Final Week

Well peeps, we are now into the final week of our time in Goodyear. Last weekend we finally made it over to Phoenix Zoo, which was really nice. It was a very hot day (32 degrees and bright sunshine - nice for November eh) - but it wasn't too oppressive. The rest of the weekend went really well, it's been nice having a regualr weekend off these last few weeks. We of course found our way to Barnes & Noble, letting Georgia play with the train set there, and topping up at Starbucks :-)

Back on Monday for more flying in the Seneca, and the pace started to heat up. I had two lessons on asymmetric flying, which was pretty cool. We had a long briefing beforehand where Tom explained everything that would happen, then we headed out to the practise area and gave it a go. Basically the exercise involved shutting an engine down in flight, controlling the aircraft then identifying the dead engine (Tom covers the throttle quadrant when he pulls the throttle on one engine). I've got some good pics and vids of that flight, I'll try to put them on my website at some point.
The rest of the flying in the Seneca has gone pretty well; both Steve and myself have been flying every day, often twice, and are thoroughly exhausted. On Tuesday my last flight of the day over-ran slightly, which saw us coming back to Goodyear as the sun was setting - it was truly awesome. I feel pretty lucky to have seen that, as it's always been clearly day or night flying, not in-between.



Today I took my good buddy Jeroen up as passenger (Steve wanted time off to go study the checklists). Jeroen enjoyed the flight I think, and was good for me to listen to how he thought the flight went. Tomorrow I have my very last lesson in the aircraft, which should be about 2 hours long. I also have to squeeze in 3 hours in the simulator too, and if all that goes well then I have my CPL skills test on Friday. If that goes well, I'm finished, and we'll be heading home shortly afterwards.
Time to dig out my jeans and fleece :-(

Ah, almost forgot - the simulator. The sims are notorious for not being entirely accurate, and this is really apparent first time in the Seneca sim. First time I had a go I found myself weaving all over the runway on take off - partly due to uneven power on the separate engines, but mainly thanks to the hyper sensitive rudders that have zero feel. Anyway, here's a clip of Steve's first ever take off in the Seneca Sim. Sorry Steve....