More flight training this past saturday. In haze. Again.
The bright side is that if I can learn to fly in this crap "VFR" (who are we kidding? There's no horizon!) weather, I'll be able to fly in damn near anything. The bad news is... there's no horizon!
So yeah, I was all over the sky (not like WAY all over the sky, but definitely not going to hold up to the PTS - Altitude +/- 100 feet my ass!)
At some point I'm sure this will all come back to me, and I'll remember how to put the airplane where I want it, when I want it.
Also I couldn't keep a turn coordinated for shit - my feet and my brain not much on the speaking terms. I was skidding across the sky (though I managed to roll out on heading about 75% of the time).
Continue reading "Hazy dayz of summer..."
Just on a whim, I went and punched up an insurance quote from AOPA. I'm gonna go out on a very thin limb and assume that the numbers they're giving me are annual numbers (i hope so anyway)...
If I purchase a PA28-140 (the same class of Cherokee I'm training in), insure it for $30,000, and get my private with 70hrs, insurance will run me $950/yr (about what I pay for car insurance... I'm shocked by that!).
Assuming I get my IFR ticket in a rather generous (low) 45 hours after that (115h total time), it drops to $875-$900ish.
If I buy an IFR-Rated Cherokee (which can be had for about 30,000 right here in NY (Dunkirk)), I can use it for my IFR training.
I need to amortize a few more costs into this (tiedown @ KFRG, annual inspections, etc.), but I was viewing insurance as the "OMGZ0R" expense, and it's starting to look reasonable ($150/mo will amply cover it, and thats about what I spend in ONE LESSON renting 1933H (the cherokee I seem to have the best luck in out of my 3 flights so far) at NFI, not counting instructor fees)).
What sucks is I don't believe I can secure a decent aircraft loan (looking at that now, thinking a 10% downpayment will get me about where I want to be so $3,000 toward the plane from the outset).
Continue reading "Buying Things..."
I'm back to the flying grind (trying to get up once a week or so, but grounded by the weather overhead for the last few days - thunderstorms and rain all weekend . . . FUCKERS!)
So in celebration of the weather, I hacked up some weather scripts (and imagine my surprise when I discovered I could still read METARs!)
To punish you all just the right amount for reading this dreck, Click Here for the current METAR from KFRG in all its glory (apparently there's no forecast station at FRG or it shuts down after hours, 'cuz I can't get a TAF, but you can check out KLGA or KISP for forecasts).
This system eats any recognized airport ID and fetches the most current data from NOAA. As a note, you really SHOULD use 4-letter IDs (K??? for US Airports), because NOAA has ALL airports in their database. If you neglect to use a 4-letter ID, my script adds a K for you and tries to get the information for you.
There are nice decoded METARs available (Woah... that's new!) for those of you who can't read the heiroglyphics -- See Here for FRG's decoded METAR.
Continue reading "Been a few days . . . "
More flight training this past saturday. In haze. Again.
The bright side is that if I can learn to fly in this crap "VFR" (who are we kidding? There's no horizon!) weather, I'll be able to fly in damn near anything. The bad news is... there's no horizon!
So yeah, I was all over the sky (not like WAY all over the sky, but definitely not going to hold up to the PTS - Altitude +/- 100 feet my ass!)
At some point I'm sure this will all come back to me, and I'll remember how to put the airplane where I want it, when I want it.
Also I couldn't keep a turn coordinated for shit - my feet and my brain not much on the speaking terms. I was skidding across the sky (though I managed to roll out on heading about 75% of the time).
Continue reading "Hazy dayz of summer..."