Pancakes and Eggs Fly-In at Paulding Airport

Today I went to the Paulding Northwest Atlanta Airport, which is the closest one from my house, for a FAAST seminar together with a "pancake fly-in". As the name states, you fly in and there will be pancakes. yumm

The seminar was about "General Aviation Accidents and How to Prevent Them!" given by Mr. Naji Malek from Berkeley Aviation. 

It started at 8:30 am and It was good to see a lot of different airplanes and people at the airport, I think the ramp was at its busiest since the airport opened back in 2008.  The pancakes were super fantastic, along with the eggs, bacon and coffee.

The seminar was very informative and interesting, we learned about how accident investigations are made, what equipment is taken, what to look for when investigating an accident and Mr Malek showed us some previous accidents where we would determine the probable causes and how could those have been prevented. 

I hope that the airport does this kind of events more often. 

The FAA Safety Team mission is to improve the Nation's aviation safety record by conveying safety principles and practices through training, outreach, and education. At the same time, FAASTeam Managers and Program Managers will establish meaningful aviation industry alliances and encourage continual growth of a positive safety culture within the aviation community.

If you are interested in attending one of these seminars go to http://www.faasafety.gov

Final checkride

Finally on September 12th 2012.. I had my last checkride with Mr. Fred Houston.. my CFI single engine add-on.. I did my best checkride ever and even the examiner noticed that I probably had more time than the other ACPP guys because my maneuvers were flawless.. That was a very nice compliment and I felt very excited.
We went up and I did chandelles (both right and left), lazy eights, slow flight, accelerated stall, power-off stall, he simulated to be a student and asked me to guide him to a power-off 180 to the 1000 footers. We also did all landings, eights on pylons, etc..
It was a very fun flight.. I really enjoyed it and I felt more confident than any other checkride. It is not easy and you need to be focused on what you are going to teach your student. The guy who took this checkride before me failed and that really made me focus on the game.. exchange of controls, detailed pre-flight, use of checklists, I was talking and talking every single thought that I had and explaining every movement that I did. That is what CFI checkrides are all about.
I'm happy to be done now.. Next step is to take a small brake, I need to take care of some personal and some work stuff and probably by the end of the year I will be applying to flight schools or looking for SIC opportunities on Charters or Part 91 operators.. Right now I feel amazing because I have accomplished the hardest part of the dream; but the journey continues.

The last few miles for the finish line..

After I got my initial CFI downt at Ft Lauderdale, I came back to Atlanta and went on a business trip to Bogota, Colombia. I had a great time down there working at the car racing circuit in Tocancipa.
When I came back, things were not very easy.. the reason is that you only get one training flight before your instrument CFI add on (CFII) which lasts basically 2 hours. I wanted to have my checkride with Mr Clyde Shelton down at Hunstville because I got my instrument rating with him and I was more familiar and felt more comfortable.
 When you sign up for the Career Program at ATP, you have a structured program with each lesson description and duration, the total flight time that you end up with is 115 hours.. which is what you paid for..At this point I had only 106 hours on the seminole, I have been on top of the game at all times and being ready for my checkrides before I finish each phase. ATP flight ops agreed that I had time remaining to fly down to Huntsville with a cross country student and take my checkride.
On September 7th 2012 I was at Briscoe Field with the other student ready to go up to Hunstville for my checkride..I haven't filed an IFR flight plan in a while, but , with this Foreflight app is a piece of cake. We flew down to LZU and another ATP airplane was there. I went inside the FBO and a student was there with a very dissapointed face.. I went ahead and ask him.. - "which checkride did you take?".. "Commercial" he replied with a very uncomfortable voice... I then continued.- "How did it go?"...
He just nodded and said.. "not good, we didn't even fly... systems, systems, systems,... I blacked out on the oral on systems and I'm pissed off at myself now"..
It looked that he really wanted to talk to someone so we chatted a little bit and I gave him some tips next time he came for his re-check.. I took my commercial checkride with Clyde as well and It went very good.
Then Clyde stepped out of his office and told me he could take me earlier and so I went inside.. after we went through the paperwork, we started talking about IFR regulations, aeronautical experience, primary controls for pitch, bank, power; he had me give him a class on holds and interceptions.. It went pretty good and then we went out flying.. It was very very hot, but I did good and I left MDQ being a CFII... one more to go and I'm done!