Flying Update

Since I've returned from a week-long trip to Brasil with my wife, I've had the sudden urge to start to wrap things up with my flying. These activities have already kicked off since I returned in March, where I've logged more time in my logbook than I have over the course of the last two years. One particular early win I've accomplished this year already is my complex rating. I was able to secure that with four flights, totalling about 11.4 hours of tach time on our club's Piper Arrow III. The aircraft is great to fly, and with the extra long endurance fuel tanks, something you can take along for quite long flying trips cross country. In the event that all the other club airplanes are booked, I can see myself using the Arrow III for my flight needs.

The next point that I'd like to turn my attention to is wrapping up my Instrument Rating. As the readers of my blog will know, I've spent considerable time circa ~ 2020 attempting to wrap up my IR, but personal life got into the way and I had to abandon flying for a couple of years. I'm back now, and completely refreshed. I've taken the written and scored a 95%. The only portion of the test that now remains includes the oral and the check ride. As I plan to complete this checkride in southern Wisconsin, I'll have to spend some time, both in the simulator and in real life, visiting and shooting a few "odd" IAPs around the airports, such as the C44 VOR-A and the JVL ILS/DME ARC 4 approaches. I believe these may come up on the checkride, so I need to be completely prepared to better understand how to program and fly them, whether they will be flown with Autopilot or not remains to be seen.

I'm currently slotted to take the checkride at some point in June. Thereafter I intend to jump directly into wrapping up my Commercial rating as well, since I already meet the minimum requirements for the CPL from an hours perspective (you need 250, of which I have 247.5 upon completing this post).

I've got one or two more flights with my instructor before I get the sign off for the checkride - which I hope will happen sometime mid-month. After that, it's cramming for the oral a bit more and I'll be off to the races.