Ground School Is NOT Over...

The elation that we felt when we finished ATPL ground school was great but wears of pretty quickly when you get stuck into ground school in Phoenix! There are a few things that are better, the days are not long, there is little home study and the weather is so much better so the afternoons are spent by the pool in a cool 30 degrees celsius. It is a far cry from ATPL ground school but nevertheless, we are unfortunately still watching the aircraft take off out the window! 

There is a lot of instructor training taking place at the moment on the DA-40 so everything is ready for us next week, but for this week we are stuck into ground school covering topics such as Goodyear Operating Procedures, Actual Fuel Planning (not the theoretical rubbish from ground school!) Effects of Controls, Mass and Balance and Performance for the DA-40, Apron Safety, Met and NOTAM sources in the US. While all this is pretty dry we can at least be objective in that we are learning about the aircraft and the airfield we will fly at for the next 6 months. Which is some consolation. 

In the background while all this is going on we are waiting for TSA approval, something which involves quite a lengthy process of fingerprints, visas, medicals etc to satisfy the US authorities that we are safe to fly around their country. That approval arrived this morning, is around a 6 week process in all starting in the UK and cannot be completed until you have entered the US and given yet another set of fingerprints to the Goodyear Police (the third set we have done!) 

This allowed us to go out onto the Apron and have a close up look and some cheesy photographs with the CTC's new (and currently only!) Diamond Star DA-40, N846TC. The aircraft is really great, excited about flying something brand new and on the stand it makes everything around it look like it runs on steam. We have a full glass cockpit, Garmin 1000, TCAS, as opposed to TAS in the other aircraft, Air Conditioning, 4 seats so back seating is always an option on classmates lessons (although the MTOM leaves a skinny margin,) something that I believe is more challenging in NZ. 

With all our afternoons off, we have been exploring a little further afield. We managed to source a car, this was very challenging to start with but as soon as some of the Lufthansa cadets realized they did not have long left in the US we found many people offering us their cars! Because we are the only ones buying they are all competing with each other on price. A nice position to be in! So there is plenty of availability out here, and not really any need to go off the airfield. 

Other than this we have been out to a couple more shopping mals, over the other side of Phoenix to see a bit of the dessert, which is over 75 miles! Just to get out of the city! and to an international soccer game! US V. Mexico, which cost us $48 each. Cant really argue with that! This was in the university stadium and 60,000 attended, great to be there. We were surrounded by Mexican supporters as there is no segregation at US games between supporters, so we went with Mexico!

Other big news... Yesterday it rained... about 4 drops for the second day this year. Exciting Stuff! It remained above 25 degrees though so nothing to get too upset about.