Squawk1200

Tom Petty one speculated that “waiting is the hardest part.”  I can vouch for that.  The great thing about my training situation is that someone else is going to pay for me to fly.  The downside is that that sort of puts me at that individual’s mercy.  After my discovery flight, I sought to nail down the terms of getting my flying started.  The terms of that agreement stipulated that I start my training in… February 2010.

noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

OK, OK.  In reality, I have absolutely no right to complain.  Given my situation, a few months is really a small concession.  Luckily, my financier was open to some discussion, so I asked about the delay, making it clear that I wasn’t trying to look this particular gift horse in the mouth… I was just damned excited.  So he’s currently considering some other ways to approach this.  Of course, I’d love to find out that  can start, oh, this weekend, but if I don’t, I’ll be OK.  But for now, I’m in limbo.

Yeah, the waiting is the hardest part. 

After Monday’s cold-weather bust, Tuesday afternoon actually ended up being really nice.  There definitely wouldn’t be any icing issues this time around.  I ducked out of the office just before 4:30 and headed for PDK, arriving about ten minutes before our 5:00 scheduled time.  Upon arrival, I got a bit of unexpected good news.  It seemed that the student and instructor who’d flown the DA20 earlier in the day had left something at LZU, where the main Advanced office is.  As such, instead of 30 minutes of tooling around, my flight would consist of a mission to LZU and back.  As you might imagine, I put up no fight at the prospect of additional flight time.

Down on the ramp, Scott and I went through the preflight, with me trying to do as much as possible from memory.  In no time, we were in the cockpit with the engine started, ready to go.  After we got ATIS info, Scott called up ground and got taxi clearance.  He got us out of the tight parking area, and then let me get in my first attempt at taxiing.  This turned out to be quite a humbling experience.  Since the DA20 has a castering nosewheel, at taxi speeds steering is done via differential braking.  I was having difficulty getting my feet positioned correctly, and I was also having difficulty figuring out the right amount of brake to get us back on centerline, but not over.  The result was a drunken weave that would have made a state trooper’s day.  At least I kept it on the taxiway.

On the way out, I got a glimpse into PDK’s reputation for activity.  We were taxiing behind a Cessna and a Piper.  Directly behind us was another 172, and as we approached the runup area, another 172 was already there.  The 172 behind us got instructions to run up on the taxiway- the four of us took up the entire runup space.  After runup, as we were holding short, a business jet was directly behind us.  Busy, busy, busy.  We got our takeoff clearance, and Scott took over for the roll.  I tried to do something useful by calling out airspeeds to him, since I figured the indicator might be tough for him to see.  Climbing through 1500′, Scott handed the airplane over to me.

A quick right turn put us on course for LZU, and after leveling off at 2500′, I did a few S-turns to get a feeling for the plane.  One thing I immediately noticed was that compared to other aircraft I’d had brief stick time in, the DA20 required almost no back pressure to stay level in a turn.  I found myself inadvertantly making climbing turns until I got a bit of a feel for things.  It seemed like no time at all before Scott was talking to the tower at LZU, and we had the field in sight.  I continued to fly into the pattern, with Scott helping out a bit, until we turned base, at which point I willingly gave the airplane back to Scott to get us safely on the ground.

In the Advanced office, I got to meet Bruce, the owner of the school.  Also, since the new PDK location didn’t have a credit card machine yet, I went ahead and paid for my flight at LZU.  Scott also showed me the student pilot kit they use.  After about 30 minutes, it was time to head back home.  I got another chance to embarrass myself as we taxied away from the ramp, though my zigzags had shrunk a bit.  Scott again flew the takeoff, but this time I got the plane only a couple hundred feet up.  The flight back was a bit more leisurely- I flew a couple of 360s and started to feel comfortable with maintaining altitude in a turn.

As we approached the PDK airspace, things got a bit more interesting.  The Tower frequency was full of chatter, and Scott had some difficulty getting a word in.  I ended up flying a few more 360s to keep us out of the airspace until Scott was finally able to talk to the tower so we could enter the airspace.  I continued to fly as we descended towards pattern altitude.  I was still flying when we turned base and final, though Scott was working the throttles on final- I just worked on staying lined up.  Scott didn’t fully take over until the last hundred feet or so.

Just like that, the fun was over.  After we secured the airplane, I checked the time- nearly two hours since I had arrived.  I’d gotten just over an hour of flight time for what was supposed to be a half-hour flight, and I’d had a hell of a time.  The Diamond is a great-flying aircraft.  Between the control stick and wonderful visibility, I found it much more pleasant than a Cessna.  Back in the Advanced office, Scott and I discussed the general structure of my training, and debriefed the flight a bit.  We then walked over to where Scott’s RV was hangared so I could show off my envy skills.  It was nearly 8:00 by the time I finally headed for home.

Bottom line, I don’t even feel compelled to check out any other schools.  I really like the DA20, and it’s cheaper to rent than a 172 at PDK.  I also really like Scott- he obviously loves flying and loves sharing that with others, and he was nice enough not to make fun of my drunken taxiing.  At this point, I still have to work out some details concerning financing before I can really start my training, and I hope it happens sooner rather than later.  I’m beyond ready to go at this point, and I feel really good about my ability to fly the airplane.

Monday morning dawned, cold and gray.  We were experiencing our first real cold snap of the year… in fact, over the course of a week we’d gone from mid-70 highs to a frost warning Monday morning.  It was barely above freezing when I pulled out of the driveway and headed for Advanced Aviation at PDK.  Morning traffic wasn’t too bad, and I got there with a few minutes to spare before 8:00.  Up in the office, I got to meet Scott, whom I’d only spoken with by phone previously.

As we chatted a bit, I learned that Scott had fairly recently actually left his full-time job so he could instruct instead.  It gave me a good feeling that he was teaching because he really enjoyed doing it, rather than just trying to build time for the next career move.  I also learned that he was the proud owner of an RV-7A- proud enough to break out the laptop and show me some construction photos.  Since I have a latent desire to build an RV of my own someday, this was all very interesting to me.

Back to the day’s flying- the immediate topic of discussion was the temperature.  Remember that frost warning?  Well, it had left a decent scale on the DA20, which had to be removed prior to flight.  And since the PDK Advanced office was new, there was no deicing stuff to be found.  A tentative plan was formed.  Scott and I headed down to the ramp with a stiff cleaning brush in hand, in hopes that it would be able to knock the frost off.  We also considered moving the plane into the sun to get some help from Mother Nature.

The brush turned out to work fairly well.  The ice on the wings came off readily, and as we worked on that, Scott also gave me a rundown of carrying out a preflight check.  Unfortunately, the ice on the horizontal stab was a little tougher, so we decided to taxi into the sun.  Into the cockpit we climbed.  My first impression was that at 6′4″, I was probably about at the limit of comfortable height for the DA20.  But I was actually pretty comfortable, though once I got the headset on, the top would occasionally bump the canopy overhead.  No biggie.

After starting the engine and taxiing out of the shade, we got back out.  The sun immediately started doing a number on the ice; within 20 minutes or so, Scott decided we were good to go flying.  Back in the cockpit, Scott had me run the before-start checklist.  All systems go, ignition to start… she doesn’t want to start.  Again and again we tried, with no luck, until it was clear the battery was getting low.  There would be no flying this morning- Scott offered to take me up in his RV, but after checking the time, I decided that I should head on into work.  We decided that Tuesday afternoon would be a good time for a do-over.

Scott apologized profusely, but I wasn’t really disappointed at all.  Just being out there, soaking up knowledge, was a great experience, even if I did stay on the ground.

So there I was, a scant few weeks ago.  I’d just found out that I was going to be given the gift of flight school, and satisfy a longtime dream/goal of mine.  Of course, the afterglow of that revelation quickly gave way to decision-making time.  Before I could train, well, clearly I had to decide where to train.  What airport?  What school?  How would I weasel this all around my work schedule?

First things first… where to go?  The Atlanta area has a fair number of airports to choose from.  The choice of convenience was clearly KPDK, a scant five miles or so from home.  It offered a wide variety of schools, along with a busy “trial-by-fire” environment.  Another possibility was KLZU in Lawrenceville.  On the plus side, it was a lot quieter than PDK.  On the other hand, it was roughly 25 miles from home; worse yet, in the opposite direction from my office.  Since I expected to be flying before/after work at least some of the time, that was a bit of a hit, since I’d probably need nearly an hour to get between LZU and the office.  Still another option was KFTY, on the west side of town.  Probably convenient from the office, but a decent drive from home for those weekend flights.

After agonizing, I eventually decided that PDK was going to be my default choice and where I would start looking.  I figured that even though the busy nature might be intimidating at first, in the long run it would be good to get used to that from the start.  So I looked through the list of flight schools out there.  I made a conscious decision to avoid the schools which seemed to cater to people going for a career track.  Eventually, I narrowed it down to two quasi-finalists:  Advanced Aviation and PDK Flight Academy.

Advanced Aviation caught my eye right off the bat, since they operated with Diamond aircraft.  I had flown a Cessna 152 on a discovery flight several years ago, and so had some familiarity with it, but it’s pretty hard to deny that the DA20 is sort of sexy looking for a trainer.  That’s probably not the best criteria for choosing a trainer aircraft, but gut feelings are hard to deny.  I was pleasantly surprised, then, to see that both plane rental and instructor rates at Advanced beat out PDKFA.  I decided to drop by the school the next day to see about setting up a discovery flight.

The next afternoon, I arrived at PDK, hunted down the Advanced office, and spent some time talking to Lana, one of the instructors.  Just some general chit-chat about what I wanted to do, etc., etc.  Eventually we got me on the schedule to fly at 5:00 Monday afternoon with another instructor named Scott.  I headed home, feeling palpable excitement.

Things changed almost immediately.  Upon arriving home, I saw that I’d missed a call en route.  Scott had left me a voicemail… seems that Lana accidentally scheduled me in the DA40 instead of the DA20, and the DA20 was already reserved for Monday afternoon.  After some discussion, we rescheduled my discovery flight for 8:00 Monday morning instead.

Finally, I was making some progress in picking a school.  I had only 12 hours to go before I’d have my first DA20 experience!