Student Pilot Cast

Back to a cockpit audio episode this week, but you may be asking what it is since I finished my primary training episodes. Well, this is an Oshkosh departure and next week we’ll do an arrival…and yes, in that order. More explanation when we get into the episode…but I hope you enjoy.

This episode is an interview with Stu Stevenson, Co-Owner of Thrust Flight, an ab initio flight school in the Dallas area with additional locations on the horizon. Stu is also one of the co-hosts and the creator of A Pilot’s Journey Podcast, and is a CFI, ATP, and generally great guy.

In this discussion with Stu we will cover all sorts of cool topics from Stu’s own training to how he and his business partner are running their flight and mechanic school today. We’ll talk about their Zero Time to Airline program, the pilot shortage, and a lot of other great hangar flying.

Links:

Thrust Flight (https://www.thrustflight.com/)

A Pilot’s Journey Podcast (https://pilotsjourneypodcast.com/blog/)

Stu’s LinkedIn Page ((99+) Stuart Stevenson | LinkedIn)

Stu’s Twitter (Stuart Stevenson (@PilotStu) / Twitter)

Welcome back SPC listeners.  Big day today…time for my check ride.  It’s finally here…and after all these years, we’ll finally figure out if I made it or not.  Hope you enjoy Episode 53, “Checking my Ride.”

Yup, the time had finally come to see if I had learned what I needed to to be able to move on to the next phase of my flying. This was a big one for me.

Back to my training, we’ll be doing the second half of my makeup flight.  This is the continuation of the flight from Episode 50.  Enjoy episode 52, “Am I Ready Yet?” I was only a few days from me rescheduled check ride, and I was getting even more nervous and excited. Glad you can join me for this one.

This week week’s episode is something a little different.  We’ll get back to part two of my Instrument make-up flight next week, but I wanted to throw in the audio from a sit-down I had with an old friend and colleague, Tim Omta, when we recently re-connected after several years because of aviation.  He had let me know that he had just learned to fly last year but I didn’t know a lot of details, and I purposely held off asking for them until we had a chance to sit down and talk with the audio being recorded.  Tim has a bit of a different back-story for his aviation interest, and in my opinion has some pretty interesting reasons for seeing his training through.  It was a very enjoyable conversation for me, and I hope you have a good time as well. Enjoy.

This is episode 50, where you may have been expecting an episode about my check ride, but alas, there was a bit of a snag, so you can get all of the information in this week’s episode. This episode will include part one of some makeup flying and we even go and land at Pinal Airpark to look at some mothballed airplanes. Believe it or not, it was a fun, relaxing flight, but I’ll be back to stressing about the check ride soon enough. Hope you enjoy episode 50.

In this episode we’ll cover a quick flight to get the additional .3 hours I needed to be ready for my check ride. The previous day I had 3 flights (see episodes 46, 47, and 48 for those). Today I would do this one flight, and be studying like crazy for my oral and check ride the next morning. I also was going to try to get to bed early so I would be ready the next day. But today, I needed some hood time…thus this episode.

For this episode we’ll be doing a dual flight with Lary, getting some of that hood time I needed, and practicing a takeoff under the hood. We’d be flying in N81658. Keep in mind this is now my 3rd training flight of the day and the fourth in the past two days. To recap, I had a solo flight in the morning (see episode 46) where I practiced the stuff I had gone over the day before with my instructor, Lary (see episode 45 for that), and then I had done my fourth and final stage check in the early afternoon (that one is episode 47). Now, in the late afternoon, I was doing another flight with Lary. I was getting very tired as you can imagine. It was late enough that it was no longer getting hotter at least, but it was still well over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Hope you enjoy the episode.

In this episode I’ll be taking you along for my fourth and final stage check with one of the chief pilots. This stage check, if successfully completed, would mark the end of my primary training and I would then be ready for my check ride with an examiner.  Of course, as I’ve already mentioned, I would have a couple more flights after this just to get my hood time in and also to do some last-minute prep and practice.

Enjoy Episode 47.

Welcome back SPC listeners…this flight was the day after my dual flight with Lary from the last episode, episode 45, and I would be some solo practice on the same things, short and soft takeoffs and landings.  I’d be staying in the pattern for this solo.  Hope you enjoy Episode 46 – The Last Solo.