All Your Questions Answered

This morning, while plowing through a bowl of Cheerios, it came to my attention that my family has begun posting my picture on the backs of milk cartons. Yikes. Has it really been that long? It might be time to make a few calls, because I'm still alive and still a pilot. You can send the search parties back to Minnesota; the bloodhounds are keeping me up at night. As for the blog, well, it's still on life support...but has hopes of coming off the respirator here in the next few minutes. There's really a dearth of legitimate excuses for the lack of blog posts. But I have been amused by the inquiries as to my status, so let's dispense of the rumors by joining the Greenpilot press conference, already in progress:

Did you flunk out of flight school? Actually, this is the one I would believe if I were in your shoes. After all, we're going on nearly 3 weeks since my last post and in all likelihood, unless you are an Enjoy Sack Lunch fantasy league participant, you probably havn't fielded a phone call or email from me either. Let's quickly put this theory to bed, though, as I'm doing just fine academically and enjoying this portion of my training more than I expected. Remember the motto, 'Cash Above All': if I were to flunk out of flight school, I'd be out the $60K. Money, believe it or not, is a huge antidote to procrastination and serves as a powerful motivator for binge study sessions.

So if you're still in school, why havn't we heard from you? As it turns out, flight school is actually very demanding. Most days there simply isn't enough time to accomplish all the things I wish to get done. The CFI piles on the homework like Emeril loading ingredients into a boulliabaisse; there's simply no stopping him. My reading assignments for tonight only took two hours; that's a decrease from the usual allocation of infinite.

Do you eat anything besides PB&J sandwiches?
No, although, I did recently did recently discover Banquet's .58 cent frozen pot pies, which seemed like a good idea, at least on paper. This false euphoria lasted for about 3 1/2 minutes, or roughly the time it took to thaw via microwave action. Please save yourselves and your families by not purchasing this product, unless you are a fan of heart disease and Ebola. The best story I can share with you involving food occurred just a few weeks ago, on Labor Day, when the acclaimed fast-food restaurant Chick-fil-A ran their ubiquitous promotion of giving away free chicken sandwiches on the condition that you wore collegiate apparel while ordering. I didn't go to the University of North Carolina, nor did I study at Oregon State. I also was never a student at the University of Minnesota. None of these facts, however, prevented me from making four successive trips with my classmates to the nearest establishment, where I proudly displayed my shirts each time for a delicious (and free) fried chicken sandwich. If only I hadn't been verbally assaulted for wearing my Bryan College jersey. Note to cashier: yes, it's a real college. Some would call my artistry dishonest; I choose to use the phrase 'poor flight school student being resourceful.'

What do you do for entertainment?
Besides study, not much. I'm beginning to think that the academic karma police are giving me my retribution for the four years of undergrad, where I compiled an impressive ratio of 1:30 study/fun hours. That time I should have been in the library studying for my Child Development exam, but instead spent 4 hours 'acquiring' pumpkins, only to roll them down a massive hill and watch as they smashed into a cinder block wall? Yep, I'm paying for that now. The gargantuan assortment of textbooks on my desk serves as an important reminder to be more prudent with my time management skills.

What's the next phase of the program for you?
I'm heavy into the instrument stage of my training. To the casual observer, it would seem like this should take a few days. After all, it's basically just looking at gauges and dials and making the correct interpretations, right? I'm discovering it's much more than that. True instrument training dictates that you will be spending your time directly in the clouds, often flying in some of the worst meteorological conditions around. Low ceilings, poor visibility, and overcast sky conditions are the cornerstones of instrument flying. Without an instrument rating, a pilot is relegated to flying only in the most ideal of weather conditions-not to mention prohibited from flying into clouds. The overwhelming majority of airline flights will operate using Instrument Flight Rules. Consequently, unless one's career ambition is to only fly banners over the Gulf of Mexico on sunny and clear summer days, an instrument rating is the quintessential endorsement a pilot should have. Instrument flying is actually quite enjoyable; your body and brain often form alliances against you, spreading lies and propaganda about your aircraft position and attitude. With no horizon to guide you, a pilot is left only with the instrument panel as an ally. Trusting these indicators will prevent you from making an incorrect adjustment. Fortunately for me, I have experience in fighting off lies from my brain, like the time in 9th grade I was convinced that an NBA future was my destiny.

How many checkrides do you have left?
Glad you asked. After passing my multi-engine exam this past Sunday, I believe the count is somewhere near six. At $400 a pop, passing is considered to be the desired outcome. Still, this check ride seemed substantially less taxing than my initial private pilot exam, perhaps due to the confidence I brought with me headed into this one. The examiner holds every possible aviation rating known to man, and at the ripe age of 60, he clearly has had a more prolific flying career than me, making his presence in the cockpit rather intimidating. Nonetheless, I'm 2/2 on check rides now and plan on continuing that trend.

Colonel Jessup, DID YOU ORDER THE CODE RED?
Whoops, sorry, wrong press conference...

This is supposed to be an aviation blog, give us something we can use!
Hmm...well, as a commercial airline passenger many moons ago, I always wondered how pilots could see and identify the runway from so high and far away, especially if, during our final descent, there were clouds obscuring their field of vision. Were they just guessing? Did a computer do the work? Magic? I've spent the last few days training in the flight simulator doing exactly what I described above. Not to get overly technical here, but most aircraft are equipped with GPS moving map technology, which aids in determining position. In addition to that, most airports have something called an ILS, or Instrument Landing System. The ILS is composed primarily of two seperate systems, one called the localizer, which provides lateral guidance, and one called the glideslope, which provides vertical guidance. Transmitted over radio frequencies, these signals are received by aircraft antennae and displayed on the display panel's heading indicator. The glideslope can be picked up from as far as 18 miles out, spanning ten degrees from the width of the runway and basically gives a path that the pilot should follow to descend at a proper rate in order to find the runway with little visibility. From there, it's simply a matter of making small corrections in pitch and power to stay on the glideslope. By using the ILS, pilots can be guided all the way down to a minimum decision altitude, at which point, if they cannot visually locate the runway approach lights, they are mandated to perform a missed approach and enter a predetermined location for a holding pattern. So the next time you're flying commerically with a window seat, don't panic simply because the airplane is slicing its way through clouds and fog. The ILS will take care of you.

Did you really just wasted 45 minutes writing that paragraph?
Exactly. It's past my bedtime.

PB&J Sandwiches Consumed (to date): 77