the adventures of me

As mentioned earlier, I have started my journey to getting my private pilots license. This is something that I have been wanting to do for quite some time. So in July I bit the bullet and starting making some phone calls. After a while I found a FAA Approved Medical Examiner that was close to me that wasn’t 100% retired. This process was quite simple. He advised me to generate the application for a class 3 medical on the faa medical website and to record the application #. When I arrived at his office, we went over the application and a few basic health questions. After words he performed a relatively basic physical and we talked about flying for about an hour. Once I had my Student Pilot Certificate /Class 3 Medical in hand, He walked me over to the flight school that was in the building.

I ended up talking with Gary the owner of Premier Flight Center for the better portion of an hour. He asked me what my goals were and told me about his program. We ended up discussing that I wanted to fly a Piper Cherokee for various reasons and Gary brought me outside to see the various planes that they had. Unfortunately the Cherokee was out and about, but We did get to look at a Piper Arrow. This was great as it this is close to the plane that I eventually want to fly. Once we stepped back inside we talked about the ground school program that they have. I thanked Gary for his time and headed out to check another flight school which was right down the road.

I won’t bother naming the flight school that I visited next. But anyone can figure it out with a little bit of google. Right off the bat I wasn’t feeling the place. The guy I spoke with would probably be better off working at a used car lot. It was a high pressure join give me your money experience. Literally at one point in time he asked me to give a deposit of $10,000. While they did have the same type of aircraft I wanted to fly. I quickly wrote this place off as a potential school.

Over the next couple weeks I debated back and forth over Premier Flight Center (HFD Hartford/Brainard Airport) or Interstate Aviation (4B8 Plainville Robertson Airport). While Interstate is much closer to me, I elected to go to Premier due to the choice of aircraft and ground school program. When I went down to PFC, I met with Ryan who helped me fill out all the required paperwork. I elected to do the Saturday ground school program which was starting September 28th. The ground school runs for 13 weeks every Saturday from 9 am to 12 pm.

I showed up for the first week of ground school and I was the first one there. Mike our instructor walks in shortly later and introduces himself. He went over the goals of the ground school and passed out a syllabus. We end up discussing the basics of flying and the history behind it. Overall I felt this class was quite boring, but only due to the fact that I already knew this portion due to taking a flight class in 6th grade. But it was good to get a refresher on it.

The next 2 weeks were basically the same, we just went over the basics of instruments in the plane and how they worked. Mike happened to have a few old pieces of equipment in the class room that we got to hold and see how they worked. That was extremely informative. We also ended up discussing the nuances that the equipment in the plane will have depending on various circumstances.

Around this time I schedule my first flight for October 17th. But that’s for later.