?

Log in

No account? Create an account
   Journal    Friends    Archive    Profile    Memories
 

One step closer to flying again - MtnVwPilot

Dec. 28th, 2005 03:11 pm One step closer to flying again

Well, I'm one step closer to taking up flying again... I've renewed my medical certificate:



So the Aviation Medical Examiner says I'm unlikely to keel over at the controls anytime in the next 3 years... ;-)

Next up: a couple of hours of ground review with my instructor (scheduled for next week), then a couple of flying sessions to scrape the rust off (to be scheduled as soon as my instructor can convince our flying club's scheduling computer that he is qualified to fly the model of plane I want to use, a Cessna 182). Of course, this time of year in the Bay Area, at least half the training flights are likely to wind up cancelled because of bad weather...

But still, I expect I'll be all current again (for visual flights; I'm not even trying to get current for instrument flight right now) by the end of January...

6 comments - Leave a commentPrevious Entry Share Next Entry

Comments:

From:(Anonymous)
Date:December 28th, 2005 11:30 pm (UTC)

Mooching Air Time

(Link)
YEA! Hurrah! May I have a ride, please?
I'll pay for gas! The passenger requests
a bit of turbulence, please.

Airport Bum
Renee
From:mtnvwpilot
Date:December 29th, 2005 01:19 am (UTC)

Re: Mooching Air Time

(Link)
Some of my friends are asking themselves "Gee, I wonder what's motivating him to take up flying again?" Pretty girls who want to go for a ride? Nah, couldn't possibly be that... ;-)

If you want turbulence, you should go for a sailplane flight; certain types of turbulence indicate lift, so sailplane pilots sniff it out. I'm not a big turbulence fan, myself, though it bothers me less when I'm at the controls than when I'm a passenger.

-B
From:generalist
Date:December 29th, 2005 02:08 am (UTC)
(Link)
Yay!!
From:tigerrrcat
Date:December 29th, 2005 04:03 pm (UTC)
(Link)
I'll second that "yay" and raise you a "Woo!!!"

Does this mean you'll be doing rescue flights again?
From:mtnvwpilot
Date:December 29th, 2005 05:57 pm (UTC)
(Link)
Probably not any time soon... That's a whole 'nother level of retraining and recurrency that I'd have to undertake, well beyond what it would take to get even instrument current again. At this point, it has been so long since I've flown SAR (Search and Rescue) that if I wanted to take it up again, I'd probably best repeat the training from scratch, which is about 20 hours of study time and at least that much flight time.

Besides which, I'm more valuable to the SAR organization as an Incident Commander (there are only about 40 of us fully qualified in California) than as a Mission Pilot (which there are about 300 of). So if a real mission came up, I probably wouldn't get to fly anyway, but rather would end up running the overall mission or some piece of it (Air Operations, Ground Operations, whatever; to qualify as an IC, you first have to have qualified at some point for almost every other emergency position in the organization).

-B
From:r_wolfcastle
Date:December 30th, 2005 07:06 pm (UTC)
(Link)
Good to see you getting back into it.

I agree with your assessment of your appropriate role wrt SAR. If you're looking to do good with your flying skill, there's always Angel Flight West. The treasurer (maybe ex-treasurer by now) is an acquaintance of mine.