Commercial Pilot: From passion to profession!

5/29/2008
After 6 months and 17 days, the day came: I earned my multi-commercial pilot certificate!
The FAA examiner was really nice, I was expecting someone to be screaming at me the whole flight... The checkride oral was pretty fast, only 1 hour, really basic questions, we didn't really get deep into any subject, and for some reason the examiner was satisfied, and we went to fly.

After a meticulous preflight, we took off from 7L to the north practice area. After leaving Charlie Airspace, I squawked VFR, changed frequencies and climbed to 4500 ft. I started to head to my first previously planned checkpoint on my route to Savannah, and then he diverted me to Palatka airport, about 30 miles northwest from were we were. After the inflight calculations of magnetic heading, time and distance to Palatka, the examiner told me forget about Palatka and we started doing all the commercial maneuvers. Then he cut my left engine, I feathered it completely and after flying a couple headings we restarted it, did a Vmc demonstration, and emergency descent to Flagler were I did some various types of take offs and landings. Finally we headed back to Daytona, when he cut my engine again, and I landed single engine back home.... That's it now there's still a lot of work to do.................... single add-on, instructor.... looks like forever!

Hope to post here more often, and keep you guys updated.
Have an awesome weekend!

Marathon: the last XC

"Miami Center, N787PE, 7500, shoreline, southbound to Marathon, KMTH."

I've been to Marathon, on the Keys of south Florida.
Hopefully that was my last paid XC... So i introduce you, the keys!




...After a nice dinner by the beach


Heading back home...

Navigating with a Sectional

I miss my old private days, navigating at 500 AGL. Well, i missed it so much that I decided to do the same on my commercial: navigate from Daytona Beach to Lake City at 500 to 1000 AGL. It was quite an adventure, because the sectional chart here is 1:500,000 and not as much detailed as it should be. Too many airspaces, prohibited areas, but not enough information about the terrain contours. Many roads and small rivers are not depicted and the lines of height as well are not shown. For someone that loved to do that low-"contact"-navigation using really amazing maps, 1:250,000 with every road and river, contour height lines, it wasn't an easy task... Yeah, i miss flying in Israel!

But anyways, it was harder to follow the planned route here, at such a low altitude. But the checkpoints were found - you can't miss the big lakes here, and are airports everywhere :) Here people fly higher, and simply use Airports as checkpoints. No one really invest all that time planning the chart, with the minutes along the route and everything. Although the Israeli military and old method is not used here at all in navigation, it is printed in my subconscious instincts - "heading, speed, altitude, clock, map, terrain" - I used it again at the lowest possible altitude and guess what - it always work! My instructor was impressed with my map and dead reckoning, and another instructor said in my stage 1 check ride that he is sending students to have tutoring with me for flight planning :))

Enough talking, check out some pictures!
Daytona Beach - Lake City Municipal - Cecil - Daytona Beach.

Cecil Airport

Don't bother the picture, that's our 737PE, the oldest lady of the Seneca fleet. It still flies exceptionally well, VFR , off-course.