BPPP number 3

This weekend I completed my third BPPP.  It was a lot of fun and I highly recommend the course for Baron and Bonanza pilots who haven't done it.  It's a bit pricey at $1395 for the weekend, but the training is top notch and worth it as there is nowhere else I know of that a person can get access to such a large number of extremely experienced pilots in person.  Some of these guys are ridiculously experienced, I mean thousands and thousands of hours, carrier landings, etc.  It's also great to meet the other pilots who are local to me and generally all a super cool group, they are flying Beechcrafts after all!  A shot of the last row of the Hotel ramp, how cool is it to see thirty odd of the finest Bo's and Baron's all on the same ramp?

My instructor for the weekend was Erik Slayback, a JetBlue captain and he was awesome.  My Saturday morning flight started at 8am.  We went through all the paper work,  and he quizzed me a bit on the IFR charts, the textual descriptions and symbols, etc.  Then we blasted off and did steep turns, accelerated stall, power on/off stalls, emergency decent, some "flying by the numbers" stuff, failed the left engine and simulated step downs for getting all the numbers, failed and feathered the critical engine and then held it at blue line max climb configuration until she could climb no more at about 8500 ft, ILS to MOD to published missed and hold, single engine ILS, single engine partial panel RNAV (he failed my AHRS by pulling the breaker) to circle to land, eng failure on takeoff, popped door, VOR approach to SCK, emergency gear extension and back to CCR. 3.5 hrs and an IPC in the books. My thigh is actually sore today from stomping on the rudder so hard.  What a work out!