Well I'm back home in London for the winter. The last week or so has been fairly busy, and I've been preoccupied with moving so I haven't written, so I apologize.
The last few days before I left it was snowing intermittently, not a whole lot of snow, but enough that I was sweeping off the Twin Comanche wings every chance I got to keep it from freezing into a solid block of ice. My day of escape was a little hectic, as I still had some last minute packing to do, and for weather reasons I planned on getting away in the afternoon, but my boss came by and asked if I could do one last trip, because my replacement pilot couldn't show up until later. Actually technically the season wasn't over, it was me that bailed out early. We've had such a late start to winter that I probably could have stayed for another month before the winter road goes in, which kills the flying business. I don't think I could have stayed and still had time to finish my instrument rating though. I wrote the written exam almost 2 years ago now, and if I don't finish the rest of the flying portion and do the flight test before the 2 years is up, the exam will expire and I'll have to write it again. Its a tough exam, so I'd rather now have to tackle it again.
These past 8 months have been a pretty cool adventure. The company was great to work for, and I've also grown as a pilot quite significantly since I first went up. I really did learn a lot.
But now I'm back home. The flight home was relatively uneventful. The weather wasn't ideal but I knew I couldn't expect perfectly clear VFR days for an entire 500-some-odd mile trip this time of year. I still made it home in good time however. I was surprised how busy the London airport is these days. I knew it got changed to a Class C airspace (same level as Toronto) several months ago, but they've even got multiple tower frequencies now. I came in and they lined me up to land and then handed me off to a new frequency I had never used before. Crazy. It was quite fun to fly in such a past-paced environment like that again, but I felt a little rusty. Its been almost a year now since I've regularly operated out of a towered airport, let alone come in a night, and I also haven't flown the Twin Comanche very often lately, so my cockpit procedures weren't as greasy smooth and as second-nature as they used to be. I'm looking forward to regulary flying it again as I finish up my Instrument Rating.
As for now I'm home, living with my parents again for the next few months (its been a while), enjoying seeing family again, and enjoying the things that Southern Ontario has to offer that I missed out on up north.
So for the next few months my blogging will have a change of pace as I'll mostly focus on writing about my IFR training.
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Will you work on your Instrument Rating full time or also maybe pick up work as a pilot or AME during the winter?
ReplyDeleteAlso (just to give you fodder for blog postings for those long winter nights), I noticed reading your first post ever that you mentioned flying in your own C150. Did you do all your flying training in your own aircraft? How did that came about? Is it really cheaper than hiring the aircraft from the flying school in the long run? I guess in your case you could perform maintenance yourself, which surely helped.
Hey Chad - thanks for having me along for the ride. Your summer sounded pretty cool and it was six kinds of cool to be able to follow along.
ReplyDeleteI was under the impression you had your IFR already, good luck with the rating!
From the sounds of things you had a pretty good boss and a fun and productive summer overall.
I'd still like to hear how the IFR goes, and your writing is really good, so hopefully you'll find time for an entry or two from time to time.
Julien: Ya getting the instrument rating done is priority #1. Not much around here I don't think for part-time pilot work, but I would if something pops up.
ReplyDeleteI did about 3/4 of my PPL renting, and then the owner of my flight school decided to sell off his 150's and just stick with 172s. I ended up buying one of his 150's off of him and finished my PPL and CPL in that. No regrets. Owning is by far the cheapest way to go, and most fun, even if you don't do your own maintenance.
5400Airport: Thanks for the compliments, I enjoyed your blog this summer as well. I should've had my IFR a long time ago, but life got in the way, you know how it is.
Good luck with the IFR. And thanks also for sharing your experiences with us.
ReplyDeleteLooking forward to the next chapter. :)