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Krista Enjoying Her Pizza, originally uploaded by 5igmund.

So, its’s finally time for some actual blog posts not just flying stuff.  I also just upgraded my flickr account to pro so expect much more photos and such.  I really want to take the time and get things thing to be something really cool.  Krista and I have been drooling over all of Aaron’s posts on pizza and the punch pizza photo contest so we decided to get some great pizza and take some photos. Not really happy with them but hey what the heck right?  Krista was really excited about this because she loves pizza!  Everything was great on a cold evening!  I am now just kicking back watching the snow fall and anxiously waiting to put Aaron’s old snowblower back to work.  Looks like I will be a bit late tomorrow morning due to blowing some snow.

After a long month of crappy weather and  a notice of dissapproval I am now a private pilot.  I have been waiting to get my license to post to the blog, kind of silly to wait for but it was a bit of superstitions for me.   So here is what happened in the past month.  Late last month I met with my examiner on a scuzzy day to get my oral out of the way so all we had to do was wait for a nice weekend to go fly.  With the “easy” part done I waited and waited for a a full month of weekends to fly.  After a month of dissapointments, of either having bad weather and good temps or bad temps and great weather, one day coming down to a degree difference between fly and not fly.  So finally this weekend I had the perfect storm of weather, great weather and great temps.  Yesterday I sent out and flew with my examiner, everyting went well, all of the cross country, stuff, stalls, until I got to steep turns.  I dont know what happened, they had been giving me some trouble and I had not done them in a few weeks.  I think I just got to them and forgot how do them.  Long story short I was well out of standard and thus this was my area of dissapproval.  Flying back I was very dissappointed but pushed it to the back of my mind and smoked all of my takeoffs and landings.  So now it was dark and all I had between my license and no license was a few steep turns and some turns around a point that we did not get to due to it getting dark.   This morning I met up with Will and went out to just get steep turns down.  I had him color them out in crayola for me and really got them down.  There was no way I was going to out again and totally blowing it.  Got my steep turns down and went out with my examiner again.  We went out, I smoked my steep turns and did the turns around the point where are easy.  Landed the plane with no problems and got a big congrats from my examiner and my instructor.  What I really figured out from my examiner is that not passing the first time is not a big deal because no matter what happens we are always learning and we as pilots don’t want anything for free we earn what we get and learn from our mistakes.  I know I learned a ton from my little road bump and am a better pilot for it.  Today I earned a license to learn and I am looking forward to every learning opportunity that flying has to offer.  My next step is and instrument rating which I will happily blog about and I am going to open this blog up to more of my life than just flying now.  Thanks for reading to this point and I look forward to sharing my next my future explorations in learning.

Well, it’s the day before my Check Ride (hopefully) and I am spending today finishing/polishing up my X/C planning getting in some last minute studying and mentally going over my flight manuvers.  I need to run out to the FBO today to go through the Pilot Operating Handbook for the plane I will be flying to make sure my weight and balence is spot on.  I was going to try to fly today but by the time I got my lasy a$$ out of bed it was too late.  I did not get home until late last night from Nebraska and I had around 10 inches to a foot of snow to clear off my driveway.  On a side note I finally have Aaron’s Snowblower figured out and it cleared my driveway with minimal problems.

Well I am now in preparation mode for my check ride which will be very shortly after Christmas. I have some good time now over the holiday to study for my oral and do my flight planning. Basically, I am planning a cross country to Green Bay, a Weight and Balance for the trip and studying for my oral. I am not too worried but I want to get this planning done before Christmas eve so I am going to put an hour in on the basics today so all I have to do the morning of my check ride is input the wind variables and do time and fuel burn calculations.

So I officially passed my Private Pilot written exam today.  It was really pretty easy after much studying this weekend.  I met with Will this morning to get my log book endorsed.  After that I drove up to Jane Field to take my exam.  The folks at Cirrus were quite helpful, though I had to wait for some guys who came off a jet to figure out who was going to drive the rental car.  Got up to the testing room where there was a girl doing some sort of medical test by  the looks of the questions she was answering.  Once I sat down to the test all of the quesitons I had seen before from the software I have been using to study.   I breezed through the test in probably half an hour, I did not really check but it was fast.  I ended up scoring 57/60 or 95% which really amazed me because there were a ton of weather questions that  I had been getting wrong in my practice tests.   I either guessed right or studied the right quesitons.  All that I have left now is 3 or so hours of check ride prep and my check ride.  We will see if I can get it done before the end of the year.  Lets hope the weather stays decent and I can get this done before I have to go back to work.

My long cross country went very well. Seriously what a great trip. I remember a post from S4xton on his blog a while back about falling in love with flying all over again. I thing you get to a point especially when you are learning/training that you are just going up flying the procedures or manuevers just to get them down or to get some time in. Not really enjoying what you are doing but flying to get that next rating or endorsement. I think it takes a nice cross country trip over some beautiful terrain to realize the joys of flying again and why you wanted to do it in the first place. I really realized this during my flight, it was all so beautifly and peaceful. I think the flight and decent into Winona airport was probably my favorite approach so far. I came in from the North over the bluffs and then decended to pattern altitude which is basically down in the river bottom. It was just a really neat way to fly in. As for Eau Claire, that was also a pretty cool approach as well. There was a jet convention while I was there 3 brand new jets taxied out and took off whithin 10 minutes of my arrival. When I asked the line guy out there if they were having a jet convention he said it was all Menards. Looks like they are doing well =D I am now done with my cross country flying. All I have left now is my written test that I have been cramming for all weekend that I will take Monday morning, some check ride prep and my check ride. It will be good to get this all done so I can take my wife for a flight. Hopefully she will want to fly with me.

I have been a bit “unplugged”  the past few weeks getting a few things going in my life, I have done a bit of flying mostly my night stuff.  Monday I flew my first solo cross-country.  It was a blast out to Wilmar and back.  Kind of lonly though - all by myself.  Today I am planning and flying my long cross country looks like I am going to fly out to Eau Claire down to Winona, up the St. Croix/Mississippi river valley to Lake Elmo and over to Crystal.  Should be a nice flight right now I am just waiting for the haze, mist and low ceilings to lift over my destination airports.  I am planning on pushing my flight back from a 0900 wheels up to a 1100 wheels up time.  We will see what happens though as the time gets closer.

Did my first cross-country today. All of my planning went well and everything worked out pretty close to plan. It was pretty sweet to write down the times for my checkpoints and only be a minute off the entire way out. I like it when a well formed plan comes together. Especially since I spent three hours yesterday planning and re-doing it this morning when the better forecasts came out. Not much flying time left with Will, some night stuff plus a night cross country and a few little things, some checkride prep. Also 4 more hours of solo and 5 hours of solo cross country and that’s all for flying time left. I just need to crack on studying for my test this week and weekend to get that out of the way. Things are moving fast now!!

Finished up my 3 hours of IFR “hood work” wearing the “foggles” That was actually a good time and some valuable training in case the worst happens and I find myself in the middle of a cloud. At any rate I am planning my first cross-country out to Wilmar today. So this will be a fun test of my knowledge. In my mind it kind of puts everything together into one nice little package. If anyone has any great suggestions I am always open to new tips and good ideas.

So today I am out flying with will doing some short field/soft field takeoffs and some cross wind landings. In addition to that we also did some hood work which I thought was pretty fun and a good thing to learn for emergencies. At any rate we were flying back from Maple Lake airport today tracking the gopher VOR and climbing up to around 3500 MSL and heading west. Off around 5 miles or so I spotted a low wing plane, piper or something heading towards us but it was flying straight and level around 2500. I pointed it out to Will and we decided that we would be fine since we were well over him. As we started getting closer this idiot goes into a climb and is now not moving in the wind shield - bad thing. Will just says, lets get out of here and peels us out. Really the first time he has touched the plane since we first started. I was probably a second or so off of doing the same thing. At any rate bubba turns back around onto our heading and after following us for a while decides to peel off and go in another direction. We had a few fun comments about intellegence and some peoples children. After that bit of excitement we headed back to the barn for a straight in landing. Hopefully this rain, clouds and wind comes and goes quick tonight so I can get some good time in tomorrow.