AztecWannabe
Filing Flight Plan
A big thanks goes out to your very own...Ron Levy, for heeding my cry for help a couple months ago while I was looking for Aztec instruction.
Ron came down to Eastern NC and we began our three day "crash" course to multi/instrument training. We put in 12 hour days, logging about 5 hours per day. If we weren't flying, we were talking about flying (or quoting some lines from the "Blues Brothers" movie). What a great 3 days (4 if you count the checkride day, a whole other story) it was. This is about as much as I could muster, my brain was getting a little mushy in the afternoons. I can't imagine doing one of those 10-day courses.
Ron is an absolutely great instructor. You'll be hard pressed to find anyone with more aviation knowledge and experience than him. We had lots of "surprises" (one-engine-inop stuff) at various phases of flight..... take-off roll, at Vyse, Vmc, in cruise, descent, approach, short final, you name it. What a joy it is to finally get to fly the plane with BOTH engines working properly.
Day 4 was some refresher stuff while en-route to our checkride destination. I had an old salt for a DE. He had done over 400 Aztec checks, but hadn't done 5 in the last year so had to jump through a few hoops to get a LOA from the FAA to do the ride. All parties involved seemed keen on making it happen.....and yes, I passed (Note my name change from AztecWannabe to AztecDriver). As Ron said in his best "sheriff" type voice, "My job is done here."
Transitiong from over 600 hours in a Mooney M20F, I really like the Aztec. It climbs great, it's roomy, really throws you back in the seat on takeoff roll, easy to land. In my mind it the best value true 6-seat plane out there right now. It has a very draggy airframe. You can both go down and slow down. Doing the emergency descent procedure I felt like we were pointed virtually straight down and the airspeed was still not in the yellow arc (I startled the DE on this one).
Safe Flying,
Tim
Ron came down to Eastern NC and we began our three day "crash" course to multi/instrument training. We put in 12 hour days, logging about 5 hours per day. If we weren't flying, we were talking about flying (or quoting some lines from the "Blues Brothers" movie). What a great 3 days (4 if you count the checkride day, a whole other story) it was. This is about as much as I could muster, my brain was getting a little mushy in the afternoons. I can't imagine doing one of those 10-day courses.
Ron is an absolutely great instructor. You'll be hard pressed to find anyone with more aviation knowledge and experience than him. We had lots of "surprises" (one-engine-inop stuff) at various phases of flight..... take-off roll, at Vyse, Vmc, in cruise, descent, approach, short final, you name it. What a joy it is to finally get to fly the plane with BOTH engines working properly.
Day 4 was some refresher stuff while en-route to our checkride destination. I had an old salt for a DE. He had done over 400 Aztec checks, but hadn't done 5 in the last year so had to jump through a few hoops to get a LOA from the FAA to do the ride. All parties involved seemed keen on making it happen.....and yes, I passed (Note my name change from AztecWannabe to AztecDriver). As Ron said in his best "sheriff" type voice, "My job is done here."
Transitiong from over 600 hours in a Mooney M20F, I really like the Aztec. It climbs great, it's roomy, really throws you back in the seat on takeoff roll, easy to land. In my mind it the best value true 6-seat plane out there right now. It has a very draggy airframe. You can both go down and slow down. Doing the emergency descent procedure I felt like we were pointed virtually straight down and the airspeed was still not in the yellow arc (I startled the DE on this one).
Safe Flying,
Tim
