So today I woke up at 5:45 am. I was scheduled to be at the school at 8:00 am and I was planning to leave at 6:30 just to get a feeling of the commute.. according to Google maps it would take me around 45-55 minutes, and you need to add Atlanta's morning rush traffic to that number.
So today was a cold morning with clear skies, I was looking forward to fly on my first day at ATP. I took a shower and when I went downstairs my lovely girlfriend already had set my lunchbox just like if I was her little boy on his first day of school. It was funny, but I love it.
I left at 6:30 am and got to PDK at 7:20 am. I was 40 minutes easrly and the school was closed. I went outside to check out the airplanes and there they were: 2 ATP Cessna 172s and a 1979 Piper Seminole PA-44 parked outside. I went around it identifying all the parts that I've been studying in the ATP videos: the double COM antennas on top, the scupper drain, the vent drain, the battery drain, alternator vents, the light in front of the airplane, the single GPS unit. (2000 models have 2). It looks like I will be learning in this old airplane but oh well, I hope to try the 2000 model in the near future.
I went back inside and another guy was waiting outside ATP's office, I talked to him and told me that he was there to get his ATP license. Currently a F.O. for the Embraer170 for Republic Air. I asked him a lot of questions about the industry, pros, cons.. I'm pretty sure I will be meeting a lot of pilots and I will be able to look at their point of view about their jobs.
Instructors arrived at 8:00 am. The PDK location has only two instructors. Very cool guys. I recognized one of them since he is the one who gave me the tour a couple of months ago, and apparently he is the one that is going to be assigned to me. Then, another student arrived, I'm pretty sure he was the same guy who was receiving his first day of ground school when I arrived for the tour. He was working now into his commercial license and told me about all the cross country flights he has done so far.
Basically the first day is just paperwork. I was thinking it was going to be like when you close a mortgage that you pretty much have a looooot of stuff to sign, but no; It was only 3 pages with legal stuff, a look at my logbook hours, they got copies of my license, FAA certificate, medical, and passport.
I also had a small 50 question test, multiple choice, which was mostly Private Pilot stuff. It is hard to remember if you hadn't been through it for a while, but fortunately I had my BFR recently, so it wasn't that hard.
I also got a binder, big binder, that includes my whole syllabus and a lot of extra stuff. I haven't been through it yet but I will today.
Then I had some ground school, multi-engine stuff from the Seminole Supplement. I have been studying so hard for the past days that I was very familiar with I was getting from ground school. I had questions about P-factor and the instructor explained it to me in a very easy way. I also didn't know that the most unfavorable weight when determining Vmc is a "lighter weight" because the heavier the mass, the more lift it is capable of creating so I learned something new today.
I have to memorize COLD the first pages of the supplement and go through the binder and be ready for my second lesson tomorrow. I didn't get to fly today, but I will for sure tomorrow. The forecast for this rest of the week is clear skies, so If everything goes according to my plan, I should be getting my multi-engine rating on Monday or Tuesday. I'm going to try to post as many pictures as I can.
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