"TV dinners" living the song

22nd February

A fellow student has just started a blog and he has named it “Living the dream”. I wish I had thought of that. He is here for a year on a career pilot programme. My title for this post is about right for me at the moment as the last few days have been busy. In fact I am going to keep this post short tonight as it is already 7:15pm and I have a lot of prep and homework for tomorrow and will be setting my alarm for a 5:45am start tomorrow. TV dinners is a song by ZZ Top and those guys really know how to play electric guitars. I have actually run out of things in my fridge so I will walk over to the Olive Garden later on.
Today has been so busy and here is a quick summary.

The weather is warm but again there is a bit of low cloud that must be under the weather radar as the view out of the window does not match the airfield data. I get to NAC for 10am as I need to complete my planning for my cross country to Pahokee and back. My shirt was kind of krinkly because I had not ironed it.
At the front desk Richard has an unenthusiastic helper.

As I said the weather info was confusing so I rang an inland airfield (KIMM) and pressed the person to look out of their window. There was low cloud. I had flown this route yesterday with Nikki and at 1500ft. I was going to do it again today at the same height but solo. My planning was checked and a slip authorising the flight produced. I was ready for takeoff in N946AC at 11:13.
On the takeoff run I realised something was wrong. The aircraft was taking off before I expected. I soon realised I had 20 degrees of flap. Somehow I had missed some checks but managed to stabilise the situation although I was verbally cursing myself with the PTT switch pressed. Sorry Naples pilots for that rude word. In the confusion I also gave the tower an incorrect planned heading so they asked my to make a turn and I complied, however I ended up out of position. After a few minutes I had got a grip of everything and was in the right place at the right altitude and heading in the right direction. Pheww, I don’t want to do that again. The rest of the flight went to plan, things came up when expected, I made the necessary calls to other traffic and landed at Pahokee at 12:43. I got onto the taxiway and sorted out my paperwork and even managed to take a photo.

Not a lot at Pahokee airfield.
After power and pre takeoff checks (still puzzling over how I missed something earlier) I took off and had a good trip back to Naples. I was a bit sheepish as I went to the office but as I had broadcast my mistake they all knew about it. My shirt was now moist and krinkly. Nikki went through the de-brief. It was 2pm so the plan was to grab some food and also plan for a return trip to Punta Gorda and back through class C airspace and leaving 3:30pm. In the flight planning room I did the plotting and the nav logs. It takes a long time and I realised I was somewhat tired. Anyway at 3:45pm I had done them and after they were checked I had to add some more detail. At 4:16 we took off. I was with Nikki now as I had just done 2 solo flights and now I needed to learn about the radio procedures in Charlie airspace. We were flying up the Florida coastline on a sunny afternoon and climbing to 2500ft. I did not have time to enjoy the view but it was definitely there. On contact with Fort Myers approach and having set the squawk code we were asked to turn onto a heading taking us straight out over the gulf. After a few miles it was obvious that we were being routed around Charlie airspace so it was not much good in the way of training, plus Nikki said that she did not feel too comfortable being this far out to sea. The plan was cancelled and Nikki informed Fort Myers and my job was to take us back to Naples.

A Naples sunset courtesy of Nikki (taken when I did my first solo).

Tonight I must plan the Punta Gorda trip again plus do lots of weight and balance calculations, plus work out the expected takeoff and landing distances at both airfields (taking into account the reducing weight due to fuel burn and my perspiration). I am also due to fly solo o Immokalee at 7am in the morning to practice short/soft field landing and takeoffs.

Peewit