Published: July 29, 2016
Well, unless something drastic changes, my cushy schedule of 3:30 pm – midnight will come to an end this evening. I’m very bummed out, because this means we’re back to mornings. But, on the positive side, it means we have less than two weeks left until we’ll know the outcome of this craziness.
Most of this past week has been spent just working on problems 3-6, and tonight will be problem 7. The problems overall have been a pretty fair balance of VFR/IFR (some problems have more of one and less of another). The operations count in the problems are pretty much the same, just spread out differently.
Tonight with problem 7, supposedly, get busier with the number of operations rising into the 50s (in a 45 minute run), which will be just over an operation a minute. I counted last night, in problem 6, around 6 VFR arrivals, 8 IFR depatures, and probably 10 IFR arrivals. A bunch of the VFRs were touch and go operations, which adds 2 operations every time they touch the runway, times the number of times they come around.
Hopefully with the increase in operations, they spread the traffic out evenly (currently there is a large “bump” in the middle of the problem). I really hope the “bump” doesn’t increase and keep the first and last 10 minutes quiet as they are now, but I guess we’ll see.
Although the traffic count this past week hasn’t increased significantly, the complexity of the operation has stepped up a notch, which I’ve mostly enjoyed. I’ve learned a few lessons along the way too. Certainly learning new techniques every day and learning the hard way not to overwork the traffic because it comes back in 10-15 minutes to bit you in the backside.
One week left of training, then PAs. Can’t believe this crazy time in OKC is closing in so fast, but I’m super excited for it. Can’t wait to see the problems this evening and meet some new challenges.
Plans for this weekend: get out of the hotel and do something to keep my mind off the final evals, which aren’t even for a week!