So close, yet so far...

Well, I broke up with my flying instructor the other day. It really sucked but it had to be done. There have been a couple times flying with Stick when I didn’t feel entirely safe, and for some strange reason I haven’t been able to get over it.

A few months ago we nearly had an accident in the plane while Stick was at the controls. It was a pure unanticipated error in judgment on his part and it was completely frightening. We could have been killed. It shook me to my core.

I worked hard to get over it. I went flying the next week, and the next. Every time I approached the plane with the utter certainty that it could be my last flight and I talked myself through the checklists, got my game on, and went flying anyway. It was an effort, but I sucked it up and did it because that’s the only way to get over the fear.

I was doing pretty well, getting my confidence back, and we were out a couple weeks ago to practice for my checkride. We did a practice power failure (a standard training maneuver) and identified a nearby park as the emergency landing site. It was the most viable site around. I lined up the plane for the landing and we got down below the treetops before adding full power and going around. We were pretty low – I was looking down at people looking up at me and I could see their faces. If I had to do it again I’d have stopped descending and gone around sooner.

But here’s the thing, why were we doing a practice emergency landing over a busy city park to begin with? The whole point of the training maneuver is to get comfortable with the idea that if necessary you can land the plane somewhere that isn’t an airport. Usually we’ll pull power over a farm or a field to practice – but over a city park? And why did we get so low when it was pretty obvious that there were a bunch of people out and about?

Funny, but after that lesson I didn’t feel all that good about flying. At first I thought I was having self-confidence issues. Then I realized that I was having trust issues. After that first brush with mortality I don’t trust Stick to keep me safe. I love the guy, but right now I just don't feel good flying with him.

This is a really huge bummer. I am so close to having my pilot’s license. I’d even scheduled my checkride. But as the date got closer, I got more and more freaked-out. I was not looking forward to my lessons, not comfortable flying the plane, and definitely not feeling all that self-confident. So I cancelled the checkride and haven’t rescheduled it.

Here’s the thing – I’m pretty sure that I could take my checkride and pass it next week. But if I don’t feel confident flying the plane, and if I don’t feel confident as a pilot then that pilot’s license doesn’t mean a damn thing. Given how I feel about flying with Stick right now, there's no way that he can prepare me for the checkride and give me the confidence I need to be a pilot.

I’m going to take a little break from flying. Then I’m going to find another instructor, another plane, and move on.

Dr. Sister

My sister is officially a PhD!

Yay Dr. Sister!!

N322MX - instrument panel

Here's the instrument panel as of last week:




Next week the Flying Fish and his friend the Mechanical Genius are going back up to the Glasair factory to install the panel, run all the control wiring, and install the engine in the airplane. After that it will get loaded up on a truck with wings folded back to be delivered to our warehouse for final fit and finish work.

Been flying a vintage 40's aircraft for the past year. I'm going to have to learn how to use all those newfangled instruments!

Context defines us.

I oughta to be studying for my checkride, so I'm watching old Reclamation Era film clips - just watched one about the Hoover Dam. The narrator's so amazed at their achievement and so proud. It's such a Big Deal - of an unprecedented and nearly unimaginable scale - kinda like the destruction of New Orleans last fall, but the exact opposite. Check this out...

"Every section of the country was called upon to contribute to the staggering quantity and wide diversity of materials required."

(great vocabulary too)

"Every state of the union contributed its quota of laborers and artisans. It was not long before roads and rail lines had penetrated into the lowest reaches of the canyon. To provide these arteries of transportation, thousands of tons of virgin rock were blasted from the age-old walls of the gorge. Thus the first thunders of man’s determination to conquer the Colorado River reverberated between the sheer cliffs of the canyon which heretofore had known only the hot silence of the desert and the roar of the river’s angry floods.”

“As the work of placing [concrete] progressed, the crews became expert in the handling of equipment and record-breaking daily pours were made only to be surpassed by later achievements on this same structure.”

(and incredible new technology)
“From the switchyard (where the most highly specialized and modern developments in the power transmission field are to be found) the lines travel out across the desert bringing light to the homes and cities and power to the factories of the great southwest."



There’s another quick little film about a North Platte river - how it contains a 2-year water supply and is used for “irrigation; by which a high degree of control is maintained over the application of the water to the land, coupled with mild western climates serve to make fruits...”

“The settlers' tents give way in a few years to fine well-kept rural homes – a far cry from the sagebrush...”

They did a lot of work on our core infrastructure making the west and southwest habitable for everyone who lives there now. Now we sit in our homes, tapping away on our computers and take their work for granted.

It's interesting to compare the Hoover Dam with the Three Rivers dam currently under construction in China. There's been a lot of outcry over that project. People displaced, species uprooted or exterminated, environmental havoc, etc. but I have to wonder whether China will see just as many core hibituation impovements as we saw in the American West as a result of our dams.

Worth noting that the Hoover Dam took 4 years in development, and two years of sitework (diverting the river) before they could start on construction. Constructing the dam took two years (funny, the first house I built took two years and it didn't have nearly as much concrete - even though it was a concrete house.) They installed and started up generators over the next four years as the reservoir filled (that took six years). A total of 8 years work after 4 years planning. That's a pretty aggressive schedule.