Follow me to the 2012 Salute America Air Show!!!

After almost a month since I finished flight school.. I am in a break to start looking for a flying job. Basically during the rest of this year I am trying to save money so I have a reserve for next year when I start to make little money flying and try to pay as much as possible to that loan I took to go to ATP.
I always try to read and try to keep up as much as possible with aviation; so I can stay sharp anything when I get interviewed for my first instructor job. Use it or lose it! Learning law of exercise! (you 'll know what I'm taking about when you get to CFI school)
I really can't afford to rent a plane and fly wherever I want now; the only reason I will do it is to get my high performance endorsement, which I will get at Superior Flight School hope pretty soon.

The airport at my hometown, the Paulding Northwest Atlanta Airport (KPUJ), hosted a fantastic air show on October 20th and I was very fortunate to be a volunteer there. I was assigned the duty of the "follow me" cart, so I had all access to the airplanes and pilots. I met some fantastic people who I worked with and everybody related to aviation, from guys with a recent pilots license to experienced 777 first officers.
This was really a very nice experience and here are some pictures, enjoy!

That's me waiting for that Steerman to follow me. 

Focused on the job after I got yelled at for taking pictures while driving :)

The Aeroshell guys were just unbelievable.

The Corsair became my favorite war bird.. It was awesome!!

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!

My CFI Initial check ride.

 I'm not sure where to start. My last post was when I got my commercial single engine add on.. and a lot of things have been going on after that.
I started CFI school at ATP on July 23rd at Lawrenceville Airport. CFI class is advertised as a 2 week course. I have a full time job doing consulting and sales for the motor sports and active sports industry  on the timing and scoring part. My job requires some domestic and international travelling and so far I have been able to squeeze work and ATP within the 10 month program.
For the CFI part, I had to request 2 weeks off from work so I could focus full time for the flight instructor class.
There are rooms with beds on the second floor of the Lawrenceville ATP location and also showers, so we lived there for two weeks, my house is 60 miles away from that airport. There was no way I was going to do that commute every day. I did go home two or three nights but I couldn't do it every day.
We were 6 in our class, we take classes from an instructor on every subject on th Pilot's Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge, sometimes we did group study and sim. We were studying everyday from 7 am to 10 pm, it is very intense. Our instructor was awesome. His class was interesting and funny, he stayed there late covering material with us and making sure we didn't have any doubts.
One of the most memorable things was definitely the spin training.. we went on a C172M over Lake Lanier and it was AWESOME! I didn't get dizzy as I thought I would.. but it is a great experience.
On the flight, your instructor acts as a student and you need to teach him everything.. basically you need to talk everything that you are doing on the aircraft.. telling your student about exchange of controls, taxi procedures, collision avoidance, checklist usage, etc..
On the maneuvers, you need to state the purpose of the maneuver, know the PTS standards and talk through the maneuver while you are demonstrating it. If you make any mistakes you need to say it and how you are correcting for them.
On Monday July 30th, we got the dates for our check rides.. mine was one of the last ones, scheduled for August 16th!! With Mr. Brooks Black at Ft Lauderdale Executive Airport. I stayed at the school until August 1st and then returned to work.
During the weekend I went back to the airport and took advantage of the quiet rooms for studying and gave some class to my classmates (role playing), I also used the sim to practice my maneuvers and talking.
The next weekend, three of my classmates had already taken their tests; two of them passed and one didn't.
I did my second flight on sunday Aug 12th. I had to practice the Vmc maneuver, steep turns and short field and single engine landings. We departed a little late and pretty much I felt comfortable with the air maneuvers, we returned to PDK and flew in the pattern; the night got us and we still did 4 more landings.
On August 15th I flew down to Ft Lauderdale with one of my classmates, we both had our test with different examiners on the 16th at 7:00 am.
Anxiety kicked it like it never had before.. I was extremely nervous, and at moments, I wasn't even sure If I've made the right decision on choosing this path; why didn't I just stayed at my job and don't have to go through all these expenses, all these check rides nervousness,  all these written tests... what if I fail?? How was I going to afford another expensive checkride and how was I going to get the time off from work to travel  back to Ft Lauderdale.. the train of fears was just rolling through my brain..
The morning of Aug 16th I arrived at ATP in Ft Lauderdale at 6:00 am.. I started working on all my airworthiness sheets, weight and balance, performance sheets. My examiner arrived at 6:45 and started working on my paperwork while I was finishing up my calculations.
Well, long story short, after 3 and a half hours of oral and one of the coolest flights I've ever had.. we taxied back to the ramp.. parked, and the examiner just walked away.. he just looked back while I was securing the airplane: "I'll see you inside!! You passed!"
This is what is considered the most difficult checkride, the odds of passing the initial instructor are a lot less than any other checkride.. I am very happy and now looking forward to my CFII.. I have a business trip to Bogota and Quito next week, I'll try to do some studying and I'll take this check ride when I come back on the first week of September.

Commercial Pilot Single Engine and Multi Engine Land

It was a long day today; after arriving at 9:30 am at KLZU, my instructor and I went for a flight to practice all maneuvers for the commercial checkride again. It is easier to fly from LZU because you spend a lot less time on the ground, contrary to PDK where besides tons of taxiways, it is also extremely busy sometimes and your hobbs can take .4  hours without even  taking off. Also LZU is closer to Lake Lanier, which is a great practice area and Winder KWDR to practice landings; PDK has nothing around.
So up we went in a scatterred cloudy day, I performed every maneuver within limits and we returned to LZU.
There were several examiners and students taking their CFII and CFI checkrides; the school looked pretty busy.
My oral went fine.. it wasn't perfect.. the examiner asked me some tricky questions about maneuvering speed, performance and density altitude. Then we went up flying, we went up to Lake Lanier and I started with a Lazy-Eight, Chandelle, Steep Spiral and Eights on Pivots.
Then we went back to LZU and did a short (bouncy) landing, a perfect beautiful soft field landing and a so-so power-off 180. The flight only lasted one hour and now I am completely done with ATP's phase 4..
I took a break this afternoon and went to the pool with my family, I enjoyed the rest of the day with them. Tomorrow and the rest of the weekend it will be all about studying for my FIA (Instructor Written Test) and then on monday I will be at CFI school at LZU. I am very excited! I can't believe I am almost done!

Commercial Single Engine Add-on Training

There have been a few changes in the past weeks after I took my FOI. Apparently, one of the instructors at PDK got hired by a regional airline and my instructor was basically unavailable due to a high volume of fast track students at this location. ATP sent an instructor from LZU to PDK and he became now my instructor for the commercial single engine rating.
This is by far, the best instructor I've ever had at ATP and I'm really grateful that he is teaching me these commercial maneuvers.
We have had two flights this week, one on Sunday morning and one yesterday at 7:00 am. I'm pretty sure I have nailed most of the maneuvers except for the eight on pylons. We went up to Lake Lanier and we circled an island on the lake about 10 times, I got a little better on it but we are still going to brush up that skill tomorrow evening. I must not eat anything prior to this flight because it made me dizzy.
Chandelles and Lazy Eights are easy now.. what I did is to watch the UND aerocast videos and practiced the procedures with Microsoft Flight Simulator.

http://youtu.be/UGaGzlXR3ls

http://youtu.be/px2GpLF3COI

One of the most difficult skills is the power-off 180, which is basically closing the throttle when you are abeam the numbers on the traffic pattern and land the airplane on the thousand footers or captains' bars. I nailed it on Monday and I also did it very well yesterday; this is probably the maneuver that gives me a little anxiety but I think I got it now..
My checkride changed and also my DPE.. It will now be this Thursday with Mr. Billy Smith at KLZU.
I have also been studying the Cessna 172R systems thoroughly.
I also start CFI school this Monday the 23rd at KLZU.. It will be a 14 day intensive program where I will be getting my CFI, CFII and MEI certificates. I also have one written test pending for this, the FIA
If everything goes according to the plan, I will be done with ATP on August 3rd. and I'm still not sure where am I going after that.
There is a career fair this weekend by Aero Crew Solutions where there will be a lot of regional airlines; minimums are around 1000 hours right now but I know that there will be a couple of flight schools hiring instructors; I am still not sure If I'm going or not (US$129.00) yet.
I think that's all so far, I'll try to post after my checkride, please wish me luck.