What a weird experience that was. Ever since I was 16, I've either had to pay someone or my family had to pay someone to let me fly. Now, it was time to fly and get paid to do it. It almost doesn't even seem fair that I am going to get paid to do something I enjoy doing so much.
On Friday, I received my first students. The one I was going to fly with first was scheduled to meet to fly with me at 11 am on Monday. When we met, I asked her a little about herself and did some "Fundamentals of Flying" ground before hopping in the plane. I got REALLY lucky with my first student. She graduated college with a degree in graphic design but realized she always wanted to fly. So, she came to the United States from Sri Lanka hoping to becoming a commercial pilot. What really threw me off was her accent. I thought for sure that being from the Indian region of SE Asia, she would have an Indian English accent. On the contrary, she sounded like she was from the UK. When I asked her about her ground school, she told me she got a 98% on her written exam. I think I only got a 94% on my private pilot ground school written exam.
So, we did a preflight inspection and then took off for her very first flight. She really had a great time except for the brief feeling of nausea. On her next flight, she wouldn't feel nauseous at all. In the last week alone, her skills have been getting better and better. She went from barely being able to fly straight and level to do more complicated maneuvers very well. I am excited to see how she does over the course of the next few months.
My other student is at the end of his instrument course. I got him with the caveat that he was struggling and had some personality conflicts with his previous instructor. Oh boy. He is a 31 year old Egyptian man who speaks much more broken english than my other student. I thought to myself that this is going to be challenging. Our first task was to fly an instrument cross country. I was a little uncomfortable with just jumping in and doing an instrument cross-country without ever having flown with him before. It almost felt like I was getting thrown under the bus. We went up and he did ok. On the next flight, we just did instrument approaches and his performance was well below average. So, we spent the next few days working on our instrument procedures in the simulator. Monday, we are going to be doing a long instrument cross country.
So, all-in-all, this has been a pretty good week. When I was driving back to my temporary home in the hotel I'm at now, I thought to myself, "you know, even though it's almost 8, today was a good day." I never once thought that in my time at Malmstrom. In fact, there were times towards the middle of my time there when I would turn on an XM Radio comedy channel just to try and make myself laugh. I remember just wanting to get off base and out of my uniform after a long and stressful day. Now, I don't feel that. I like hanging around and geeking it up with the other instructors. I enjoy getting in the right seat and just sitting there while someone else is flying the airplane. I get to look down on the beaches of the Atlantic Ocean and watch the waves crash on the shore. Plus, I am making $22 an hour. It's not a monster fee by any means, but it is better than nothing.
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