T-6 Checkride Complete

I passed my Final Contact check today with only 3 downgrades - the best checkride I've ever had. It was a lot of fun too. The weather was great, and I knew a ton of people were praying for me and thinking about me. So thanks again! The flight was generally uneventful and my patterns were fine, but some of my area maneuvers and aerobatics weren't very pretty. Being finished with checkrides for now is a great feeling.

We had our official T-6 pictures taken this afternoon. The photographer was willing to take all the pictures we wanted, but had to get a couple official ones without sunglasses, etc. Never satisfied to be at the mercy of another organization, we setup our own camera and my neighbor "developed" these himself.

Been slackin'

...on writing blog entries the last couple days, not on flying. Tuesday and Wednesday's flights went alright. Formation is coming along. Tactical is still really fun, and challenging. Fingertip still gives me fits, but I think I have it under control. Today I flew regular ol' contact to rehack all my currencies for dual-only maneuvers like the spin recovery, stalls, and ELP. I got to see Hacker again for the first time in about 2 months, but it was largely uneventful. I forgot to squawk the appropriate code the whole time, but almost no one was there, so it went unnoticed. We debriefed, and I rolled right into a solo in the afternoon - probably one of the best times I had yet. Sky was clear with some white puffies below and some anvils off in the distance. Finished all my aerobatics and all of them felt pretty good...not perfect, but definitely improving. I got stood up this morning too, and it wasn't the end of the world. Funny how some of the days you just think will be terrible turn out to be the best. I love that. Seems to be the way God works.

Removing the Rust

I flew plain ol' contact today, complete with area work, emergency landing patterns, and aerobatics. I felt a bit rusty, but other than that the flight went pretty well. I would have liked to move through each maneuver in a more timely manner, but I got most of it done anyway. Flying more formation tomorrow.

Advanced Contact

Today I started the next block of training. It's mostly all the same stuff we've been doing with the addition of advanced aerobatics. Our new batch of maneuvers consists of the Lazy 8, Cloverleaf, Immelman, Cuban 8, Chandelle, and the Barrel Roll. The Cuban 8 is definitely the most difficult. The Cloverleaf is pretty fun. It's basically four successive loops each offset 90 degrees from the previous. I have another ride tomorrow focusing on the same stuff. Looking forward to it!

I finally had another instrument sim today too. It went pretty well, but it was also the last sim of the basic block. From now on, I need to study the approaches more beforehand, and chairfly the checks. I may regret it later, but I think instruments will be a welcome transition.

The best part about today was that I got to fly!