Nice!

average_joker said:

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Hey gang, just wanted to drop that I passed all of my sims , check rides, and evaluations. I am now a 737 captain for the "world's largest airline." 8 year old me would call me a "bus driver," but I'm pretty proud of myself.

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A320 CA's are bus drivers. You sir, are a Guppy driver. Lol

Congrats!

/Whale CA for Brown

A passenger on an overnight flight from California to Massachusetts recorded skyscrapers just barely peeking out from the dense fog surrounding Boston. https://t.co/UBfAJ7ewjD pic.twitter.com/4eXSAwMhn0

— ABC News (@ABC) December 27, 2023

Your momma is real proud of you.

Pretty cool.

My first thought was surprise you couldn't get an entire company in that big a plane. My second thought was I bet even only a 60 man string is strung WAY out over a DZ just because it takes such a long time for all to exit the plane.

Not trying to get too far in the weeds or compromise anything, but do y'all practice this with escorts? I'd imagine you'd have to have fighter and wild weasel cover to attempt something like that low and slow for real.

This DZ has a jump time restriction based on an impact area off the end, if the range is cold I can put out 102 in a pass.

Yeah there's exercises throughout the year that practice that integration with the CAF

Your littlest brother is quite impressed. I'll show the other one later.

The bigger one would like you to know that he's pretty impressed you flew in a straight line.

How about a 265 MPH tailwind and an 800 MPH ground speed?

https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/planes-top-800-mph-as-near-record-winds-sweep-high-over-mid-atlantic/ar-BB1itub3

PPL checkride is scheduled for middle of May!

Anyone familiar with John Emerson out of KLCH?

I passed my IFR checkride last Friday. Anyone have suggestions for a first solo flight ifr? weather conditions, min ceilings, visibility etc. I have my personal minimums set up as 5 miles and 2K feet, the dpe suggested i start with 5 miles and 5k ft.

boredatwork08 said:

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PPL checkride is scheduled for middle of May!

Anyone familiar with John Emerson out of KLCH?

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i do not know john emerson unfortunately but good luck on your ride. i just passed my ifr checkride and i can tell you one thing you might not have heard about is what are type certificates? buddy of mine took his ppl oral not too long ago and they asked him that question so i looked it up. lo and behold i was asked the same thing on mine.

for the practical, i would recommend if you aren't already, practice talking out loud about what you are doing which will help you stay ahead of the airplane and also give the dpe a good view into your airmanship and decision making. if you make a mistake, and you will, you are talking out loud about how you are correcting it and that's what they want to see. you recognized the mistake (much sooner than later of course ) and you are properly correcting for it. good luck, i know you'll do great.

trouble said:

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The bigger one would like you to know that he's pretty impressed you flew in a straight line.

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is there a single forum on this board you don't post on?

Dallasag517 said:

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trouble said:

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The bigger one would like you to know that he's pretty impressed you flew in a straight line.

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is there a single forum on this board you don't post on?

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Quite a few actually.

Dallasag517 said:

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I passed my IFR checkride last Friday. Anyone have suggestions for a first solo flight ifr? weather conditions, min ceilings, visibility etc. I have my personal minimums set up as 5 miles and 2K feet, the dpe suggested i start with 5 miles and 5k ft.

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I've read a couple WW2 fighter pilot books lately and one had a suggestion that stuck with me.

He had a similar situation early on in flight school when he stepped up from the training aircraft to his first fighter. The instructor suggested he keep a higher floor for the flight and he wanted to stay lower to feel safer / more secure. The instructor won out and he flew a couple thousand feet higher than he was going to. I think the altitudes were almost identical to the 2 you mentioned.

Low and behold he had an issue that required him to make a correction to avoid crashing. If he had flown at the lower altitude he wouldn't have had time to recover and would have crashed. So his suggestion when just learning or doing check rides in a new type of aircraft was to fly a little higher than you would normally feel comfortable to give yourself a little more room for error. He made a point to devote a couple of pages to this because he felt they lost good men that would have made good pilots that never survived the first couple of instructional schools merely because of plane malfunction while flying at lower altitudes that made them feel safer, but ultimately turned out to the opposite when they didn't have time to recover or bail out.

And it wasn't just about novice pilots. They lost a couple of really good pilots over the years (including some aces) merely from plane malfunctioning at low attitudes. So his take was always, while it's fun to fly map of the earth, altitude was your friend.

In the airline world, new captains add 100 and 1/2 to all approaches.
Just remember that personal minimum's are for planning purposes to keep you out of the muck.
Once aloft, don't run out of gas doing missed approaches on an ILS when the ceiling is only 400 overcast.