Got my ME rating

[gkey]

Not that it is earth-shattering news, but I did get my ME rating last Thursday.

[Guy Paris]

Congratulations! guy paris, the old 72 driver....

[gkey]

Thanks, Guy.

I know that this rating is a breeze for others, but I had a real hard time with it. In all I went through 3 CFI's and nearly 48 hours to get it.

My time is extremely constricted, since I am on call for anesthesia at my hospital for 24 hours at a time on average every second day. On top of that, I still run a family clinic in the afternoons, and do a ER call once every 9 days. I firmly believe that I should not fly if I did not have at least 6 straight hours of sleep prior, so finding these golden opportunities to go fly are quite sparse.

I could have done it with my first CFI, but then he moved away a day after we started. The second CFI was a real problem, and wanted to nullify everything that the first CFI did. Not a good idea. Especially as the first CFI is like a brother to me. Our personalities did also not work in synergy (strong euphymism used here), and I decided for the sake of my own sanity and his chances of longlivety that if he did not want to sign my application for the check ride after nearly 43 hours, I will never get it.

So I closed the clinic for 3 days, went down to Saskatoon, and flew with a wonderful CFI for 2 mornings. In the afternoons we sat down and discussed the "academics" for an hour or so.

I did my check ride on Thursday morning. The weather was really bad, with cloud bases 8/8 at 3000 AGL, tops up to 22,000 AGL and lightning on the horizons. Wind was 15G25, and it started to rain moderately. This is the same cell that caused a WestJet 737 later that day to plummet almost 1000 feet. My whole upper air work was done amidst the clouds at 4500 AGL - solid IFR weather, but hey, I was with an expert anyways. It was quite a different story to do stalls and steep turns with no peripheral reference at all. I can see how people can fly themselfs to a premature death that way!

That just confirms this message for me: IFR course as soon as possible.

[Paul Sharp]

Congratulations. Sometimes it isn't easy when an instructor relationship gets like that. When I got my private license, the initial instructor was driving me crazy. As soon as I changed instructors everything went smoothly.

[rick bell]

sunny skies don't make you better; sooo
now you are on your way and ahead of the learning curve.