My first IFR Flight!!!

LAst Saturday, 9/18, I had my first IFR flight. The weather was below minimums so we had to file IFR to take off.  Cince I had been doing my IFR training this seemed like a good thing to try.   It worked out very well.  I flew N4404J in actual IFR conditions, made 2 VOR approaches to SPB (scapoose, OR) and a VOR approach to PDX that terminated at Pearson field.  It was a lot of fun.

Lots of flying this weekend

So, I did a lot of flying this weekend.  None of it was flight training related, but it was flying anyway.  I flew down to Salem to join up with two of my very best friends and go to the state fair with them.  We had a great time even though it was a short visit.  In the morning I picked up a friend in Salem and flew her to Skagit (near Bellingham) to meet up with her husband.  The weather was overcast at 6000ft so we climbed above the clouds and enjoyed a couple hours of sun before descending back through the clouds inti the San Juan Island area.  We picked her husband up and flew around the archipelago for about an hour and then returned to Skagit.

We all had lunch and then I headed home.  I had to climb up to 9500ft to be above the clouds.  While passing over the Seattle area I had a 747 fly below me which was pretty cool to see.  I made pretty good time since my ground speed was 122 knots and I was only using about 9 gallons per hour.  I landed back at Pearson field at about 5pm.

The next morning, I flew my friend Jason to McMinville to got to the aviation museum.  We saw the Spruce Goose and many other aircraft including an SR-71 and an Me-262.  It was a lot of fun and I am glad we went.  I let Jason fly a fair amount of the flight home.   he did really well.  it was a very nice day.

I had a great time at the museum and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in aviation.  it is a 2hr drive from Portland but only 25min by air, so if you want to go, let me know :-)

Instrument rating - Pass written Exam - Check :-)

Last Wednesday I passed my instrument written exam.  It was a lot of studying and stress leading up to this accomplishment.  I attended a ground school last year and also purchased Sporty's Instrument course.  I used the instrument course to study up on all that I had forgotten in the last year.  I also used the Online Instrument Practice test for the exam material and this great training site VOR ADF HSI and Holding simulators. I had a bit of a problem with the Sporty's online test not remembering that I had completed it multiple times at 90% or better and the ensuing frustration dragged my practice scores down considerably.  In the end I passed my exam and I am on to the more practical aspects of instrument flying.

Lately my flight instruction has been focused on holds and holding procedures.  That is now complete and I am moving on to approaches!!!  I will have to make a blog post for each of those flights.