Preps , Reps, and Props and Repeat

I don't have anything new to report to you today. I was supposed to have a lesson on Sunday, but it was canceled. My next scheduled lesson is this Wednesday, but at this point, I'm not banking on anything. As I stated before, taking two people's limited schedule availability, and taking into account the weather limitations, cars breaking down, people getting sick, etc., and you begin to realize how many lesson cancellations can occur, and that's what's been happening to me. Frustrating? Yes.

Instead I thought I'd tell you the things I do in order to prepare for the next lesson:

1. Read
I like to read newspapers, internets, and romantic novels. But for every lesson, there's also a chapter out of the "Canadian Flight Training Manual" book. This book is fantastic. It basically tells you about each lesson, what exercises it will consist of, what you should expect, how to handle the airplane, etc. It's actually an easy and interesting technical read, and I look forward to reading it after every lesson. In fact, I've pretty much read the whole book once over, but I go back to it before each lesson for the particular chapter.

2. Flight Simulator
It is, after all, how it all started for me. It's a big part of how I became fascinated with flight. These days, I use it as practice. I have a computer that runs X-plane, which is a cheap but very realistic flight simulator. I practice things that I have done the prior lessons, I brush up on things that that I haven't done in a while, and I practice the exorcises that I feel I'm weaker at, such as steep turns. Apart from feeling those G forces and feeling like you're going to die, you can really get accustomed to the angle at which the horizon sits on the windshield. I think X-plane is proving to be a big help, as well as a big money saver for me. It keeps me sharp so I won't have to spend as much time on things I already did in the air in the real airplane.

3. Live ATC
I've started listening to the air traffic control for Buttonville Airport, which is where I fly from. You can listen to it here if you want (in fact you can listen to every airport's available traffic control frequencies here), but I don't imagine that would interest many people so much. For me, it's good practice to get used to the "radio language", as well as the procedures for Buttonville airport. When I cross-reference what I hear on ATC with my airport diagrams and maps, it all starts to come together and really make sense. For a small airport such as Buttonville, there are only so many taxiways, routes, navigational landmarks and procedures that the traffic is based on, so in that way it starts to become repetitive, and more importantly, more familiar to me.

4. Take pictures
No, not while in the airplane, not yet. While sitting at home anxiously waiting for my next lesson, in order to psyche myself up, I sometimes take pictures of... well, just look for yourself:

Im going to get a lot of slack for this one.

All joking aside, I find that when I feel over-prepared for my lesson, that's when I feel most comfortable in the airplane. If I don't do enough of the things I stated above, then it feels like a million things a second are being thrown at you, and it's hard to comprehend them all. However, when I do enough studying and preparation, the lessons are like butter.

Flying, and everything that encompasses it, seems to be a lifelong, never ending journey. There's always more to learn, more to study, more to explore. I feel like the more passionate I am about it, the more I will accomplish these things. Sometimes I feel like I don't do enough, but so far I've managed to work on my weak points and be focused about this endeavor. I'm thankful that my passion for flying is holding up.