Pilot Life: A Quick Half Hour

I tried to go up for a flight this evening to hash out some more night hours, but things didn't go the way I intended it...

Also on a slightly unrelated note, I've decided (at the suggestion of my flight instructor!) to enroll in a three-week long Instrument ground course at Albany starting in April; this means the rest of my Instrument checkride is pushed back even further. Not the way I wanted to do it, but considering that it's been nearly two years now since I took classroom ground lessons for the Instrument Rating at UVU, I think the refresher on much of the book work and study materials is needed. And when it boils down to how my flight training experiences has been two years ago, I wouldn't be in this situation had my experiences with UVU been better, namely my private pilot training that they treated poorly!

On top of that, I've decided to work for the rest of this month on any commercial requirements I need to fulfill in preparation for my eventual commercial rating as well (namely, some complex airplane experiences and some cross-country requirements).

A shorter-than-expected flight in N5174E!

As for tonight, I got in the air after all the usual pre-flight and before-takeoff business and planned to head up to McMinnville to shoot some landings there. However, as I tried to make some position calls over the radio, I realized that there was something wrong with the pilot-side radio mic button. When I pressed down on it, the radio wouldn't transmit. A quick test of the co-pilot side's mic button showed that the radios were working. Right there and then, I decided to abandon my plans going up to McMinnville and decided to head back to Albany for some troubleshooting on the ground as I was in no mood to do so while airborne. I leveled off briefly to unplug my headsets from the pilot side and plugged into the co-pilot side so I could at least make my radio calls without too much trouble.

From there, I entered the downwind and landed on Runway 34 and taxied back to the hangar. After shutting down, I got on the phone with my uncle to inform him of the issue before determining that additional troubleshooting is needed. I put the plane away and called it an early night.