It is Saturday and my lesson is at 11:00 so just for once I am not rushing around. After breakfast and making some phonecalls home I set off on my bike (I thinking the loud clanking noise it makes is because the rear wheel bearing are very slack). It is sunny again but quite windy. Being a weekend there are quite a few locals out on their pushbikes and we are all riding on the footpaths as the roads just seem plain dangerous for cyclists. I have yet to see anyone walking anywhere. Along the way I saw a bike approaching with a middle aged gent cycling it and he had a parrot sat on the handlebars. Not something you see every day and it made me smile. I didn't get a photo as it all happened so quickly. At the airport, I did the pre flight checks on N946AC, but on checking the weather the wind was gusting significantly. Nikki (my FI)felt that it be counter productive to fly in the pattern so we would spend an hour and a half going through plotting a typical cross country flight on Navigation logs. The route was from Naples (KAPF) to Palm Beach Co Glades (KPHK) on leg 1, then KPHK to Punta Gorda (KPGD) on leg 2, and KPGD back to KAPF on leg 3. She got me going on the first leg showing me how to plot the route, plan VRP's , select and document the radio nav aids, choose the altitude, get the weather (USA style), then it was up to me use the wizz wheel and POH to work out the airspeed, wind correction, variation correction, deviation correction, speed correction, timing and fuel use. I had previously done all this in my CAA Navigation exam but it was good to get a reminder and the American slant on it. I was also using a Jeppesen Navigation Log sheet that was different to the one I was used to. Airfield data and comms frequencies are also added. Plotting this first and easy leg used up the one and a half hours. My homework was to plot the next two more difficult legs. These involved some featureless terrain, restricted areas, parachuting areas, class C airspace, etc. looks like that will be interesting. Also although tomorrow is Nikki's day off I have to show up to watch a video on navigation and also do a pre solo written test. This will cover a range of topics but will include a lot of air law questions. I know that some the air laws are different here.
At 2:30 I cycle back to the hotel. Here are a couple of pictures of the side streets and river streets on my route. I think that this area as pretty as it is, is occupied by fairly low income families.
Those funny little white things in the sky are clouds as the weather is changing.
Keep your boat at the bottom of the garden.
Back at the hotel I did a bit of work on the route planning and then decided to cycle to Walmart to get some items to help. On the way I passed the Court House. Here is a picture of it. Hopefully neither you or I will ever visit it in person but it is a very useful visual reference point when in the Naples circuit (pattern).
At Walmart I got some pencils with erasers on the end, a plastic ruler (I lost my navigation scale rule, it was so long it would only just fit my flight bag), and a solar/battery pocket calculator ($4.94). Then I cycled all the way back to the hotel.
The weather is definitely on the turn and it is forecast to be cold and cloudy on Sunday. I spent a couple of hours finishing off the route planning and completing the nav logs. I had a microwave meal and it was my first and last experience of tofu. Then updating the blog before watching some tv and off to bed.
Phil
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