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I have been putting it off, and putting it off, but I knew it had to be done. V3 just seemed like such an overwhelming task.
Even when I sat down at my cockpit, I was thinking "I might just wait and do this at the end of the week....but then I got this powerful burst of courage , pushed the PTT button and said... "John Wayne Clearance, Skyhawk 6804Bravo"....."Skyhawk 6804Bravo, John Wayne Clearance, go ahead"....

"Skyhawk 6804Bravo is type 172Romio at west GA parking with Hotel. Request Northwest departure with Flight Following for the Coastal Route into LAX Bravo for V-3 rating".

....There, I said it and it was all over, but the crying. (what have I done?) Now I had to proceed forward and throw myself at the mercy of the court.

What a pleasure to hear Torrance tower say " Skyhawk 04 Bravo, Exit the runway. You have passed your V3..Congratulations!"
I am ecstatic! What a great feeling! Next step is into the world of (gulp) IFR

Congrats! The IFR stuff is fun and can be complicated too!
Be sure to watch the pertinent IFR workshops along with them so you have a better understanding of the "why" and not just the "what".
http://www.pilotedge.net/workshops

Congrats it's a huge step finishing the VFR ratings ! IFR ain't so bad, in some ways it's easier because there are more rules to follow, and you're never on your own, the difficulty comes with the subtleties, but I'm sure you'll have a lot of fun !

Awesome man . Keep it up!

Thank you Everyone! What is scaring me about IFR is understanding and following SIDs and STARs with real ATC.
I have used them in the sim with no consequences because I never had to deal with real ATC while flying them. Now it will be different and a lot more at stake.

> following SIDs and STARs with real ATC

That is definitely the hard part in my experience. You might file the SID and STAR but ATC will almost always give you some curve ball that means you're not actually on the SID/STAR for a portion of the flight. The more you fly manually (or with autopilot in plain old heading mode) instead of relying on the FMS, the better able you'll be to respond to the dynamic changes ATC will throw at you.

-Chris (SWA484)

Good job Bob. I could tell you were nervous when I issued you the clearance out of KSNA. I wasn't around for the arrival but it doesn't look like you had any issues!

Congrats on passing your V3!
You will have a lot of fun flying the I-Ratings. I guess everybody has his own highlights, but I especially enjoyed flying the VNY3.DAG departure without FMS or GPS. Doing this in a fast turboprop or jet, you definitely got your hands full even when not having to talk to ATC. Another memorable rating for me was the I-9, but that was mainly because of the plane getting ahead of myself, so I needed to get vectored around quite a bit. In the end everything went fine, but I wouldn't have been suprised if I had gotten a fail because of this. Kudos to the controller!

For the sids/stars just do a good pre-brief. They're not so bad after that. Use skyvector or whatever mapping system you use to look at the departure procedure (and of course the chart) to visualize what direction you're headed. Pre-enter your freqs for NAV1 and 2 if you have it. Pre-plan comms if you can (can't always). Basically do as much as possible before you actually depart.

Make sure you know the ins and outs of your aircraft too, at least at the start. Later for a challenge fly the procedure in a different plane hehe... that always goes... "well"

Shawn Goldsworthy wrote:Good job Bob. I could tell you were nervous when I issued you the clearance out of KSNA. I wasn't around for the arrival but it doesn't look like you had any issues!

Thank you Shawn and everyone. I really appreciate you saying that. The worst part was when I was flying back toward LAX Bravo for the Mini-Route after ATC telling me not to enter Bravo until cleared, and I started getting nervous thinking what if I get close and nobody clears me into Bravo. What do I do? Do I just start flying around in circles?
It seems so hard to shake off that nervousness when getting on PilotEdge. I really don't know why that is, but I believe it is getting better little by little.
If I plan what I'm going to say before I key my mic, I do better, but when ATC asks me something that I don't expect, like " Skyhawk 6804Bravo, Say intentions", it just throws me into a spin. I have trouble explaining my intentions without getting all wordy.

The fact is that I am learning so much since getting on PilotEdge, that it is really exciting. I guess the nervousness of doing a lot of things that are not comfortable and familiar, is part of the fun.