No flight but training none the less.

          December 22nd Preflight training:  Due to the weather being less than cooperative yesterday we rescheduled the training and flight for today.  Even though the rain was still a couple hours away, we thought we'd be able to get at least a small flight in after going over some ground information.  The flight was scheduled for noon and I usually leave a half an hour early just to relax and hang out at the FBO(fixed base operator) for a few minutes before Mike is ready for me.  Around 1100 Mike gives me a call and we get to talking about the weather, that it's good enough to fly in, but the training he wants to do requires a little more altitude than we can get to.  Since we'd only be flying around 1500 feet we decided to make a ground training day out of it and leave the flying for tomorrow.
           Today Mike wanted to cover a couple of things before he headed to work at NetJets.  Topic 1 was very short, "Required documents needed for flight".  And this can be summarized in the acronym "A.R.R.O.W".

A - Air Worthiness Certificate
R - Registration
R - Radio License (if traveling out side of the U.S.)
O - Operating Hand Bood
W - Weight and Balance

          The other topic he wanted to cover was what you look for when you're about to fly.  Every time you go up you must do a "PreFlight Inspection" before you fly.  We covered what you need to look for, what all the antenna's are, how to check the oil, fuel and other miscellaneous parts.  It was a pretty quick lesson, about a half hour in all.  Even though we didn't fly I still had a ton of fun learning and just being out there.  Then I got home, and checked if the weather had improved, it got worse and I made it home just in time.

1.8 Hours down and a lifetime to learn

Weather in Ohio

      Mike and I scheduled my next lesson for today at noon with out looking at the weather forecast.  We had done this once before right after my intro flight.  It was all rained out that day, and I thought to my self, "next time you should really check the weather and have a good idea of when your next lesson should be so you don't have to reschedule a bunch".  After lesson two we set up today's lesson and did I check the weather previous to making that appointment? Nope. 
      Today we had a high of around 44 after we had some cooler days around freezing, this means fog, lots of fog.  Yup still foggy.  Plus there was a nice storm system moving it's way North and East out of Texas that is supposed to cover the area until sometime Thursday.  Next time, I'll check the weather before scheduling another lesson.

Just for reference every thing North and East of (1) hit us today.

Flight #2: Hour 2

             December 16th, 2011 was my second flight, and the start of my official training.  Mike Davidson, my instructor, had some family issues he had to deal with and wasn't sure if he could make our 1pm lesson today, I didn't know this.  So one of the guys gave him a call and sure enough he was on his way.  We got started right on time, and got right into the basics of aerodynamics and we had a disscusion on who is right about the theory of how lift is made, Newton or Bernoulli.  He then threw down the "I'm an engineer who graduated from OSU" card and I accepted defeat and we got on with the lesson.  He's happy that I'm so far ahead of the curve on the material he's covering that we can concentrate more on the hands on flying than lecture. 
             Today we took a 50 minute hop around the same area as the last time, London, OH.  Today I did my taxi and take off and did most of the flying.  We concentrated on more maneuvering, slow flight, taxi's and power changes.  After about 35 min we turned and followed the railroad tracks back to Bolton Field.  To this point I had been doing most of the flying and we were approaching the airport from the Southwest and descending to 1700' from 2500'. 
             While we were descending there was another airplane departing to the North on runway 22 (south is 180) so he's already pointed Southwest.  He told the tower he wanted to turn to the right to go North.  He advised him we were there and to watch out for us and us to watch out for him.  As we were getting closer to the airport we radioed the tower to say we couldn't see him and we were going to make a 360 degree turn to make sure we would avoid him.  It wasn't till we were about half way through the turn that we finally saw him and were sure we'd avoid him.  Mike made the landing look easy and let me taxi back to hangar row and he parked it. 

1.8 Hours down and a life time to learn.

Intro Flight: Hour 1

December 12, 2011 I started my flight training with an introduction flight at Bolton Field(KTZR) in Columbus, (the great state of) Ohio.  At noon I pulled into the parking lot and met my instructor for the first time, Mike Davidson.  We got off on a great start and quickly got to know each other.  We taxied out of hangar row to runway 22 via the bravo and alpha taxi ways.  We took off and headed South West to where the instructors take most of their students near London, Ohio.  We were up for an hour and went over some simple maneuvers like straight and level flight, turns and power changes.  The air was smooth as silk and I think we only felt one bump in the air.  I couldn't have asked for a more perfect day to fly.  After our time was up we flew back to Bolton Field and concluded the flight with a soft and smooth landing.  Mike handed me a log book which he had filled in my first flight and signed it.  Now I need to prove I'm a citizen and he can officially continue the training.  One hour down and a lifetime to learn.