Friday night, I flew my first cross country in the system, from atlanta to chattanooga. It was an interesting flight... ATC caught me off guard a couple of times with re-routes, and once in the air where it caught me off guard and left me fumbling for charts
All in all though, I did pretty well and enjoyed myself thoroughly.When we got back to the airport, a friend of mine was there, and he introduced me to two of his friends. One of them, Dan, is a 22 year old guy with 1300 hours, half of which is in crop dusters, his A&P, and a bunch of experience building Pitts's. The other guy, Bill, is a CFI/I/MEI who's looking to build time really hardcore. They both agreed to help me fly my hood time off... So last night, I got together with them to do some hood work, and Dan says 'why don't we take my Arrow?' So Bill hops in the back and we fly to birmingham and back. We shot a couple touch and goes first, and Bill says 'consider yourself endorsed for complex'. It was quite a nice plane to fly, very similar to handling my Cherokee, the biggest difference is that I had to leave a substantial amount of power in during the flare, and gently pull it out to get it to settle. We flew to birmingham on an IFR plan and shot the ILS in there, went missed and airfiled home, and shot the ILS back into McCollum. 3.5 hours of hood time and complex time! And all it cost me was $50 worth of MoGas
Today I'm scheduled to fly with one friend in the morning and another in the afternoon to build even more hood time.
