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Jeff Zacharias is my certificated flight instructor, or CFI. He's the guy who taught me how to fly. I found him after sending an email to a bunch of local CFIs describing my specific goals and needs. His reply was the first and the best among several. We scheduled a demo flight on November 26, 2006, out of San Carlos, and it went fine.

After the lesson I asked Jeff all the usual questions you're supposed to ask a prospective CFI, in particular what percentage of his students pass their checkride on the first try. His answer was more or less "not applicable," because he hadn't sent anyone yet to a checkride. Usually you expect an answer somewhere very close to 100%, so this was technically a disqualifying answer, but I had a good feeling about Jeff, so we settled on a weekly schedule from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. Wednesday mornings at San Carlos.

Twice I did my best to kill Jeff. First, in March we were at Livermore Airport doing touch-and-go landings, and on the takeoff roll the plane began veering toward the left of the runway. I had been trying to avoid dragging the brakes during taxi and takeoff, so I'd overcorrected by leaving my feet on the floor unless I really meant to effect a control input. (As I write this eight months later it sounds ridiculous; you're constantly putting in at least some pedal input just about whenever the plane's in motion.) As I realized what was happening, I froze. I was afraid to lift my feet and put them back on the pedals. I recall a visceral fear that I'd flip the plane if I touched the pedals, much as you might if you quickly spun your car's steering wheel on the highway.

We were at nearly 50 knots and headed for the rough along the side of the runway. Today I know several different ways to handle this situation, but at the time as a junior student I'd have certainly nosed-over the plane at a deadly speed.

This was the first time during our instruction that Jeff had to take control from me. The recovery was straightforward: jam on the right rudder pedal, pull back to lighten the load on the wheels, and moments later we were in the air and safe.

We discussed what happened later that day in email. Jeff's attitude was these sorts of incidents are part of learning (specifically that p-factor is huge when you're already off the nosewheel and at full throttle), and that it was no big deal. I took comfort in his response, and didn't let it crush my self-confidence.

The second time I tried to kill Jeff was a few weeks later in April. We were at Hayward Executive, getting closer to my first solo flight, practicing all sorts of emergencies and unusual situations (broken flaps, broken trim, engine-out, short but very high approach). I was too high but the flaps were "broken" in an up position, so I had to execute a forward slip, which is a maneuver in which the pilot yaws the plane but rolls in the opposite direction in order to thwart the airplane's naturally clean aerodynamics and cause it to begin to descend quickly without gaining airspeed. For some reason that day I decided to pull slightly back on the yoke during the maneuver, forgetting that one usually needs to push the plane's nose down in order to keep it safely above stalling speed.

If that was too technical, here it is again in layman's terms: if a plane keeps moving forward fast enough, then the wings lift it and it stays airborne. If the plane slows down too much, it turns into the aerodynamic equivalent of a rock, which, as you may know, falls right out of the sky. You don't want to stall the airplane, and you especially don't want to stall it when you're doing a forward slip, because that leads to a condition called a spin that is generally fatal below 1,000 feet.

The moment Jeff realized what was happening, he reflexively shoved his hands at the yoke, thereby pointing the nose down and increasing our airspeed. He simultaneously issued a wryly phrased admonishment that it would be better if I didn't kill us both. I believe we got close to 52 knots, which is quite close to the stalling speed of a Cessna 172 in the flaps-up configuration (even though the airspeed indicator can be inaccurate in low-speed and slipped conditions), and I'm not sure I'd have corrected in time on my own.

Anyway, as you have no doubt deduced, I failed on both attempts, and we lived to fly again. But my respect for Jeff's restraint, patience, and perspective increased dramatically after these two incidents. I'd have vowed never to fly again with a spaz like me, but it rolled right off Jeff. I think this epitomizes what makes a good instructor good: a determined, unflappable willingness to sit quietly in the right seat and let your student make mistakes, while at the same time staying alert to prevent fatal mistakes.

I could go on, but this is the web, and your attention span is consequently short. So here are some bullet points:

• Jeff videotaped my solo and edited it into a DVD. Amazingly cool and kind of him.


• Jeff was almost never late to a lesson, even though we started at 6 a.m. on weekdays. The one time he was late, I coincidentally forgot to set my own alarm and slept in, and we almost simultaneously called each other, apologizing and begging to reschedule to 7:00.


• During the three hours of my checkride that took place over nearly a month, Jeff went through heroics to ensure I was prepared to succeed. He showed up on his own time to make sure my checkride paperwork was correct. He offered to fly me IFR to get me to Watsonville, where my examiner was stranded. He juggled his work and personal schedule to fit in spur-of-the-moment lessons when I was feeling out of practice. It was gratifying to have another human being on Earth who cared at least as much as I did that my checkride went smoothly (which, other than scheduling, it did).


• Jeff always responded quickly and thoughtfully to my emails. I have no idea how many unbilled hours he spent composing his replies over the last year, but I'm sure the total is substantial.


• If Jeff has an ego, he never showed it to me. Like me, he's a software guy, and when you get two of those types talking about any technical subject, eventually they're going to get into some kind of disagreement that rises to the level of religion. Aviation has just as many styles, dialects, schools of thought, and gray areas as software development, but nothing between Jeff and me ever escalated -- though he did have to try pretty hard to disabuse me of some notions. I've been fairly described as abrasive and stubborn in the past, so I have to give Jeff credit.

All this, and he's a genuinely nice guy, too. Oh, and that question I asked him last year about his percentage of students passing their test on the first try? His answer is now 100%. :) If you're looking for an instructor, give him a call.

Today I flew with my first passengers: my family! Mary, Emily, and Thomas willingly or unknowingly got in N54JA, a Cessna 172SP, and we attempted to fly from SQL (San Carlos Airport) to HAF (Half Moon Bay Airport).

I picked 54JA among the other available planes because it was near the Gazebo, which is a little raised platform at SQL with picnic benches. It's a great place to leave the kids during preflight. I did my normal preflight and then added booster seats into the back row of the airplane and plugged in everyone's headsets. We packed everyone in, and we were off!

I stayed in the pattern once in case anyone freaked out, and then we departed Runway 30 toward VPCRY. As we passed the mountain peaks, we began hitting a little turbulence. I self-announced on HAF's CTAF as we overflew the airport at 2,500, then we began a 180 over the ocean to do the official 1,000-feet-above-pattern-altitude overflight. At this point I noticed people were entering 30's pattern by coming in well north of the airport (versus overflying and then looping left onto the 45), so I turned left, followed their pattern, and began descending to TPA. The mountain turbulence was really starting to bug Mary, but I pressed on a couple miles behind a Cherokee.

As I turned onto base, I decided to call it off; it was just too gusty for an enjoyable landing. I could have easily made a safe landing, but I knew that even with my limited experience my idea of "safe" was well outside my passengers' idea of "safe and comfortable." So I self-announced that I was aborting the landing and departing the pattern on 30's base leg, and we climbed to 2,500 and headed back home to SQL.

The flight was 0.7 hours on the Hobbs with less than half an hour in the air. When the turbulence began the kids fell asleep (their usual defense mechanism). As they got out of the plane back at San Carlos they claimed to have had fun.

I'm glad to have gotten my first flight with passengers out of the way; part of me had imagined doing hundreds more hours of pattern work before taking any passengers, but once I finally got my license, my confidence level was high enough that I wanted to take the whole family right out of the gate. That said, it's a heck of a lot of work to fly to HAF with two toddlers for ice cream. Next time I'd like to go somewhere interesting or do something fun, so that the 30 minutes of preflight and 15 minutes of post-flight cleanup are worth it.

Mary will probably be posting pictures soon.

These are the topics I hope to cover in the future:

• My excellent CFI (certificated flight instructor), Jeff Zacharias
• Why I started flight training to begin with, and why most of those reasons turned out to be wrong
• The time I almost killed Jeff
• The other time I almost killed Jeff
• My theory why many students stop flight training midway through
• How to complete flight training on a budget (subtitled "Everything that I wish I'd done, in hindsight")
• Capsule reviews of various aviation products and services

Some of these posts are already written, but I deferred publication until now. The reason I kept my flight training fairly quiet while it was in progress is because I've noticed that the topic of pilot training tends to dominate all conversation with friends and family, partly because it's genuinely interesting, but mostly because the experience is immersive. It's hard for someone in the midst of becoming a pilot to avoid turning all possible discussion toward the topic of aviation. Now that the most intense part is past, I hope I can start discussing it without becoming too much of a bore. :)

As of a few hours ago, I am officially a private pilot! Today I passed my FAA practical test, informally known as the "checkride." This means I'm now legal to fly passengers in airplanes, subject to about 700 exceptions, qualifications, and limitations.

You know that heavy lead vest the dentist puts on you when you get your head X-rayed? Imagine wearing about three of those for five months straight, and then one afternoon taking them off and suddenly being as light as you used to be. That's how I feel! Beginning in July of this year I've been "just a few weeks" away from my checkride, and I've put much of my life on hold as a result. Little did I know that weather would delay my cross-country flights for many weeks, that a dozen little things would conspire to delay my checkride prep again and again, and that my checkride itself would take six weeks to schedule and almost a month to complete. I'm excited to have my life back.

I'll write more later.

This morning was exhausting. I just took a two-hour nap and feel like I've slept for a week.

Phase checks aren't graded, and they aren't pass/fail either. They are what they're called; a "check" at this "phase" of flight training that the student is moving in the right direction. But they certainly could be graded like school exams, and if they were, I'd have passed with a C+ grade.

The ground review section was fine. As usual I had to think for a few seconds before coming up with the right answers for some airspace questions, and there was an interesting question about a new kind of emergency (stuck throttle). I didn't know a few answers (What does HIWAS stand for? What is the cause of an overvoltage problem?), but there weren't any chronically deficient areas.

We got in the plane and flew off to our imaginary destination, a desolate spot in Nevada. In spite of my examiner's proper concern that error induced from the unpredictable liftoff from SQL (runway 12 or 30 plus various traffic conditions can lead to quite a different heading toward a waypoint), I got lucky and arrived at the Sunol Golf Course VFR waypoint right on time. However, I had to make things more interesting than that. I looked down to my left and confirmed we were over the lake, but the golf course was up ahead to the left, so I waited until we were overhead it, and then a minute longer to get to SUNOL, then turned onto the Victor airway toward Sacramento.

Unfortunately, I was about to learn that I had identified the wrong golf course: one that was about six miles past the one that constitutes the informal visual checkpoint west of SUNOL. We'd turned a significant distance north of our course.

Ever the optimist, Patti turned the situation into a genuine version of the lost procedure, and asked me to look out the window (as opposed to using GPS or the VORs) to figure out where we were. Although I quickly identified the lake near Byron, I didn't have enough of a sense of scale to quickly turn that into a fix on our position. I had to circle for quite a while to decide that we were right between Tracy and Modesto, close to the north side of Tracy. I got the right answer, but it just took too long.

Next, Patti asked me to divert to New Jerusalem. I got this essentially right: heading 140, about eight nm away, arrive in four minutes, use 0.6 gallons of gas. I put us on course for the airport and sure enough saw a lonely runway below us at the expected time. However, it took me far too long to convince myself that it was the right airport; I didn't have the A/FD in the front seat, and that was the only way to tell that New Jerusalem's runway was indeed 12/30. So I had to reach into the back seat and fumble around for the book. But eventually it worked out, and when I announced my answer, Patti said it was correct. Again, right answer, just too long to get it.

We talked through the entry and landing pattern, and unfortunately Patti was satisfied, because she skipped straight to a simulated engine-out emergency. I went through this procedure correctly, but my spiral downward wasn't lined up properly such that I could exit right onto final. Instead, my entry into the spiral was on the centerline. So on exit, I had to turn to get on final. This led to a sequence of problems: getting on centerline late caused me to be late to adjust the glide slope, which caused me to be too high, which gave me too little time to get my approach speed correct. I was too fast, too high, and too close to the runway. About halfway down the runway I decided to go around, which I did. This was the right decision in the situation, but I shouldn't have gotten into the situation. I clearly failed the engine-out emergency.

Next was hood work and navigation to a VOR. This was fine. Coming home to SQL was fine. There was a 7-knot right crosswind on the soft-field landing that I handled OK, but I fell into an old habit of relaxing the controls on touchdown and didn't keep the ailerons pushing against the crosswind, so we drifted off centerline on the post-landing roll.

Something new: it turns out that Tower can hand you to Ground without saying "taxi to parking, monitor ground point six." What he actually said was "Contact ground point six" but didn't clear me to taxi. I would have failed this on a checkride because I misheard this as clearance to taxi and started rolling before Patti kindly pointed out the mistake.

And finally, I let my mind distract myself in the parking area. While running through all the mistakes I'd made during the phase check, I skipped pulling the mixture full lean and just shut off the mags. I didn't notice the problem right away because this particular plane sometimes takes a while to sputter to a stop with the mixture full lean, and the behavior was identical to that. Patti quickly figured out the problem, though, and all was well. We later joked that we needed a new section on the phase check for how to shut off an airplane.

For my loyal readers, if any, I'd like to squish a nanomeme that is thriving amid the Steve Fossett search. Here's an example:

"The search has been complicated by the fact that the 63-year-old veteran of numerous record-breaking solo airplane and balloon flights failed to file a flight-plan for what was supposed to be a routine three-hour jaunt."

This is flat-out wrong. A flight plan for an area flight (that is, one where the origination and destination airports are the same) would not specify anything other than the name of the airport and how long the flight was expected to be. Here's how the phone call would go:

"Hello, I'd like to file a VFR flight plan. Tail number N240R. Decathlon slant golf. 100 knots, leaving from Flying M Ranch near Smith Valley. Cruise altitude 2,500 feet AGL. Destination Flying M Ranch. Time enroute two hours. Five hours of fuel. One person onboard. Contact telephone xxx-xxx-xxxx. Aircraft is blue with yellow. OK, thanks, bye."

This helps explain why he didn't file a flight plan -- because it would be nearly useless. Flight plans don't help rescuers when your route is imprecise. The purpose of Fossett's flight was to scout out ground locations for a car, so the route was necessarily imprecise.

At this point, all we know is that the plane is probably within a circle of radius 500 nautical miles (5 hours of fuel @ 100 knots), centered at the Flying M Ranch (only "probably" because of the chance of winds, UFOs, and government coverups). That is unfortunately over a million square miles, and the area wouldn't have been any smaller if Fossett had filed a flight plan.

I know three people who made it as far as soloing an airplane, but then stopped their instruction and to this day haven't gotten their license. Each had a surprisingly similar explanation: work and/or life got very busy, lessons got delayed, and... well, that was that. This is no doubt a good reason to stop training for one's private pilot license. You need your head in the game to stay safe and thrive in the cockpit. But it piqued my curiosity that of these three people, all three stopped at roughly the same point in their training. I respect each of these guys and know each of them to be thorough and disciplined in their various professions, so I had no reason to believe I'd be immune to whatever got them. I had a persistent fear that when I reached the same milestone, I, too, would abandon my pursuit.

This morning I completed my second solo flight, meaning I'm more or less at the point that I've worried about. And sure enough, I now think I understand the intense desire to quit. It's not a single thought process or emotion, but rather a set of feelings that are battling themselves viciously. The outcome is that solo flight during one's pilot training is anticlimactic, exhausting, and unenjoyable, and when that sort of experience competes with the rest of your life... well, that's that.

Why anticlimactic? Read any old-timer's account of his first solo. You'll go misty-eyed; it sounds like the most romantic experience one can have without anyone else helping. And yes, it's a great accomplishment, but it's quick, and afterward, all you feel you've proven is that you're not abnormally susceptible to panic attacks during times of stress. Granted, my flying club doesn't have much of a tradition of shirt-cutting or the like, but I don't think that would have made a difference. It's just a repetition of what you've been learning for weeks or months, but this time without your CFI in the right seat. That's the point, of course; your solo should be anticlimactic and uneventful. You can't win; either your hundredth flare is just like the first 99, in which case it really doesn't matter that it was your first solo flare, or your hundredth flare turns out to be "special," and you get to pay for a prop strike. In probability terms, your solo has negative expected value.

At this point you've completed an amazing, spectacular rite of passage that by definition must be a letdown. And now they hand you the keys and tell you it's OK to take the plane out by yourself again. But you can't take anyone with you, you can't actually go anywhere useful (your first solo endorsement usually allows you to take off from and land at exactly one specific airport), you can't go near or even over clouds, and even if you were allowed to use any of the cool navigation equipment in the plane, there's no reason to, because you aren't permitted to go far enough from your home airport to get lost. This pretty much means you get to take off, fly in circles for 30 minutes, and land.

By describing these solo flights as mundane, I don't mean to make them sound easy; in fact, they're terrifying. Did I preflight the plane correctly? Did I somehow drain all the oil when I brushed the fuselage, thereby dooming myself to attempt The Impossible Turn shortly after takeoff? Did I leave the flaps down? Did I just decapitate an entire class of children on a field trip when I started the engine? Am I about to retract the landing gear while still on the runway in my non-RG Cessna 172? Am I taxiing to the wrong end of the runway? Will I decide today that P-factor pulls to the right? Will theoretically possible but never-before-observed infinite low-hill updraft suck my plane up to Flight Level 1000? Wait a minute, am I in Bravo airspace right now? If I turn back into Echo airspace, will SFO Tower's Sidewinder missles that are surely screaming toward me also turn back? Am I about to intercept a wayward skydiver? Is Tower screaming "CESSNA DESCEND NOW" at me, but I've foolishly just switched to ATIS? Or worse than any of these fates, does somebody in the control tower think I'm an idiot???

A choice is before me: either take two hours out of my day to practice squelching my inner voice that's screaming in terror, or stay at work and write a few more unit tests. I admit, it's a tough decision. I'll continue flying in the hope that my gut reaction to a solo flight becomes "yeah! woohoo! let's go!" rather than "err, yeah, that's substantial risk for insufficient upside, I'd rather not." Meanwhile, nowhere on my checklist does it say to have fun, and I sure as hell am not straying from my checklist.

Although it's important for a retail business to fulfill orders correctly, in some ways it's even more important for them to do a good job of fixing fulfillment problems. I'd like to award the first-ever Sowbug.org Gold Star For Excellent Customer Service to mypilotstore.com for their fine handling of a mixup.

I ordered a Garmin GPSMAP 96C (this is a GPS device but for an airplane instead of a car), and when the UPS tracking info arrived, I scheduled a flight accordingly so that I could take it out for a spin. Unfortunately, on Friday a box arrived with a 96 in it, not a 96C. Although the differences between these models are only cosmetic, I definitely wanted the 96C, and I couldn't fairly use the 96 over the weekend and then return it, because then the seller couldn't legitimately sell it as new after that. So I was stuck.

I cynically emailed the retailer, expecting to get a "mailbox full" bounce or at best a reply some time the following week. Instead, less than 20 minutes later I got a shipment notification from UPS, as well as an apologetic email from the retailer explaining that they'd just overnighted the correct model (not just overnighted but with Saturday delivery). They included a shipment label for me to return the other device.

Sure enough, Saturday morning the box arrived, and all was well again in the universe.

One of the big fears of shopping with an Internet store is what happens when something goes wrong. I have no such fear with these guys. I regret that mypilotstore.com sells only aviation supplies; I'd be willing to buy anything from them.

Today was my first full flight as PIC (pilot in command). Technically it's my second solo, but the first one doesn't feel much like a solo -- it's just the tail end of a flight with your instructor, and you're not allowed to leave the traffic pattern. Today was the first flight where my instructor wasn't standing at the edge of the runway with his fingers crossed, and it's the first time I ended communication with the tower ("Frequency changed approved. Good day!").

My office's annual picnic is today, and I finished the work I needed to do, so I took an off-campus lunch hour and drove to SQL. Winds were a bit of a concern -- 10 degrees @ 6 knots, but that was within the limits of my solo endorsement, and in any event I figured I needed to get used to the normally windy conditions during the day at San Carlos (as opposed to my usual early-morning flights, which are almost always zero-wind). Preflight fine, ATIS Uniform, runway 30 in use. My plan was to take off, do a Bay Meadows departure, fly over OSI, and come back in for pattern work.

That's pretty much what happened. Before departure I tuned in the nav for OSI, and during my climbout after turning past Bay Meadows I dialed in the right heading in the OBS. I climbed to 3,500 feet and saw OSI, but I decided not to fly over it because fog was beginning to creep over the hills, and I didn't want to come anywhere near violating the FAR student-pilot requirement of maintaining ground reference at all times during solo flight. So I called back in to SQL Tower and began my flight back. I didn't ask for closed traffic because I was concerned about crosswinds. In addition the pattern was quite crowded, so I didn't want to add midair collisions to my list of things to worry about (at least, any more so than it always is).

I crossed 101 at 1,400 feet but was descending too quickly, so I had to push in the throttle to comply with the Tower's mandate of crossing the field at or above 1,200 feet. Entered right downwind, told to wait for departing aircraft. Then cleared to land on 30.

As I turned to final I asked for a wind check. 340@8. Very quickly looked up the crosswind component: 5.5 knots, just a hair under my endorsement. Yikes! I could go around and hope for calmer air in 5 minutes, or just give it a try. I decided to press on.

My landing was fine except for the crosswind. I landed left of centerline and didn't remember to hold the ailerons to compensate for the wind from the right of the plane. So as I tapped on the brake there was a bit of a screech, but not enough to leave a flat spot (as I later checked back at parking). Next time remember: climb into, dive away! I should have had the yoke pulled all the way back and turned right. (I also should have landed on the centerline, of course.)

While taxiing back to parking I realized it was VERY hot in the cockpit. I'm still not sure what percentage of that was ambient temperature and what was stress.

0.6 hours logged. 4.0 more to go before I complete the non-cross-country solo part of the private-pilot requirements to take the checkride. I'm not quite ready to call this fun; I'm still thinking too much. But I suppose this is what it was like when I was 15, learning to drive. I'm sure it'll get better.