I was supposed to fly at 2pm but the instructor was unavailable so I rescheduled for 4:30pm. Not such a big deal. Except that I worked from 6am to 2pm just to fly in the afternoon. That sucks a little but whatever.

Fast forward- I'm pulling into the street for my flight when what do I see but Mark's van parked in front of his former office space. I caught him as he was pulling out. Rather than being pushy about the $1300 he owes us for classes he had to cancel, I asked him how things were going. I already knew the answer. I already knew what he would say. But I wanted to hear it from him instead of just speculating.

He acknowledged I called and emailed but didn't say why he didn't respond other than that he's "under tremendous stress" and "trying to sort things out". He's no saint. He should have called his students and have been upfront. He should never have used our money to fund his legal battle.

He's personally bankrupt from the legal battle that ultimately bans him from using Airpark as the location for his flight school and plane rental location. Another student of his sued to get his money and another guy went to Mark's house to collect. I was about to do the same but then I wanted to know if Mark was going to be honest. And he was.

I gave him an out. I asked "so what should we do next?" He came up with a solution: he has planes parked out of Airpark that he will let us fly. We have $1300 of rental time to use when we're ready. I won't fly his planes until I'm licensed but I think it's a fair trade. He can't rent flight time but he can allow us to use his planes as a gift. That's legal.

Regarding my flight, we took off at dusk. I did several landings at McKinney Regional, all fine landings, and a very nice landing at Addison. The first half had enough light in the sky to see the ground but the latter half was all dark. I love night landings! I got complimented on my pattern technique (Thanks David!) and was reminded to keep my hand on the throttle more often.

I fly again Saturday morning, and hopefully will get endorsed for solo flights going forward.

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