Flying Update

Next weekend we head off to the Grand Canyon for our road trip with friends J&J. Standby for some great photos from that. In the meantime, it's been crazy busy with work, getting the dogs return to Australia preparations going, training for this silly marathon in October and of course, flying. I've been a little quiet on the flying as it's been frustrating, challenging and fun. I have been delayed due not getting a medical clearance. I have gathered all the information for the FAA questions and will give it to the aviation doctor this week - he then sends it away to the FAA who hopefully will be ok and finally give me my medical clearance ASAP. I have not been able to fly solo without this medical pass so instead, pushed ahead with learning cross country, doing night flights and learning to fly with instruments. There are minimum hours to do so I'm almost done with that. The hope is that I will have my medical pass by end Sept and then I can do all my solo work in one big fat chunk - about 10 hours. And then, I have to put in a huge effort to polish my flying and study for the final theory exam and flight with an examiner. I'm not sure I"m going to make it to be honest, but I will give it everything I have. However, if my medical is further delayed, this will likely force me to call it quits as I won't have enough time to finish before returning home.

So, my landings have improved - hallelujah !! I'm learning how to read navigation charts which are so bloody busy with information. I find it hard to read them and the detail is so bloody small. Thankfully I have an iPad with incredible software that has the maps on it and I can zoom in. However, I need to be able to read the paper maps so I'll be practising that for the exam. I'm sure if there is treasure map on those maps also cause they sure have everything else printed on them. I've said it before but I'll say it again, this flying stuff is hard, just bloody hard. 

I took my first night flight last week and it was incredible. I was a bit nervous and unsettled at first. We used red torchlight to ensure our eyes could adjust to night vision. Takeoff was like wow, just felt so different. I could see less things than daytime of course, but I could see so much more because of all the lights. It was a beautiful night and we just flew around the training area to experience the look and feel of things at night and learn about lights on other aircraft. I adjusted fairly quickly and totally enjoyed the flight. We did several landings which I thought were ok. I felt like it was a bit easier than day time in the sense that you can't see distractions that you would normally see in the day. So I could just focus on the landing. The runway lights at our little airfield are activated by clicking the radio switch 5 times. My friend AH got to do it the first time but I got my chance later. I felt like a little kid turning on the big christmas tree. 

I also took my first long cross country night flight, about 2.5 hours. We headed up to Lancaster and did some landings and then navigated back to land at Baltimore on the small general aviation runway. It runs parallel to the main runway so it was very cool to see the big guys landing beside us. It was another beautiful night with so many lights. We climbed to 5500 ft which is the highest for me so far. I'd probably have been more scared if it was daytime but since you can't see as much as night, it didn't seem that high. It was a late night and not home until after midnight but I totally enjoyed the night flights. It was fantastic experience and one of the best things on my 50 Shades of DC adventure.

Cockpit Instruments

Lancaster Airport

Baltimore

Baltimore Airport

I've also been doing some cross country flights which are flights more than 50nm. We've covered about 150nm on average with a stop or two at other airports to get landing practice and tower communication practice. It's been fabulous to fly around and see parts of the area that I've never seen. It's quite pretty, very green, lots of beaches and water areas and a mixture of aircraft wherever we go. 

One flight we went to Ocean City in Maryland which is the place locals go to the beach. We landed first then took off and flew up along the beach. There were helicopters flying around and also a jump plane with parachute crazy people. I saw on Facebook that a friend was there the day before and the same time I flew by which was pretty cool. 

And I've been running my little legs off. I did some calf damage in June which held me up for  two months so I've been pushing ahead with a modified program in the hope I can still be ready for the Marine Corp Marathon end October. I'm behind my training group and haven't been running with them. The heat and humidity has been just dreadful and it really impacts my running. Today I was up at 5 to run 24km (15 mile) and it totally broke me. It was 3 hours and Deb met me along the way to refill my bottles. I came home and just collapsed. I think my words were  like 'this is farking stupid'. It is definitely easier to ride a bike for 3 hours and I'd even say 24 hour racing didn't feel so bad. I slept for 2 hours, have been wrapped in compression pants and had a long bath with salts to help ease the muscles. Anyway, I will continue and hopefully the temperature will slowly cool from here on as we approach autumn.

The dogs passed their rabies testing and got the official declaration from the US head vet dude. The also got their import permits approved and I'm not booking dates with the vet for Dec/Jan to get their pre-departure treatments and vaccinations. It is going to keep me very busy and I've got a spreadsheet worked out like a good little project manager.

 

My cute trendy hair stylist is enjoying giving me short and lighter coloured hair. Love his work (The Burrow). If you need a great stylist, check out his salon. I will miss him as a good short haircut stylist is hard to find. I think men do the best short haircuts.

Well, that's about it for now so standby for some fabulous reports from the Grand Canyon.