Well, I've been a bit remiss in keeping the blog up to date. Work has been a bit hectic and I've been trying to compensate for losing one of my team members from my project. However, I'll briefly summarize my past two lessons (won't be too hard) and then work harder at keeping this blog current (I bet that could be canned and re-used by pretty much anyone who has ever written a blog).

Two weeks ago

The weather was bad again so I worked on quick stops, air taxi, and normal approach (from low altitude) with a tail-wind.

It was brutal. I was flying with a different CFI than normal (my normal CFI was out of town on business) and there was a bit of adjustment to be done because the CFI I flew with was a bit different in how he approaches maneuvers than my normal guy. However, the problem wasn't the different CFI. I was frustrated because I just didn't seem to have the control of the helicopter that I had on the previous lesson. Overall, I didn't really feel like I made any progress in the lesson and even had problems setting down from a hover at the end. Not my best day.

Last week

Back with my normal CFI. Not as bad as last time, but I'm still having trouble with my normal approaches. I just can't seem to see and feel the angle. I keep letting the nose drop and I come in too fast. My CFI said he saw progress (there was a cross-wind and I took a few runs at taking off from both directions on the runway so I got a feel for it from the right and left).

One bright note, I did my first work with the governor off. It was definitely interesting (I was way focused on the RPMs and the warning horn). My CFI did some hover work with decreasing RPMs to show me that the Low RPM horn didn't require immediate response with the governor off (i.e. I had some leeway when it first went off and the correlator works pretty well in most cases). We hovered until about 81RPM before we actually touched down. Hopefully, next time I'll remember that and won't feel the need to immediately start messing with the throttle as my first priority but will feel comfortable enough to address is in a less "got to do it right now or it's going to fall out of the sky!!!!" sort of fashion.

FAA Written

Well, I took the written today and passed. I got a 95 and am very happy. I needed to do it this week in order to submit it to UVU as my class with them ends next week (I have 3 quizzes and a flight plan remaining in their curriculum for AVSC1100 too).

The practice test guide and http://www.mywrittenexam.com were a big help and I was very prepared. It took me about 20 mins to complete the actual test (much faster than I typically needed on the online versions).

The approach I took was to take the online practice exams at mywrittenexam.com and then read through and focus on the areas that I missed the most in (they give you a very useful report on which questions you missed and what area they are from). I would also run through the questions in the test prep book for those areas paying special attention to the explanations for the ones I missed.

Overall, it wasn't a bad couple of weeks even with the added stress of the day job ramping up a bit. <_>

Hopefully, I'll be able to start flying twice a week again in the next week or so.

Later and safe flying,

Kelly