Posts Tagged ‘172’

making tracks in the sky

Saturday, September 20th, 2008

Lesson One Tracks
click for a higher res photo

Lesson one in a 172 was amazing. I have lots to write and talk about, but I wanted to share the Google Earth snapshot of the track I covered. The red jumble in the lower right is Chicago Executive (KPWK) airport. We headed out to the northwest and practiced trimming the plane, turns in both directions and around a point, and both ascending and descending. Then, of course, CFI Forrest took us in for the landing.

If you have Google Earth installed, you can load the entire KMZ of my trip. There is some car time as well as flying, so the stuff in the southeastern bits of the map, east of the forest preserve belt, is my commute.

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second try: looking better

Wednesday, September 17th, 2008

This Saturday, a mere 25 minutes after sunrise I will be meeting with CFI Logan at Windy City Flyers for my first lesson in a Cessna 172. They have a fairly large fleet of planes on hand, and CFI Forrest was kind enough to offer a very early morning option for me since we had to cancel last week due to the massive storms in the area from hurricane Ike.

Casually I’ve been looking over checklists for the 172. Wow, there is a lot. I’ve also watched pretty much every video on YouTube that shows how to start the engine on a 172. Naturally, there are a million ways to skin a cat, but the generalities are emerging. I’m pretty sure every plane has it’s own nuances, and I’m looking forward to learning what some of them may be in the coming months.

KPWK (Chicago Executive) is about 25 miles northwest of my house. In traffic that can take upwards of an hour, but early in the morning should be a breeze. At least I hope so. I’d rather not wake up at 4:30am. How am I ever going to sleep Friday night? I’m already excited enough…

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