Will Fly For Food

I like to cook. Unusual hobby, sure, but it's healthier than constantly eating greasy burritos from Taco Bell 24/7, and it saves money. Unfortunately, the flight school diet has consisted of far too many sandwiches and oatmeal over the past few months, but on occasion I splurge and head for the bulk meats section of the nearest Wal-Mart supercenter, all in hopes of stockpiling the ground beef for making Hamburger Helper. If you have the discipline to ration the portions refugee-style, one can usually get 2-3 meals out of this. Even though I'm now very proficient in making this meal, it always baffles me how it's able to come together. At first it's just a lump of red, raw meat. Fifteen minutes later it's an unrecognizable scramble. Douse it with a few cups of water. Maybe add in some milk, throw a few noodles in it. By now it's all I can do to keep my creation from overflowing the pan and causing a big mess. There's nothing about it that resembles a meal, not even close. It's at this point I mix in the seasoning sauce, and that only furthers the perception that I'm cooking vomit. The discolored blob of ingredients hardly looks edible. But soon, after a few stirs, and enough time over the hot stove, the liquids settle in, the noodles begin to cook, and the pan starts to become one. An aroma flows through the air. Soon, with a little care and effort, my dinner's ready. Now, no one here would argue that Hamburger Helper is a gourmet meal. Point conceded. But there is something special about taking something ordinary and seeing it come to its full potential. Maybe it tastes better because I went through the effort of making it. Or maybe I've gone senile over the past few months and somehow decided that writing a paragraph on Hamburger Helper was a good idea.

No matter, I can't help but draw parallels from one of my favorite low-budget meals and my experiences here. One of my first recollections about this crazy journey comes from back in early May, when the first crate of aviation textbooks and supplies arrived at my house. As I sifted through the boxes, feelings of being overwhelmed consumed me. The materials were things I'd never seen before, never knew they existed. I flipped through a few pages of a training manual and thought, "What did I get myself into this time?" It was a disaster.

Over the next few weeks, little by little, I threw myself into the books. My free time was spent learning things that, even just a few months prior, never envisioned myself caring to learn. And as summer approached, and my flight school date grew ever closer, I realized there was no going back. The beef was now brown.

My arrival here in Texas was met with more books, more uncertainty, and an even greater overwhelming feeling. I remember my first night here: exhausted from the fourteen-hour drive, hungry and in dire need of a shower, I met a few of my training partners and collapsed onto my bed, wondering if I'd made the right decision. The life I'd left behind suddenly seemed remarkably appealing. Was it too late to change my mind? As I stared at the heaping pile of books and aeronautical charts on the table, I wondered how I would ever make it.

The next morning, while eating the first of the PB&J sandwiches for breakfast, I pored over the syllabus, which outlined the next 150 days of my life, almost down to the hour. I'm the type of person who likes to take things one day at a time. I thought I'd accidently stepped into a military prison camp. I felt more out of place than Captain Crunch at a quilting convention. That night my classmates and I studied until midnight. If the first day didn't kill me, I thought, maybe there's a chance I can do this.


Eventually, my classmates and I fell into a routine: wake up, study, go flying, study, sleep. And that's how it went for me for the first month. Before I could blink, I'd been here a month. The reality that I was chasing a dream sprung me out of bed each morning. Soon, after about six weeks, I'd earned my private pilot's license. A few weeks later, I'd added a multi-engine rating. Who knew I had it in me?


Slowly, but steadily, I progressed though the grueling instrument stage. If there were ever a time to quit, this would have been it. These were long days, often starting before 6 and ending well after midnight. I wanted to kill my instructor. He probably wanted to kill me. If Vegas had been taking bets on survival, odds would have been pretty much even.


Time has been on fast forward ever since. I spent two weeks flying around the country, building my hours. I took three written exams in seven days. Just last week, I conquered two commercial checkrides in one weekend, making me qualified to fly for hire. Somehow, someway, the ingredients all came together. I am now a real-live pilot. The end is near. In a few short hours, I'll board a U.S. Airways flight for Jacksonville to begin certified flight instructor school. Two weeks of grueling study and preparation for a checkride that determines my immediate flying future. After being separated for most of the past three months, my classmates from our private pilot days are joining me for this final push. If all goes well, I'll be back to Dallas and done with the program in three weeks. The end is near.


In one of my very first posts, I broke down my ambitions as plainly as possible: I just want to fly airplanes. While I've attained that goal, I'm ready for the next challenge: I want to teach people how to fly airplanes. I'm still not quite sure how this happened, but I never want to go back.

PB&J Sandwiches Consumed (to date): 143

Break In The Action

They say no man is an island, but flight school can sure make you feel like it. Inhabiting the basement floor often leaves me wondering if indeed the rapture has happened and I've somehow been forgotten. These are dark and quiet days, with few demands on my schedule besides a few hours of flying each day. While it's a nice respite from the grueling pace of the program, the abundant downtime leaves one with a prevailing feeling of guilt. Even tasks once viewed as a productive expenditure of time, like laundry or composing emails, now offer a chance for my conscious to challenge my diligence. You should be studying or getting ahead right now. That's what living each day on flight school autopilot will do. After all, since I first stepped foot on the tarmac way back in July, I've been bludgeoned repeatedly with one assignment, project, or test to prepare for. And now, at least until I leave for instructor school, the exams are finished and ground lessons done, giving me ample time to realize I'm not accustomed to having ample time.

Fortunately, I've combated this by purposefully scheduling early morning flights back in the Cessna and plenty of textbook review. Simply staying on guard against complacency consumes a tremendous amount of energy, especially without an individually assigned instructor for this phase of my program. There are positives and negatives to this, with the major advantage being I get to see and hear several different critiques of my performance in a relatively short period. The major downside, of course, is that I usually end up being tossed around like one of the Kardashian sisters. Since every instructor is different, each has their own idiosyncrasies that can't help but be encountered during a lesson. A checklist flow method that generates applause from one instructor might result in a tongue-lashing from another. Trying to keep them all straight almost requires the use of Microsoft Excel. Today's flight was spent with the most experienced instructor our school has, a guy with nearly 1,700 hours on his resume and enough confidence to salvage a middle school homecoming dance. His penchant for crazy unusual attitude training notwithstanding, the guy knows his stuff and is an excellent instructor. It's hard not to feel intimidated around the more experienced, battle-tested pilots. I look forward to the day when I'm considered a peer, rather than just another student climbing the ladder that seemingly lacks a top step.

A quick glance at my logbook says the 200 hour mark is fast approaching-the minimum benchmark when applying for a commercial pilot's license. Training for the commercial checkride really is a lot less awful than, say, drinking a sewage-flavored smoothie. The new maneuvers aren't all that difficult; it's mostly a refining of the basic skills I learned back in my private pilot days. What's mainly giving me trouble during my training flights is a maneuver responsible for the majority of botched checkrides at this stage, known as a power-off 180. Simply put, it's a simulation of a failed engine while in the traffic pattern of an airport. While parallel to the landing zone, approximately 1,000 feet off the ground, I cut the throttle to idle and begin turning the aircraft back down towards the runway, with the goal to put the wheels of the plane down exactly on a pre-determined spot. Sound easy? The margin for error here is +200 feet, -0 feet. If I land it a foot short, too bad, it's a failure. Also in play: accounting for the wind factor. At no point am I allowed to increase the throttle-my only weapons are adding flaps or performing S-turns while I lose altitude. It is a constant blend of determining position and airspeed while slight adjustments to align the aircraft correctly. To be honest, the few times I've successfully pulled it off so far could be attributed to minor miracle. And even while demonstrating it to me, the instructors repeatedly botch it as well. The moral of the story: hope for a checkride day with zero wind and pray for leniency from the examiner. It's more than that, and with two training flights before the moment of truth I'm sure my proficiency will increase, but it'll be interesting to see how I perform. From this point on, I'm calling it the $400 maneuver. To see it done at a passing level, click here.

There are days I'd love nothing more than to sleep in and lay around, but both of those are incongruent to the ultimate goal and the magnitude of what's at stake here. Seeing the big picture requires loads of discipline, but I'm getting weary. In my downtime I've realized how much I miss family and the structure of normal life. This is the longest I've gone without seeing any of them-4 months. And all the things I miss about my 'normal life', like sleeping in a bed long enough for my 6'4" frame. Morale remains high, and the end is in sight, but man, I am ready for some home cooking. As I finish my final few weeks of training, the sandwiches are rapidly beginning to lose their flavor. Marked on my calendar after this week's checkride: a trip to China World's massive buffet. Motivation for passing never tasted so good.

The other day, a fresh new batch of students came in, all excited and ready to get started with their private pilot program. It strikes me as fascinating that my two classmates and I are now the self-proclaimed big dogs around here, the ones who supposedly know the drill and are viewed as the wise old sages. Let me be the first to say that I feel grossly unprepared for that mantle. What's even more alarming to me is that after Friday of this week, barring a complete disaster up in the air, I will be qualified to begin earning $$$ as a professional pilot. Not that there'll be a Lion King-style stampede of job offers at my door, but still, it's a very exciting and humbling prospect.

PB&J Sandwiches Consumed (to date): 131