By popular demand...

Wow, it's been a while. So, I've been hearing that people actually read this thing and my absence has been noticed. That's kinda cool.

We're in the midst of some typical late winter/early spring weather here in Waco. In fact, I'm sitting in the Waco Flight Training office listening to an American Eagle ERJ-145 fly an ASR (Airport Surveillance Radar) approach into Waco. Not really sure why...(Jerome, do you Colgan guys ever do that?), but the weather is definitely not pretty and definitely just barely above ILS minimums.

Tim and I did my long instrument cross-country last week. Emphasis on long. It was supposed to be about a 2.5 hour trip, but the winds turned it into a 4.8 hour trip that got us home at about 0230. We flew the DUMPY 2 arrival into Addison and flew one of the more interesting ILS's I've ever shot...can you say low-level wind shear in a C-172? Then, we flew on to Tyler and Waco. Tyler to Waco was the long leg...with headwinds we were making about 60 knots over the ground. We were nice and wore out by the time we got in the neighborhood of Waco, where we were greeted with a nice low layer of clouds in which to fly the 14 DME arc and VOR 14 approach to get home and into bed. All in all, a good flight.

I'm just a couple of flights short now. We need to get 4 more hours of dual so I can qualify for my checkride, but the weather is holding us up. We were supposed to go today, but the weather is supposed to stay low and I have to go to Dallas to pick Parker up in a bit (he took the Mooney to Kansas City yesterday and is stuck in Oklahoma City, so is Southwesting it to Love). Tommorrow might work, and if not, I'll be looking at rescheduling my checkride. Ahh, Central Texas springtime.

Not to worry...the Commercial won't take that much and Tim and I are still confident that I'll be ready in time for my May CFI school date.

I just spent the past few days in Seattle at a conference for grad school. Didn't get to do any flying there (I'd hoped to get seaplane current at Kenmore Air), but I decided to make this a budget trip. Did have a lot of fun and eat a lot of seafood, but it was nice to get back home and get on schedule.

Think that's all for now...I'll blog more when I know what's going on with my checkride.

Blue (or at least ILS minimum) skies!