Two Lessons Down

The weather was finally good enough to go on my two cross country flights to knock out two of my lessons. I choose to go to Park Rapids, MN which was 106 NM away from Grand Forks. Here are some pictures from these flights.

First picture is Crookston, MN at altitude of 5500. Next picture is Fertile, MN same altitude. The next picture is of some foliage 35 NM outside of Park Rapids.

Here are a few pictures of the sunsetting on the horizon, we are about 20 NM from Park Rapids.

The first picture is on the ground at Park Rapids. The next two pictures didn't come out very well but there are of Grand Forks at an altitude of 1600. And the last picture is sitting on the ground at Park Rapids.

I took some video while I was flying and uploaded them to YouTube. The first video is my take off at Grand Forks. We were doing a soft field take off, so we took the airplane off the ground as soon as possible and flew above the the ground until we had more airspeed then climbed out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnJWlf7d6tk

This next video was take off at Park Rapids, the landing light went out and we had to flip it off and on again while taking off.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2q3gIBtgO_Y

No Go

Well after hanging out on my computer all day long and watching the weather like it was news coming in for WWIII, the weather ended up winning the battle. I had to cancel my two cross country flights because of the forecast of thunderstorms in the area. Well yes there were some storms moving through the area and the closest they came to Grand Forks was about 30 miles to the West. My flights were planned for going to Cedar Rapids which is southeast of Grand Forks. I am not too happy to put it nicely, I would have loved to have gotten those two flights done and over with but I guess I will just have to get them done another day. Pictures of these two flights will be posted as soon as they are available. Here is a shot of Cole I took this weekend. I really need to get him a conductor hat but he is pleased with just wearing his hard hat.

Half Way Done

My last flight on Monday had put me over the half way mark with getting my private license. There are 17 lessons that I have to take and I am currently on lesson number 10. It has really gone by quickly and I am looking forward to getting it done and over with so that I can have more time to spend on my other classes.

My last flight was a little bit interesting. I haven't really flown in high wind conditions since it really isn't ever windy in the Idaho area. I was watching the wind speed and direction the majority of the flight and noticed it got up to around 41 knots. Just for fun my instructor turned us into the wind and slowed the airplane down to around 55 knots. We were trying to see how slow we could get our ground speed. Well we got our ground speed down to 27 knots. That means it would take us roughly one hour to travel 27 miles. It felt like we were just sitting in the air not moving.

He told me about a story when he was getting his private down in LA (the state not the city) and there was some bad wind. His instructor actually got the plane to fly backwards. If you can't picture this think about trying to swim upstream in a fast current. Same thing.

I will really try to take pictures of my next flight. We are going to try and combine the next two lessons together. There are a day cross country and a night cross country. So I will have nothing but time to take pictures. This flight will be on Monday so I should have some cool pictures on Tuesday or Wednesday, if the weather is good.

The Women and Children Are Safe

Well I didn't get to fly solo on Wednesday because Cole woke up in the middle of the night and didn't want to go back to sleep...so I ended up flying solo today. The last time that I was up in an airplane by myself was August of 2001, so it has been a little while. I took a couple of pictures while was waiting to take off. I didn't take any airborne pictures because I am pretty sure I would have gotten into trouble if they found out. The first one is of a Warrior on a short final, and the second picture was just a picture outside of the airplane.

And since I am still waiting on a CD from someone I decided to put up a video of Cole feeding the ducks on You Tube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzHKWUXhuzk

Solo Tomorrow

Well tomorrow is the big day, it is time to fly or not to fly. I will be going solo for the first time in about 5 years. I will be honest I am a little bit nervous but nothing I can't handle. I will be going up and working the traffic pattern in Grand Forks for about 30 minutes, like an all star of course. Since I didn't get to take any pictures this flight on Sunday I thought I would at least post some pictures the college has. The first picture is a picture of a piper warrior (the plane that I fly). The next picture over is the what the instructors commonly call "the round eye." This is the cockpit of the warrior with the old round dial instruments. The final picture is the newer cockpit of the warrior with the two display screens. I get to fly the newer cockpit commonly called the "glass." Thank God, it is much easier to fly with all of the instruments on one screen. It really cuts the workload down and allows you to fly the airplane more efficiently.

Another Week Down

Man time flies. I am not sure there is any other way to put it. It feels like all I did this week was blink and it has all gone by. School is keeping me way too busy. I liked it better when I didn't have to study anything or really do anything out side of class. Those days have come and gone. One thing that I really like this semester is that they are making me take a flying class. Before I didn't want to spent the money and the extra time that it was going to take for this class. Last Monday I got back into the air with the UND fleet for about 2.5 hours. I forgot how much fun it can be. I am flying a completely didn't plane than I have before. It is a Piper Warrior. Like I posted earlier, this plane has everything you can think of. I will be going up into the air on Sunday afternoon if the weather is good and I will be taking my camera. Expect several pictures in the days following Sunday.

Why hold pretzels in a bowl when you have all of this extra space between your toes that you are just not using? Cole and I have come up with a homemade version of sumo wrestling. I will list what you need below.

1. Two Feather Pillows - Large Enough to cover all critical areas of the body (Hint: This is for your protection not your child's. You don't want to catch the ever popular "Flying Knee")
2. Two Over Sized Belts
3. Clear Area - Large Enough to move around but small enough that they can't get a real big running start for the "Flying Knee")
4. One Ice Pack or Bag of Ice - This is for you...after you catch the "Flying Knee"