Kate's Aviation Journal

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2/18/05 Three Fridays of Commercial Maneuvers - On February 4th, 11th, and today, I practiced commercial maneuvers from the right seat of the Trinidad. If I don't fly those pesky lazy eights and steep turns often enough, my good performance fades. My instructor and I were looking for some consistency before I take my mock checkride.

2/20/05 Why You Haven't Heard from Me - It's hard to keep this site up-to-date. I have been busy with two jobs and flight training. Until now I was devoting much of my free time on the computer to making a three-inch binder full of lesson plans for flight instruction.

Flight Lesson Plans

I hope I can do my mock CFI checkride this week. The weather has been a constant annoyance. We're stuck somewhere between winter and spring. Another reason I haven't written much online is that not much is happening. I have only flown about 20 hours since the end of October. I'm looking forward to better weather and flying a lot after I become an instructor.

I am only 1.6 hours away from having 300 total flight hours!

2/23/05 Arrrrrrrrrgggghh! - I'm gonna need a do-over. I had my mock checkride with the chief instructor today. The oral part covering fundamentals of instruction went fine. We were running short on time, so we didn't talk about any flight subjects. Then we went flying. My head wasn't in the game. We started with eights on pylons and I made a mistake I'd never made before. I was pretty frustrated with myself. I tried it again and did okay. Then when I tried slow flight, I flew way below my normal skill level. It wasn't my day. I wasn't mentally there anymore. I decided it would be better to end the flight and try again another day.

I couldn't quite figure out what my problem was, but I know it was a combination of factors. I'm sure it had something to do with being tired, nervous, and under so much pressure. At least it's better that this happened on a practice flight rather than the real test. Still, my confidence took a big hit here, and I'm going to fly with my instructor again before I do anything else.

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