3/8/04 No Flight Lesson, but a CRM Simulator Session- My prediction about last week's weather turned out to be true: it was poor flying weather. If I had stayed in Dubuque I probably wouldn't have flown. It's been cloudy, rainy, snowy, and windy. I thought maybe I would fly today during my flight block. But a freak winter mess passed through with a warm front! Snow wasn't in the forecast, but it snowed hard enough this afternoon to cancel my lesson.

Tonight was my first simulator session for my crew resource management (CRM) class. There are nine people in my class (myself the only female). We were paired up and given an assignment of creating checklists for our simulator in multiengine configuration. The checklists had to state the actions of both the pilot flying (PF) and pilot not flying (PNF). Then we were briefed on our mission, which would be a simulated empty repositioning flight of a Piper Navajo from St. Paul Downtown (Minnesota) to Dubuque. We had to fly using IFR charts and procedures. Tonight, I was the PNF and my classmate Bryce was the PF. We briefed each other on what would happen, then briefed Steve, our professor. Bryce and I took our seats in the AST Hawk 201. Steve sat behind us at the computer. Bryce concentrated on flying. I had to read checklists, monitor systems, navigate, and pretend to talk to air traffic control. Steve threw all kinds of situations at us. Circuit breakers popped, fuel leaked, an HSI failed, an engine failed, and our landing gear failed. Not only was our simulated airplane falling apart; we had to deal with several changes of plan! Steve diverted us, put us in a nonradar environment, gave us a hold, and gave us incorrect clearances. Now add to all this the difficulty of fumbling through a stack of maps, papers, and approach plates while trying to simultaneously enter information into the radios and GPS! It was an hour of high stress. Bryce and I learned a lot. We had to work hard to communicate well. We'll discuss what we learned with other groups in class soon. There are more simulator sessions to come.

3/9/04 Snow Didn't Stop Them... - Remember that "freak winter mess" from yesterday? Well, last night at around 10:00, a Cessna 172 bound for Madison crashed on the Dubuque airport on the way from Des Moines. Nothing was left of the airplane except for the fuselage. The three occupants amazingly survived and are in a hospital in Dubuque. The accident was apparently weather-related. The pilot said he was picking up ice, tried to land at Dubuque but couldn't see the runway, and stalled the airplane. My roommate shot a picture of the wreckage this morning. I thought about what the weather was like yesterday, about how I cancelled my lesson, and about how some people push their luck too much when it comes to snow and ice. The accident made national news.

3/12/04 Eighth Trinidad Lesson - Three full-stop taxi-back landings took 0.8 of an hour today at Dubuque. Kyle had me do a normal takeoff and landing, a soft field takeoff with a no-flap landing, and another soft field takeoff with a short field landing. The weather was great and the airport was busy. I got to watch a helicopter land and take off. An MD-87 took off as I held at the runway for my second takeoff. It's rare for airplanes like that to fly in and out of Dubuque.

The Trinidad in front of a line of other UD airplanes and an MD-87

3/24/04 Passed Complex & High Performance Stage Check - After my last lesson, my instructor decided that I was ready to take my stage check for my complex and high performance endorsements. Today I flew 1.4 hours with Adam, one of UD's check instructors. This was after waiting for more than a week. I was lucky to go at all because the weather was very marginal today. It was VFR but I could hardly see, so I had to rely on the instruments a lot for my maneuvers. I did steep turns, slow flight, stalls, an engine failure simulation, and three landings. My instructor wasn't available for a signature today so I would get the endorsements later.

3/27/04 Received Complex and High Performance Endorsements - I went to the airport to get logbook endorsements from my instructor. I'm proud that I am now allowed to act as pilot in command of complex and high performance airplanes! (Complex = retractable landing gear + flaps + controllable pitch propeller; High Performance = greater than 200 horsepower.) I can solo the Trinidad! However, I can't carry passengers in the Trinidad until I have five solo hours logged in it because of insurance requirements. That will be my next hurdle. For now, I am very excited about soloing my fourth type of airplane.

3/31/04 Night Safety Piloting - My friend Kevin needed to get instrument current. I rode with him in a 172 tonight as the safety pilot while he did six approaches, holding, and tracking courses. We flew for 1.8 hours.

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