Trim Tab Altitude is everything!

All right! I passed my flight test, so I will get my new license after doing a bit of paperwork Here are the details.

As anyone even casually checking will have noticed, prices for GPS units have dropped steadily over the last few years. One month ago, I came up with enough excuses to convince me that a GPS was in my future. I'll save the details and comparisons for another post (maybe), but the point is that I bought a used Garmin nuvi 760. Now the question was how could I use it for flying?

Getting a private pilot's license (PPL) can be described as

• showing you know the textbook
• showing you know how to fly.

The requirements for getting a PPL say that the two final exams a student must pass are, guess what:

All of us know what a subdivision looks like - we've all driven through them and visited friends who live in one. All the houses (ignore their similarity for a second) look perfectly finished, with siding or faux stonework and sod covering the yard and lining the driveway. Well I am in the dark about most of the building process, but I can speak about the efforts of the landscaping crews who prepare the ground and lay sod and are often the last people to work on a property.

I have the amazing fortune to live across the street from a couple, both pilots, who own a plane (PA-28 - see pictures) and invite me for flights occasionally. We have flown to Morrisburg and Pembroke, and this weekend Mike asked me if I was interested in going to the Canadian Aviation Expo being held in Hamilton. You're reading this, so obviously I eagerly accepted.

I am two solo flights ahead of where I was when I wrote my last article, one of which went well and the other...not so well

Exams are over, and I am getting tired of having to tell people I still don't have my PPL. There is going to be a lot of free time for the next couple weeks for me, and hopefully a lot of good weather too, so I'm making a push while I can.

I flew last week with Mark, and did a pre- flight test including two hours of ground material and two hours in the air covering everything I have learned so far. I did okay, but while he is on a trip for the next week or so I will make a couple solo flights to practice my weak areas.

Mark and I flew around Russell, Embrun, and Cumberland today so I could practice diversions. It was very cold, and I'm starting to think that I will never get a plane with decent heat! The flight was 1.7 hours. Mark asked me to do a mock flight plan that we'll go over during my next booking.

The airport was undergoing a lot of snow removal today since the Ottawa area got about half a foot of snow yesterday, so the tower told us to use runway 32, our longest runway.

My exams are done, and I am going to fly as much as possible, weather permitting.  I flew for the first time in a long while on Tuesday - a rather cold day, but good for flying. Since Unal, my instructor until now, is returning to his home country, I will now be flying with Mark.

Mark and I flew out to the practice area so I could work on some things I will need to demonstrate during my flight test.  I was pleasantly suprised at how much I was able to do, although I ran each radio call past Mark, just in case .

The weather in Ottawa is frustrating. Seriously, there have probably only been about ten days of good weather in the last six weeks, and I haven't had a flight booked on any of them!

About once a week, I head out to the airport in the middle of the afternoon for my second solo cross-country, only to hang around a bit, then decide I can't go. Today, that happened, but I wrote a practice exam since I was there anyhow. The exam was to see if I am ready to write the real Transport Canada exam that I have to pass to get my license. I'll find out in a couple of days what I got.