On Monday evening I'm meeting up with a flight instructor to map out a plan on how to complete my remaining commercial requirements. Talking to him on the phone just now, he seemed to indicate that the two 100nm cross-country flights were supposed to be solo (as I originally thought) even though the regs seem to indicate it is dual. So we'll ( Read more... )

I've flown to Mulege, Mexico (816nm), Hillsboro, OR (486nm), and Fallbrook, CA (342nm) but these flights were all with passengers on board. The regulations require pilots to fly a 300+ mile cross country flight solo in order to get a commercial license. This flight must include landings at three different airports. Additionally, one point of ( Read more... )

After spending Saturday exploring the Lee Vining and Mono Lake area and then camping in town for the night, we walked the 1.7 miles back to the airplane on Sunday morning. We weren't the only ones at the airport:


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Well tonight I successfully completed seven solo landings at night at an airport with an operating control tower, thus making 10 total such landings and fulfilling one of the commercial license requirements. Then I came back to Palo Alto for landing #8 however this one "doesn't count" because the tower there was closed for the night. In fact I ( Read more... )

Date: August 23, 2008 ( Read more... )

I was going to fly tonight. I reserved the plane from 9pm to 11pm to take advantage of the cheaper night rental rate. Then I was going to hop down to San Jose and do touch and goes on runway 29 which is the short runway (4600 feet instead of 11000 feet like the main runways that the jets use). Hopefully I would be able to get 7 landings in and ( Read more... )

Here are the requirements I still need to meet in order to get my commercial pilot's license ( Read more... )

My next upcoming flight is to Lee Vining (O24) near Mono Lake. This will be an overnighter. Fly in Saturday, camp the night, fly out Sunday morning hitting up Lake Tahoe on the return trip. In order to get to Lee Vining I will need to cross my highest terrain yet. I don't have much mountain flying experience but I have read a lot about it and I ( Read more... )

Flew to Elk Grove last weekend in the club's Cessna 152. This was my first cross country flight in the little plane and it worked out really well. The only thing wrong with the day is that the person flying the plane before me was an hour and a half late returning it. This turned my 1:00pm departure into a 2:45pm departure instead ( Read more... )

I posted pictures of my trip to Canada here