Day 1

I flew in Sunday morning and took most of the day just catching up with the folks, unpacking some boxes, chatting with my Grandma, playing a little ping pong, and going for a walk. After dinner, my Dad gave me some books and highlighted some chapters I need to read this week. I'm starting off by studying general radio technique, contact procedures, and radio communication phraseology.

Some of what that means is learning to speak like a pilot so I can better communicate with air traffic controllers. I need to learn the phonetic alphabet, which means when I refer to the letter "A" I'll need to say "Alpha". B=Bravo, C=Charlie, D=Delta, E=Echo, F=Foxtrot, G=Golf, H=Hotel, I=India, J=Juliett, K=Kilo, L=Lima, M=Mike, N=November, O=Oscar, P=Papa, Q=Quebec (Keh-Beck), R=Romeo, S=Sierra, T=Tango, U=Uniform, V=Victor, W=Whiskey, X=X-Ray, Y=Yankee, and Z=Zulu. Pretty cool so far. I'll also need to brush up on Morse Code, which is something I haven't tried since I had some Playschool Walkie-Talkies at age 7.

Numbers are pretty much the same except 4 should be pronounced FOW-ER, 5 is FIFE, and 9 is NINER. Another thing about the numbers is that anything over 9,900 should be spoken by separating the digits preceding the word "Thousand". For example, when stating altitudes and flight levels over the radio 12,000 is One Two Thousand, and 12,500 is One Two Thousand Five Hundred. This is not at all intuitive, but if it keeps me and others safe, then I guess I'll go with it.

I took my first flight with my Dad Monday morning, which went pretty well. He did the take off and landing, leaving me to do most of the steering. We landed at the Coeur d'Alene airport and worked mostly on taxi-ing the plane around and identifiying taxiway markings. I had a tough time just doing that since the plane is steered with right and left foot pedals instead of the yolk. Once again, not very intuitive.

This is what everyone calls One-Six-X-Ray, it's a Cessna 172 a four-seat, single-engine, high-wing fixed-wing aircraft that belongs to my Dad, and it's what I'll be doing most, if not all, of my private pilot training on.

This airplane is what is called a Kitfox, it belongs to a guy named Ben, and it's an "experimental" lightweight aircraft with folding wings for easy storage and transport. It's just a two seater, and most of the body and wings are wrapped tightly with a vinyl like fabric instead of the metal that covers my Dad's Cessna. Also, this is what's refered to as a taildragger. Notice the third wheel is under the tail, as opposed to having it under the prop like the Cessna. Ben has invited me to do some flying in the Kitfox too, which is exciting and somewhat frightening.

Here is the end of the runway and pretty much the view from my parents house where I'm staying. It's just beautiful here, and it's an exhilarating view to fly over.

This is the rest of the runway. You can see the airplane hangar off to the left there.

Here you can see the hangar, and my parents house just to the left of it. As you can see, I'm living about as close to the planes and runway as I can get!