I was prompted by my friend Shay Will that I should update my blog. So here it is… WARNING: I’m not a flight instructor, nor do I pretend to be one. This information is presented as is. If you fly your dumb ass into a mountain, it’s your fault, not mine. What better way to prepare for my private pilot checkride then to write out some key points for review.
Finally got the camera hooked up properly to record air traffic control audio in the cockpit. All in all it was a pretty slow afternoon, I figured there would be more people flying around on a holiday weekend, but apparently not. A few police helicopters, and some banner towing planes and that’s about it… I had the pattern to myself for an hour on a Sunday. While I was in the pattern, Esteemed Freeskier editor Matt Harvey was suckered into going for an aerobatic demo flight with my flight instructor from Sunrise Aviation. Harvey managed to not throw up, despite a raging hangover.
Finally getting back out and flying more. Managed two days in a row this weekend! What started as a mucky muck low overcast morning eventually turned into a nice sunny day. After one lap around the SNA pattern in the diminishing clouds, which was capped off by the crappiest landing I’ve ever managed to put down, I got clearance to fly out to the practice area. The video picks up as John Wayne Airport control tower terminates my radar service and cuts me loose to tool around over suburbia. Nothing to exiting or spectacular on the way back in, other than redemption on the landing.
My first solo trip around the pattern at KSNA and a full stop landing on 19L in N66NA, a 2004 Diamond Eclipse DA-20! Big thanks to my instructor Chris at Sunrise Aviation. This was also my first time shooting video in the cockpit, hopefully next time around I can figure out why the camera wasn’t picking up the ATC audio, stay tuned!
Next week on Saturday at 4pm I’m going for my first solo flight; I’m pretty pumped to say the least. I haven’t been able to get out and fly much, my busy schedule has been conflicting with my flight instructor’s busy schedule so things slowed down a bit over the last couple weeks…
Got out for a flight today, the first one in a couple weeks and did some reviewing. Liveatc.net is an interesting site that lets you listen live to air traffic control, I managed to dig back through the archives from this afternoon and find my landing clearance to 19L at John Wayne Airport. Yeah I know, I’m that excited about it.
If for some wierd reason you’re still reading this and wondering what the hell is going on, its like this… airplanes have what amounts to a licence plate number, its called the registration. The plane’s registration I was in was 253JP (Juliet Papa). I was returning to the airport to land from the practice area, I’d aleady talked to approach control, who’d handed me off to the tower controller who’d previously instructed me to procede inbound and call my turn to downwind. The first thing you hear is me anoucing the aircraft type (katana) then the registration, so the controller knows who’s talking to him, then what I was doing… turning downwind. To simplify things a lot, turning downwind in this case was entering the traffic pattern for runway 19L. Since everyone was busy eating Easter dinner, the traffic pattern was empty and I recived imediate clearence to land. As per regulation, I called back the clearence to land and followed it with the registration number so that the controller knows I know what he wants me to do. On a more normal afternoon, there are usually a few other planes in the pattern, in which case the controller would tell you what number you are in line to land to land, at which point its up to you to identify the number of planes in front of you, maintain separation and your place in the sequence through the rest of the pattern till you land.
