ATP Stage 3 - Cross countries

This is what former students call the best stage of the Airline Career Program at ATP. It is the cross country phase. It starts just after you get your instrument rating and the first two flights consist of going with your instructor on a cross country flight. The first flight is a day IFR flight and the second is the flight back at night. At this stage you start using your instrument skills; filing your IFR flight plan, and most important, learning about CRM to prepare you for the airlines.
It didn't start good because while I was doing the preflight and I was untying one of the ropes underneath the wing.. I hit my head with the sharp edge of the cowl flap. I didn't think it was a big deal until i start seeing blood dropping from my head and suddendly covering my face. My instructor almost passed out. I covered my head with towels but they turned red in a matter of seconds.. I didn't feel dizzy but it was scary.. my head wouldn't stop bleeding. I ran towards the bathrrom and washed my face and kept trying to control the blood with the towel.. It hurt a lot more and then it stopped bleeding.
After maybe an hour and a half just sitting there and trying to see how I felt.. I decided that I was able to go flying.
I went to my instructor to Meridian, MS (again) and came back at night, I just put a towel underneath my headset just in case but I felt good all the time. For the first part he was the pilot flying and I sat on the left making all radio calls and setting navigation instruments and for the flight back I did the flying and he managed all comunications.
After this flight, scheduling will check my availability calendar (since I am self paced student; fast track must be available every day) and will send me a text message the night before telling me where am I flying to at what time and who will be with me. I forgot to say that the instructor won't be flying with me; this time it will be with another student who is on the same stage. There will be 50 hours of cross country flights.
After the flight with my instructor, I got the text message for my first cross country flight. LZU-MEI .. yes, Meridian again! for the 4th time.
I arrived at LZU at 7:30 am and the other student arrived shortly afterwards.. it was his last cross country flight so that was good because he already was familiar of what is going on. We decided that I would fly the airplane towards MEI and we were pretty sure that they were going to send us back to LZU because he only had around 5 hours left; so the flight back he was going to fly the airplane and I would be Pilot Monitoring.
That day the ceilings were very low, dispatch wouldn't let us go until noon when the weather was above ATP minimums at both airports. ATP minimums are higher than the FAAs.
Another first was that I got to fly a 2000 model of the Seminole!! I loved it!! After flying just old 79 models, this was like a BMW with wings. I loved it!
We arrived at Meridian and got some hot dogs.. there was some military training going on around.. for what I saw it was like French military men were being trained by the US. I also met a guy who delivered Cessna airplanes to Africa.. he was there flying a Cessna 172, brand new, that was going to be delivered to Angola. That really sounds like a great job.. 
The other student complimented me on my flying, and I also think I am doing much better on IFR communications. That flight was last Saturday and my next one will be tomorrow. I can't wait for that text message to come and tell me where am I flying tomorrow.

So far I have 49 hours on the Seminole since I started the program at ATP. I am also studying the Gleim book for the commercial written which I hope to get out of the way on mid April.

My checklist after I hit my head.. ouch!

This is what I hit my head with

Flight towards MEI with my instructor.. there is always this efect when you take a picture to the engine.

Approaching Meridian runway 22 from the right seat

Waiting at Meridian for the sun to set

2000 Piper Seminole for my first cross county!

Flying over the clouds

Some stuff I was not able to see while being a VFR only pilot

Dobbins Air Force base while approaching LZU

Atlanta

KATL-MGGT

I have been very busy with work and have not posted since my instrument checkride. I went on a business trip to Guatemala and San Salvador during the last week of March and I had a blast.
I took some pictures from the airplane and kept track of the airline route with Fore Flight. I love the fact that everytime i see an airport or a lake or mountain from the window I can find out exactly where we are.
The approach into Guatemala was the ILS/DME-2 Rwy 1

Over the Gulf of Mexico towards MID VOR (Merida)

Flying over Coban, Guatemala

Over the city of Guatemala towards the VOR

 Starting the teardrop turn inbound towards Runway 1, theres Amatitlan Lake. Challenging approach.

La Aurora International Airport - MGGT

Saturday... the checkride

I arrived at the school at 9:30 am, I made sure I had everything I needed for the checkride with me. Foggles, money, Id's, cross country flight plan, performance charts... I finished up the airworthiness information for IFR on that morning. (Annual, VOR check, 100 hrs, Altimeter, Transponder, ELT..) It was a very busy morning; my instructor had 3 students with checkrides. One of them was a private multi-engine, a commercial single-engine and me; however, I was the only one who was going to take his test at another airport, so he had to call an instructor from KLZU to come to KMDQ with me since ATP doesn't allow solo flying for students in the Seminoles.
The instructor from LZU arrived and pretty much I handled all the radios all the way to KMDQ. We taxied to runway 2R and off we went up to 6,000 feet. The air was smooth and we requested Huntsville Approach the RNAV  to runway 18 at KMDQ.



We arrived at Mr Clyde Shelton's office. It was pretty impressive, he had tons of awards and pictures with Geoge Bush, McCain, etc. He told us some nice stories about the good ol' days of flying and computers, very nice person.
We went ahead and started the oral; I think it went pretty good but you also learn a lot from him. The first question he asked me was if I knew how to calculate Va.. I didn't.. he provided me with a piece of paper with the formula written and asked me to calculate Va for our flight.

 I felt I didn't start good.. he then went ahead and started asking questions about the cross country flight that I planned and all the weather resources, weather charts, approach plates, scenarios.... Then he went ahead and briefed me about our flight.
Mr Shelton really gave me a workout in the air, I contacted Hunstville approach to request practice VFR approaches. The ILS at KMDQ was out of service so we were going to do that at KHSV runway 18L with one engine inoperative, then we went direct to RQZ VOR for a VOR-B approach, circle to land runway 18, then tune to the IAF for the GPS runway 18 touch and go, back to intercept the 070 radial from RQZ, do a 10 DME arc to the 044 radial inbound that have to be interrupted because another airplane was flying towards us.. but the arc was pretty good. Then we went back into the radial and he covered my HSI and my Attitude Indicator and we hold on the 8 DME 044 radial with just the clock and magnetic compass. After that we went ahead and did unusual attitudes and by that time I got pretty dizzy. For the end we went ahead and we did a PAR.. he would tell me headings, altitudes, rate of descents and speeds to the threshold of the runway.:my first Cat III landing and it was the smoothest of all 3!! Bottom line.. I passed, I am instrument rated now, I filed my first IFR flight back and we logged some actual instrument. I celebrated last night with my girlfriend and I am ready now for phase 3 on the ATP course!!

Instrument checkride has been scheduled...

I had another instrument flight last thursday. It was my very first flight with my new instructor. I already did some sim work with him and everything it went ok.
This past thursday before our flight, my instructor was very tired. He had been flying all day and helooked kind of he was in a bad mood. He told me that my instrument checkride has been scheduled in Huntsville, AL with Clyde Shelton for Sat, February 17th . I am a little scared now, since I now don't know what to expect and apparently they are going to start using Clyde now for some checkrides since it has been pretty hard to find availability from the DPEs. The bad thing is that my mindset was that I was going to go with Mr. Fred Houston and I am very familiar with the approaches at KWDR and the area around; I already had a lot of information of how he conducts the oral test plus I had my multi engine checkride with him at the beginning of the year, so I already now what to expect on the personality side.
My instructor doesn't have any information about Clyde either.
On the good side.. this will be a great challenge. I am not familiar with the Hunstville, AL area since I've never flown there but I will do my homework and research on the approaches and areas around it. I don't have any more flights scheduled before my checkride; except for the one going up to Huntsville and back. I'll have an intensive sim work tomorrow and monday afternoon. I already finished the King school IFR checkride videos and today I will go through the ASA oral test guide. I am terrified of getting a pink slip here, I can't get it and I won't get it.
My flight for that night wasn't my best, we had to switch airplanes since the red nav light was not working on the one we filed. We did a VOR approach at Toccoa . I lost some situational awareness and busted my MDA on a GPS approach to Gainesville. My ILS back to PDK was flawless.
Keep your fingers crossed.. my next post will be on Saturday night...

Electronic Pilot Logbook

One night I was online lookin up a tail number. One of the links that google showed took me to a webpage called flightlogg.in; a free electronic pilot logbook.
There I was able to see somebody's pilot logbook, somebody from ATP since the tail number was a PA-44 from ATP. It was very interesting, the guy was now flying for American Eagle and his logbook showed all this cool flights on an ATR. Then I got curious and turned to page 1, just about 3 years ago! There was his first solo, his first cross countries, his checkrides.. then I clicked to a link that said maps. Holly guacamole! I got hooked! This is amazing! You can see on the map all the flights, if there were solo, dual given, received, PIC, SIC, etc. You can see how many flights you have on each airplane, type.. It gives you a lot of information and the best part.. It is free and you just need to use your google account.. or yahoo.. or whatever..
I have heard of electronic pilot logbooks before, but never really paid attention to them. I wasn't really interested in logging my flight time electronically, I already had a logbook, why would I log my times twice? Why bother? Well now I got hooked! I entered all the flights on my logbook and I love it!! Here are some screenshots of my flight life!

2 more instrument flights

Last weekend I had the opportunity to fly both on Saturday and Sunday. Saturday was choppy, lots of turbulence but I managed to do some descent approaches into Athens. Still I made some stupid mistakes that pissed me off (forgot to retract the landing gear after takeoff, didn't set climb power after 1000 ft, and lost 150 ft of altitude while trying to maintain heading.
Sunday was a total different thing, the air was smooth and my instructor decided he would do a mock checkride. This would be his last day at ATP. We took off and this time I had my game on;  I was totally focused, I was making small corrections to maintain heading and altitude, totally dominated the GPS for the approaches, having my next frequencies ready ahead of time, I did pretty good and I'm very happy now. We shoot the VOR DME Arc from AHN into KWDR, then did the published missed,  the RNAV approach at the same airport, and finally we were vectored into the ILS to 31 where the instructor cut one of the engines and I managed it perfectly without loosing my LOC CDI.
I am still studying every night for the oral test. My next flight or sim should be this weekend with my new instructor.

I can smell my instrument rating

On the flying side, I've had only one flight since my last post. An RNAV into Rwy 2 at Athens (KAHN) and the ILS to 27 at the same airport. I did some stupid mistakes that  really pissed me off, altitude and heading mistakes, some communication mistakes. I went to the school early next day to correct my mistakes on the sim; I flew about 4 hours on it and that was last weekend. The rest of the week I have devoted my self into studying the Instrument Jeppesen book from cover to cover and answering all the quizzes at the end of each section.
After I finish it, I will review my Sporty's videos again and the King School course.. I am using all the resources available to me, I really want to ace this checkride which I'm thinking it will come on the second weekend of March.
I have 4 more training flights before my check ride; the next one will be this weekend and also it will be my instructor's last weekend, so it will be interesting.