Wednesday, May 2nd

Yesterday, I arrived at the Cuyahoga County Airport and met with my sponsor, who was a little tired from flying the red eye from Phoenix the night before, but still wanted to spend all morning going over lots and lots of information with me. We discussed a lot about flight instruments like the altimeter and the artificial horizon. We also went into the differences between Pitot-Static instruments and Gyroscopic instruments; in short, they run on two different types of outside sensors, which operate the different flight instruments in the airplane. Then, we went on to discuss probably the most boring section of ground school - the FAA's regulations. This is all of the requirements for flying an aircraft, medical certificates and how to keep your license current. Something odd that I learned is that there are actually three different definitions for "nighttime" which apply in many different cases. Like, for instance, your lights have to be on between sunset and sunrise, but nighttime, as far as the FAA is concerned, is the end of evening civil twilight to the beginning of morning civil twilight. Today, Kevin and I examined the Aircraft Systems in extreme detail, this includes the engine, fuels and the electrical system. And we also covered troubleshooting and anything that can possibly happen in the air and how to fix it. A lot of the issues can sound a little scary, but most are solvable, or you have about 30 minutes to figure out a place to land.