Prescott Student Blog: Stephen

It's been two week since my last entry and several things have happened since. To begin with, flying is awesome! I am doing so well! It's weird, it's like I already know this stuff. I am learning it all so fast and well. I am just learning the basic instrument maneuvers and the control and performance flying method.

The control and performance method is using certain controls and instruments for the desired performance. It is a fairly simple concept but applying it takes a lot of practice. For practice, I did a vertical S maneuver which consists of climbing and descending at 400 feet per minute for 500 feet. This one really teaches you to fly the plane by known power settings and and brings out your weaknesses in the control and performance method. For the first time doing it, it was ok. It's just fine tuning all the things is what I need to work on.

Horizons came out with a new issue last week and it is the best to date. We had all of our editorial staff there and the editing and design was great. This paper has gotten many compliments and has definitely helped us re-gain some of our credibility back. We also had more people join our team of reporters so our staff now is close to 20. This paper is definitely growing.

School is going ok. Weather class is getting a lot tougher as more concepts are introduced and it has been getting hard to keep up with homework with all the work I'm doing. It's all about balancing things out. A system Im still trying to grasp before the end of the semester.

Posted by Stephen at 1:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I finally got my instructor so I began my flight training. He is really cool and a very good pilot. He is part of the Standards team meaning that he is one of the pilots that gives check rides so he can give me pointers on how to be better prepared to pass a check ride. I can't wait until we get to do the actual instrument stuff.

School overall, is ok. Enjoying most of my classes but I am seeing that overloading myself every Tuesday and Thursday and having Monday, Wednesday, and Friday off was kind of a bad idea. I work when I am not in school and I fly at night so my time is limited. Also, I am the Editor-in-Chief of Horizons, Embry-Riddle Prescott's campus newspaper, so that takes up a lot of my time.

Last Wednesday we released a new issue of Horizons and it did not come out well. Only four out of the seven editors could make it making it very hard to complete the issue. It was rushed and did not get edited as mush as it should have been. Several misspellings, and the design was very rushed. Our faculty advisor told me that this was one of the worst issues he has seen in five years. I was really embarrassed and all these mistake caused us our credibility. It's going to take hard work to get people interested in the paper again.

The good thing about the paper is that that staff keeps on growing slowly. We started out with 12 people and have already added 3 more staff writers in one week. There are a couple of people that look like they have editor potential that could help out a lot with the overall product. Let's just hope things get better from now on.

Posted by Stephen at 3:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This first week of school is over. It was an overall easy week just getting to know your professors and the course syllabus and getting into swing of things. A couple of classes look like they are going to be challenging.

One of these classes is Weather 301. As a Aeronautical Sciences student, I am required to take two weather classes for my degree. In the Spring, it took the first one, Weather 201, which dealt with high and low pressure systems, convergence, divergence and a general overview of the atmosphere and weather conditions. This year in Weather 301, it looks like it's going to be all that and more. Thunderstorms, radar and satellite images, warm and cold fronts, it just looks like a lot more work and memorization, but I have been wrong before.

Physics looks like it's going to be ok, I did pretty well last semester so I don't think I would struggle with this course.

I started my instrument ground school and this one looks like the hardest. So many more things to learn and memorize make the entire rating look very complicated. We haven't covered much expect instruments and all. Haven't start with flying due to some paper work problems but hopefully it will all get resolved by next week. I look forward to this semester,

Posted by Stephen at 3:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)