Recap

Gosh it's been too long!  Sorry that I was MIA for a while here.  Instead of catching you up since the last post, I'll just share with what I'm up to at the moment.

I am back in Idaho for the last part of flight training with MAF.  I have been here for almost a month and just about to start the final week.  It's been great to be reunited with friends who are on the same path as I am, preparing to head overseas.  We are all living on "campus" and get to hang out every day. This community of friends has been so wonderful to be a part of as we all process through life and leaving.

My first week here had me in ground school from 8am-5pm.  This course taught us about the airplane we were flying and the way that MAF wants us to fly and operate.  There were basic things like checklist usage and then more specific things about dropping packages onto a target from 50 feet.  There was a big review on aerodynamics and how to assess a new airstrip (Wind, Length, Altitude, Surface, Slope, Obstacles), and how to determine the last point in which you can safely stop the airplane or reject the take off or landing....and so much more.

There are 5 other guys going through the course with me.  Once we started week 2, four of the guys went on to their maintenance training, while myself and another guy started the flight portion of the training.  My instructor pilot and I started going to long, flat, dirt air strips.  Each time practicing the techniques taught in ground school.  As the days went on, he would bring me to more challenging airstrips.  Some would have a bit of a slope, sometimes trees or towers on the ends, or they were located in valleys with rising terrain all around them.  These ones can be tricky if you're not familiar with the illusions that rising and falling terrain can give you as you no longer have a true horizon to base your attitudes on for flying.  The more practice, the more familiar it would get.  Week 3 of flying took us into more airstrips...each day a new one to discover.  I think the hardest part of this training is that we never go to the same place twice, so although the skills aren't necessarily "new"...you are always in a new environment.  I would prefer to feel confident that I'm nailing the exercise before moving on, but the instructor is just looking to see that you're moving towards that direction.

It has been close to a year and a half since I last flew an airplane and I can tell you that it has been a steep learning curve.  It's really my expectations that are getting in the way, I think.  I know how I felt in the airplane when I stopped flying at the end of 2011.  I felt "one" with the airplane - an extension of me....and as I get back into it, I'm not quite there yet.  So not only am I getting used to a new airplane, new procedures and a new environment, I am trying to get this brain of mine to be thinking like a pilot would - something that came really natural before, but is out of practice.  Slowly as the days go on, it is coming back - but I just wish it was faster....

I am about to start the last week here.  Thankfully it is the long weekend here and I have 2 more days to relax and rest.  Starting Tuesday, I will be flying into the real mountain airstrips that are short, dog-legged, trees tight on the sides, "blind" approaches, 10-15% slope grass airstrips.  I am praying that the information that I have learned will settle and click into my brain and I can perform in the way I know I can.  The wind has been very gusty here last week which has prevented us in going to the airstrips that we needed to use.  Would you pray for calm conditions this week?

Pictures to come soon....

Thanks for being a part of this journey,
April :)