Second dual flight in the 172SP yesterday morning.  I got some more of my confidence back on the radio, and overally things went well enough that my CFI said he’d talk to the head instructor about whether they’d let me solo again without another semi-formal stagecheck ride.  Nice gesture, I thought, but I wasn’t really sure I was ready yet.

Another lesson earlier this evening.  Looked a little cloudy leaving work, but the weather was great at Hanscom.  6500 broken, ceiling around 25000, light winds, cooling off but nowhere near dew point, nice light.  The air really starts to smooth out toward dusk, too.

When I got there, my CFI (Ben Wilder at EFA, recommended) said the head instructor gave him the go-ahead to let me solo at his discretion, and basically left it up to me.  The rest of that conversation went something like this:

FC: “How about tonight?”
BW: “Sure.”

So I pulled out my medical / student pilot cert, Ben scribbled in the necessary magical incantations, we did some work in the pattern [touch and go's, unintended no-flapper approach, short approach (blown, went around), simulated engine-out at pattern altitude (glove save), etc.]

So then we landed, went back to the ramp, pulled off the taxiway, and Ben got out.  I called ground control, taxied to runway 29 via Sierra and Echo, re-ran the engine runup checklist, switched over to tower frequency, taxied up short of the runway threshold, called the tower, and sat there for a few minutes while mad peeps came in for the evening.  After like 5 or 6 planes landed, tower homepiece thanked me for my patience (dude please, you’re all doing me a favor) and cleared me onto the runway.

Two touch-and-go’s and a full stop.  I wish I could say there were no alarms and no surprises, but I actually got confused about who was ahead of me in the pattern queue at one point, and turned base (the turn before you turn ‘final’, or onto the runway heading) a little earlier than I should have.  There was plenty of room between me and the dude I was supposed to follow, so it wasn’t dangerous per se, but had I been looking at the right aircraft I definitely would have waited to make that turn.

The thing is, I had a slight twinge of doubt as I started to make that turn.  I looked behind the dude I thought I was following, to see if there was anyone there I missed, and I didn’t see anybody.  Turns out I wasn’t looking in the right place, because the dude I was supposed to follow hadn’t really been in the pattern.  He got sequenced in on a longer base/final leg, so he was on like a 3 mile final.  Even though I’d extended my downwind leg a bit for spacing, I wasn’t 3 miles east of the field yet, so if I’d turned base a lot earlier I might have actually cut the guy off.  Not scary, really, just worth learning from.  Trust that twinge of doubt.  Check three times, and if you’re still not sure, ask.

Anyway, good times.  Maneuvers were silky; radio work wasn’t perfect but pretty good.  Prolly one more supervised solo before I can just schedule solo time on my own.  Within sight of the furthest I’ve ever been with this.  When I pass the written, I’ll probably be less than 15 hours away from my license.

ps - totally awesome Navy jet landed while we were flying dual in the pattern.  The guy even used the radio like a badass.

First flight since February this morning; first time in a Cessna 172SP.  WOW…less like a 1975 VW Bug with wings and extra gauges.  Aside from the better seats and sun visors, it also had plenty of gear I’d never used before:

• Fuel injection (no need to manually pump-prime)
• Airbags (fwiw)
• GPS
• Auto-calibrating heading indicator
• Electric, yoke-mounted elevator trim adjustment
• Auto pilot

Did slow flight, power off stalls, power on stalls, steep turns, simulated engine out, a couple touch and go’s, a short approach, and a go around.  Overall, 3 take offs and landings, all landings buttery despite some early flaring.  Should be solo’ing again real soon.

A couple days ago, finally ordered rear struts for my car; Bilstein “HD” spec (versus “Comfort” or “Sport”).

While at the Sherman this morning, updated my hardware-accelerated mainframe crypto code to reference the correct library symbols when compiled for 64-bit addressing mode.  Resolved to merge shared code from my AES and DES modules into a single source file, but have not yet decided whether to bifurcate them via macros or function calls.  Function calls would be cleaner to maintain, but I wouldn’t want the cost of an extra method invocation to creep into the stuff that’s called in a very tight loop.  I bet the compiler will optimize out the extra function call, so I’ll probably do it that way.

Went out to Hanscom, put my updated airman’s medical and student pilot certificate on file, and got back on the schedule (x12, through September).  Stepping up to a 172SP with GPS in preparation for cross country training (versus “local”, i.e. taking off and landing at the same airfield all the time).  Also, it has a fire extinguisher installed, so you know, “bonus.”

Went out to Lowe’s (Saugus) with the wife, where she talked me down from Samsung SteamWasher™ territory to a pair of very affordable GE workhorse laundry machines.  Well done, honey.

“…for when that brilliant plan you had the night before to balance a plate of quiche on another plate of pie, while navigating your narrow back staircase, in the dark, (n-1)(mod n) sheets to the wind, didn’t really work out how you’d hoped.”

Thanks to all for an awesome birthday party!  The food, beverages, and conversation were so good that the lack of music was a feature.