What's Next: HP? Complex? DC-3 Dreams?

This is a regular blog post. No audio for this one.

Getting my ass kicked at work again as usual for corporate lawyers in December. Not complaining. I need to get my year finished with enough billable hours to satisfy my partners that I deserve the bonus that will clean up the credit card balance spawned by the instrument rating and lots of other activities. No real prospect of getting an episode out any time soon.

But it provides an enforced time of reflection about flight. I have the instrument rating and I'm now PP ASEL; Instrument Airplane. What's next? Lots of possibilities out there.

I intend to pick up the ground instructor and ground instrument instructor certificates as soon as the pressure of year-end relents. I had also planned to go after a few other interesting things. Like high-performance, complex, and tailwheel endorsements. Each of those will likely mean training somewhere other than Tradeweinds, which is a bit of a bummer. I like Tradewinds for the quality and maintenance of its aircraft and the genuinely professional instructors. I also really like that it has a corporate flight department (King Air B200s and Hawker jets) to which many of the instructors aspire so I know that the guy or gal in the right seat isn't just building time (or at least that it would behoove him or her not to blow the option of flying corporate at Tradewinds by doing anything stupid with me, a relatively sophisticated consumer of flight training, on the left seat).

I can pick up the high performance with CAP. I need to go get Form Fived at some point anyway. There's a guy in my squadron who's doing his instrument rating Part 61 and he could use a safety pilot. It's be nice to be able to sit right seat for him.

And I know that there's a Citabria at KARB and at least one other taildragger at KPTK in which I could train, albeit with different folks.

So I'm catching up with my podcast listening yesterday and listening to one of ANN's special features in between the Daily Aero-Briefings (as I occasionally do when the special feature is either Bob Miller of Over the Airwaves or something else that doesn't sound like mere promotion) and heard something really cool.

What about a type rating? What about a type rating in a DC-3? 95-foot wingspan twin taildragger. Oooooh. Aaaaaah.

Check out the interview with Dan Gryder and the training part of Dan's website. It says, in relevant part:

DC-3 PILOT IN COMMAND INITIAL / TYPE RATING / ATP UPGRADE
With an existing multi-engine private, commercial or ATP certificate, our DC-3 initial program takes you from start to finish and completes the program with the issuance of a new FAA temporary airman certificate stamped "DC-3" on it! We train by and follow the FAA Type rating PTS for the DC-3 This initial course can take anywhere from 8 to 15 flight hours to complete, mostly depending on your ability and past experience. Having this rating on your airman certificate is becoming a real rarity with the disappearance of this aircraft world wide. If you have the ATP written test complete and would like your pilot certificate upgraded from commercial to ATP in conjunction with this type rating, we can accomplish that at the same time as well.

DC-3 SECOND IN COMMAND INITIAL
With an existing multi-engine private, commercial or ATP certificate, our DC-3 initial program takes you from start to finish and completes the program with the issuance of a new FAA temporary airman certificate stamped "DC-3" on it! We train by and follow the FAA Type rating PTS for the DC-3 This initial course can take anywhere from 8 to 15 flight hours to complete, mostly depending on your ability and past experience. Having this rating on your airman certificate is becoming a real rarity with the disappearance of this aircraft world wide. If you have the ATP written test complete and would like your pilot certificate upgraded from commercial to ATP in conjunction with this type rating, we can accomplish that at the same time as well.

Could this be big bucks? Sure. More than flying a C-172 around, certainly. Not sure how much I'd be looking at. But it'd be pretty big by my usual flying standards of "Don't spend any more than it would require for an apartment in town for that mistress I don't have and will never obtain."

Would the rating be useful? Don't be silly. Or, more properly, would the rating be useful in any sort of remunerative way or expand my daily capabilities? Again, don't be silly.

There are only 500 DC-3s still registered and only 100 or so of them are in the US. Unless I wanted to be of assistance to some volunteer organization that keeps a DC-3 flying, I can't see making any use of such a rating in any remotely practical way.

But picture this. You're hangar flying with some cranky old bastards at the local fly-in (these guys are rare in our wonderful community of pilots, but they're definitely out there) and the conversation naturally goes where it does when cranky old-timers want to put the new guy in his place.

Cranky bastard: "So, son, you fly auto-land [tricycle gear] aircraft, or have you had some taildragger time?"

Me: "Yeah, I've flown taildraggers. I heard that they'll make a real pilot out of a guy and I believe it."

Cranky bastard: "I got my private in an Aeronca Champ in 1960. Great airplane. What'd you do? fly a Citabria for a few hours?"

Me: "Nah. I got mine in a DC-3. It was part of the type rating."

Would the rating be useful? On that count, hell, yeah!

Like I said, cranky bastards are truly few and far between in our community of pilots, but wouldn't it be nice to have automatic and solid cred to dryly present if you ran into one? Just put that man card back in your pocket there, buddy. Genuine cred here. Don't make me drop it on you. I hate getting it out because it's so hard to get it back in the wallet.

(And it'd be really cool for less adversarial hangar-flying opportunities, too!)

So what do I need to do? Get Dan on the show, for one thing. I have an e-mail in to him. Dan! Call me, man! Can you tell that I'm intrigued? Can you tell that any red-blooded pilot would drool all over his keyboard to seriously consider that type rating? I'll record audio of the whole thing and put it out on the show. The average episode gets around 2,000 listeners and there are something like 10,000 downloads per month. Serious promotion. And I'll put out an MP3 CD for you and/or serve the audio to your site for promotion! Check out Test Pilot: You or Shooting a GPS Approach at Flint for what I do with cockpit audio. Better yet, check out the IFR checkride audio when I get it published.

And Dan put all of the manuals out on his site, too. That's what Im taking to Starbucks to study over in the corner with my venti drip coffee (black, thank you). Can the sissy boys with their MacBooks doing blog posts about topiary and knitting possibly compete? No way!

For another thing, I need to get my multi-engine rating. Hmmm.

Traverse Air at KTVC has an accelerated 2-3 day multi course for $1,300. My folks live under the KTVC Class D. We vacation up there from time to time. When the weather is nice, Mary and the kids could head out to the beach and I could buzz around over them, depending on the active runway. And I could piss away $1,300 in three training flights at Tradewinds easily, so it's within my budget radar range.

Okay, so I'm in the throes of a corporate lawyer at year-end and even remore fantasies tend to seem more achievable because, whatever they are, they're not sitting at this bloody desk hating all the music on my iPod even though it has something like 3,500 songs on it (key indicator that life sucks). But I'm going to dig a little deeper into this. If it's at all possible, that (along with a jet team ride) might end up being my focus for 2008.

Anyway, ain't aviation great? There are more challenges out there than you can shake a stick at! When the only problem is picking among them and making the time to rise to them, I think you have a pretty good indication that your avocation is pretty darned worthy.

Happy and safe holidays, folks! If you're flying somewhere, don't succumb to get-there-itis! Some of the best aviation (and other) stories and experiences happen when you have to spend the night in a little motel in East Overshoe with the FBO's K-car sitting outside your door and dinner is microwave burritos.