Finally doing it

J

joarf

Filing Flight Plan
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Sep 24, 2015
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Stef
Hey forum, my name is Stefan and I'm another addition to the new students. I'm 34, originally from Germany (moved to the US 3ish years ago) and will be flying out of KVNC (optionally KSRQ).

I've always wanted to and have been thinking of getting my PPL for a few years, now I'm finally about to get started. Did a discovery flight (a birthday gift from my now wife) about two years ago. Did parts of the take-off, a few turns, some level flight, some of the take-off portions of the three touch-and-gos and some taxiing, all with little prior knowledge. Loved it, but didn't have the time or money to actually start training. Now, I have even less time but can afford it and am just pulling the trigger. Otherwise it's never going to happen.

By now, I've read through – OK, I admit, I did skip a few paragraphs and chapters here and there – the Pilot's Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge as well as the Airplane Flying Handbook. So, I'm hoping I'll understand a little more the next time I'm in the air.

The appointment for the medical is on Wednesday, to get that out of the way. My only concern is the red/green deficiency I have. I usually have some difficulties with the color plates. Not that I'm planning on a lot of night (or eventually IFR) flying, but it'd be nice if I could. The tinnitus (and not being a native speaker) issue I guess I should be able to work around with a decent ANR headset.

Since my future mission profile is pretty well defined (some solo flying, otherwise my wife and an infant, probably two in 1–2 years, around Florida and after a lot more hours possibly to North Carolina), I already have the buy-to-train bug. I promise that I'll get a good chunk of hours in before considering an actual move on any hardware, though. That won't keep me from looking at every Archer, 182 and 180hp 172 for sale, of course.

Guess the only thing needed now is to actually let the flight school know I want to start training. I'll keep you updated how it goes...
 
Hey Stefan, I fly out of KSRQ myself and KVNC. I own a Piper Cherokee 180, but I've flown with both school's on the field at KSRQ. PM me if you need any suggestions on instructors / etc.

And..good luck with the training, I did the same thing you did, though my discovery flight was about 23 years ago :). I put it off for a very long time, but glad I finally finished up.
 
welcome! and yes, the only thing left to do is schedule the first lesson!
 
Discovery flight for me around 2000. Started taking lessons this summer. Enjoy the ride!
 
Welcome,congrats,your in a good area for flight training.
 
Thanks everyone for the warm welcome. Getting more and more excited!
 
Welcome. Get that medical out of the way.....that's what I did with my issues before plunging in too deep.
 
You mentioned tinnitus. Have you had that diagnosed professionally? I thought I had that, but all I needed was a good ear cleaning.
 
woodchucker said:
You mentioned tinnitus. Have you had that diagnosed professionally? I thought I had that, but all I needed was a good ear cleaning.
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Yes, it was diagnosed by an ENT doc a number of years ago. The ear cleaning was done back then, too. The (not very empathetic) doc told me I had basically listened to loud music too much and that I was SOL.

It doesn't bother me much, but is present most of the time. The only issue is that I'm not hearing the audio frequencies around 4KHz very well anymore, which sometimes (along with English not being my native language) leads to me having difficulties understanding people in a noisy environment. That's why I'm looking to get a decent ANR headset. Maybe not the BOSE A20 right away for training, but definitely an ANR that I can then use for passengers when I upgrade. I believe a local avionics shop has a few of those, so I can compare and see what works for me. For the discovery flight, a passive beat-up headset from the flight school worked fine for communicating with the instructor (once he showed me that the headset had a separate volume control :rolleyes:).

To do some research, I will look up the headset threads here, too...
 
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joarf said:
Yes, it was dianosed by an ENT doc a number of years ago. The ear cleaning was done back then, too. The (not very empathetic) doc told me I had basically listened to loud music too much and that I was SOL.

It doesn't bother me much, but is present most of the time. The only issue is that I'm not hearing the audio frequencies around 4KHz very well anymore, which sometimes (along with English not being my native language) leads to me having difficulties understanding people in a noisy environment. That's why I'm looking to get a decent ANR headset. Maybe not the BOSE A20 right away for training, but definitely an ANR that I can then use for passengers when I upgrade. I believe a local avionics shop has a few of those, so I can compare and see what works for me. For the discovery flight, a passive beat-up headset from the flight school worked fine for communicating with the instructor (once he showed me that the headset had a separate volume control :rolleyes:).

To do some research, I will look up the headset threads here, too...
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I highly recommend the QT Halo, then. Dirt cheap compared to the high end ANRs and also incredibly quiet. Arguably as quiet as an ANR, but I can still hear what the engine is trying to tell me.

I've had mine for about a half a year and have put 60 hours or so on it so far and haven't looked back. Wore my DCs for a 30 minute flight a couple of weeks ago and on the way back went back to the Halos as there was a pronounced difference!
 
First: Just got my 3rd Class Medical – no limitations, as I got "only" 3 wrong on the Ishihara 14-plate test. :D

As to the headset, I've had bad experiences with in-ears traveling commercial, so I'm steering clear of those. I think I'll try the Faro G2, the Bose A20 and whatever ANR headset the avionics shop recommends.

Excited to head to the flight school and get set up and started!
 
joarf said:
First: Just got my 3rd Class Medical – no limitations, as I got "only" 3 wrong on the Ishihara 14-plate test. :D

As to the headset, I've had bad experiences with in-ears traveling commercial, so I'm steering clear of those. I think I'll try the Faro G2, the Bose A20 and whatever ANR headset the avionics shop recommends.

Excited to head to the flight school and get set up and started!
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The tubes coming out make pressure normalization no problem compared to normal ear plugs.

Sent from my Nexus 9 using Tapatalk
 
mkosmo said:
The tubes coming out make pressure normalization no problem compared to normal ear plugs.
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Sorry, I was a little unclear about the in-ears. They seem to be making my tinnitus worse for a few hours, whereas a regular ANR helps.
 
joarf said:
I think I'll try the Faro G2, the Bose A20 and whatever ANR headset the avionics shop recommends.
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Apparently the Mrs. thinks radio communication is important for safety and got me a used Bose A20 set for my birthday :goofy:

Still haven't started lessons, though. Work and out of town visitors have kept me pretty busy...
 
KVNC is a nice airport. Seems to be a fairly busy place - we usually make the trip down from Michgian a few times a year to Venice. The restaurant over at Suncoast is pretty good also! You will love the A20's....we have Bose X in the Cirrus and they work great but I was really impressed with the A20 and PFX at Oshkosh this year.
 
Very cool. I just started recently as well. 6.5 in the book so far and loving it. Dream come true. Keep at it and have fun!
 
Again, thanks for the warm welcome. Can't wait to go up!

warthog1984 said:
As a non-citizen student, first thing you will have to do is a TSA background check.
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Yep, that's currently processing. Love how after every entry in the past few years, the permanent resident application and GlobalEntry they need another set of fingerprints.
 
From the TSA Alien Flight Student Program website:
Approval Delays
We are currently experiencing a high volume of training requests, which may take longer than normal to process. Please allow 2-4 weeks for training requests to be reviewed, in order to prevent any potential training delays.
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:mad2:
 
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