What should I do? (Re-currency)

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Mtns2Skies

Final Approach
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Mtns2Skies
All this engineering school is making me go stir crazy so I'm taking the 172 Bolen Taildragger up this Thursday from BJC. I haven't flown since January when I took @G-Man for his first ride in a taildragger(Yes he survived... barely).
So apart from 3 stop and goes what should I do?

I was thinking.
Brush up on Commercial Maneuvers?
If Wx is nice fly to Grandby GNB?

Any other suggestions?

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Sweet plane... I always did like those conversions. I'll be parked and reading the responses. ;)
 
Honestly your best bet is drop out of engineering school and become a pilot <{-_-}>
 
CC268 said:
Honestly your best bet is drop out of engineering school and become a pilot <{-_-}>
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Heh... I'm sooooo close to the end, don't tempt me. But yeah I feel that way most days. Heat and mass transfer is a special kind of hell.
 
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Just curious... I see you have pants on and are on a snow packed tarmac/runway. How many times have your brakes or wheels frozen up inside the pants? I guess the question is, how many butt pucker landings have you had?
 
azblackbird said:
Just curious... I see you have pants on and are on a snow packed tarmac/runway. How many times have your brakes or wheels froze up inside the pants?
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Never. But it's a rental so not my choice to have them on. Were just removed recently though I don't know why. Maybe a student broke them.
 
Mtns2Skies said:
Heh... I'm sooooo close to the end, don't tempt me. But yeah I feel that way most days.
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Just hang in there. I finished my EE degree 7 years ago. The job itself is an order of magnitude less draining than school and well worth all the work it took to get there. I still have nightmares about engineering school.
 
Mtns2Skies said:
Heh... I'm sooooo close to the end, don't tempt me. But yeah I feel that way most days. Heat and mass transfer is a special kind of hell.
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Been there, done that, but they don't give out tshirts. Makes me feel like a survivor. But work is much, much less complicated, unless you're working for GE / P&W designing new engines. With an ME degree, you can work just about anywhere, doing just about anything . . . It's worth it to stick out that last year!

Just go fly, relax and enjoy the scenery. Maneuvers can wait til after exams. Take at least 30 minutes away from
the pattern, preferably 45, to unwind, relax and reset your brain. It helps me do that, and I've been finished with Heat Transfer for a couple of decades . . .
 
Hang in there. It gets easier the closer you get to the finish line (some of that s*** even starts to make some sense :eek: ).

Just don't forget there's a lesser known Fourth Law of Thermodynamics..."Things get worse under pressure".
 
Mtns2Skies said:
...I haven't flown since January when I took @G-Man for his first ride in a taildragger. (Yes he survived... barely).
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Survived? I thrived! It was a ton of fun! You even let me steer when we were airborne.

What to do? I can send a nice Northern Colorado small airport touch and go sortie I did in January, 2015. Or, get current and plan to do the CPA Fly In to Pueblo Weisbrod Museum on April 15. (I'm too travel tired to go, I think.)

Plan ahead, have fun, and be safe.
 
Mtns2Skies said:
Heh... I'm sooooo close to the end, don't tempt me. But yeah I feel that way most days. Heat and mass transfer is a special kind of hell.
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Yea I was there not long ago...couldn't wait to graduate. My first heat transfer test I got like below a 50...it was this Indian professor who was brutal and the whole class did horrible. We had to do this heat transfer finite element method project on MATLAB that took me like 16 hours. Lmao...but I worked hard and got an A in that class.

I do miss college though and being around my friends. Real jobs are easier than school, but man I really miss the college breaks. Then you gotta grind it out another 10-15 years until you get some good vacation time. I only have two weeks vacation and it kind of sucks. Sitting behind a desk has really got me thinking about other careers/flying...guess we will see where things go in the next few years

Once you graduate people start their lives, get married, move away, etc. It's just a different life after college I guess
 
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bjc-->lar (crewcar)-->Shari's.

The food is mediocre. The service is slow. It's Laramie. And the crew car is a real POS.

Everything else will seem much better afterwards. Even engineering.
 
CC268 said:
Yea I was there not long ago...couldn't wait to graduate. My first heat transfer test I got like below a 50...it was this Indian professor who was brutal and the whole class did horrible. We had to do this heat transfer finite element method project on MATLAB that took me like 16 hours. Lmao...but I worked hard and got an A in that class.

I do miss college though and being around my friends. Real jobs are easier than school, but man I really miss the college breaks. Then you gotta grind it out another 10-15 years until you get some good vacation time. I only have two weeks vacation and it kind of sucks. Sitting behind a desk has really got me thinking about other careers/flying...guess we will see where things go in the next few years

Once you graduate people start their lives, get married, move away, etc. It's just a different life after college I guess
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The advantage of 6-12 month contracts. Interesting work, good money, then take a few weeks (or months) off to do,whatever, then another contract.

Unfortunately the next contract may not be when you want it. may be longer than you like before the next contract materializes. No guarantees. But lots of fun.
 
murphey said:
The advantage of 6-12 month contracts. Interesting work, good money, then take a few weeks (or months) off to do,whatever, then another contract.

Unfortunately the next contract may not be when you want it. may be longer than you like before the next contract materializes. No guarantees. But lots of fun.
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Yea the only thing with contracts is you don't get any benefits...401k, medical insurance, etc...but maybe it is a better way to go. There are several guys who are contract here at my work and some of those guys are making twice what they were...so there definitely has to be some advantages
 
What a good day. Flew to Kremling (20V). GNB was closed due to a gear up landing, No injuries.
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I'm not calling you a light weight, but with that altitude, you were at light weight! How were the winds?
 
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G-Man said:
I'm not calling you a light weight, but with that altitude, you were at light weight! How were the winds?
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Completely calm. Though I'm glad I didn't stay out longer than I did. They really started to kick up about an hour after I landed.

It was a long slow climb, about 500 feet per minute the whole way up. If I couldn't make it to 13,000 I decided I wouldn't cross Rollins and instead would go to LAR like @Clark1961 suggested. The plane just kept climbing, slow and steady! Full fuel too.
 
I've always wondered about these Cessna tailwheel conversations. Do they do anything to make the rudder more powerful? I recall a few years ago a local flight school put a C-150 tailwheel conversation on line. I sat it in, and as far as I could tell the rudder was no difference than Grandma's C150. I said to some random guy at the airport that this was a ground loop waiting to happen.

It lasted about a month before it was wadded up on landing.

That's only one data point, but in the Air Force and the internet it only takes one data point to prove a trend.
 
JimNtexas said:
I've always wondered about these Cessna tailwheel conversations. Do they do anything to make the rudder more powerful? I recall a few years ago a local flight school put a C-150 tailwheel conversation on line. I sat it in, and as far as I could tell the rudder was no difference than Grandma's C150. I said to some random guy at the airport that this was a ground loop waiting to happen.

It lasted about a month before it was wadded up on landing.

That's only one data point, but in the Air Force and the internet it only takes one data point to prove a trend.
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No that's an accurate sentiment. I flew a texas taildragger 172 (still a swept tail) out of FNL for a bit and it got ground looped (not by me). This one is a Bolen conversion and once you get used to how aggressive you have to be on the rudder it's not so bad. X-winds are definitely limited and it keeps your tailwheel skills in tip-top shape. They do nothing to enhance the rudder, so you have to get on any direction change very quickly.

This one has been in the weeds next to the runway more than once (again, not by me) but no damage.

If I were to buy a taildragger that was less powerful than a 180, I think a 172TW conversion would be it - I really love these planes.
 
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Dang, if I'd have seen this sooner, I would have played hookey from work and joined you in the 182. :) Ohhhh well...
 
I Co-Op'd thru engineering school so a quarter in school, a quarter at work at a machine tool company. Kept me from going bonkers at either place. Graduated as an ME and a Journeyman Machinist. Hated Heat Transfer the most of all the courses and Design the best.

Nice looking plane

Cheers
 
Saturday, May 13? Location?
 
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