Whew

Whew, I'm pooped. I had to go back and look at my own schedule to see what I did yesterday. I spent the day at Kokomo, making phone calls and sending texts and looking at weather and all that stuff, then going over cross country info until late afternoon. We made it home kind of late, changed clothes, cleaned up and went right out to the Wild's Christmas party while Kaylee stayed home with Grandma & Grandpa, watched a movie, made hot chocolate, and had a nice evening at home. We enjoyed ourselves at the party--I hadn't been in a party mood when I left the airport, but it's always nice to see and be with people whose company you enjoy. It ended up being a fun evening-even if I was wearing heels. ;)

Today was a long day. I had to drive down to Indianapolis International Airport to pick up my C-340 insurance checkout instructor. From the moment we were in the car, the checkout was on, and we started discussing systems. I'm trying to figure out where I'm going, in the traffic, and construction, and rain, and trying to concentrate on what I'm being told, too. I was tired before we got back to Kokomo. ;) A stop for a late lunch, check in at his hotel, and then we went out to Kokomo Airport, sat in the hangar at a table and went over a bunch of stuff. Crawled from there into the plane and set up the APU and turned on the avionics and went over what we had in the plane. Dial by dial. I've already learned a lot, and I've learned a few things I didn't really want to know, which means it may or may not be dumped out of my brain when I go to sleep tonight.

He's a very nice, personable fellow, but it is possible for pilots to be polar opposites as far as flying...let's go with philosophies...and we are that. He doesn't make a turn in the airplane without doing a math problem in his head. Literally. The number of degrees you are turning, knock off the zero, then add 5. That is the angle of bank to use in order to have a proper turn. So if you're turning 180 degrees around, 18+5= 23 degree bank. But what if you're turning 360 degrees around? Are you going to have a 41 degree bank? Naw. Hmm. Obviously I'm missing something in this formula. But there's a formula. To make a turn. So you know that you're at the exact right and proper bank for each and every turn you make. Take off is holding an exact, 7 degree pitch attitude. There is a formula and a procedure for every thing you do in an airplane, including the ILS, etc. Flying should be done by the autopilot from shortly after takeoff on through to breaking out of the clouds and coming in to land. But you must know how everything works so that you can monitor properly and know what is wrong asap if anything is (which is good). He teaches students all in simulators and on the ground, and doesn't believe flight time itself is very important. His goal is to take any guessing out of flying, to make it all precision. I can't say that's a bad thing in and of itself. He's a jet pilot, does a lot of jet flying, and is trying to translate that into 340 flying, including V1 and V2 cut (engine out) info, for now so that it'll be there when I move up into jets. 1. I'm not sure-to doubt-I'm going to be doing that, and 2. thank God I didn't go for airline pilot, because this kind of flying is not very much fun. ;) I wink, but I'm sort of serious too. Turn on an autopilot, do math formulas for everything I do, then let the gizmos do all the work? I like to open the window on the Citabria and turn however I feel like it at the moment. When flying IFR, that's more precision, but you follow the needles and have proper power settings, and it's not that hard. At least I didn't think it was.

To be honest, I don't mind learning something new here. I don't mind learning some new tricks and seeing if I can translate some of them into something that will be helpful for instructing, or helpful for flying. I'm easy that way, willing to listen to anything, willing to learn something new from someone new. But by the same token, this is making my life a little difficult. Not being in one, I don't care how jets fly. I just need somebody to sign off the fact that I can fly the 340. But I've now got a 348 page book and dvd to go through, and a 16 page, 85 question written exam/study guide to go through, fill out, and answer questions on before I'm done. Flying something new with new instrumentation that I'm not used to and trying to do it his way instead of the way I've always done it will be a little bit of a challenge--or maybe I'll just do it my way anyway, fly the plane just fine even in this old haphazard and imprecise way, and hopefully be done and okay shortly. ;)

I'm tired, but I'd better start pounding out some of these 16 pages of questions. :O