Official Airport Bum!?

denverpilot

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DenverPilot
Oh my, what have I done?!

A few folks here know I've been toying with the idea of taking some time away from IT work to do some flying.

It's "semi-official". I talked to the powers that be at work today and shared that I need some more personal time to go outside and play. Ha.

How this came about: Frankly, it all your fault, collectively. Or at least I'm going to blame it on all of you! But seriously, Jonesy's thread about his "retirement" jaunt to the airlines, threads like the "Would you quit your job" thread and ALL of the great threads about you all flying all the time, were the inspiration.

A lot of years of just being relatively frugal and responsible, and having a pretty good fiscal situation. House paid off, no kids, vehicles all running and after the last few years of a really good paying and decent job, an aviation sized savings account.

I've got no aspirations right *now* to be a complete career changer, but recently I started talking to my lovely wife, who not only is very smart, but also knows when I'm taking too long mulling something over in my head. For those that remember, she's also the person who pushed me over the cliff into aircraft co-ownership after she analyzed it and decided I was being too much of a worry wart about it.

It's tax season, always a time around our house when budgets get tweaked, and we're already cracking the fiscal books anyway, something we both do separately for most of the year but during tax document gathering, we usually have a full weekend day where we're thinking and doing nothing but gathering all the paperwork and talking about the year ahead. After gathering everything this year and making up the packet of stuff for the accountant we both got distracted... I was in my office at home playing with a spreadsheet to see if the finances would allow me to just quit my job for a while, and unknown to me, she was sitting in a chair in the living room also doing the same analysis with her preferred method, a legal pad and a pencil.

Couple hours later I came out and asked if she'd come look over my shoulder at the screen in the office and double check the spreadsheet I had made, and she interrupted me and said she had run the numbers and we could pretty easily get by on her salary alone, as she waves her legal pad at me. Hahaha.

Okay then! That escalated quickly! ;)

So that evening we talked about it more like a plan and less like a pie in the sky dream, and hashed out some more details. Worst case scenarios, etc. We came to the conclusion that I should go do it. Next, the hard question: When?

You see, even if I whine here a bit about silly IT, it's still a very good job and I work with really good people. We (as a company) don't always have our feces congealed (ha!) but the people I work with, I honestly like. (Sorry 6PC! Haha. No psychos that I'm aware of... Yet...!) I don't take this lightly. I've worked for really bad people and I actively avoid it now when I can.

And of course there's that mental block based in a lower middle class upbringing that says you never EVER quit a Good Thing(TM) that'll just scare you to your bones for no damned good reason whatsoever at the thought of walking away from a good job with good pay for the completely unknown.

We settled in on a soft date of May 1st. Reasons and probably not great ones:
- Better flying weather. We're bound to have some more crud before winter is out.
- Post April 15, just in case the taxes really blow this year, can toss whatever cash is needed from the last few paycheck at it and not hurt too bad.
- Time to change some bad but easily fixable monetary habits, like eating out a bit too much. (Already well on that path and eating much healthier and we're both cooking. It's a no-brainer but we got comfortable and lazy and "pick something up and bring it home" got too repetitive in our habits.
- Time for the people I work with to decide what projects they really want done and enough time to hammer them out.
- Time to talk with our financial guy and explain the income change, triple check the plan, change some insurance stuff, spend a couple of months pretending the income level is significantly lower and put my check in savings, yadda yadda.

Etc. All pretty boring stuff. But necessary.

So. Today was the day I talked with the boss. We talked for a while and he seemed interested in seeing what we could arrange to have me stay on in some sort of limited capacity and do project work or ... He's thinking about it. Of course, I'm sitting there with the worst in mind... If he says "two weeks pack your junk and get out!", for the first time in my life, I'm actually okay with that. Talked a bit about how much time the ratings would take, etc. He then surprised me, and it shouldn't have been a surprise, with the question, "What's YOUR ideal amount of time away from here, so I know where to start."

Well heck. I had spent so much time thinking about the worst case, I forgot to plan the best case! LOL. Oops. I was honest and said I would need to think about it a bit and couldn't decide on the spot if I needed full days off, or half days, or really anything. I was kinda dumbfounded he was asking. Like I said, I shouldn't have been. But I was caught flat footed on that question.

Add one more plus for the May date...

- Time to figure out how to maybe do this simultaneously with working some hours at the current company.

(More next post...)
 
So that's where it sits tonight. Obviously there's other stuff bouncing around in my head. Definitely know I'm going to do:

- ASEL Commercial/CFI and -I
- Glider Add on
- Tailwheel endorsement

Slightly more up in the air:

- Glider Commercial/CFI
-AMEL Commercial/CFI and -I
(But I don't see why not if the budget holds.)

Doubtful:
-ASES/AMES Just not likely but not ruling them out.
- Chasing hours for a different flying job other than teaching, but I'm not ruling it out.

Remember my "doubtful" is based on me being by nature a worrier and planner, so Karen would probably laugh at that assessment. I'm pretty sure right now she thinks I'll be in an airplane 3 hours a day, 7 days a week, for a couple of years. Haha.

That right there in the "going to do" part is a LOT to do. I think I'll start with an IPC. :) Then written tests for Commercial, etc. Haven't thought through a plan for "fastest way" or anything yet. Not on paper anyway.

Definitely have the go-ahead for at least a year off of the day job from my beautiful bride. And it's kinda looking like I may not be all the way "off" but that's up to them.

I want to do the flying "first" and the IT "second" but I'll give them honest work part time if they want it. Or even until they find my replacement -- if that's the path they want to go down. They still have some big projects that would be "fun" in the pipe and some of those I could do with a mix of on and off site work, so ...

Right now I just wanted to share with all you aviation nuts. It's ALL your fault. ;)

Too many wonderful people in aviation. Seriously. It wasn't that long ago I thought I'd be a VFR pilot for life and some guy here says, "Why don't you come out to Nebraska and we'll knock out that Instrument Rating..." and I didn't take it seriously for months. Then an opening in my schedule happens and I'm freezing my butt off in -10F nighttime weather bouncing all over NE sweating under the hood and then the drama with the checkride weather, and going back during another opening months later to do the ride...

And podcast people. You know who you are. And OSH people. And who knows who else.

And then one day I'm sitting in my boss' office saying, "I think I need to make a big life change..."

(By the way, he immediately made me laugh... "So are you going to Trinidad, or...?" LOL!)

Thinking about firing up the old podcasting skills and doing one just for me along with a blog for this "once in a lifetime adventure", too. We'll see on that.

Right now I have to get the logbook caught up, get all my crap into myflightbook, and start prepping for the tsunami of meetings and work prep for whatever they want to do, keep doing the regular day job stuff, figure out where I'm going to be doing some/all of this flying, and what the "perfect schedule" looks like. (Even the boss said, "If the perfect schedule is no time here at all, just let me know that.")

Thoughts, ideas, heckling, cajoling, haters, whatever... All appreciated.
 
Oh, and for the record, the budget says I can keep my share in the 182 for now. It's not the right aircraft for much of this "mission" but I have some personal flying that needs to get done also, and some adventures that have been put off for a long time that might need to get done, that the old girl can assist with.

Even have talked to the co-owners about the crazy "what if" I flew the pants off of it doing some crazy time building, and while it's not the most economic way to do that, it's sure comfortable after I think about 300 hours in that seat. (Oh yeah, I have to figure out how to fly it from the right seat anyway, don't I? LOL...)

One of the topics was, "So if I fly it past TBO and it tells us it's time, is the engine reserve number right?" and the other of course was, "You going to be done with the CFI before my next BFR is due?" Hahaha. Should have seen that one coming! Why do I have this feeling the co-owners will get a "discount"? Grin...

Well there you have it. I'm going to become an airport bum for a while. Looking forward to 2016 and a couple hundred healthy sack lunches!

I will post more here as it happens... Y'all will know if I go totally broke aviating as soon as I know! Hahaha. Only get one shot around on this whole "life" thing.

So if Karen says I can trash "her" finances, I guess we'll see where this goes! I'm already apologizing for making her poorer in retirement! Ha. Maybe that's not funny. I don't know yet.

"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood..."
 
Dude... That is INCREDIBLE! Congrats on making the decision to take the time off of work and even better that you might not have to!
 
I sorta did similar, but not in the same way. I had my first two flying gigs at the same time I was working full time IT. First gig was manatee survey, four days a month. I took vacation and sick days to do it. Told the bosses what I was doing and why. They were totally on board with it. Second gig was jumpers. This was a weekend gig, so not much impact on the job front.

If they offer a part time/consultant type of deal, I'd say go for it. I was lucky that I was working nights when I was getting my comm/inst/mel stuff done, so no real impact on the job at the time. Having a few days off during the week will allow you to do the same.

If you still want to work the IT job, you can always keep part timing it and do CFI stuff.

Which ever way you go, good luck and have fun with it!!
 
Great story, and more importantly, great wife! Oh and your boss pretty cool too. Good luck, enjoy the journey.
 
How about proposing a flip-flop schedule for now...Mon/Tues this week and Wed/Thur/Fri the following week. That would give them about 80 hours a month and give you 5 solid days of airplane time every other week. Five days every other week of fairly intense training and studying would let you progress at a fast pace without getting burned out on it and at the same time, would let you pack away more cash to extend your budget should you finally quit the IT world altogether.
 
so this time off is mostly for training/ratings and not so much travel? I'm sort of with you...I want to do something similar but for travel purposes. I want to take full advantage of my ability to work "from home" (which can be anywhere), and the fact that I will apparently never have a wife. both of those make for easy 'get up and go' plans. alls I need is a plane.

anyways, good luck, hope it works out for you. I'm not uber thrilled with coughing up a GOOD job, I'd be more onboard with u if u hated ur job, but you only live once man, go for it.
 
This is really cool. Please do the podcast!
 
As someone once said: "No one is a completely worthless; they can always serve as a bad example." Glad I could help. :p

Enjoy your adventure!!
 
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Since you'll have more free time, can we expect your posts on POA will be longer? I feel like you've been holding back. :) J/K - I look forward to following your journey.
 
Congrats on prioritizing life over work. Even going from 40 to 30-and-change hours/week makes a big difference.
 
Nice,you certainly have plenty of support,follow the dream ,and enjoy your new choice.
 
Just answering stuff...

I got as far as: and my mind threw me a logic error: undefined variable $mythicalWife.

She is pretty awesome. Part of that comes from knowing she'd do just fine without her goofy airplane-addicted husband, I suspect... hahaha. She would disagree and seems to like me hanging around... I figure it's for the snowblowing, dog chasing in snowy weather, and mowing duties. All of which she could easily replace my contributions to, by getting a condo in the city. Haha... :)

How about proposing a flip-flop schedule for now...Mon/Tues this week and Wed/Thur/Fri the following week.

This was helpful - I realized after reading it that you do want some days "back to back" off on a regular cycle, if you can. Thanks.

You'll be able to afford it all better if you get you A&P/IA.

Gah... I don't see any good way to get the thing the "hard" way via "time served", and those official schools are spendy.

It would also fall into one of those types of things where you'd say "I enjoy this, but I enjoy other stuff more...", for me anyway. (It's also why I don't seriously think I'd ever build an experimental... I'd enjoy getting a shop set up, and the tools together and all those logistics and then actual building would become a slog... you really have to enjoy that stuff and have lots of time you don't want to be doing "something else" to build a plane.)

I'd actually ENJOY doing avionics work, but not really into the other stuff. But you need the whole A&P to make wiring harnesses and test avionics and stuff, I guess.

so this time off is mostly for training/ratings and not so much travel?

Well, I do want to wander a bit in the 182... it's nice to own a plane, but not taking it anywhere other than local airports (Denver is somewhat "land locked" so to speak, there's local airports and then the next closest "stuff" where actual humans you might know live, is probably Texas or the other sides of Nebraska or Kansas... population centers and what-not...) leaves out what the thing was designed to do: Go places.

This is really cool. Please do the podcast!

Two thoughts there...
1. A podcast today probably needs video, and I'm not super-enthused about that. (And no, I'm not buying Troy's all in one camera package!)
2. If people did want to hear audio-only, I still have some severe limitations on bandwidth at home, which was a major contributing factor to killing the last podcast... a 5Mb/1Mb pipe is just painful for uploading content, especially if it's video. So I'd have to schedule uploads to coincide with trips to the office or somewhere that has modern Internet. LOL.
 
Nate, dude!

So, I've been off for just shy of five years, playing, chasing adventure, etc. and am just now planning to go back to work.

So....

I guess someone needed to pick up the "sabbaticalizing" torch and run with it. I will officially bequeath that moniker to you.

Well, IF I actually go back to work anyway!

:)

Congrats, man! It's fun, believe me.
 
Oh...and did I mention how much fun it is when...

someone asks "what day is today?"

To respond with...

"Everyday is Saturday!"
 
First official update! (ha...)
Taxes are done, and there wasn't any earth-shattering kaboom.

But it was a very "patriotic" year... we owe $1776 to the Feds. LOL! :)

 
Good for you, Nate. Still being new to my private certificate all I can think about is owning an airplane. Leaving a solid job to fly, and fly, get more ratings, and fly some more... That sounds like Heaven. There's a little Champ for sale at APA with a C-90 and electrical system, and it's pretty affordable. Except for parking. Anyway, let's go fly some time!
 
Jonesy's Dreams Come True thread is definitely a starter mechanism to re-evaluating the next 15 years.....
 
Wife got a sister? :p

I like your plan. Sounds like you really thought about things and it's nice to have the full support of your spouse!
 
Good luck. I have been thinking it may be nice to get a Commercial and CFI and do flight instruction as a retirement job. Granted that would be years away, but it would be fun.
 
This is good stuff! I'm also in a high-paid IT job trying to balance "responsible" income with the desire to trek into Costa Rica or hop around the country. Thanks for the updates!
 
After 3 years of "retirement" (thank you, sequestration) I'm back at work so I can afford to retire again and get the certs and have a real retirement career as CFI.
 
Just an update...

- The electronic logs were not working. I'd been keeping a log in my phone for a while to enter into "something" once I decided on "something" and also into the paper logs. Fired up the old LogTen and ... Huh?... No data?! Hmmm. Let's see here... This machine was upgraded to El Cap a while back and I copied the data up to cloud storage, which one...? Hmmm. Here's a folder. What? Empty?! Uh oh. Maybe it's on one of the other cloud storage services... Yep. There's a folder. WTF?! Empty?! WTH is going on here?!

Anyway that long story short, eventually an old Time Machine backup saved the day. And an old copy of LogTen is up and running an ready for export.

Next!

- Now the easy part. Let's go get the paper logs out and get those updated. Got my little log on my phone and in the cloud, decided it'd be sane a couple of weeks ago to photocopy the last few pages of the airplane use logbook just to make sure it all matches up...

Hey. Where the hell are the REAL logbooks?!

Search the office where they usually live in the fire safe... No.

Kitchen table and shelves? Nope.

Desk in Ham shack. Nope.

Okay now I'm getting ticked.

Maybe I took them to the office. It's Friday night. So much for "working from home" today. I'll drive up there (80 mi round trip) and see. Nope.

****. Okay mild panic starting to set in now. Should I go to the hangar tonight and check there? I wouldn't have any reason to have taken them there. It's Friday night and dark. I'll go tomorrow.

Saturday late morning idea: Oh! I had the bag they were in, in Karen's truck! She's out of town but they carpooled so she truck is at her friend's house. Where's that address again? Okay. Will head over there.

Dig through truck. No logs.

Serious cursing now ensues. And a creeping but significant level of sadness. Uh oh.

Okay last stop, the hangar. Go there. Look around. Not there as expected. Totally dejected.

Pull truck over into parking lot and zone out trying to think where they are for a minute. Instead start thinking about recreating logs and that nightmare.

Grab Pho for dinner on the way home because I've been worried enough all day, all I've had is coffee and some Fritos.

Go home. Really really bummed on the way there. Feed dogs. Decide Karen MUST have put them somewhere I would NEVER expect.

Walk around a bit looking and thinking. I've already searched every room, and even the two gun safes.

Absentmindedly empty the dirt and dog fur out of the vacuum robots.

On my way past my big TV chair downstairs a tiny corner of a black nylon case that looks like the one the logbooks live in, appears to catch my eye.

Under one of the coffee tables. Not only on the bottom area but ... UNDER Karen's yoga mat?!?! WTF, over?!

For ****s sake! Why would anyone put a case full of logbooks underneath a yoga mat?!

ROFLMAO. Dogs now wondering if I've lost it. I'm standing with a case full of logbooks looking at them and a pink yoga mat and laughing out loud to myself in the basement great room.

Well anyway. I'm glad nobody took my blood pressure this weekend so far, nor did I need to speak to anyone or I probably would have torn their head off out of being really ticked at myself more than them.

The logbooks are back in the home office and as soon as I'm done settling them against the new electronic log, they're going back in the safe and that's where they're STAYING unless I need a signature in the LAST one. The case isn't coming out with all of them in it, ever again without a specific request from God or someone close enough to warrant seeing them. (FAA, CFI ... Haha.)

I know better. Damn near gave myself a stroke.

Poured myself a double shot of scotch and sat down to type this. Holy hell that sucked.

ImageUploadedByTapatalk1458442591.252184.jpg

The scotch isn't bad. A friend gave it to me weeks ago and it seemed a good time to open it for a celebratory shot.

Going to take some damned photos of all of he pages of those logbooks and stash them somewhere, too. Man, the last two days really sucked! I was shooting for fully caught up Friday night. Beat head here.
 
Just remember that flying (and everything that goes with it) is fun. If it's too stressful now then you need to shut up and go fly something.
 
Well, not flying tonight, but I am deep within occupied Boulder (I made sure to drive the Stealth Lesbaru so I wouldn't be "made"...) to attend the annual kickoff meeting for the Soaring Society of Boulder.

Shhhh. Don't tell the Bernie-ites I'm here. I think I saw his twin brother huffing up a hill in nylon sweatpants. ;)

If I'm not out in a few hours, the militant ones have dragged me to a basement and are showing me Monkey videos. Don't bother with a rescue mission, just clear the bombers inbound from their orbits near the IP over Westminster.
 
Lol. When I get made in Boulder I just tear my clothes up some and start beating on the nearest bucket with my eyes rolled back. Resort to spoken word if the Bernie-ites keep talking to you ;)
 
I panicked when my original logbook wasn't where it was supposed to be while I was scrambling to prepare for my airline interview. Thankfully, it turned up at the last moment. But I had printed out the MyLogbook.com version which ended up being the thing they looked at the most, just glancing in the written books here and there. But I was glad I had them along! Good luck!
 
So here's the latest "official" update...

Logbook is finally caught up and moved over to myflightbook. Wasn't too painful... other than the airplane that apparently I wrote the tail number down wrong of back in 1992... only rented it once. :)

Got through the last of it tonight, and into MFB. Like it! Still have a "final pass" to do to make sure there's no errors in it, but looks pretty close!

Here's an interesting "side effect" of My Flight Book sharing aircraft across people: One of the airplanes I flew back in the day was just a bog standard Cessna 150F... it apparently is a Cessna 150F "150 HP" nowadays and some doofus put it into MFB with the "150 HP" in its airplane type. Hmmm... well, made a note, and don't really care... but it does highlight what happens if an airplane say, switches from a nose-dragger to a tail-dragger in a conversion kit when the aircraft are all "shared"... luckily didn't have THAT problem...

I noticed that four flights that ended in x.6 hours all imported interestingly as x.58 ... cute. I don't know (I do have all the files as I stepped through this and could go find which step barfed, but don't care...) which step blew up a little, but it's interesting that it decided to "whack" only a few lines but always ones that ended in x.6 hours. Fascinating bug where ever that one is...

Weather needs to start behaving now... :)
 
Had an interesting conversation with a highly recommended instructor who specializes in accelerated training (since I can spare the full days to devote to it) and his pricing is competitive, as well as he has an interesting technique...

Now granted most of his graduates are working on moving toward flying jobs for a living, so it works better for them, but...

He starts the Commerical in a Turbo Seminole. Reason: Gotta have the retract for the initial Commercial, and his Seminole is a much better maintained and in shape airplane than the the ratted out single retracts around here that are getting so long In the tooth that at least one club even says "to be used for flight training only, not available for extended XC".

Then his students just "go backward" into a non-beat-to-crap non-retract to add the Comm'l ASEL. (He just happens to do that in a 182.)

Most of his students need as much twin time as they can get anyway, so it works. Might not be the most cost-effective for me, but running quick numbers it really isn't that bad.

Talking to him in person on Tuesday next week. May go this route. We need to "talk turkey" a bit anyway, he used to do these things as "package deals" but he has moved away from it because folks figured out how to game his system. They'd be ready for a checkride and then start saying "oh, I don't FEEL ready..." to snag a few more hours in the twin, or just more hours in general. So we'll chat and see what the actual pricing numbers are that he's using these days. He hasn't had time to update the website. (Hey, I just happen to know a web geek who could fix that for you... Haha...)

Getting kinda excited now. Only a month before I can take whole weekdays to go flying!

Kinda still don't believe it. And no, that isn't an April Fool's joke! :)
 
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Well, since Loren provided a much more interesting update, here's mine...

Haha... No severe icing or St. Elmo's Fire in this one. Sorry kids. ;-)

Got the logbook caught up. (2016 has been pitiful by the way... Yikes. I need to go flying. But I think that'll be remedied extremely quickly...)

Met with Larry Camden at Executive Flight Training at KAPA today. Larry came highly recommended by pretty much every person I could find to ask, and I wanted an accelerated program.

I just do better in the fully immersive methodology. Fits my personality and schedule best.

We sat and talked for a little over an hour this evening about where I'm at, the job scheduling thing, and a bunch of other stuff.

Larry's got some great photos in his office. He started his airline career at TAA in the DC-3, ended in the DC-10 at Continental. So he's been around the block a few times, I'd say.

I'd also say I agree with a mutual friend of his and mine who says, "Sounds like he's doing 'retirement' right!"

Talked about the order of operations and Larry's preferred schedule and what not. (By the way, the answer to that is -- barring weather cancellation, of course -- he's game to fly seven days a week if that's what the student wants to do. Wow.)

For the curious, his website isn't totally up to date. I didn't ask why he hasn't updated it, but the "flat rates" on the site aren't what he's doing anymore. He had some students essentially playing the "I don't feel ready for my checkride" game so they'd have to go fly the twin for a couple more hours -- and while he understood that's why they were doing it, it wasn't the intention of a "flat rate", as one can imagine.

We talked about the process a bit and he told me to go get the Commercial written passed immediately. We'll start as soon as we both have an opening in the schedules (he's finishing up a couple of folks on other things right now) and of course my job status change on May 1st.

Sounds like the job/work thing for me will be that I'll be handed some off-hours only projects that nobody really wants to do, since they're off hours, but that we've been sitting on, and something like 20 hours of "billable" time a week (could be lower if I need to work more with Larry), that I'll have to track in our ticket system, etc. it'll be similar to being a contractor and I'll be free to "have at it" on those projects on whatever days, nights, weekends I can get them done.

So Larry knows we'll go at it pretty hard with some "breaks" so I can get those projects moved along every couple of days or so. Hopefully it'll work out that those can be fill in on bad weather days.

That'd be ideal, but nothing ever works out that perfect. Ha. We'll see how this goes.

Anyway, we'll start day one in the turbo Seminole and go toward the Commercial Multi. Once that's done, I can backtrack into the Commercial Single. We'll also knock all the rust off the Instrument as needed.

Then we go after the CFI stuff.

Larry says most of the time, Denver FSDO is not doing CFI rides and they're sending that out to DPEs. He mentioned one DPE in particular who he usually tries to use, and I know him. He's by the book and very detailed and fair.

I also know at least two of the other DPEs that regularly do work at APA and they're all good.

He said he's only had one Fed ride in many years but the local Fed that came for that one was also fair and very thorough. The oral tends to drift upward a bit time-wise on the local Fed rides but no weird surprises and no oddball personalities that he's run into yet.

So either way, it's about the same process. If someone wins the Fed ride lottery expect a longer oral is all.

Been reading up on the Seminole.

Interestingly slow speeds for Vmc and stall, and not that fast for single engine best performance either. Also with Vmc and stall being within a knot of each other at lower DA, it may be a tad "too" tame. And no critical engine.

Not sure why I'm surprised by the slowish speeds, it is a light training twin after all, but it's interesting I thought it was slow. Maybe I had fire breathing twins in my head. LOL. Must be all that twin marketing that Ted does here. Haha. Kidding Ted. :)

Nothing in any stuff I've read indicates any major weirdnesses to watch out for other than the usual cautions about T-tailed aircraft. Don't try to yank it off, just let it rotate at the right speed and it'll fly off in a few more knots, and don't try to save landing sink rate with the wimpy elevator.

Oh and the gear warning, since it's going to be bleeping fairly regularly for certain maneuvers. Various approaches to how to handle that in the training environment. We'll see how Larry likes to deal with it.

I'm sooooooo looking forward to this. If I had the written done I'd be figuring out how to sneak out of these last couple of weeks of work and get started. Ha. I'm already impatient.

Going to go study now.

I do have an error in myflightbook somewhere and my totals are off a little, so I also have to find that at some point. Probably a dupe or similar. Not a hige high priority. The paper book is right.

Oh... Roughly 540 total time starting this new adventure and a bit under 500 PIC. If anyone cares. And the funny ones, because I'd never bothered to carry them forward on every page and I fixed that... 1.2 Conventional Gear time (LOL! I need to fix that next!) and 3.2 Glider (I REALLY want to fix that too.)

Looking down the road a bit... I definitely want to keep the momentum going after the powered rating stuff and get some serious sailplane time in. I think I've shared that currently Boulder Soaring Society has some tough decisions to make about insurance and the club, and they were "on top of the list" for places to check out. I think personally I find the club environment works better for sailplanes overall so I don't think I have any interest in flying at Mile High up there, and technically the closest active sailplane organization to my house is Black Forest Soaring Society at Kelly Airpark, by a long shot. Boulder is an hour and a half drive and Kelly is 45 minutes via the back road. Still have some research to do on all of that, but it can wait a bit.

So... Why get a BFR next January when I can just get another six or seven ratings?

Wait, I don't think that's how that phrase is supposed to work... :) LOL!
 
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