Day 1 – The Training Begins

My wife’s flight back to Minneapolis left San Diego this morning at 9:50. My aunt was going to initially drive her to the airport. However, my instructor called me Sunday evening to reschedule our ground lesson from 8:00am to 1:00pm. This was a nice surprise seeing as it now allowed me to bring my wife to the airport and see her off.

I have been waiting months for this day to come! I am excited to finally be back into the realm of aviation! I was more than impressed with the ATP Airline Career Pilot Program binder I received today. The organization of the program’s syllabus gets me really excited. I wished they had sent the binder out earlier so I could have planned more appropriately. I assume they avoid that to protect their program from those students whom quit before Day 1. It is nice to be involved in a program that is so organized. I am sure these 90 days are going to ‘FLY’ by.

I arrived at the airport at 12:45pm for my 1:00pm ground lesson. It wasn’t until about 1:30pm that I noticed my instructor had left a message on my phone letting me know that he bumped my lesson to 2:00pm. That was ok though, it allowed more time to study. The first couple hours consisted of the filling out of paper work, log book audit, training contracts, etc. I was also given a 50 question multiple choice test on private flight knowledge. I scored a 78%. I will admit, I am a bit rusty. However, every question was familiar; it was only a matter of knocking that rust off. If I took the test again, I would definitely score 100%.

From there we began to cover the systems of the Piper Seminole. When I had come down in June for my interview, the San Diego school had only 1 1979 Piper Seminole and 1 Cessna 172. In the past month they have traded the 79’ Seminole in for 2 2000 Seminoles and a DA40 Glass Cockpit. It will be nice to operate newer equipment. Although the 79’ and 2000 Seminoles have a lot in common, we have been covering the systems for the 2000. We also covered the practical test standards for multi-engine. This was something none of my instructors in the past had ever gone over with me. Not sure why, now that I see the advantage is gives.

We also took a trip out to the tarmac to familiarize me with the airplane. We pulled some numbers out of the POH and used them to calculate numbers from all of the performance graphs as well as weight and balance.

I will be studying for a couple hours tonight and tomorrow morning before my 10 o’clock lesson.