A different perspective
I was out of town last week on business in New Orleans, so I obviously couldn’t fly. Side note – I think that the “8 hours bottle to throttle” rule should be changed to “80 hours bottle to throttle” if your drinking is done on Bourbon Street. I’ll bring it up at the next FAA meeting.
When I returned, I scheduled some time with Marv, who was back from his surgery and feeling much better. Morning sky looked pretty dismal, so I prayed to the weather gods for something reasonably VFR for my 1:00 lesson. Started happening around noon – I may have to really re-think this religion thing. By 1:00 the ceiling was 2700 broken, virtually no wind.
Marv arrived around 1:15, and we started by talking about what I had learned in my time off. I explained that I had sucked up as much information as possible, including ALL of the Cessna training CD’s, ALL of Rod Machado’s Private Pilot Handbook, and ALL that I could find on the Internet. He seemed reasonably impressed (damn right!) and proceeded to quiz me on the finer points. We went through the preflight (which I have pretty much nailed now) and hopped in to 2257E for flight number 3.
Given that the only PTT (push to talk) switch is on the pilot yoke, I did all of the radio work, which he complemented me on (even read another book on radio communications) as well as my taxiing ability. We headed to 16R at Van Nuys, did our run-up, and off we went. We headed northwest towards Simi Valley, and found the cloud cover to be very broken. We climbed on top (about 6500’) and started some airwork. Marv is very clear about the procedures he wants done, which I really enjoy. We did coordinated turns at standard, medium and steep banks until I felt like I had a good feel for them. Then some slow flight, which took some getting used to, but I finally nailed those as well. By now we had meandered well north over Santa Clarita, so we turned around to head back. Over Magic Mountain I radioed in and heard quite a bit of traffic around VNY, but was cleared for a straight in approach to 16R. Marv explained our cruise descent in detail, and then the transition to landing, which I just helped with again. Taxied in and shut down. Another GREAT flight! Scheduled two more lessons for this week.
1.2 hours/3.2 total