Lessons have been going great. The instructor has complemented
me several times on my progress and performance of various tasks. The lesson on
partial panel flying (which is learning to fly instruments with certain ones
failed) he warned me “this will be a very challenging lesson so don’t feel
discouraged if it feels rough.” He was right! Whew! WOW! But I survived it and
at the end he said I did well. It was actually very comforting to successfully “fly”
the simulator with “dead” instruments and still keep it under control. He has
also said on multiple occasions that “sim flying” is harder than real aircraft.
The next step is to transfer that training to the plane. Unfortunately the
timing of the transition to using the actual airplane perfectly aligned with
the annual inspection of N4192F.
The weather here in Oklahoma has been very wet with the
ground so soggy we couldn’t get the plane out of the hanger. We finally had two days in a row that were
warm, sunny, and windy and dried things out enough that I could get the plane
to the runway and fly it over to Gundy’s airport (O38) and start the annual
inspection. When we did the compression check; cylinder #4 failed and had to be
serviced. It took 3 weeks to get it back. On the plus side I’ve been learning a
lot from the Inspector about aircraft maintenance and aircraft care. Yesterday (6-23)
I took the airplane up and did the initial break in procedures for the work
that had been done. So the plane is flying again and I can pick up where I left
off 3 weeks ago!
The next 2 weeks are
going to be very busy getting everything together to go to Panama. Thank you
all for your love, prayers, and support.
