October 25

I guess thats how the get down.

F-18

You see clouds, I see the clear skys.

FBO at Wilmington

In the clouds.



Just above the clouds.

It's been quiet around here for the past couple of days. After some bad luck, I passed my multi-private checkride, so now I can officailly fly airplanes with 2 engines! Today I did some time building in the good ole Cessna. It doesn't have two engines, and you can really tell. The things just creeps along! Anyways, I flew from Richmond to Wilmington, NC. It was a pretty nice airport with nothing around it but trees and farms. It seemed like it took forever to get there! We were getting killed by a head wind, so our ground speed was 46 knots most of the time!! We could have gotten there faster if we drove. We climed up a little higher after, up to 8,000ft and our ground speed jumped to a whoping 87 knots.(Still slow) I don't know if it was the speed that was causing it to take forever or because we were in the clouds for 2 and a half hours. ATP disables all of the auto pilots so you actually have to fly the airplane the whole time. Who would have thought!! We had clouds all the way to Wilmington until about 1,600 feet, where we were able to do a visual approach. They had a nice FBO there, even had free popcorn :) It was about 75 there today, alot better than the 60, windy, rainy Richmond. We filed our flight plan back to Richmond and took off about 20 minutes after that. This time we went up to 9,000ft. It was a smooth ride all the way back to Richmond, but instead of a headwind, we had a tailwind so our ground speed was about 137knots, sometimes it was up to 170knots!! (thats fast) It took us 3.5 hours to get there and just about 2 hours to get back home. The weather back here was pretty crappy. The clouds were down to just 500ft, in moderate to heavy precipitation, and winds about 9 knots gusting to 15. We had radar vectors to do the approach and I nailed it! I flew the approach down to 500 feet about the ground before we could see the approach lights on the Runway 16 at Richmond. The feeling that you get when you see those approach lights infront of you as you pop out of the clouds is a really good one. You feel really accomplished. Its actually flying. I am flying another two hours tomarrow in the skyhawk and then back to the twin engine Seminole where I'll be flying for 5 hours at night. Im really looking forward to that.

Yesterday, a couple of F-18's came in and are staying on our ramp for a couple of days. Those things look awesome!

October 18

Gulfstream G550 The side said "Hartmann" on it. I don't know who or what that is but thats who it belongs to.

The seminole I have been flying.
The Seminole again.
Miami Air taxiing to our ramp for fuel.
The 737 on our ramp. Miami Air does charter and alot of Government stuff. They were doing touch and goes at Richmond the other day!
The engine that I shut down during our flight!! I had to take a picture to show you guys! See, they can fly just fine with one engine.

Today was pretty fun. I flew at 10 this morning for 2 hours and then went back up for another hour and a half. The first flight, we went to Petersburg and Chesterfield and did all of the manuevers, along with engine failure procedures, one engine landings, etc. Then we did the same thing for the second flight, except we went to Hanover. All the airports down here are basically the same. Most of them have the same runway configurations, or at least all of the ones that I've been to. All of them are pretty nice. Nicely paved runways and fresh paint for the centerline and threshold, etc. Richmond wasn't too busy today, we got our landing clearance both times about 10 miles out, which is pretty far. It was little windy today, gusting to 17 knots. It was alot of fun doing crossing wind, short field, one engine landings all at once. It was a really good experience. My multi-engine private checkride is scheduled for Tuesday morning at 9AM. And then on Wednesday I have to do a 10 hour time build program in good ole' Skyhawk. I've been told I will probably be going out to Knoxville, TN. But who knows.

October 15

"SEMINOLE 215FW, RICHMOND TOWER, FLY HEADING 320 RUNWAY TWO, CLEARED FOR TAKE OFF."

"HEADING 320 CLEARED FOR TAKE OFF, SEMINOLE 5 FOX WHISKEY."

Today was awesome!!! Got to the airport early this morning around 9:15. (Had nothing better to do) Started in the sim right away at 10 and did all of the same manuevers that I did yesterday, but I had stricter limits during the manuevers seeing how I had done them already. God the sim is sensitive. Anyways, I did about 2 hours in the sim until I felt comfortable with the manuevers. I sat in the sim for another 2 hours watching my partner do the same manuevers I has just done. Then we were finished and Steve (my instructor) said he couldn't take the sim anymore so he tried to get us a plane. The new one was just being rolled out of maintance so he tried to get that one, but unfortunatly the Robert ( pleasantly plump, lunch time, not a good time to ask a fat man to make a fun call) hadn't called ATP dispatch yet to let them know the plane was good to go. So instead we took N215FW, and 1979 Piper Seminole. I was so exicted walking out the doors of the Richmond Jet Center to the ramp seeing my seminole on the ramp along with about 12 other large jets and a bunch of King Air's. We did the pre-flight, got in and got our clearance out of the Class Charlie airspace. We tookoff right after a cessna landed, and right before a Chautauqua 3022, heading up to La Guardia took off. I don't think they were too happy we were going before them seeing how they taxied up about 12 feet from us and the captain staring at me tapping his fingers on the dashboard. I didn't care, I had my normal grin on my face when I'm doing something that annoys people (you know what I'm talking about). Got our take-off clearance and taxied into position on Runway 2, power set to 2000 RPM, engine instruments all in green, full power, release brakes, airspeed alive, 75 knots, rotate, positive rate of climb gear up, climb at 88 knots, turn to heading 320 1000ft above the ground reduce power to 24'' manifold pressure and 2500RPM. "SEMINOLE 215FW CONTACT POTOMAC DEPARTURE 134.70"
"DEPARTURE 34 7, FIVE FOX WHISKEY, CYA."

We got to 2,500ft, our altitude to go over to Petersburg ( Dinwiddy airport).
We climbed up to 4,500 ft to do all of those manuevers I had practiced in the sim.
And alls I have to say is wow, that sim sucks.
The airplane is so much easier to fly in real life compared to the sim. I did steep turns perfect, slow flight was pretty good, then we did a power off stall, then a power on stall, and then I shut down an engine. Man!! It sure was cool looking out my window at the left engine and seeing the prop not moving. HAHA! I restarted the engine and then we went to Dinwiddy airport were I attempted my first landing in the new airplane. Enter the traffic pattern properly, slowed to about 120 knots, and did my gear down before landing checklist, turned base, and did my 1000ft GUMPP check, (gas, undercarriage, mixture, props, pumps) and then the 400 foot above the ground Gear down and stablized call. Lined up perfect, speed is perfect at 88 knots, pulled the power back over the runway numbers and then slammed it down onto the runway, not a very nice landing :( I kind of scared myself seeing how the nose wheels slams down after each landing, I wish someone would have told me that before) We did a touch and go and tried it again. Actually about 5 more times, and each one was better and better and before I knew it, I was greasing the landings. It was time to go back to Richmond so we departed Dinwiddy to the east and went back to Richmond. I had a nice landing there, parked and shut down. When I got out, I reached into my back pocket to make sure my car keys were still there and they were, but I found out that I had been sweating just a little bit ;). All in all, a successful day and I can't wait to do it again!

October 14

Hello,

Today was my second day in the program. I am really enjoying it so far!
I reported to the airport this morning at 10 to do ground school and to go in the sim again.
When I got there, there was a Dash-8 hanging out on the ramp that had flown in from Nassua the night before, so it was pretty cool seeing that. It was a really busy morning at Richmond International. There was a point where I counted 7 aircraft lined up for departure. (They were using the runways right outside my window so it was a very loud morning) Also, there was a Miami Air 737 doing touch and goes!! Thats something that you don't get to see everyday. And I've heard that Air Force One has been here lately doing the same thing so I hope I am lucky enough to witness that!! We did ground for about 2 hours and then went in the sim to do a little crew resource management (reading off checklist's, etc.) I watched my partner do all the manuevers in the sim, and then we had about an hour and a half break so other people could use the sim. Then it was my turn. I did power on and off stalls, a Vmc demo, Slow flight, and occational engine failure, and some landings. This thing is so touchy, its really hard to get used to. After we were finished with the sim, around 3:30, we had the sim for the rest of the night to do whatever we wanted. I sent up random failures, bad weather, you name it. It was alot of fun. I am scheduled to fly the new seminole on Thursday but I am a head of schedule now so we are going to try and move that to tomarrow instead. I can't wait to get up in the air and take a look at the new scenery!