Slow (as in Progress has been slow)

I haven't flown a lot in the past three months. This is partly because of the holidays, my work schedule, illness and school. I am nearing the completion of my private license and should get it before the end of March. I have to take 5 days of mandatory vacation from work, so during that time off I will be finishing my required hours and preparing for and taking the check ride.

I also need to take the FAA written exam but I have not been studying nearly as much as I should be for it. You need at least 80% to pass the written exam, but most things I have read and heard say you should have 90% or better.

I made a cross country flight and that went well. The next flight I have planned is a solo cross country flight to get the remaining solo time I need for my license. I think I would feel better about the check ride if I was flying on a regular basis, but my instructor says I have the skills needed to pass the check ride.

My most recent flight was at the beginning of January and it had been nearly three months since I had been flying before that. I flew with my instructor and stayed at the Tallahassee airport doing maneuvers. I flew really well for not flying in so long and after a few minutes the rust was gone and I was successfully performing most maneuvers. We practiced landing on slopes, which I have only done once before near the beginning of my flight training. It was kind of awkward at first but after some verbal review of what to do and a demonstration from my instructor, I was setting down and picking up from the slope.

One of the things I noticed during this flight was that while practicing auto-rotations, I didn't really freak-out when you lower the collective which causes the helicopter to descend towards the earth at over 1,500 feet per minute. I only really felt (slightly) panicked or unsure when it came time to stop the descent and begin the hover recovery. And since we were at the airport we were only about 500 feet AGL, so the auto-rotation from start to finish was about 25 seconds.

I tried to get a GPS track of my flight using my phone, but it kept loosing GPS signal and only recorded about 1/3 of the flight in bits and pieces. I am going to try a different GPS tracking app and place my phone in a different spot to see if I can get it to record better. If I can get a decent capture, I will share it.

R48