A week has gone by...

I can't believe how fast the time is passing here. I only just noticed that it's been over a week since our last update.
We started the week with our planned trip to the Apache Trail. We didn't travel the whole trail, but we saw the museum at Apache Junction, the mining ghost town of Goldfield, a stop at Canyon Lake for a swim, then a trip to Tortilla Flat to sample some Prickly Pear Cactus flavour ice-cream!
I've added a photo album of the trip to my website if anyone wants to take a peek.

The rest of this week has been taken up with flying - I have flown at least once every day. Gilbert has been excellent at securing prime-time slots for me, and I think there is only Toddy in AP256 who has flown more than me. Pretty amazing considering I was one of the last to start flying.
I've done a lot of my general handling solos, and am definitely getting the hang of the things I need to do for my first test - steep turns, 3 types of stall, practise forced landings, 3 types of landing, and general control of the aircraft. I have also done some flying later in the day when the thermals get pretty bad, but that all went ok too.
This week I was also introduced to the FNPTII simulator. My initial impression of the sim isn't great I'm afraid - the controls and responses feel nothing like the real aircraft and are waaaaaaay too twitchy for my liking. I know it's something I'll get used to with practise, but it's very frustrating when you know you can fly pretty well in the real plane, to find yourself all over the place in the sim. Considering the sim costs $1 million, I can't say I'm all that impressed. This week I acquired a Piper Warrior add-on for flight sim 2004 and a scenery pack for Phoenix and surrounding area. Here's a few pictures of Warrior N357ND flying over Goodyear. Compare the pictures to the photos on my website, and you'll see the detail on the aircraft, airport and surrounding countryside are pretty impressive. I just wish I had my flight yoke and pedals with me (maybe my dad will find room in a suitcase when he comes to visit next month ;-) )







We stayed over one night at Tony and Claires this week, which was really nice. Tony had an evening flight so wasn't around while Claire made tea for us all, but he did come back at about 9pm I think. Claire and Daisy were supposed to be flying back to the UK this weekend, but with all the problems at Heathrow they postponed the return until next weekend. Hopefully we'll get chance to meet up again this week - Georgia has been saying 'more Daisy' a few times recently.

On Friday Clare and I celebrated our 4th wedding anniversary. We didn't actually do anything special as I had two solo flights starting at 6am, but we did manage to go out for a meal last night at TGI Fridays. We were planning a trip to Tucson this weekend, as I should have had today and tomorrow off, but when I saw Gilbert in the sim yesterday he told me we would be doing our first Navigation flight on Monday. Fortunately we hadn't made any reservations, so maybe we'll go away next weekend.
Speaking of navigation flights, I guess I should go get some flight planning done - and see if I can remember how to use my CRP5....

Adios Amigos

SJD