Tailwheel Endorsement

Just finished doing 4.7 hours with Bruce to get my tailwheel endorsement out of Wings Field (KLOM).

Have to say he is a great bloke and good to work with in completing this endorsement in the Citabria he has access to. Currently $183 per hour for the plane and Bruce.

He also does spin training and other aerobatic work if you are so inclined.

I guess I was just lucky for that hour time as it seems to be considered low. Being coordinated with controls, stablized approaches and quick on my feet would have helped as well as the crosswinds over the few days we flew to provide that steeper learning curve.

Endorsed after 12 landings, but I went out for a lucky 13th which turned into a nice one wheel crosswind landing.

We also did about 40 minutes in a training area with some wing overs and other manoeuvres, so I will definitely go back for more of that.

Bruce was an unlimited aero competitor for a long time and his skill and experience it comes across really well in a training environment.

FAA Unrestricted

Managed to finish my checkride today. I passed.

Flew out from Wings (KLOM) under an inversion (which was around 8000 ft), so I had visibility of around 8 miles or so under haze, but the ride was super smooth.

The DPE Tom C was great. It was a pleasure to fly next to a very experienced pilot.

After speaking with a FSDO office, I will now have a number of licenses: the full Australian PPL, the FAA license based on my foreign privs and now a new cert number for the unrestricted license I just passed.

Time for instrument work, however after posting on http://pilotsofamerica.org I think I will complete a tail-wheel endorsement before completing the instrument.

In other news, things are brewing on the flying club front. More to come later, however as a sneak peek... I have partnered with someone else from Wings and we have been gathering interest and doing work behind the scenes to start another fractional. Working out whether it will be an equity or non-equity club. Time will tell.

FAA Checkride

Last week I started my FAA checkride to migrate my current FAA certificate (based on foreign privileges) to a full FAA certificate.

As previously mentioned, the process requires me to complete the written exam, be endorsed by a CFI (to sign off my IACRA application) and then find a DPE to conduct the oral portion of the certificate and then sign-off on my checkride.

I did mention weather on my last post and unfortunately I did have to ask for a discontinuance after the oral portion of the test. Winds were between 25 gusting to 35 in the area and continued for almost two days, so we also couldn't finish the following day.

We rescheduled for this coming Tuesday as the weather looked promising on forecasts, but now that seems to have turned sour as well, so I may have to hold it off again.

Sigh... I will get it done soon enough.