And then there were two!

This week after a pretty relaxing weekend around the pool, which was forced upon us because the hire car was only loaned to us for a week and we were not fast enough in arranging our own transport! The process in the USA is pretty long, even when you do find a car at is suitable and have decided that you will buy it, and everyone agrees. You need to meet the guy who you are buying it from and exchange the keys and pay. Sounds simple enough. But no. Then you need to go to a notary who will witness the filling in of the paperwork and sign after seeing your ID (must be American ID) you can get American ID for $10 from the local DMV. Of course at the same time the notary will want a fingerprint to confirm who you are! :-) keep your fingertips unmarked and no cuts or damage while out here, you will need them a lot.

After this paperwork is fill in you need to get insurance. Quite simple and actually we were told that we needed to get US driving licences to make the insurance reasonably priced and this involved both a theory and practical driving test, as if there are not enough tests around at the moment! In fact this is not the case, as long as your stay is less than 7 months it actually works out better on a UK licence. So you have insurance and your car, but you still cannot drive it. You now need to go to the DMV and register it and get a number plate. This incurs a fee which is based on e value of the car, another reason not to buy one that is too expensive! Finally now you can get around.

This Monday we started by sitting in innovative a instructors course for the DA-40. Really useful stuff, this will last for three days and conclude with our first flight on Thursday. It is really weird pulling up the flying schedule and seeing your own name on it! Suddenly everytng seems to be worth it! The instructors course will not be a permit ant feature of the CTC course but will be delivered by the instructors to the cadets themselves. It is quite in depth and gives a really good grounding on the ins and outs of the aircraft, and the Garmin 1000 system, which really is an amazing bit of kit. This instructors have already told us that most of the functions will be inhibited to begin with because this aircraft is really so advanced it can display parameters and perform functions that really make the pilots life very easy!

All this was helped by a look at the next DA-40 to arrive in the hanger, the plane is fresh from the factory and still in many bits, so we really got a great view of how everything works, where it is located in e aircraft and hopefully this will all help us should we find ourselves in an abnormal situation.