Whew

Stressful few days around here lately.

Kaylee's trying to figure out what to do about college, roommates, etc.

I have a student whose checkride is Saturday and he's not ready. You can lead a horse to water, but the horse has to do all the studying, can't force feed it. He's had like 16 hours of ground prep time for the oral and still isn't ready. If he doesn't take his checkride before he gets to Purdue, he starts off a semester to a year behind everyone else in the pilot program. He's trying really hard for the most part, but he waited too late to take it seriously. He didn't realize. He's a nice kid, but now I have pressure. If I cancel his checkride last minute, it angers the new examiner we are bringing in from St. Louis because ours are all booked up and not answering us, as now he'll have an empty day where he doesn't earn money. It causes the kid to fall behind in his career/school choices. If I send him anyway, and he doesn't pass, that's worse for me and him, the examiner will not be impressed anyway. He's pushing and pushing to get ready. He has tomorrow, and part of Friday. If he can't impress me with his knowledge and ability, I'm canceling him, and we're all going to be unhappy. *sigh*

A CFI using our plane is not...great.  His students don't have any concept of airspeed control. One of his students today wrecked our plane. Kid was unhurt, fortunately, but the plane is going to be a new prop, an engine tear down, gear, wing, stabilator. Who knows, maybe firewall. And now we are out of an airplane, a lot of people trying to get stuff done on that plane, and it's going to be down for at least 6-8 weeks. At best. At the peak time of trying to get stuff done before Indiana winters set in. We don't have a plane to replace it with at the moment. So we came out of winter, our slow time, then right into COVID, where we shut down for awhile, and now this, and in a couple months, back to winter.  It's great.

On the other hand, today I got sent a couple photos and this video. A decent portion of it is me in the T-6 on my Formation card checkride. I was so nervous. But even looking at the video I'm fairly pleased. I fast forwarded through the C-47 and the other North American flights, and laughed at the break to a Cherokee that landed on all three wheels at once (three point landings are supposed to be for taildraggers). But if you want to see an element takeoff, you'll see that, and a fly-over, and a break, and a landing. It's kinda cool, to me anyway. :)  JP is in the yellow T-6 as Lead, Tim G. is #2 in the green wings with the yellow/orange cowl, Mark N is in #3, and I'm in #4 with the examiner in my back seat.



The airshow stuff photographer also took these photos of me in BOB.

I had a flight in the Champ with a scholarship winner today, and she's a young teen, doing well.  Then I took the 340 over to Aurora to fix that ungodly squealing noise it's making.  Steve went with me and did the flying, and then Jerry picked us up in Aurora in the Toga.   That was the end of my flying for the day.  Then I spent the rest of the time stressing over everything else until it was time to go to dinner, and as we sat down for dinner at Foxes Trail, our nice steaks, that's when we learned about the airplane that got buggered up.  Good day, good day.  ;)

I think I'll go watch the video again.  It makes me feel better.  Especially that my landing didn't look as bad as it felt.  ;)