Friday

I had my instruments checkride on Wednesday and it went very very well. I had to do the 2-check twice because I screwed up my missed approach the first time so I was a little apprehensive going into it but everything went nice even with some crazy 30 knot gusts out there.

No rest for the weary though, as they stuck me in my formation 'dollar ride' the next day. They paired me up with a good dude in our class, Allin, and we had a pretty nice formation ride. On the dollar ride the IP does most of the flying but from the sounds of things we got to do a larger share of it than most and my IP seemed to think for my first try it was pretty decent. It's pretty awesome to be up there with another plane 10 feet from your wing but it's going to be frustrating trying to get good at keeping it there... 

I have my last T-6 simulator ride today which is a low-level sim where you fly a low route 500' above the ground. I'll get to do 2 of these in the plane at some point. 11 more day...

Update

Whoops apparently it's been awhile since I updated this thing - but hopefully I was able to see most the people who keep track of this thing over Thanksgiving.

So I had my 2nd checkride (final contact) on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. My "profile" ended up getting all switched around because of the weather but everything ended up going pretty well. I did most my patterns here at laughlin, then went out to the MOA and knocked out the area stuff - the loop was pretty ugly but good enough to get by.  Finished up the flight with the general knowledge and emergency situation and everything went much better than my first checride. It was definitely great to knock that out before the holidays!

That night I drove down to San Antonio with a few guys and hit up the flying saucer and spent the night at a hotel near the airport as we all had flights the next morning. I flew out on a 6AM flight and got back to Philly where Megan picked me up and got to enjoy not 1 but 2 Thanksgivings at my Aunts house with most my family and then over Megan's and got to see a bunch of her family there so it was a very nice evening. 

The next day we went up to Sea Bright, NJ for Andrew's wedding and had an awesome time seeing my friends there and getting the opportunity to witness Andrew's big move into married life. It was pretty surreal being there while I'm in the middle of all this crazy flight training but it only made me appreciate it that much more. We (megan and I) enjoyed a great after-party at the hotel and breakfast the next morning and said our goodbyes and headed back to South Jersey to drop off my tux and hit up best buy where we turned up RockBand on PS3 as loud as it would go and played a couple songs before the employees came and told us it was too loud. Had lunch with my family and then met up with Nick and Lou for a night in Atlantic City. Dinner at Buddhakan was great and then made some money on the roulette and blackjack tables. 

Sunday I was supposed to fly back but my flight got cancelled because of all the weather and had to stay home an extra day (darn...) But the bad part was I had to take a 540AM flight which meant waking up at 245(145 Central) and then had to take the bus to Del Rio since I had carpooled which put me back into Del Rio at 6PM... aye

I had an instrument ride on Tuesday that went well, then my last instrument Sim on Wedesday and an "out-and-back" Nav Ride today where I flew out to College Station ( where Texas A&M is at) and had lunch and flew back. This means I'll probably have my instrument checkride early next week and there's a lot to know for that! That about covers it I think for now,

17 days until get to go home again~