructor and go out in our SR-20 so I could start flying it again. Since my night currency was set to expire we scheduled the flight after sunset so I could log the required three night takeoffs and landings.

And, while I watch a lot of approaches with my instrument student, I rarely fly an approach as "sole manipulator of the controls." In fact, the last approach I logged was on my CFII checkride, three months ago.

So we decided to throw in a hold and an approach as well to make efficient use of time.

It was a beautiful night and the Cirrus was just like I remembered it so the airwork went just fine. We did a few steep turns then I went on the gauges and flew the hold at LORDY, on the VOR-B into Buffalo.

I guess all the hours watching my instrument student fly approaches in the sim paid off because I wasn't as rusty as I expected and managed to keep the needles nicely centered.

The winds aloft at 3,000 feet were strong out of the west and it took some doing to get my inbound leg even close to one minute. Even flying the outbound leg for 20 seconds wasn't short enough. Our groundspeed downwind was 146 knots, into the wind it was down to about 85.

We did three trips around the hold then flew the GPS-14L back into Crystal, which worked out just fine, despite a 25-degree correction for the crosswind on the final approach course.

The surface winds were light though, 180 at 4, so the landing was simple enough.

At pattern altitude the winds were easily 25 knots and it took a big correction angle to track the runway. It's bizarre to be sliding along final with a massive crab angle only to have it all go away 100 feet off the deck and land with no wind to speak of.

Anyhow, I'm current in the Cirrus again so I need to go fly it a bunch to start getting ready to go through the CSIP deal up at the factory.

It sure was nice to actually fly an airplane again.

Handheld

I guess I was old school or something, but I never had much of a desire for a handheld transceiver. Since I never met a gadget I didn't like this always struck me as being a little odd.

I always thought they were just a little too geeky, expensive and, most importantly, not terribly useful given their limited transmission range.

Then I experienced my second electrical system failure in three years. In both failures I had enough battery power remaining to get back on the ground without losing communications but in both cases I sat there wishing I had a handheld for backup.

What sealed the deal, though, was the thought of soloing students. When I soloed my first student I decided against watching from the tower and instead stood outside watching but not being able to listen to what was going on. That wasn't a great feeling and I can certainly envision heading out with a student to an uncontrolled airport, getting out and letting them take it around by themselves for a while so having some way to communicate with them is a good thing.

(When I soloed my instructor just waved a white handkerchief when he wanted me to come back in. I love the nostalgia of that approach, but prudence dictates a more, um, modern method.)

So I sprang for a handheld the other day and have been spending some time learning how to use it.

I decided on a Vertex VXA-300 Pilot III and bought it from John and Martha King. Their price was the lowest I'd seen ($240) and what the heck, maybe my order will win the airplane they give away every year. And I should be able to deduct it as a business expense, since I bought it to keep track of students in the pattern.

So far, I'm cautiously impressed.

The unit is sized just right, a little smaller than a checkbook in height and about as thick as a pack of smokes. That means it doesn't take up a whole lot of room in my flight bag but isn't so small that I have a hard time holding it in my hand.

It has both communications capability and navigation (useful in a real pinch, I suppose) plus weather channels (not terribly useful, I'm afraid.)

It feels heavy, rugged and extremely well put together. I've used other handhelds that either felt sort of cheap (Sportys) or were just huge (Bendix/King's venerable KX-99) but the Vertex is neither.

I also liked that the VXA-300 uses a more robust NiMh battery instead of the more sensitive NiCad battery in their VXA-150 communications-only radio. I'm no battery expert, but my past experience with NiCads has been that they're a bit of a pain and require a bit more planning when charging in order to get a reasonable life out of them.

Since the VXA-300 was only $10 more than the VXA-150 the decision was no-brainer.

I also liked that the Vertex shipped with a headset adaptor in the box, which is not the case with the Sporty's radio.

The headset adaptor, by the way, took some fiddling to figure out and I'm glad I tried it on the ground in the comfort of my living room rather than trying to figure it out bouncing along in the clouds.

The headset plug needs to be screwed in fully or the radio will transmit blindly. So the trick is to turn the unit off, screw the headset plug in all the way, hook up a headset and push-to-talk switch then turn everything back on.

For emergency use I'll probably leave the headset adaptor installed on the radio in my flight bag, since while it's a simple enough task on the ground it could present an unwanted distraction in the air.

The keys are on the small side and fairly close to the case surface, which means there's not very good feedback when punching in frequencies. That's not a huge deal for me, but older eyes or arthritic fingers will probably have a hard time. And forget about using the keypad with gloves on, it's just not going to happen.

There's quite a bit of capability but putting most of it into use requires some quality time with the manual. I don't find the steps required to do some things particularly intuitive.

The process for using both the navigation side and the communications side at the same time, for example, is convoluted enough that I'll probably never do it in the air, and certainly won't remember how to do it without consulting the manual.

I've been spending some quality time with the manual and there's still plenty that I don't quite understand about programming the radio.

Luckily, most of the advanced features I don't really care about. Tuning a frequency is as simple as keying it in and that's about all I'll ever do with the thing.

On the ground, I can pick up MSP tower and approach (I live about six miles away) just fine as well as the MSP VOR. Driving to the airport I started picking up Crystal's ATIS about 10 miles away and tower shortly afterward.

The sound quality is just fine, even through a headset, and plenty loud. (And yes, I looked like a total dork walking around my house with my headset on trying it out. What we won't do for science, eh?)

The radio also comes with a very nicely designed belt clip. Seriously, it's very well thought out and easy to flip the radio so it slides out, leaving the clip itself attached to your belt.

I'm not geeky enough to ever actually use the belt clip, but props to Vertex for designing a nice one.

I haven't flown with the unit yet or tried to see how well it transmits and performs in the air. That'll have to wait a bit. I need to get a night currency flight in within the next week or so and I'll probably give it a shot then.

I'm still not sure how useful the thing will actually be in an emergency but I do know that I'll at least be able to hear ATC and navigate to a VOR, so that's better than before.

I'll also bet that I'll never experience another charging system failure in my life, at least not until I forget the radio at home at which point the airplane electrics will go promptly to hell in IMC at night.

Frozen

One of the disadvantages of being an independent instructor is the lack of proper briefing space before a lesson.

In the summer it's not a big deal because it's easy to improvise in the hangar.

In the winter, it's miserable.

If you recall the theories outlined in the Fundamentals of Instructing, a student's physical needs must be met before they can learn.

In practice, that means students can't learn if they're on the verge of hypothermia. Not surprisingly, instructors can't teach if they're freezing to death either.

Today was one of those days. By the time I arrived at 9 a.m. for an instrument lesson my student had the hangar open and the pre-flight completed. The wind was howling and the air temperature was -14C.

I said a quiet "thank you" that he was done with the pre-flight inspection since I make it a point to freeze or bake with my students. I just can't bring myself to sit in a car while my client is outside battling the elements.

I'll probably get over that once I've gotten frostbite once too often, but for now it's a matter of stubborn pride I guess.

We went over the flight in his car, which wasn't optimal but it was better than trying to spend more than a few minutes standing around outside.

I'd gone back and forth about what to do before I left the house in the morning. The forecast was for VFR with occasional MVFR between Crystal and St. Cloud due to restricted visibilities. I wanted to stay out of the clouds to avoid any potential icing but I knew that if we wanted to fly approaches we'd probably have to get close to the bases, perhaps even into them.

I checked the Forecast Icing Potential widget (http://adds.aviationweather.gov/icing/) and it was only showing a small chance of icing along our route. There were no pireps for icing in the area and I reasoned that it was cold enough that any moisture we might find would be in the form of ice crystals.

Plus, the ceilings were broken and the layers fairly thin, maybe 1,000 feet maximum.

Putting all that together I guessed we wouldn't run into any icing and decided to file IFR to St. Cloud and back to Crystal. My plan was to avoid actually flying into the clouds and therefore avoid running afoul of the FAAs interpretation of "Known Icing Conditions," which is basically visible moisture or high humidity and temperatures near or below freezing.

In other words, the FAA says if you fly into a cloud during the winter (at least here in the upper midwest) you've flown into known icing conditions. Since our 172 isn't approved for flight into known icing, well, we need to stay out of the clouds.

I'm on the fence about the FAAs definition of known icing.

For one, icing is one of those deals that need to be avoided in anything from a Cub to a 747. It's bad mojo and especially bad for airplanes. Sure, the big Boeing has plenty of power and excellent de-icing equipment, but I'd bet that any 747 pilot will tell you that if they start picking up ice they're going to do whatever it takes to get out of it, as they should.

Since I plan on dying in bed on my 100th birthday, shot dead by the jealous husband of the nude starlet next to me, I'm not going to mess around with ice in a puny 172.

Anything that keeps people away from taking icing casually is a good thing.

But the reality is the by the FAA definition virtually any IFR flying in the winter can't happen, at least not in anything not approved for flight into known icing, which our 172 most certainly is not.

Experience and judgment gets left out of the FAAs interpretation. Maybe that's a good thing, but I'm not so sure.

So the call that made the most sense was to file IFR, do everything possible to stay out of the clouds and get on with the business of teaching instrument flying.

It worked out just fine and although we wound up going through some clouds while being vectored for the ILS 31, and then again while being vectored back into Crystal, there was no ice to be found.

The trip was beautiful. Above the broken layer the visibilities were unrestricted. Below, they varied between virtually unrestricted and just a few miles in floating ice crystals.



I'm still awed by the sights on hand as you fly a small airplane through canyons of clouds.

My student did a fine job on the ILS while I sat in the right seat slowly freezing to death. Even with the heat on full little more than a tepid flow of air came from the heater, it was just too cold.

By the time we got back to Crystal I was right and truly cold and miserable. We parked, started our cars to get the heaters going then pushed the airplane back into the hangar.

After that we debriefed in the standard independent flight instructor's winter office: A car with the heater on full blast.