My plastic, permanent pilot certificate arrived in the mail yesterday. It just feels some how more official now that I have the number and the card. Hopefully I can save up enough money from my new job at RadioShack to actually buy some hours now. Licenses are no fun if you don’t get to use them.
I also got good news from the aviation advisors yesterday. They’ll give me permission to enroll in the flying classes early and then hold final enrollment until my grades post. Basically this means that I’m going to be the first person enrolled in Aviation classes (read: FLYING) for the Spring semester. Yay for 135 hours in college… :/
It would also appear that I have a ticket to the OU/TX game this weekend if I can manage to find someone to work my shift at work.
I’m pretty much just spinning my wheels these days. I’m taking COMM 1113 “Principles of Communications” this Intersession to get it out of the way before the fall semester. I wish I had discovered Intersession before this past May… Getting a course out of the way in three weeks is amazing.
My GPA is continually rising now that I’ve switched to Aviation. Final grades aren’t in from this summer but it looks like I came out of it with eight hours of 4.0. I think that will be enough to finally get my old college off my back. Still not enough to officially switch majors though… That looks like it will have to wait until after this Fall.
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about where I am now with respect to where I thought I would be when I was in high school. I think that until very recently I was getting farther and farther from my “core” dreams. Now that I’m changing my major to aviation, doing better in my classes, and finally (after 12 years!) have my pilot’s license, I feel like I’m getting back to the things that I have always been passionate about.
I recently came across a copy of a poem I’d all but forgotten about. I first read this poem while I was touring the Air Force Academy my senior year of high school and encountered it again while in ROTC and at Field Training. “High Flight” was written by John Gillespie Magee Jr. while he was serving as a pilot in World War II, back at the dawn of modern aviation.
The poem occurred to him while on a test flight, during which he took his Spitfire to 30,000 ft. He finished it once back on the ground and sent a copy to his parents in a letter a few days later.
“High Flight” by John Gillespie Magee Jr.
Written 3 September 1941.
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, – and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of – wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlight silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long delirious burning blue
I’ve topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark or even eagle flew -
And, while with silent lifting mind I trod
the high untresspassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.
Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee Jr.
No. 412 squadron, RCAF
Killed 11 December 1941, age 19
I am officially a licensed pilot! I blew my emergency landing procedure yesterday and did a “review” flight this morning with another instructor before retaking the checkride this afternoon and passing easily. Amusing how the one maneuver I never blew in practice is the only one I screwed up on my checkride… go me. Anyways, I’ll be starting Advanced Flying this Fall and hopefully blowing that out of the way early and moving on to Secondary Flying before the Spring semester so I can get my Instrument rating this Spring.
So far it looks like this as far as strict scheduling goes:
- Fall 08: Advanced Flying
- Spring 09: Secondary Flying
- Summer 09: Instrument Flying
- Fall 09: Commercial Flying
- Spring 10: Multi-Engine Flying
- Summer 10: Turbine Transition
somewhere in there I’ll take my CFI and CFII classes and hopefully work as an instructor (wouldn’t mind MEI either). Anyways, for now I’m just extremely happy to have my Private Pilot License!
Woke up this morning at 0515, got up planned the route, did my weight and balance and performance sheet, called and got the weather briefing, and started cursing.
VFR Flight not recommended, AIRMET for IFR conditions and a Center Weather Advisory to your south…
@#%!… The airport was reporting clear below 12,000 ft.! Oh yeah, but OKC, and Wiley Post, and Chickasha were reporting ceilings at 500, 800, and 400 ft. respectively. So yeah, about that VFR only checkride… how about later.
I rescheduled for this afternoon, and hopefully all will go well. I had to reschedule yesterday too because of marginal weather and my generally feeling crappy. Oh well, that’s aviation I guess.
I passed my Private Pilot oral exam yesterday in half the time it normally takes!! 
I made a 95% so I’ll take it and run thank you!
There was a bit of a fiasco when they couldn’t find my paperwork anywhere and my instructor was flying some JROTC kids around and unreachable. The instructor who was originally going to do the oral said to reschedule and left. After chatting with the office folks for a few minutes, we located the paperwork and due to another student’s early finish with an IFR checkride I went and took the oral with a different instructor.
Anyways, I’m flying my practical today, so if all goes well, I’ll be done in a few hours!!
Well, I’m done with my primary flight training… assuming I don’t bomb my oral and practical exams on Monday and Tuesday respectively. Hopefully I’ll have a pilot’s license on Tuesday or soon after!
sudoku solver is done! This is the final in my CS 1313 course this summer. It works pretty well for the simple method by which it solves. The basic idea is presented here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backtracking
If I get bored, I’ll add some limiting to reduce the number of test values based on the input grid. Basically I’ll set it up so that if a 3 is given on a row, no other cell on that row will *ever* have a 3 placed in it as a test value. Expand the idea to each row, column and quadrant, and you get a decent increase in performance. Granted, we’re talking milliseconds worth of improvement for most puzzles, but hey, what is computer science without the one in a million case, one iteration improvements.
Check out Project Euler, its a pretty cool site for anyone interested in working on programming skills and/or math. Nice challenges, so far I’ve solved the first 11. Number 202 makes me want to cry just looking at it…
Well, I’m one step closer to the pilot’s license… I passed my Private Pilot written test today. Made an 88, not bad for not having studied for it since the final on 6 May 08 for my ground school course. I’ll take 88% happily. Now I just have one more flight lesson tomorrow morning at 0930, my pre-stage check quiz tomorrow at 1530, my oral exam and my check ride sometime on Monday.
Hi!
I’m giving this blogging thing yet another chance, hopefully by limiting myself to just a few categories that I’m fairly active in I’ll actually post something regularly. Also, now that I have an iPhone, and the WordPress app for it, I can post from the hand-held when the mood strikes me.
At the moment, I’m finishing up my primary flight training at OU, and am taking my Private Pilot written exam tomorrow at 2:30… a little stressed about that, lots of studying to do. In true form however, I decided that this was the perfect time to get WP up and working on my website… go me. If all goes well, I’ll have my Private Pilot license around the middle of next week. Gee, it only took me 12 years…
I’ll be back tonight or tomorrow with something more interesting, like maybe something about the backtracking solver algorithm for sudoku I’m currently attempting to understand or my iPhone App I’m thinking about writing.
I’m off!
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