passed the FAA Private Pilot written exam

I passed the FAA Private Pilot written exam today (and am pretty pleased about it). I was stressing a fair amount and was not looking forward to it at all. For anyone not familiar with it, it consists of 60 questions drawn from a total of 600 questions and you have 2.5 hours to finish it. The questions come from a wide range of subjects including navigation, airspace, federal requirements, weather, aerodynamics, aeronautical charts and aircraft performance. I missed 4 questions (score was 93) so I need to do some more review but I'm happy for now. My plan for the remainder of the weekend is to not work and not study. I do get to fly tomorrow evening which I am looking forward to.

flying lesson - landings

Shot touch and go's yesterday afternoon. Did ok but had some crosswind and (at least) a couple of them were not level so one wheel touched before the other. I wish we had a video camera system out there to record them because I'd like to see what they looked like after the fact. It's hard to remember what was going on at the time so some sort of record would be useful I think.

flying lesson - towered airport (first time)

I flew for the first time to KMRB today and had a couple of observations on it if anyone is interested:

* KMRB is a towered National Guard airport (first time for me), a few new radio responses from the tower that I had never heard before
* you do not announce traffic pattern movements since it's towered (and it was hard for me to not say my turns in the pattern since I've been doing it at a non-towered airport for many months now)
* there is no visual glideslope indication there (and I'm used to PAPI)
* there is construction going on on the far end of the runway so there are people/vehicles down there which is unusual to see during touch and gos
* there was a construction vehicle with it's lights on at the far end of the runway (using 26) and I kept thinking it's lights were the glideslope indication
* my usual aircraft was busted so we took another one, it's trim is much more different than my usual, I had to keep fiddling with it

In the future I am going to keep a little camera in my headset bag. If I had done that I would have been able to take a picture of the Yak-18A that took off ahead of me. Here is a little info on what I think I saw:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakovlev_Yak-18

flying lesson - crosswind takeoff, emergency procedures, ground ref maneuvers

Flew today, did some ground ref maneuvers and then we did a little emergency procedure practice when my instructor pulled the throttle to idle and I had to do an in-flight engine out thing. I need to take the FAA written exam this weekend but work stress (which is happening now) can really impact my performance on that so I'm not sure what I'm going to do yet.

flying lesson - landings

Flew yesterday afternoon in the evening. I scheduled it at the last minute because because my instructor was available and I was supposed to go this morning and the forecast was not good for today. I did pattern work and did 9-landings. Some of them were even ok. I'm glad I did it because my instructor called this morning and said ceiling was expected to be 1,500 at 0900 so
we had to cancel. Had fun flying yesterday and was looking forward to today. Ah well, more time to study ground school material for the FAA written test

flying - VOR radials/intersections and ""how do you spell ...?

Today, while studying for the upcoming ground school test, I've been listening to Potomac ATC. For the first time I've heard at least 5 pilots ask for the spelling of the TICON airspace fix when they were directed to it. I tried to find it on my chart and had no luck (so I'm assuming that the pilots were doing the same). I also came to the revelation (I think it's correct) that the Victor airways are just matching VOR radials.

weather, weather, weather

Could not fly today because of weather again so we went over ""stuff"" that will likely on my upcoming ground school test. Also bought the new set of aeronautical charts for the area (they expire every so many months).
The airport manager on duty today is the wife of a professional pilot and they are interested in selling their airplane (a twin) since they do not use it often (I think they have two). While that would be nice someday I'm not getting my hopes up. If I can just keep getting training and learning I'll be happy (which of course implies being able to pay for it).