Ridin' Solo

(S/O to Jason DeRulo for the awesome post title)

Saturday July 26, 2014

Today, I had two flights on my slate - an 8 AM flight with a different instructor than the one I normally have, and a normal training flight with my regular instructor in the afternoon. This first flight was my solo cross check flight, or in other words, a flight where a different instructor accompanied me up to "double check" that I was approved for solo flight.

In this early morning flight, the weather when we lifted off from Clow (1C5) didn't look like the weather that other airports in the area were reporting - the clouds were lower and seemed to be getting lower by the minute. As a result, my instructor had to deviate from some of the normal procedures that were part of a regular solo cross check. After practicing some pilotage (using local landmarks to navigate as opposed to a GPS or other navigation aids) my instructor took me to Joliet Regional Airport (JOT) where we practiced landing on a shorter runway than I was accustomed to (2900' vs 3400').

What made the landing/approach at JOT more interesting was the fact that we flew it with the airspeed indicator out. In other words, the instructor placed a circular piece of paper, similar to a post-it note, over the instrument so I couldn't see what my airspeed was and I had to rely solely on my senses/how the airplane controls felt/responded to get a general idea of what my airspeed was.

As it turned out, I overestimated my approach speed and ended up having to execute a go around because I was too high and had excess speed. Nonetheless, the instructor said that he was happy with how everything went and said that it's definitely better to overestimate airspeed, because at the low altitude we were at, it's nearly impossible to recover from a stall (more on those in a later post).

After our practice at JOT, we headed over to the Lewis University Airport (LOT) to practice a couple standard takeoffs and landings - pretty uneventful. To end the day, we flew back to 1C5 and my instructors certified me for solo flight!

After a two hour break, I went up again at noon with my regular instructor. We started the day just doing some pattern work because the clouds were still at a level where we were unable to practice any other maneuvers/procedures, like stalls.

The 5 Different Legs of an Airport Traffic Pattern

After doing a couple circuits and nailing a couple landings, we were taxiing back to the end of the runway to takeoff again when my instructor told me to pull over next to the office, and I did - but I was confused...

Once I had stopped, he told me to keep the engine running and said "Alright, I'm gonna hop out here. She's all yours." I almost froze. I was actually going to fly solo...

It all came as such a shock to me because I thought I would be soloing when the cloud conditions were better, but he must've known that I was ready to do it and he threw me right into the fire.

On my taxi to takeoff, I kept going through the various procedures in my head if something were to go wrong - engine failure on takeoff, minimum altitude to turn back if engine failure occurred during climb, stall recovery procedures for both landing and takeoff - just to name a few. I know I know...thinking of all the things that could go wrong isn't exactly what you want to be doing when you're nervous, but when you're a pilot, it's a necessity.

I started my takeoff roll and everything was going smoothly. I was just be flying in the traffic pattern and my upwind, crosswind, downwind, and base legs were all uneventful. But when I rolled out onto final, I realized the small crosswind had pushed me a little bit off of the runway centerline and I knew I had to realign myself if I had any hope of landing the plane on the 50 ft wide runway.

Not wanting to totally botch my first landing, I decided to execute a go around, making sure not to stall the plane and performing all of the procedures that the checklist called for. My instructor actually chimed in on the radio after the go around just wanting to double check if everything was OK and of course I told him yes...I mean, what else am I supposed to think when I'm hundreds of feet up in the air by myself? I have to put the bird down somehow...

My next landing went according to plan, and after completing three more landings, I had officially finished my first solo flight. I was ecstatic - shaking, sweating, smiling - it was definitely one of the proudest moments of my life to date.

I had finally done it. I had finally flown a plane by myself. While I still had a good amount of hours to go before getting my license, I didn't care - I felt on top of the world.

Speaking of hours, I accomplished my first solo flight after accumulating only 12.2 hours of flying time in 5 days worth of flying, and as far as I know, that's a record at the school that I fly at. Also, it's something that I'm definitely proud of because I actually had to put in numerous hours of studying to even be able to solo in the first place, and it all paid off.

It's long been tradition in aviation that after a student flies solo, the back of their shirt is cut off and they are doused with water (depending on the weather). The story behind the shirt is that during the early days of flying, the instructor sat behind the student in the cockpit and since the cockpits were loud and there were no headsets, the instructor had to pull on the student's shirt to direct him. The shirt back being cut off was symbolic in that it signified that the student no longer needed to be pulled in the right direction. As far as the water tradition, that I'm not 100% sure of...but it happened!

It's also tradition for the student's instructor to take the shirt back and draw a design on it after it has dried and present it to the student.

My Shirt Back Design

After my First Solo

My first solo takeoff 

My Now Back-less Shirt

In my next post, I'll talk more about the plane that has carried me through all of my training and what I will likely be flying for the foreseeable future...the Cessna 172 Skyhawk

Cleared for Takeoff

At the beginning of the summer after my freshman year of college, I was excited - excited to see my friends, excited to make some more money working at a local restaurant, and excited for all that summer in the beautiful city of Chicago brings. Those plans all changed when I dislocated my thumb tossing the football around with my good friends Nick and Kevin, and I was put in a cast for six weeks.

Initially I had thought about waiting on my flight training since my summer was more or less booked with working, working out, taking a summer class, and relaxing with my pals. Since the cast was around for those six weeks, I was unable to work and could only work out one side of my upper body. It was also a huge, smelly, bulky pain to have around and I couldn't wait for it to come off. I spent most of the rest of the time with my cast on doing various odd jobs for some family friends to make a buck here and there, but it didn't compare to the steady, albeit minimum wage, income that the restaurant job would have provided.

Once the cast was off, I had to wait two weeks to be cleared by a doctor, then there would be another week or two for me to get any work in at the restaurant before leaving for school. I decided taking the time to adapt to working there again and re-learning the menu and protocols wasn't necessarily worth doing for two weeks, not to mention just getting back on the schedule to work again.. Instead, I thought that I could spend some time working on my dream of flying instead.

While I was back at school in the spring, I had looked into various flight schools in my area and the one that caught my eye was at the Clow International Airport in Bolingbrook, IL - about a 20-25 minute drive from my house. On Sunday, July 20, I called them up and they said they could accommodate me later that day for an intro flight.

Not to sound corny, but the flight was everything I had expected. The weather was perfect - winds no more than 5 knots, scattered high-level clouds, and I didn't do as bad of a job landing and taking off as I thought I might for my first flight.

After the intro flight, I decided to set a goal for myself of flying solo before I left for school. All of the initial training flights went relatively smoothly and quickly. After eight flights and five days of flying twice a day, my instructor threw me into my first solo, and I was totally blindsided by it - and I mean blindsided in the nicest sense of the word.

In reality, I had sufficient preparation and I was ready, I was just shocked at the way it all went down.

Check back for how my first solo went in the next post!

Back to the Beginning (pt. 2 of 2)

So here I was, going into my senior year, a bright student - good test scores, good grades, wanting to pursue engineering and hopefully one day work for Nike designing and tweaking their products. After I had spent countless hours poring over my college apps, I was excited - I was about to head to beautiful Keystone, CO with my family for some great skiing and much needed relaxation.

The night before our flight out from Midway, I realized I wanted a fun, new app to play while on the roughly five-hour commute from Chicago to the Keystone Resort. I was browsing the app store and thinking there wouldn't be any flight sim apps on the store, but I thought I'd give it a shot and see what came up. As it turned out, Infinite Flight popped up on my screen. I read the reviews, looked at the in-game screenshots and it seemed like for the $5 price point, it would be well worth the purchase.

While traveling the next day, I couldn't put my phone down - even though the app was relatively rudimentary. Whenever I was off the slopes, I couldn't resist the chance to play - I was hooked.

Over the course of the next few months, I still played the game quite a bit, and in the process decided to continue my academic and athletic "careers" playing football and studying engineering at a small-ish school in upstate NY. I initially applied as a materials engineer but with my interest in Nike fading and interest in aviation again growing, I figured I'd rather be an aeronautical engineer and study a field that I have great passion for instead.

During the summer leading into my freshman year, I knew that I would be getting a Windows PC for the engineering software that my school provided. Being a MacBook owner, this meant that I'd be able to pair my new Windows with the latest version of Microsoft Flight Simulator as well. As it turned out, I bit the bullet and decided to drop money on both the game and a joystick/throttle combo to accompany it as well. With the joystick/throttle I could fly around in my game much more realistically and, most importantly, without using arrow keys.

All throughout my freshman year, I would try to play the game and advance my skill/knowledge as much as my school/football schedule permitted while still trying to maintain a solid social life. I'd also like to thank my roommate and great friend Greg for putting up with me flying at the desk next to his while he was trying to get homework done. I know that virtual jet engines/props aren't the easiest thing to listen to, so thanks for dealing with it, Greg.

Now, in every great turning point in our life there's some sort of revolutionary moment or event that has to take place at some point or another. This moment for me came during a test review session for a class called Strength of Materials (the name just screams "fun," doesn't it?). The thought that changed everything was "Wow...I'd definitely rather fly planes for a living than sit behind a desk and design them/crunch numbers for the rest of my life." Of course, the issue of airline pay - amongst many other things - came to mind as it absolutely pales in comparison to engineering pay, which I'll touch on at a later date. But most importantly, I knew if I were to be a pilot that I would absolutely love what I was doing every single day that I went to work.

Tentatively, the plan I have at this point is to obtain my private pilot's license while I'm in college and fly on my own and build hours. After I get my degree, I'd like to get on my feet for a few years and from there obtain all of the other licenses/certificates necessary to be a commercial pilot. I can't wait to share with all of you how that plan goes.

Frankly, it seems weird to call engineering a backup plan at this point, but almost all major airlines require a four-year degree...so why not pursue this (hopefully) lucrative degree while I'm at it? I also can't say enough about the people I've met, the friends I've made, and the experiences I've had while living in a totally different part of the country. I wouldn't change a minute of it.

So, from here, we'll move on to what prompted me to start my initial training in the first place. More to come on that in my next post...

Back to the Beginning (pt. 1 of 2)

In order to understand anything in life, we have to look to it's origins - where it all started. For me, my love for flying started at an early age when I was fascinated by planes as I traveled to and from Ft. Lauderdale every winter and/or spring to visit my great grandmother. I can vividly remember days at Chicago's Midway Airport traveling on ATA 757's to and from South Florida, and my parents always let me have the window seat. I even specifically remember not liking the fact that we were on a 737 instead of a 757 because I liked the way that the 75 looked...

Surprisingly, not much has changed in the 16 or so years since my first flight (that I remember at least), as I still fly out of Midway, albeit on Southwest 737's instead of ATA's, and I always always have to get the window seat. Heck, I'll still take the chance to ride on the soon-to-be-retired 757 over the commonplace 737 any day of the week.

From there, I would always ask for little toy planes as Christmas or birthday gifts...or whenever. For some reason, I found a lot of joy in being able to hold the scale models in my hand and make those WHOOSH noises as I contorted my arm around and "flew" the plane.

Building small planes out of Legos was something else that I enjoyed - they were pretty good ones for a second/third grader if I do say so myself. I know I took pictures of a few of them somewhere along the way with my dad's camera, but they have yet to surface around the house. Thankfully.

Next came Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 - the one thing that really got me interested in possibly being a pilot as a career. I got the game about the time I was in fourth grade and played it as often as I possibly could. Many of my landings/takeoffs were unrealistic and some of the maneuvers performed would likely result in immediate license revocation and possibly death in the real world, but the fact that I was behind the almost-entirely-accurate controls of a virtual plane with real cities and airports was incredibly captivating.

I went on like this for the next few years until my computer broke and the disk was unrecoverable from the ancient desktop computer. I remember I was crushed but I remember moving on fairly quickly as well. A few years later down the road in grade school, Nike's shoes and products really started to interest me. Being a shoe designer/product test engineer for them was a dream of mine all the way up until my senior year of high school. It was halfway through my senior year in high school that things started changing... **cliffhanger**

That's where I'll leave it for now...more to come in the next post!

Without Further Ado...

Well, here it goes. I've long told myself I'm a strictly math and science, left-brained kind of guy, but this whole pilot's license journey in my life has made me realize that I can write about and share these amazing flying experiences with you all.

So, with that, I present to you Flight Over Matter.

If you're scratching your head and wondering where the blog title came from, look no further than retired collegiate athlete, current West Point cadet, and my good friend Peter Shares for the idea. A clever play on words on the brilliant song and album "Mind Over Matter" by Young the Giant (see YouTube link below), I figured it was fitting because I'm actually flying over stuff on the ground, ya know?! Maybe there's some deeper philosophical meaning behind it that I just haven't uncovered yet, but nonetheless, kudos to you, Pete, and thanks again for the idea.

I'll hopefully be posting more to this blog in the coming days/weeks because I've been asked a lot of questions about all the flying that I've been doing by a bunch of different friends and figured this was a good way to get it out to all of you. Plus, you reading about it and being able to go back and look at what I write is a lot better than me mindlessly trying to explain the concepts of flying/training to you verbally, in my humble opinion.

Also, I'd like to give a shoutout to Sam W., commercial pilot, whose blog I have been reading for a little over a year now, and who more or less gave me the idea to start blogging about my own flying.

If you'd like, you can read more about Sam's blog HERE

More to come soon...stay tuned

Mind Over Matter => CLICK HERE

**DISCLAIMER** - Poor grammar is certain to be used at some point along the way...oops?